Dune and Anthroposophy - Steiner, Higher Worlds, & Herbert's Dune Saga - pontos fathom podcast EP18

Dune and Anthroposophy - Steiner, Higher Worlds, & Herbert's Dune Saga 

- pontos fathom podcast EP18

Welcome to pontos fathom podcast episode 18: Dune and Anthroposophy - Rudolf Steiner, Higher Worlds, & Frank Herbert's Dune Saga - pontos fathom podcast episode 18. Today we will talk about Steiner's Anthrosoposophy and the Knowledge of Higher Worlds and similar themes of Paul's transformative journey in Frank Herbert's Dune Saga. Please leave a comment and if you like similar content like and subscribe and ring the bell to grow our community. Please also visit out links below to support the channel. Website: https://www.pontosfathom.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pontosfathom/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pontosfathom Hobby Blog: https://pontosfathomhobbies.blogspot.com/ Books Blog: https://pontosfathompress.blogspot.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/pontosfathom Book Store: https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pontosfathom

welcome back everyone to pontos fathom podcast episode 18 dune and anthroposophy today we're going to talk about the works of rudolph steiner specifically knowledge of the higher worlds how it is achieved and some resonances i find with frank herbert's dune especially for the first half of dune so in a way it kind of corresponds uh with the release of the movie and as you may know the the dune movie is only a portion of frank herbert's original book but then i want to not only expand into some other areas regarding some anthropo anthroposophic thinking that i've i see not only in dune but in the later part of the book and as well as in the dune saga and then i want to extend that into some other topics there's some other fictions and some uh other areas that i think will be really interesting to discuss so hey welcome back thanks for joining us again as you may know i've tried to build this channel and would like to get to a point where i'm doing these as a live stream but just waiting to get some audience built up so if you like the topics that we discuss here on the podcast please leave a comment below i've gotten some great feedback below from people uh some interesting links to some other people's content so i really think it's a great start but we can do better to grow it so please help me out and uh leave a comment like and subscribe share the video if you can ring the bell and you can keep track of new podcasts coming up and this way we can start getting this to a live stream and and really discuss things that we discuss here on the channel a lot of what we've been discussing has been around uh esoterica occult uh for sure anthropos theosophy but also psychology psychological interpretations and then we kind of ground it in fiction movies films cinema ideas as a way to sort of bridge the gap between what i like to think of it as that spectrum of imagination and how imagination is is along a spectrum of spirituality and you know we see with a lot of the classics uh of fiction science fiction even anime uh film the the works of artists that resonate with us end up showing us that they are either exploring these spiritual areas or exploring these i'll extend it to psychological areas but and i think what's great about anthroposophy that we'll talk about today is it really was steiner's reaction to

theosophy and it's really grounded in the idea of our human lives so what what better place to start with anthroposophy than with dune the story in in many ways of transformation story right from from paul to muadeeb sort of doing trans transformation stories uh so i definitely will kind of dig into doing a bit in steiner's uh knowledge of higher worlds he talks about a number of interesting areas so first of all as anthropo as an anthroposophical work this is really sort of a a guide to

knowledge of oneself and knowledge of one's place so i'll just give you a little quick reading from the beginning says in every human being they're slumber faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher worlds the mystic the gnostic the theosophists have always spoken of a world of soul and a world of spirit which are just as real to them as the world we can see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands anyone can listen to them may at every moment say to himself that of which they speak i too can know i can develop certain powers which today still slumber within me it can only be matter a matter of how to set the work to develop such faculties and you know we starting out with dune we have obviously dune is the story of paul atreides on the desert planet arrakis and it really hinges around the control of dune and the spice melange but also the way melange fits into a psychological transformation tool in many ways as the center of the universe i just wanted after reading that introduction phrase i just wanted to read this quick

idea because we have the idea in dune that the sleeper shall awaken right we have that vision of the sleeper shall awaken right and here we have um paul fell asleep to a dream of an arakin cavern silent people all around him moving in the dim light of glo globes it was solemn there and like a cathedral as he listened to a faint sound the drip drip drip of water and while he remained in the dream paul knew he would remember it upon awakening he always remembered the dreams that were predictions the dream faded paul awoke to feel himself in the warmth of the bed thinking this world of castle caledon without play or companions his own age perhaps did not serve sadness and fail well

