In terms of true development, which is not simply intellect, what we call education misses the point completely. Here again we get into what Rudolph Steiner had in mind behind its Waldorf education. The real issue rests within the image making capacities of the human mind.  That can create an internal image in the earliest period which can overlay the external image and we play in the modulated reality of our own making.  That’s precisely what led Visclosky famous expression, developmentalist’s terms with this image making factor. William Blake considered it the way in which we are formed in the image of God is our imagination.  It’s divine. Then we get into the issue of the idio-savant. All this indicates a top down influence. Fields themselves, suggest a top down influence on the regular biological process. Interestingly enough Mozart comes very close to having been that type of savant. 

Here again we get into what Rudolph Steiner had in mind behind its Waldorf education in which most of the pursuits of ordinary education are just bypassed. They’re not where the real issue lies.  The real issue rests within the image making capacities of the human mind.  That can create an internal image in the earliest period which can overlay the external image and we play in the modulated reality of our own making.  That’s precisely what led Visclosky famous expression, developmentalist’s terms with this image making factor. William Blake considered it the way in which we are formed in the image of God is our imagination.  It’s divine.  And Rudolph Steiner sees the capacity to exercise imagination, the creating of the internal worlds as the bridge between our current evolutionary state, you might say, and the field of all fields which he calls the Akashic record.  And with this imaginative capacity in the first 12-14 years be allowed to unfold appropriate to the age, then we would have access to the higher worlds as Steiner called it. If we don’t like that it’s too occult we can simply speak of it as some total of all fields of activity that have taken place in human experience. 

Then we get into the issue of the idio-savant, as they were called, genuinely they were always males, seriously damaged one way or the other so that their whole interaction with the world on a physical level is impaired in some way. And maybe as a compensation for it they developed the ability to open to what we might call the Akashic record without realizing that’s what they’re doing.  And for years the savant, who has a very low I.Q. and yet can give you incredible information and answers and perform incredible mathematical procedures and so on, was ignored by science because it was a threat. This indicated a top down influence, fields themselves, suggest a top down influence on the regular biological process on which we stand. There again the great Rig Veda was impulse from below, that’s the thing that keeps your, and guiding image from above field activity. 

So Steiner was interested in a way by which the young person could have a trained, not trained but a development and opening and education in which he finally is able to open to these higher worlds, at which point the human species takes wings and flies. And of course that was a great threat to culture and still would be if culture realized fully what was going on.  The issue of the savant who can’t tie his shoes or get his clothes on and can’t tell left from right, drive a car or any of that, and yet presented with certain issues such as mathematical problems can do incredible things. So they had access to the higher worlds but without direct knowledgeable incant, we might say. These are kind of accidental things. Daniel Dennige, the famous savant they’d been working with at Cambridge University, who can just do unbelievable things and yet socially, culturally, he’s awful helpless.  (http://www.neatorama.com/2008/09/05/10-most-fascinating-savants-in-the-world)

Interestingly enough Mozart comes very close to having been that type of savant.  His cultural social skills were limited.  He needed to be cared for. The great tragedy in his life was he was not. Like Thomas Wolfe said, we let our boys die, we let our composers die.  But he had direct access to the field of music and I have used that as an example, a field that breaking into the mind and presenting a whole story intact, pure structure that we don’t create but we receive.  Mozart then saying that all this just is given to him but then he has the labor, challenge, of getting it down on the paper.  And he said no one knows how hard I have to work.  But there again is the impulse below at the image from above and you have a Mozart.