"Every so-called expert or authority who would tell his fellow human beings what to do or what to think must be able to convince people through the facts alone. If the facts do not convince his intended audience, then either his facts are wrong or they are not yet ready to be heeded. Were the previously demonstrated facts unheeded, more effects would inevitably follow, producing more facts. These new facts could then be added to those previously elaborated, increasing their “weight.”
There is no guarantee that an authority is stating a fact, or that some particular conclusion he has reached, actually, healthily fits within the deep and encompassing mystery of world-existence; whatever his position may be. Personal defects, immoral impulses, and unnoticed assumptions can be dressed in a suit, a uniform, a badge, or title, and so, each human being must live wakefully in his thinking life if he would evade becoming prey to these intrusive abnormalities from personalities and their influences.
Whomever forfeits their thinking faculty to an external authority is forfeiting their humanity. The more complete the forfeiture, the more inhuman they become.
Just as the body requires food to reach satiation, so too does the free individual require facts to reach a state of satisfaction for those questions which live in him as a hunger for knowledge. Knowledge is the ground upon which the free human being can stand. “Force-fed” it or deprived of it and you will see, instead of a human being, a beast take his place.
The attainment of true knowledge is a soul-spiritual event. And it, like love, cannot be compelled into existence. Spiritual touch, as opposed to physical touch happens from inside out and in a quite literal sense, genuine knowledge is a spiritual touching between two beings.
My eyes touch the impressions of the physical world and they touch me through the quality carrying play of the chemical light in the world. But just because this is so, does not mean I know something about the world before me. In order to know something about the world, I must perceive, not just its outer form in the external light of the world, but also, its idea, its “concept.”
When looking at artifacts from ancient history, there are moments when a discovery is made in some sediment, that stands out from the surrounding material. Due to its shape and density, the archeologist determines that it is in fact “man-made”…this idea dawns in him. But, he may turn the object over and over again, at a loss as to what purpose it may have served or in which way it would have been placed or handled. Perhaps he turns later to archival writings or drawings to search out a description or illustration of his finding. He discovers that this “triangular piece of bronze” matches the description of a once gem-studded breast plate of so and so’s. Now! when he holds it again, he understands which way is up or down or front or back or why there are little raised notches, for which to hold those lost stones. Before, they were inscrutable. Now their place and purpose is plain to see. The Idea is now in his possession and it has rendered the object knowable; establishing a soul-spiritual unity between him and the object.
Until so-called authorities have taken these most elementary steps in self-observation, their ground is thinner than most any of them would care to know.
Each individual human being must learn to really examine his relationship to his own faculties and become responsible for their future development. Otherwise, “authorities” will snatch him up and dress him up and prod him out, off onto a gang plank over fathomless waters of whose depths and residents they have little to no conception."
~ Anthony
On the 'Culmination' of Anthroposophy
Re: On the 'Culmination' of Anthroposophy
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
Re: On the 'Culmination' of Anthroposophy
Awake to Dream: a Pentecostal Contemplation
"Rudolf Steiner speaks of a very particular and peculiar experience of those who "walked with Christ" during His Earth-mission, following His "departure." When they reached back in memory to their time with Him, their memories were suffused with a dream-like quality -- permeated by an inner luminosity and inwardly mobile feeling of intimacy that blurred the characteristically stark contours that our body-bound sense of self normally orients itself within.
Normally, this self-contained condition of consciousness creates and upholds the waking state with which all modern human beings are familiar. In this state, the nerve-sense system allows the contents of Earthly life to flow into and impress themselves upon the soul of man, from outside. This stimulates the human being, this inflow of impressions from the external world, and these stimulants which act upon his organism and soul elicit certain desires and impulses which call forth his engagement with this external world.
The man who has lost all interest in the world, perhaps in a state of absolute boredom with outer life is liable to simply nod off. A dry and rambling lecture in a large, university hall produces countless examples of this phenomenon on a daily basis throughout academic institutions around the world. Instead of outer impressions, inner contents become more "interesting" instead -- thoughts and feelings that are bound up with the automatic life-processes of our organism begin to hold sway and pull into sleeping submersion the formerly, outer-sense-oriented awake soul.
How remarkable it would be for such a schoolroom snoozer to awaken from his public nap and upon his attempt to remember how he had arrived at his desk, the memory arose of his walk from his dormitory, but it possessed the same inner quality as a dream which unfolded during his most recent nod-off.
Generally, when one awakens from a dream, the sensory contents of the external world fill our soul’s awareness, and the dream environment recedes into the dim and dark regions of unconsciousness or sleep. Those dream contents, just so recently the stage of our inner dramas, evaporate under the glaring light of our sensory world. And yet, once our forces sufficiently wane, how tenuous even the grip of Earthly happenings is, to be all together forgotten at the threshold of dream and sleep.
It is healthy for human beings to distinguish their dreams from Earthly life. We could say that dream occurrences are too far-fetched or that they defy the laws of physics and at times, logic and for these reasons, we can differentiate between them and the steady, predictable, sensible way Earthly life proceeds. But how often are human beings making that distinction while they are dreaming? Quite often, they are not. When they do, and will themselves to wake up, what action is performed that pulls one from the land of dream into the land of the physically awake? The soul remembers its body in order to unite to it, and it unites to it via the nerve-sense system. The soul sets itself upon the nerve-sense system voluntarily when one fulfills the intention to wake up from a dream.