one thing that we have from dune is this idea that the sleeper will awaken right paul is sleeping and if we go back into the space of knowledge of higher worlds we have this metaphor of this conditions of esoteric training says so he kind of goes through this steiner goes through the idea of esoteric training where he talks about the conditions of esoteric training to feel oneself as a member of humanity

to listen to the accomplishments the knowledge that comes to one to to strive to improve the fourth condition is to be convinced that the real being of humans lies not in the outer world but in the inner world anyone who regards himself as a product merely of the outer world as an outcome of the physical world can achieve nothing in esoteric training right says he should not force upon his environment anything for which it has no understanding and so very much so in dune we have paul moving from kaladan

more like an earthish planet oceans and temperate and he moved to this harsh new world and through paul we see this eyes of a new world a new place to transform transform himself and they said the saying the freeman had the saying that um dune was was made to test the faithful right so as paul progresses through the book he starts to

realize his place in the bened jesuit plan in his place in spiritual transformation the spice begins to increase his dreams he starts to have these feelings of prediction the benny jesuit reverend mother asks him do your dreams come true and he just mentioned in that paragraph that his dreams do come true and as we go into that there's a great passage here that says uh

so the idea of of having the dreams that are oppression is again seeing with different eyes right so he says the organs thus formed our eyes of the spirit with them the pupil gradually learns to see something like psychic and spiritual colors and once a person has acquired the faculty of seeing with spiritual eyes he encounters sooner or later the beings mentioned some of them higher rank than men some of them lower rank and this really resonates with paul's ability to see his ancestors eventually right he starts to see other entities he starts to see his own place in the world right he starts to see his own under all circumstances however

one precautionary measure is necessary and whoever is unwilling to adopt it would be well to advise to abstain from any attempt to make headway into occult science it is essential that anyone who becomes a pupil should lose none of his qualities as a good high-minded person or his sensitivity to physical reality throughout his training indeed he must continually enhance his moral strength his inner purity his powers of observation to take one example only during the elementary exercise for enlightenment the pupil must take care to ensure that his compassion for the human and animal worlds in his response to the beauty of nature are constantly increasing and with dune so we also have paul's awareness of the fremen right his awareness of dunes uh ecology and something that was great about herbert's work at its time was it was one of those novels that really had us learn about that connection between the ecology and the world but but of course paul is part of a tradition in the fiction of spiritual advancement right he's part of a school he's part of a breeding program that's going to spiritually advance him right so unlike us we're just humans but we are also part of a real-life breeding activity in that we have ancestors we have relatives we come from families we exist in a world in our country so very much so we're all as steiner would put it on a path with conditions for that esoteric training right so

here paul is with jessica

and she said let go of me he said she heard him with the iron in his voice she obeyed do you want to tell me what's wrong paul do you know what you were doing when you trained me did you know what you were doing when you trained me he asked there's no childhood in his voice she thought and she said i hope things any parent hopes that you'd be superior different different she heard the bitterness in his tone paul i you didn't want a son he said you wanted to quit sat hararak you wanted a male benny jesuit she recoiled from his bitterness but paul did you ever consult my father in this she spoke gently out of the freshness of her voice whatever you are paul the heredity is as much your father as me but not the training he said not the things that awakened the sleeper right the sleeper it's here he put a hand to his head and then to his breast in me it goes on and on and on and on and paul she heard the hysteria edging his voice listen to me he said you wanted the reverend mother mother to hear about my dreams you listen in her place now i've just had a waking dream do you know why you must calm yourself she said if there's the spice he said it's everything here the air the soil the food the geriatric spice it's like the truth slayer drug it's a poison she stiffened his voice lowered and peter poisoned so subtle so insidious so irreversible it won't even kill you unless you stop taking it we can't leave arrakis unless we take part of arrakis with us the terrifying presence of his voice brooked no dispute you and the spice the spice changes anyone who gets this much of it but thanks to you i could bring the change to consciousness i don't get to leave it in the unconscious where its disturbances can be blanked out i can see it paul you i see it he repeated she heard the madness in his voice didn't know what to do but he spoke again and she heard the iron control returned to him we are trapped here

we are trapped here she agreed

i must tell you of my waking dream paul said now there was fury in his voice to be sure you accept what i say i'll tell you first i know you'll bear a daughter my sister here on arrakis

