Lyra, perhaps you should actually take a bit of time and read Steiner before going off on another rant.
Why read Steiner? ... Why read Tom aka Montalk?
Simple: Truth.
Tom very clearly and very obviously strives to see and express Truth.
(Indeed there are many paths, and all our own individual personal truths, but only one Truth.)
However, in Steiner's case you have an obvious Initiate sharing openly and voluminously. That by the way was unprecedented at the time, and has not been repeated since. Steiner paid for it with his life.
I think Guru is not the right word to describe the anthroposoph's relationship to Steiner and his work. Perhaps teacher is better, in the same way as Tom acts as a teacher when you read one of his articles, take it in, and make it your own. And, precisely here, as you say, you have to decide on what you think for yourself based on your own experience, how you take that information in, deciding if it is correct, assessing it , how it conects with Truth, and so on. That is an ongoing process. Same goes with Steiner, only in his case you have a Tom magnified many fold, whose spirtual perception spanned just about anywhere he chose to go, which was just about everywhere, no offence to Tom. More importantly than this however, Steiner developed Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, a way, scientific so demonstrable and repeatable, where you can develop this spiritual perception in the crucible of your own self. Where you can see this for yourself. Which as you say yourself is what we need to do.
Example: Tom's and your hypothesis about OPs, how they factor in our lives, our relationships to them. I don't want to press any of your buttons here, because I know how when you have taken stuff in, and made it your own, how you can get pretty possessive with that information, fairly combative even at times (which of course can be a good thing) but you may want to check out Steiner's lecture cycle The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, the last few lectures in that book where he openly discusses OPs -this is in 1924- and says that eventually 1/3 of the population will be Organic Portals. Steiner doesn't call such people Organic Portals however; in Steiner lingo, an OP would be a human without an "I" . The physical, etheric, and astral bodies are intact, but no 'I' has incarnated.
Check it out for yourself.