Again, the confines of the body and its nerve-sense system secure for the soul its sense of self. This is exactly the impression which is lacking, generally, when one dreams. When this outer-sense-oriented impression of the body is extinguished, inner contents of the soul rise and expand unhindered - these overtake the outer impressions from the bodily senses. Whether we can articulate effectively this difference, the majority of us, nevertheless, are able to recognize the difference between a dream event and a physical one not merely because of the likelihood of what transpires in either state, but because of this fundamental condition of being bound to the nerve-sense system or free from it.
So why did the followers of Jesus look back upon physical events during His Earthly mission, and experience them in memory as if they were a dream?
This question brings us to the ongoing threshold event of Whitsun.
Christ is the Self of Worlds, the Higher Self of Man. He incarnated into Earthly life, uniting Himself with Earthly man. Unlike the lower self of man, which relies on the physical body and the external world of sense to maintain his wakeful sense of self, the Higher Self is the self-initiating, self-sustaining ground of being, of all that Is. The outer sense world, the world of nature and its forms, is that portion of world-being which slumbers, which is asleep, Maya — it is under a spell of sleep insofar as mankind is asleep to the soul-spiritual realities of being which work and weave “behind” the surface of Earthly life. At this stage in evolution, mankind, in general, lacks the inner activity, the inner strength, to perceive these soul-spiritual realities directly when he beholds the outer, sense-perceptible world. He is asleep to it, and yet he is awake within his nerve sense system and is stimulated by that which flows into his senses from the external world. It is only when he falls asleep to his nerve sense system that he, at times, finds himself enveloped within a world of soul, as occurs in dreams. But, even in this body free state he is also lacking that inner activity, that inner strength whereby the real, external world of soul and spirit can reveal itself to him. Instead, he is enmeshed within his own, personal, soul atmosphere, elaborated by memory impressions of his physical experiences intermixed with impressions of his own bodily organ’s life processes. These dream pictures derived from outer sense and inner life processes ARE connected lawfully to real soul-spiritual realities, but his Ego has not yet penetrated wakefully into and through the outer world of sense and the inner world of life processes unto spiritual reality. In a certain sense, he is powerless to do so.
In the Steiner’s, Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, it is said that man’s bodily condition engenders an individual’s sense of self, (this is the gift of the body), but, that man is able, through the development of sense-free thinking, to re-found this sense of self within his purely self-sustaining spiritual activity. His ‘I’ can awaken independent of his body, and live, initially, in the world of ideas. This world of ideas is spiritual, it is a purely spiritual world to which living thinking unites its Self, through selfless activity. This activity is made available to mankind through the Christ, the Spirit’s “I am.” Man is capable, through this activity, to arrive at Moral Intuitions, insights that penetrate to “the heart of things,” whose spring of action is Love.
Isn’t this a fitting description of our Christ, One, Who in the Most Perfect Way, is Alive within and as the very heart of reality giving Himself lovingly to the world, to mankind on Earth.
While in His Presence on Earth, those whose hearts were united to Him, were lifted into a soul-spiritual activity that was and is perpetually overcoming the veil of sleep and death. What do sleep and death veil from sinful, mortal man? The reality that we live within one another. When those who followed Him looked back upon their experiences during His Earthly-mission, the dream-like quality of their memories was a consequence of the power of His living within them, and their living within Him, and thus their living within one another, a condition which is foreign to our “normal” body-bound state of wakefulness. They were awake in a soul-spiritual atmosphere that was not, like ordinary dream, circumscribed by one’s own life-processes, but one that arose and expanded into fruited reality even in the midst of their ordinary state of wakeful embodiment.
Now, let us consider the following verses from Rudolf Steiner:
From the Calendar of the Soul: Whitsun
There first
Where sense can know no more,
Stands the portal, which discloses
Life-reality
To Soul-being;
This portal's key the Soul may fashion
If she herself grow strong within the strife
By World-Powers waged on their own ground
With human forces;
If of her own accord she puts to flight
The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses
Cloaks the forces of knowledge
In spirit-night.
And, “Motto of the Social Ethic”
A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living.”
In these two verses we are given an exact method to enkindle and realize the Whitsun reality, a crossing over the threshold as a truly social endeavor. World-Powers, in realms of soul, wage strife, with human soul forces, and only if the human soul overcomes the sleep at the frontier of the senses, can genuine forces of knowledge penetrate these realms of soul and transform strife into bonds of loving brotherhood.
The “Motto of the Social Ethic” does not describe an abstract condition, automatically rendered into fruition by higher powers; it gives to us a living activity we can strive upon, one which is destined to become the rightful foundation for humanity’s future. It requires the human being to participate in acts of willed consciousness whereby an impression of his whole community is brought to life individually within him. Portrayed in words: “I carry you all within me, I allow the impress of the whole of my community to resound within me, sensitive and awake to the fact that all that I think, speak, and do reflects you all, reflects my esteem for you all, and impacts you all and those with whom you come into contact.” The body cannot produce such thoughts, nor can the sense-world provide to me the contents of this solemn commitment. Such a contemplation and commitment rises consciously into the living world of ideas, into realms of soul and spirit and we find there, the weaving forces of destiny and the blessed help and being of the Christ.