jessica placed her hands against the tent floor her only her benny jesuit training had allowed her to read the first faint signals of her body to know that the embryo was only a few few weeks old only to serve we exist only to serve we will find a home among the fremen said where your missionary protectiva has brought us a bolt hold the things that can happen here i cannot begin to tell you he said i can't even begin to tell myself although i have seen it this sense of the future i seem to have no control over it the things just happen this immediate future say a year i can see some of that a road as broad as our central avenue on calidan some places i didn't see shadowed places as though it was behind a hill he fell silent as memory of that seeing filled him no prescient dream no experience of his life had prepared him for the totality which veils had been ripped away to reveal the naked time jessica found the tense glow tab control and activated it dim green light drove back the shadows easing her fear she looked at paul's face it's the look of terrible awareness she thought of someone forced to the knowledge of his own mortality he was no longer a child there's a way to evade the harkonnen she said the harkonnens put those twisted humans out of your mind he stated to her you shouldn't refer to people as humans without don't be so sure you know where to draw the line we carry our past with us in another mind there's a thing you don't know and we should we should know we are harkonnens her mind did a terrifying thing it blanked out the thought of sensation paul's voice went on when you text and you find a mirror study your face study mine now the traces are there and don't blind yourself to it look at my hands look at my sets of bones i've seen a place i've seen the data we're harkonnens a renegade branch of the family that's it some harkonnen cousin you're the baron's own daughter he said the baron sim sampled many pleasures in his use and once permitted him to be seduced it was for the geriatric genetic purposes of the benny jesuit one of you

the way he said you struck her like a slap but it set her mind working the daughter of the benny jesuit wanted wasn't at the end the old atreides harkona feud but to fix some genetic factor in their lines she grew up for an answer and as she saw inside her mind paul said they thought they were reaching for me but i'm not what they expected and i've arrived before my time and they don't know it mother pressed jessica pressed her hands to her mouth great mother he's the kwitzatz hedorak she could feel fear you're thinking i'm the quitsats hatharak he said put that out of your mind i'm something unexpected i must get word out to one of the schools she thought the mating index may show what has happened they won't learn about me until it's too late he said we'll find a place among the fremen the fremen have a saying they credit to shai hulud old father eternity he said they say be prepared to appreciate what you must and then he thought yes my mother among the fremen you'll acquire the blue eyes and a callous beside your lovely nose from the filter tube of your sill suit and you'll bear my sister saint alia of the knife so here here we have an intense scene where paul has the thought you could not possibly know what i am and you won't believe it until you see it and he thought i'm a seed right so he becomes a seed of the future here and um and in sort of going back to that anthropos that's quite an intense chapter to read but going back to the anthroposophical he talks about the candidate has come to be ready for the experience he is given what is called symbolically the draft of forgetfulness the draft the draft of forgetfulness this means that he is initiated into the secret of how to act without allowing himself to be continually disturbed by the lower memory this is necessary for the initiate for he must at all times have full confidence in the immediate present he must be able to wipe out the veil of memory which envelops man at every moment of his life if i judge something that happens to me today according to what i expected yesterday i'm exposed to a multitude of errors so this is like when paul says it just came up upon him this knowledge of the future this presence right the waking dream it's not something he can control but it's also what he controls is he controls his stillness at the heart of it and using some of that benny jesuit um training about letting the fear pass by notice in that paragraph how jessica is feeling fear and this is what they herbert says that the bene jesuit could not look to the place that the hedorah could see naturally does not mean the experience gained in life should be disavowed it should always be kept in mind as clearly as possible but the second draft given to the initiate is the draft of remembrance and this is where he remembers the ancient history like the dune other memory and throughout the dune saga that benny jesuit other memory becomes very powerful the idea of looking back and later in future books it's not only prescience seeing the future but memory ancestral memory that becomes such a powerful powerfully aligning to the human experience and what lato will later call the golden path which is how can man go forward and very much so what steiner was doing with anthroposophy was to give humanity a way forward that is both human and is spiritual a human-based spirituality right the thought of remembrance though he acquires the power to have higher mysteries always present on his soul ordinary memories would be unequal to this we must become completely united with the higher truths so will he raise himself to the spiritual sense more and more to the level to which nature has brought him physically wow right so um so yeah it continues when they're talking about sleep again during sleep no communication from the physical sense organs no perceptions of the ordinary outer world find their way to the human soul in a certain respect the soul is outside that part of the human body the so-called physical body in which the waking life is the medium for sense perception and thinking the soul is then connected only to the finer bodies the etheric bodies and the astral bodies and we can see in that last paragraph where paul is sort of um uh polish channeling that higher life right if we go to this quote we see paul is channeling that higher life and later in dune when paul