Likewise, the virtue of each one is expectantly called and heartily welcomed to find its perpetual expression and realization within the community. Each human being is endowed with his True Name, his eternal being which labors upon his karma amongst his fellows, life after life, transforming his lower self and its passions and impulses into ideals and deeds that shine his essential self into existence, participating in the creative spiritualization of mankind. When we take the time and make the effort to call up The virtue of each one in our community, we set our gaze upon the spiritual foundations of our fellow human being. His virtue may reveal itself in myriad ways in life, but these are like the clothing, the outer garment of his essential nature. It is well and good to be aware and to intercede on behalf of his struggles, his needs, his hour of need and yet none of these, in and of themselves, require of us this spiritual deed, of eternal merit and consequence, to push aside our inmost ‘I’ that his ‘I’ can fill our soul. When we strive to accomplish this in moments of solitude and in the midst of our encounters with our fellow human beings, we found and forge the inner architecture of spiritual realms, those realities which consist of soul-spirits living within one another. This is the deeper Christ mystery in action, mankind, as social beings, redeeming and spiritualizing world-existence unto Eternity, His Kingdom, the New Jerusalem.
It is not much use to read such statements as sentimental pronouncements, their meaning and their life arise in the doing of them. The doing in this case may not evidence itself through any conventional form that claims the name, “love thy neighbor, as thy self,” though is not in any way opposed to these, but what is striven for here becomes apparent only to those sensibilities which are of a soul-spiritual nature.
I once worked with a crew of men, all of whom belong to such a community, landscaping for various clients in our area. Each of us are of different shape and size, of personality and capacity, but on more than one occasion, a client or contractor would, at some moment, approach us quite innocently, a little perplexed even, and ask, “Are you all brothers?”
It’s as if we had awoke into a dream, a dream where the soul-spiritual bonds of brotherhood emanated more strongly than our clearly defined and humorously distinct bodily forms, begging the question, “are you brothers?”
The amelioration of pain, suffering, and privation is certainly a task which a Christian ethos inspires us to face and lend our hands, but there is an inner demand that sounds from the heart of the Christian mystery that leads man not only out upon the surface of Earthly life, but from out of our inner isolation of soul out into worlds of spirit for the sake of the spirit. An inner effort is required, an inner awakening is required and yet it is not a fascination with our inner selves which is called for, but the awakening of the world within us. The thoughts of anthroposophy, of spiritual science are a portal through which this awakening can occur, but if we meet them as mere thoughts, as intellectual information, we only demonstrate the lameness and coldness of our soul, which when confronted with the prospect of deep, inner effort casts them off as unnecessary intrusions into a world which is sufficiently organized by materialistic machinations and suitably ensouled by the “simple” offerings of doing good. Both of these combined will not secure humanity’s future, as the strife of World-Powers is waged in realms of soul-spirit, with human forces. And it is only by the soul’s strong effort to put to flight the heavy veil of sleep that o’er covers the world, that human beings can, through Christ, break the spell of sense-bound existence and rejoin what suffers beneath this weight, to the Glory which it rightly belongs, among the Light of Spirits, shining through Man.
“Why do we occupy ourselves with Spiritual Science? It is as though we were learning the vocabulary of the language through which we approach the Christ. If we take the trouble to learn to think the thoughts of Spiritual Science, and make the mental effort necessary for an understanding of the Cosmic secrets taught by Spiritual Science, then, out of the dim, dark foundations of the Cosmic mysteries, will come forth the figure of Christ Jesus, which will draw near to us and give us the strength and force in which we shall then live. The Christ will guide us, standing beside us as a brother, so that our hearts and souls may be strong enough to grow up to the necessary level of the tasks awaiting humanity in its further development.”
GA 175
~ Anthony
"Rudolf Steiner speaks of a very particular and peculiar experience of those who "walked with Christ" during His Earth-mission, following His "departure." When they reached back in memory to their time with Him, their memories were suffused with a dream-like quality -- permeated by an inner luminosity and inwardly mobile feeling of intimacy that blurred the characteristically stark contours that our body-bound sense of self normally orients itself within.
Normally, this self-contained condition of consciousness creates and upholds the waking state with which all modern human beings are familiar. In this state, the nerve-sense system allows the contents of Earthly life to flow into and impress themselves upon the soul of man, from outside. This stimulates the human being, this inflow of impressions from the external world, and these stimulants which act upon his organism and soul elicit certain desires and impulses which call forth his engagement with this external world.
The man who has lost all interest in the world, perhaps in a state of absolute boredom with outer life is liable to simply nod off. A dry and rambling lecture in a large, university hall produces countless examples of this phenomenon on a daily basis throughout academic institutions around the world. Instead of outer impressions, inner contents become more "interesting" instead -- thoughts and feelings that are bound up with the automatic life-processes of our organism begin to hold sway and pull into sleeping submersion the formerly, outer-sense-oriented awake soul.
How remarkable it would be for such a schoolroom snoozer to awaken from his public nap and upon his attempt to remember how he had arrived at his desk, the memory arose of his walk from his dormitory, but it possessed the same inner quality as a dream which unfolded during his most recent nod-off.
Generally, when one awakens from a dream, the sensory contents of the external world fill our soul’s awareness, and the dream environment recedes into the dim and dark regions of unconsciousness or sleep. Those dream contents, just so recently the stage of our inner dramas, evaporate under the glaring light of our sensory world. And yet, once our forces sufficiently wane, how tenuous even the grip of Earthly happenings is, to be all together forgotten at the threshold of dream and sleep.
It is healthy for human beings to distinguish their dreams from Earthly life. We could say that dream occurrences are too far-fetched or that they defy the laws of physics and at times, logic and for these reasons, we can differentiate between them and the steady, predictable, sensible way Earthly life proceeds. But how often are human beings making that distinction while they are dreaming? Quite often, they are not. When they do, and will themselves to wake up, what action is performed that pulls one from the land of dream into the land of the physically awake? The soul remembers its body in order to unite to it, and it unites to it via the nerve-sense system. The soul sets itself upon the nerve-sense system voluntarily when one fulfills the intention to wake up from a dream.
Again, the confines of the body and its nerve-sense system secure for the soul its sense of self. This is exactly the impression which is lacking, generally, when one dreams. When this outer-sense-oriented impression of the body is extinguished, inner contents of the soul rise and expand unhindered - these overtake the outer impressions from the bodily senses. Whether we can articulate effectively this difference, the majority of us, nevertheless, are able to recognize the difference between a dream event and a physical one not merely because of the likelihood of what transpires in either state, but because of this fundamental condition of being bound to the nerve-sense system or free from it.
So why did the followers of Jesus look back upon physical events during His Earthly mission, and experience them in memory as if they were a dream?
This question brings us to the ongoing threshold event of Whitsun.
Christ is the Self of Worlds, the Higher Self of Man. He incarnated into Earthly life, uniting Himself with Earthly man. Unlike the lower self of man, which relies on the physical body and the external world of sense to maintain his wakeful sense of self, the Higher Self is the self-initiating, self-sustaining ground of being, of all that Is. The outer sense world, the world of nature and its forms, is that portion of world-being which slumbers, which is asleep, Maya — it is under a spell of sleep insofar as mankind is asleep to the soul-spiritual realities of being which work and weave “behind” the surface of Earthly life. At this stage in evolution, mankind, in general, lacks the inner activity, the inner strength, to perceive these soul-spiritual realities directly when he beholds the outer, sense-perceptible world. He is asleep to it, and yet he is awake within his nerve sense system and is stimulated by that which flows into his senses from the external world. It is only when he falls asleep to his nerve sense system that he, at times, finds himself enveloped within a world of soul, as occurs in dreams. But, even in this body free state he is also lacking that inner activity, that inner strength whereby the real, external world of soul and spirit can reveal itself to him. Instead, he is enmeshed within his own, personal, soul atmosphere, elaborated by memory impressions of his physical experiences intermixed with impressions of his own bodily organ’s life processes. These dream pictures derived from outer sense and inner life processes ARE connected lawfully to real soul-spiritual realities, but his Ego has not yet penetrated wakefully into and through the outer world of sense and the inner world of life processes unto spiritual reality. In a certain sense, he is powerless to do so.
In the Steiner’s, Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, it is said that man’s bodily condition engenders an individual’s sense of self, (this is the gift of the body), but, that man is able, through the development of sense-free thinking, to re-found this sense of self within his purely self-sustaining spiritual activity. His ‘I’ can awaken independent of his body, and live, initially, in the world of ideas. This world of ideas is spiritual, it is a purely spiritual world to which living thinking unites its Self, through selfless activity. This activity is made available to mankind through the Christ, the Spirit’s “I am.” Man is capable, through this activity, to arrive at Moral Intuitions, insights that penetrate to “the heart of things,” whose spring of action is Love.
Isn’t this a fitting description of our Christ, One, Who in the Most Perfect Way, is Alive within and as the very heart of reality giving Himself lovingly to the world, to mankind on Earth.
While in His Presence on Earth, those whose hearts were united to Him, were lifted into a soul-spiritual activity that was and is perpetually overcoming the veil of sleep and death. What do sleep and death veil from sinful, mortal man? The reality that we live within one another. When those who followed Him looked back upon their experiences during His Earthly-mission, the dream-like quality of their memories was a consequence of the power of His living within them, and their living within Him, and thus their living within one another, a condition which is foreign to our “normal” body-bound state of wakefulness. They were awake in a soul-spiritual atmosphere that was not, like ordinary dream, circumscribed by one’s own life-processes, but one that arose and expanded into fruited reality even in the midst of their ordinary state of wakeful embodiment.
Now, let us consider the following verses from Rudolf Steiner:
From the Calendar of the Soul: Whitsun
There first
Where sense can know no more,
Stands the portal, which discloses
Life-reality
To Soul-being;
This portal's key the Soul may fashion
If she herself grow strong within the strife
By World-Powers waged on their own ground
With human forces;
If of her own accord she puts to flight
The sleep, which at the frontier of her senses
Cloaks the forces of knowledge
In spirit-night.
And, “Motto of the Social Ethic”
A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living.”
In these two verses we are given an exact method to enkindle and realize the Whitsun reality, a crossing over the threshold as a truly social endeavor. World-Powers, in realms of soul, wage strife, with human soul forces, and only if the human soul overcomes the sleep at the frontier of the senses, can genuine forces of knowledge penetrate these realms of soul and transform strife into bonds of loving brotherhood.
The “Motto of the Social Ethic” does not describe an abstract condition, automatically rendered into fruition by higher powers; it gives to us a living activity we can strive upon, one which is destined to become the rightful foundation for humanity’s future. It requires the human being to participate in acts of willed consciousness whereby an impression of his whole community is brought to life individually within him. Portrayed in words: “I carry you all within me, I allow the impress of the whole of my community to resound within me, sensitive and awake to the fact that all that I think, speak, and do reflects you all, reflects my esteem for you all, and impacts you all and those with whom you come into contact.” The body cannot produce such thoughts, nor can the sense-world provide to me the contents of this solemn commitment. Such a contemplation and commitment rises consciously into the living world of ideas, into realms of soul and spirit and we find there, the weaving forces of destiny and the blessed help and being of the Christ.