takes the

is this all right for me to drink he gestured to the sack in cheney's hands they want me to drink it she heard the hidden meaning in his words realize he had detected the poison in the original unchanged substance and he was concerned for her it occurred to jessica to wonder what the limits of paul's prescience his question revealed her so much you may drink it she said it has been changed

and she looked beyond him to see stillgar staring down now we know you cannot be false he said she sensed hidden meaning there how warm it was and how soothing paul saw the drug take hold of his mother he searched his memory so this is when jessica is taking the drug drink it chinese says she waved to the horn spot of water

if he drank the spice drug with the quintessence of the substance that brought the change into him he would return to the vision of pure time of time become space would perch him on the dizzying summit and defy him to understand from behind chaney stilgar said drink it lad you delay the right so now paul is drinking right um paul is drinking the water of life and paul listened to the crowd then through the wilderness in their voices they said muadeeb he looked down at his mother she appeared peacefully asleep in the sitting position breathing even and deep a phase out of the future that was his lonely past came to his mind she sleeps in the waters of life

johnny tugged at his sleeve paul took the horn spout to his mouth hearing the people shout there was something he can give us we are alike in a thing usual we each have lost the father to the harkonnens paul followed her they entered a narrow side paul felt the drug beginning to have its unique effect on him he found steady himself against johnny the mixture of whip cord and softness he felt beneath her robe stirred his blood the sensation mingled with the workings folding future and passed into the present leaving him the thinnest margin of trinocular focus so here we go like like in the steiner the past and the and the future begin to merge in the now and there's only a wider deeper now

and paul felt himself at the center he held himself poised in the awareness seeing time stretch out in its weird dimension delicately balanced yet whirling narrow yet spread like a net gathering countless worlds and forces a tight wire that he must walk yet a teeter-totter on which he balanced on the one side he could see the imperium the harkonnen called fade routha who flashed toward him with a deadly blade the sardocar raging off their planet the guild conniving and plodding the benny jesuit with their scheme of selective breeding they lay masked like a thunder head on the horizon he held back by no more than the fremen and their muadhiv the sleeping giant freman poised for their wild crusade across the universe paul felt himself at the center at the pivot where the whole structure turned walking a thin wire of peace with a measure of happiness china at his side he could see a time stretching ahead of him a time of relative quiet in a hidden siege a moment of peace between the periods of violence there's no other place for peace he said russell you're crying chanting members who so my strength do you give moisture to the dead to who's dead to the ones not yet dead he said let them have their time of life she said see hiya he said i'm no longer afraid usual look at me i see what you see when you hold me thus what do you see i see us giving love to each other and the quiet between the storms so many times you've given me comfort and forgetfulness so i write giving forgetfulness give me forgetfulness and knowing the past and the future right this is the the two gates sort of that uh steiner talks about uh last last uh little quote here uh he says the threshold is built out of every feeling of fear remaining in you this section is called the guardian of the threshold uh when you have crossed my threshold i shall never for an instant leave your side as a form form visible to you and in the future whenever you act wrongly you will immediately perceive your guilt as a hideous dymonical distortion of my form my threshold is built out of every fearing of fear remaining in you as long as you still have any trace of fear of becoming the director of your own destiny for just as long does a threshold lack something that must be built into it hitherto i emerge from your personality only when death recalled you from the earthly life the powers of destiny ruled over you visible do i stand thus before you as i ever have stood invisible behind you in the hour of death so again here we have the the calming notion and also the realization of the immortality and the connectivity the interconnectivity and for paul in in in this chapter of june as he's taking the water of life he's transforming into something that's going to bring this horrible uh uh war in his name at the same time it's the next step that he has to take sort of resigns to it just two quick other readings just thinking across the dune books obviously paul later in the god emperor of dune

his son lato ii uh becomes an even more tyrannical position of destiny you know his golden path requires him not only just to lead a revolution of sorts but also to become a a tyrant over mankind to hold mankind to task to evolve right so this is weird evolutionary force that's at play and it's very powerful in uh herbert's world building right so from the idea of a fiction fictional world it's fantastic how these very very real human conditions like the trials of trials of