Likewise, the virtue of each one is expectantly called and heartily welcomed to find its perpetual expression and realization within the community. Each human being is endowed with his True Name, his eternal being which labors upon his karma amongst his fellows, life after life, transforming his lower self and its passions and impulses into ideals and deeds that shine his essential self into existence, participating in the creative spiritualization of mankind. When we take the time and make the effort to call up The virtue of each one in our community, we set our gaze upon the spiritual foundations of our fellow human being. His virtue may reveal itself in myriad ways in life, but these are like the clothing, the outer garment of his essential nature. It is well and good to be aware and to intercede on behalf of his struggles, his needs, his hour of need and yet none of these, in and of themselves, require of us this spiritual deed, of eternal merit and consequence, to push aside our inmost ‘I’ that his ‘I’ can fill our soul. When we strive to accomplish this in moments of solitude and in the midst of our encounters with our fellow human beings, we found and forge the inner architecture of spiritual realms, those realities which consist of soul-spirits living within one another. This is the deeper Christ mystery in action, mankind, as social beings, redeeming and spiritualizing world-existence unto Eternity, His Kingdom, the New Jerusalem.
It is not much use to read such statements as sentimental pronouncements, their meaning and their life arise in the doing of them. The doing in this case may not evidence itself through any conventional form that claims the name, “love thy neighbor, as thy self,” though is not in any way opposed to these, but what is striven for here becomes apparent only to those sensibilities which are of a soul-spiritual nature.
I once worked with a crew of men, all of whom belong to such a community, landscaping for various clients in our area. Each of us are of different shape and size, of personality and capacity, but on more than one occasion, a client or contractor would, at some moment, approach us quite innocently, a little perplexed even, and ask, “Are you all brothers?”
It’s as if we had awoke into a dream, a dream where the soul-spiritual bonds of brotherhood emanated more strongly than our clearly defined and humorously distinct bodily forms, begging the question, “are you brothers?”
The amelioration of pain, suffering, and privation is certainly a task which a Christian ethos inspires us to face and lend our hands, but there is an inner demand that sounds from the heart of the Christian mystery that leads man not only out upon the surface of Earthly life, but from out of our inner isolation of soul out into worlds of spirit for the sake of the spirit. An inner effort is required, an inner awakening is required and yet it is not a fascination with our inner selves which is called for, but the awakening of the world within us. The thoughts of anthroposophy, of spiritual science are a portal through which this awakening can occur, but if we meet them as mere thoughts, as intellectual information, we only demonstrate the lameness and coldness of our soul, which when confronted with the prospect of deep, inner effort casts them off as unnecessary intrusions into a world which is sufficiently organized by materialistic machinations and suitably ensouled by the “simple” offerings of doing good. Both of these combined will not secure humanity’s future, as the strife of World-Powers is waged in realms of soul-spirit, with human forces. And it is only by the soul’s strong effort to put to flight the heavy veil of sleep that o’er covers the world, that human beings can, through Christ, break the spell of sense-bound existence and rejoin what suffers beneath this weight, to the Glory which it rightly belongs, among the Light of Spirits, shining through Man.
“Why do we occupy ourselves with Spiritual Science? It is as though we were learning the vocabulary of the language through which we approach the Christ. If we take the trouble to learn to think the thoughts of Spiritual Science, and make the mental effort necessary for an understanding of the Cosmic secrets taught by Spiritual Science, then, out of the dim, dark foundations of the Cosmic mysteries, will come forth the figure of Christ Jesus, which will draw near to us and give us the strength and force in which we shall then live. The Christ will guide us, standing beside us as a brother, so that our hearts and souls may be strong enough to grow up to the necessary level of the tasks awaiting humanity in its further development.”
GA 175
~ Anthony
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."
Re: On the 'Culmination' of Anthroposophy
Fence Sitting Upon the Path:
An individual may wonder to himself, "why have I yet to perceive the spiritual world, though I have endeavored to take up those exercises which should reveal it to me?"
One answer to this question can be found by acknowledging that one has yet to make a concerted effort to renounce the life of desires which enchants the soul to its sense-existence.
Thoughts, feelings, and will impulses enamored into memory images surge in the human being's astral body. When an aspiring meditant turns his attention away from sense-life and attempts to turn inward, a roiling fog of these impressions rise up to meet him and vie for his attention. In seeking the root of this situation in which he finds himself, he discovers one common cause...desire.
A penetrating self-assessment uncovers a, perhaps disconcerting, fact of earthly life, namely, that desire carries us into and through the affairs of our daily life to a very high degree.
The decision to meditate intimates that the soul is seeking for a solution to this predicament, experiencing, in some measure, in depths of soul, that earthly life and the cycles of desire that condition it, alone cannot provide the answers to the riddles of life, of reality. But, turn as he may away from the sense-world, in search of these answers, the life of desire follows him, full force. Thus, impressions from sense-life, bound to these desires, flood the soul and become an impediment to his seeking.
If he wanted to become conscious of a spiritual-scientific idea at this stage he could cognize this fact, "these impressions of earthly life, seething hither and thither, is my untamed astral body. As long as these impressions capture my interest, outweighing my inner longing and seeking for the spirit, I cannot rightfully expect to perceive the purely spiritual world. Instead, I will be enclosed within myself, remaining a riddle to myself, the world, remaining an unsolvable riddle to me."
Such a thought can help give a bearing in the self-enclosed, tempestuous sea of one's personal astral body. But something more must be developed in order to set course and venture beyond this condition. This thought must deepen into an intimate inner experience, a powerful and all-pervading mood of soul.