of the centuries let's call it can become tests for our ability to become more human and things that might threaten to remove our humanity actually become the things that show us the importance of that humanity so i think these are some of those some of those themes that come across uh just a quick quote here from the fan fiction dune revenant which takes place way at the end of the of the dune saga so this takes place thousands of years later but there's this apocrypha of the hermit the smell was the first thing it brought the visions of the fremen with their children and their blue and blue eyes for then was a time that humanity first knew the spice and was first to partake in the being of shahulud i who know the motions of time as the desert knows the passage of time at the infernal mouth of shai halud i stood and i took the spice melange that was from his hot breath and this is what came to pass this is all known to any and all is due to the spice dream for these words were first written not on a paper not in the lines in the sand but etched into the consciousness that emerged timeless between human and worm thus in the first trance these words were written upon eternity upon the very storms of time itself by the mystery of melange and shai hulud things past were present and places far were near still things now never were and the here was gone a voice had been spoken and yet to be spoken it was the audible ear and the human was with sand worm and the sandworm was with the human

uh and this is sort of the new paths that extend lato's golden path uh yeah so maybe just to wrap things up i have another quick quote from the

again we're talking about the great guardian of the threshold and the watchers and i just wanted to share this note here from the emerald tablets this is out of giuseppe balsam's necromancy of neolithotep but it says downward in the darkness the thoughts of the atlanteans until at last the wrath arose from his aguanti the dweller the word has no english equivalent it means the state of detachment speaking the word calling the power deep in earth's heart the son of the amenti heard and hearing directing the changing of the flower of fire that burns eternally changing and shifting using the logos until the great fire changes direction over the world then broke the great waters drowning and sinking changing the earth's balance until the temple of light was left standing at the great mount mountains on andal still rising out of the water and some there were to be living saved from the rush of the fountains call to me the master saying gather ye people gather ye together my people take them to the arts you have learned from far across the waters until you reach the land of the barbarians dwelling in the caves of the desert and follow them there and gather up the people and the great ships of the master upward we rose into the morning dark beneath us the temple suddenly over rose the waters vanished from the earth until the time appointed fast we fled toward the sun of the morning until beneath us lay the land of the children of kem and so the sons of atlantis enter the land of kem which is egypt uh and like paul traveling from caledon to the desert of uh dune which is egyptian in a way right so maybe we just uh leave that here and and enclose it back in with the beings of light now that the guardian of the threshold as described above the product of the past alone is made manifest right paul becomes the kritzat hederak containing only such seeds of the future paul is the seed as we're woven into the past of time but the individual must take with him into the future super sensible world everything he can draw from the world of the senses if he were to bring with him only what has been woven into into his counterpart of the past his earthly task would only be partly accomplished so it's not just knowledge of the past but it's knowledge of the act to the future the meeting with the second guardian will then describe narrative foam when the pupil has recognized the things from which he must free himself an exalted being of light stands before him on the path right the golden path the meeting thus takes place in the organs of thinking feeling and willing have so far freed themselves of each other

but now gaze on me see how immeasurably i am raised above you you have attained your present degree of perfection through the faculties that were developed in the sense world as long as you're still dependent upon it but now there must begin for you an era which your liberated powers will work further in the world of the senses hitherto have only recognized yourself but now having yourself become free you can liberate all your companions in the sense world so here we go the human call to liberate our companions

and to be aware of the belt the black path right and their instructions lead to the good or to nothing at all it is no part of their task to lead to egoistic blessedness and to mere existence in the supersensible world from the very outset it lies in the nature of their tasks to keep the pupil away from the supersensible world until he can enter it with the will for selfless cooperation right so there you have steiner's message of anthroposophy uh you know a a bit of resonance there between paul's journey some of those touch points on the knowledge of higher worlds uh what do you guys think leave a comment below let us know um june revenant and necromancy of your lethal tepe available on pontus fathom press website you can check out the bookstore below would love to read the comments would really appreciate your help in sharing this liking it and subscribing so we could get the algorithm to get this out to more people and if you would like to support us as mentioned the books patreon below and can

really look for the time where we can do this as a live podcast and i think would be great to have us have a chat going and have it as a group activity so looking forward to hearing your comments below in the meantime uh hope it was interesting let me know what you think what you'd like to see next we're going to be doing another anthroposophy series all month we'll be doing one on lucifer and ariman and artificial intelligence and we'll also be talking about the anime bleach in the sense of rudolph steiner's anthropo anthroposophical um works on occult science and some resonances we see there so similar to this podcast but just with that property so uh thanks a lot for watching everyone talk to you down in the comments and we'll see you soon thank you bye bye