"I am in a state of bondage, ensnared as I am by earthly desires. As long as these desires and these images hold sway in my soul, I make myself unfit for higher knowledge. Let me die to these, let them turn to black oblivion for me, that I may strive with all my heart and mind towards the eternal."
The several exercises that Rudolf Steiner offers to the seeker, to the aspirant, direct him to take conscious control of his thinking, feeling, and willing and these along guided paths, which all demand and work toward the overcoming of this state of bondage.
To speak of it directly reveals this state of affairs in a religious light and tone and offers to the human soul a means whereby he too can bring occult practice into the depths of a corresponding religious mood. Such a deepening can prepare the soul for his meditations, and serve as a meditation unto itself - this reckoning with the life of desire and its chastening, in his most intimate and sober efforts to turn towards the Divine in meditation.
An occult image may come to mind, of one which many an anthroposophist is aware, the Rose Cross Meditation, as a meditative symbol that addresses this predicament. But, I would like to point towards another that is mentioned less often in our circles, though its wisdom has very much to offer.
The Staff of Mercury.
The Staff of Mercury is composed of a central, straight rod, two upward spiraling lines of force (serpents), and an apex, sometimes depicted as a winged orb.
This image is meant to come to life in our meditation. The two serpents circle, diametrically opposed, in a rising motion around the fixed rod or line, up and up and around and around toward the orb. Having attained the apex, they fixate, one from one side, the other from the opposite side, upon this orb.
The symbolic character of this image must give way to very real, inwardly perceived, formative gestures in the soul. Poking and prodding it with the intellect does not unlock it, in the way occult effort demands.
The serpents represent the life of desire, but in our meditation they do not just represent it, they embody our life of desire. The lower desires, rooted in the lower half of our organization are entrained upward along a passionless and straight staff of uprightness. Those appetites and desires which hinder the soul in his meditative efforts, which present themselves clothed in the sundry memory-images of sense life, are those very forces in the astral body which are called upward and toward the highest and most perfect organs of our organization, seated in our skull.
Rudolf Steiner elaborates that one of these serpents can be symbolized as black, representing the lower desires, and one that is white, skin freshly shed, representing the purified life of desire, the chaste desire for the higher life. Again, it is not sufficient to contemplate these colors abstractly, the meditant must feel the black quality of his lower desires, the white quality of his purified desire, and the spiraling movement upwards, to unleash and rightly modify his desire life so that it no longer produces the chaotic surging of his sense-bound memory images.
Along the ascent, the purification of lower desire into chaste desire culminates in an attempt at perfect concentration upon the apex of the central axis, in the "heart" of the skull. If it fails, a new effort is made to engage the dual, upward spiraling movements. Repeated efforts and the subsequent deepening of the meditation enkindle and awaken a new experience of color in one's inner darkness of soul.
The untamed life of desires compels the production of word-thoughts and mental-images that flash as will-o-the-wisps in the astral body, and these likewise feed the lower-desire-form of the astral body...round and round. Though they are obscured in shadow, these memory images, must siphon a fleeting glimmer of inner light to be cast into shadow pictures that reflect themselves to our conscious awareness. These pictures are of all sorts of feeling-character, of gesture and color, intermixed in various permutations that give distinction to each of our memories. When the astral body ceases to produce these sense-bound memory pictures, and instead follows the path of our meditative, purifying movement gestures, the soul's color-life is liberated from sense-images, and becomes perceptible as a phenomena unto itself.
Thus, the soul can begin to live and breathe in color impressions. Each color is also a soul mood. The blue-violet soul experiences deep and solemn inwardness, the red soul, vital and vigorous well-being, and so on. These inwardly perceived colors are not derived from memory, they have been freed from memory. The astral body has begun to perceive the etheric body, the etheric body that has been loosened from the physical and the physical senses. But wherefrom does THE LIGHT originate?
Here, we must delve further into the mystery of the Staff of Mercury.
The serpents of desire are purified, raised towards the apex of the passionless staff, and fixate their attention upon it. The two eyes of our physical sense-organism inwardly devote their gaze towards the center of our skull, towards that which would Hold their gaze enraptured. WHAT are they looking at?
At first, we do not directly perceive what it is that they are looking at, we, "merely," intently gaze. If we have spent ample effort, spent sufficient time living and breathing in the liberated etheric colors, and experienced the moral tenor of each of these colors, we can gaze, now, etherically at the center apex, which, physiologically speaking, is the pituitary-pineal axis and organization. This organ, once awakened, by our efforts, shines. Spiritual Light, not color, transparent-white-gold Light, shines into the soul through this center. This is the eye of spirit vision, where, for the first time, since the Kali Yuga, the I of Man lives consciously in the I of God, in the Light of the Spirit.
Rudolf Steiner describes that mankind once possessed this capacity, to commune in the light of the spirit, but the ages of modernity have sealed this organ from its activity, to be regained in this the age of the consciousness soul and on into the age of the Spirit Self. He also describes more advanced exercises that are to be accomplished once this stage is attained. And the spiritual-scientific knowledge that can accompany these experiences is perhaps limitless.
Rather than proceed forward, I wish to go back to the beginning, to address again the question posed at the beginning of this post,
"Why have I yet to perceive the spiritual world, though I have endeavored to take up those exercises which should reveal it to me?"
Genuine occult vision, obtained through conscientious effort, demands a transformation in the life of desire, and a decisive inner shift from the life of the senses -- the two being tightly intertwined. The human being himself is thus transformed, step by step, towards his perfection.
He cannot attain to this perfection without taking these steps in freedom, to do otherwise, is to relinquish the path of one's development to the passions, to the lower desires, and to seek for "perfect" comfort through the sense-bound world. He will be given another form that matches this inner orientation and condition.
Each human being stands somewhere between these two paths, some are already in a beastly state or evil state, some in a saintly or ascended state and everywhere between.
In our time, spiritual science is offered to mankind as a means whereby he may become adequately acquainted, in full consciousness, with these facts - that he may consciously receive these insights as nourishment for his immortal soul and as guidance, even in this lifetime, to tread the path of initiation.
It is a matter of world destiny that it be so, and this destiny is made manifest in the minds and hearts and deeds of Rudolf Steiner and others who are capable of carrying and selflessly devoted to the task of Christian salvation.
The apostle Paul speaks of the future, a future that unfolds perpetually yet in distinct stages, in these words:
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
1 Corinthians 13:12-13
The human being, enmeshed unknowingly, unwittingly, in sense-life is like a child, and he does childish things. To become a man in the occult sense, is to awaken to the reality of the spirit, esteem it correctly, and to work courageously towards it and for the sake of all. And though our knowledge is incomplete, we shall, as striving adults, come face to face with God, in the Light of the Spirit, and we shall know the Spirit of God in the Spirit, even as we are known by Him.
The development of our higher members, Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man is the perfection and completion of our knowledge and of our humanity. These can be conceptually grasped to an ever greater extent through study, and this works upon our latent faculties constructively.
Study can become meditation when we lift ourselves into a wholly inner, willed activity and cease our involvement in perceptions compelled by sense-appetite. In doing so, we create the conditions whereby the subtle impressions of soul-spiritual forces can be perceived, lifting ourselves into the spirit in accord with Divine Providence.
The vigil for the Light of the Spirit is a definite activity, it puts aside distractions, it is wakeful devotion towards the higher, it is a decision...to step fully on one side of the fence.
The hour of solemn meditation passes, and we go on to meet the demands of outer life with greater strength and clarity - in time to perceive even there the working of the spirit into matter, the illusion of Maya loosening its grip while we become all the more firm (not hard) in our being.
The more this awakening becomes the focus, the fulcrum, of our anthroposophical life and discourse, the more we will find one another united, united from out of those worlds which cannot be reached via sentimentality, but only through earnest, heartfelt striving, experience, and knowledge. Then our daily bread, the spiritual nourishment that is given superabundantly will be in our hearts, our hands, our lips, passing between one another.
Today the Sun will reach its apex in the vault of heaven, and persist there for several days, heralding the inner spiritual reality of St. John's Tide.
Rudolf Steiner speaks of Uriel, earnestly gazing, at this time, as if with winged countenance, down, into the depths of the crystalline earth, into the depths of the human soul, surveying the moral perfections and imperfections of mankind. These soul pictures mount to the heavens, some passing and uniting into the stream of divine activity, others reeking disturbances in the atmosphere, which must be thrust back down, rejected.
The Staff of Mercury, its straight and narrow rod can be for us, our path ahead, the self-imposed trial we place before ourselves; so that we can rise to moral insights of world being and world relating, and as meditative symbol, help to awaken and serve to attain to what the gods have planted in us, the slumbering faculties of spirit vision, hearing, and touch, which fashion the form of one's Higher Self.
Come along with me, and jump over the bonfire this year, over the fence of lukewarm indecision!
from the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa
~ Anthony
An individual may wonder to himself, "why have I yet to perceive the spiritual world, though I have endeavored to take up those exercises which should reveal it to me?"
One answer to this question can be found by acknowledging that one has yet to make a concerted effort to renounce the life of desires which enchants the soul to its sense-existence.
Thoughts, feelings, and will impulses enamored into memory images surge in the human being's astral body. When an aspiring meditant turns his attention away from sense-life and attempts to turn inward, a roiling fog of these impressions rise up to meet him and vie for his attention. In seeking the root of this situation in which he finds himself, he discovers one common cause...desire.
A penetrating self-assessment uncovers a, perhaps disconcerting, fact of earthly life, namely, that desire carries us into and through the affairs of our daily life to a very high degree.
The decision to meditate intimates that the soul is seeking for a solution to this predicament, experiencing, in some measure, in depths of soul, that earthly life and the cycles of desire that condition it, alone cannot provide the answers to the riddles of life, of reality. But, turn as he may away from the sense-world, in search of these answers, the life of desire follows him, full force. Thus, impressions from sense-life, bound to these desires, flood the soul and become an impediment to his seeking.
If he wanted to become conscious of a spiritual-scientific idea at this stage he could cognize this fact, "these impressions of earthly life, seething hither and thither, is my untamed astral body. As long as these impressions capture my interest, outweighing my inner longing and seeking for the spirit, I cannot rightfully expect to perceive the purely spiritual world. Instead, I will be enclosed within myself, remaining a riddle to myself, the world, remaining an unsolvable riddle to me."
Such a thought can help give a bearing in the self-enclosed, tempestuous sea of one's personal astral body. But something more must be developed in order to set course and venture beyond this condition. This thought must deepen into an intimate inner experience, a powerful and all-pervading mood of soul.
"I am in a state of bondage, ensnared as I am by earthly desires. As long as these desires and these images hold sway in my soul, I make myself unfit for higher knowledge. Let me die to these, let them turn to black oblivion for me, that I may strive with all my heart and mind towards the eternal."
The several exercises that Rudolf Steiner offers to the seeker, to the aspirant, direct him to take conscious control of his thinking, feeling, and willing and these along guided paths, which all demand and work toward the overcoming of this state of bondage.
To speak of it directly reveals this state of affairs in a religious light and tone and offers to the human soul a means whereby he too can bring occult practice into the depths of a corresponding religious mood. Such a deepening can prepare the soul for his meditations, and serve as a meditation unto itself - this reckoning with the life of desire and its chastening, in his most intimate and sober efforts to turn towards the Divine in meditation.
An occult image may come to mind, of one which many an anthroposophist is aware, the Rose Cross Meditation, as a meditative symbol that addresses this predicament. But, I would like to point towards another that is mentioned less often in our circles, though its wisdom has very much to offer.
The Staff of Mercury.
The Staff of Mercury is composed of a central, straight rod, two upward spiraling lines of force (serpents), and an apex, sometimes depicted as a winged orb.
This image is meant to come to life in our meditation. The two serpents circle, diametrically opposed, in a rising motion around the fixed rod or line, up and up and around and around toward the orb. Having attained the apex, they fixate, one from one side, the other from the opposite side, upon this orb.
The symbolic character of this image must give way to very real, inwardly perceived, formative gestures in the soul. Poking and prodding it with the intellect does not unlock it, in the way occult effort demands.
The serpents represent the life of desire, but in our meditation they do not just represent it, they embody our life of desire. The lower desires, rooted in the lower half of our organization are entrained upward along a passionless and straight staff of uprightness. Those appetites and desires which hinder the soul in his meditative efforts, which present themselves clothed in the sundry memory-images of sense life, are those very forces in the astral body which are called upward and toward the highest and most perfect organs of our organization, seated in our skull.
Rudolf Steiner elaborates that one of these serpents can be symbolized as black, representing the lower desires, and one that is white, skin freshly shed, representing the purified life of desire, the chaste desire for the higher life. Again, it is not sufficient to contemplate these colors abstractly, the meditant must feel the black quality of his lower desires, the white quality of his purified desire, and the spiraling movement upwards, to unleash and rightly modify his desire life so that it no longer produces the chaotic surging of his sense-bound memory images.
Along the ascent, the purification of lower desire into chaste desire culminates in an attempt at perfect concentration upon the apex of the central axis, in the "heart" of the skull. If it fails, a new effort is made to engage the dual, upward spiraling movements. Repeated efforts and the subsequent deepening of the meditation enkindle and awaken a new experience of color in one's inner darkness of soul.
The untamed life of desires compels the production of word-thoughts and mental-images that flash as will-o-the-wisps in the astral body, and these likewise feed the lower-desire-form of the astral body...round and round. Though they are obscured in shadow, these memory images, must siphon a fleeting glimmer of inner light to be cast into shadow pictures that reflect themselves to our conscious awareness. These pictures are of all sorts of feeling-character, of gesture and color, intermixed in various permutations that give distinction to each of our memories. When the astral body ceases to produce these sense-bound memory pictures, and instead follows the path of our meditative, purifying movement gestures, the soul's color-life is liberated from sense-images, and becomes perceptible as a phenomena unto itself.
Thus, the soul can begin to live and breathe in color impressions. Each color is also a soul mood. The blue-violet soul experiences deep and solemn inwardness, the red soul, vital and vigorous well-being, and so on. These inwardly perceived colors are not derived from memory, they have been freed from memory. The astral body has begun to perceive the etheric body, the etheric body that has been loosened from the physical and the physical senses. But wherefrom does THE LIGHT originate?
Here, we must delve further into the mystery of the Staff of Mercury.
The serpents of desire are purified, raised towards the apex of the passionless staff, and fixate their attention upon it. The two eyes of our physical sense-organism inwardly devote their gaze towards the center of our skull, towards that which would Hold their gaze enraptured. WHAT are they looking at?
At first, we do not directly perceive what it is that they are looking at, we, "merely," intently gaze. If we have spent ample effort, spent sufficient time living and breathing in the liberated etheric colors, and experienced the moral tenor of each of these colors, we can gaze, now, etherically at the center apex, which, physiologically speaking, is the pituitary-pineal axis and organization. This organ, once awakened, by our efforts, shines. Spiritual Light, not color, transparent-white-gold Light, shines into the soul through this center. This is the eye of spirit vision, where, for the first time, since the Kali Yuga, the I of Man lives consciously in the I of God, in the Light of the Spirit.
Rudolf Steiner describes that mankind once possessed this capacity, to commune in the light of the spirit, but the ages of modernity have sealed this organ from its activity, to be regained in this the age of the consciousness soul and on into the age of the Spirit Self. He also describes more advanced exercises that are to be accomplished once this stage is attained. And the spiritual-scientific knowledge that can accompany these experiences is perhaps limitless.
Rather than proceed forward, I wish to go back to the beginning, to address again the question posed at the beginning of this post,
"Why have I yet to perceive the spiritual world, though I have endeavored to take up those exercises which should reveal it to me?"
Genuine occult vision, obtained through conscientious effort, demands a transformation in the life of desire, and a decisive inner shift from the life of the senses -- the two being tightly intertwined. The human being himself is thus transformed, step by step, towards his perfection.
He cannot attain to this perfection without taking these steps in freedom, to do otherwise, is to relinquish the path of one's development to the passions, to the lower desires, and to seek for "perfect" comfort through the sense-bound world. He will be given another form that matches this inner orientation and condition.
Each human being stands somewhere between these two paths, some are already in a beastly state or evil state, some in a saintly or ascended state and everywhere between.
In our time, spiritual science is offered to mankind as a means whereby he may become adequately acquainted, in full consciousness, with these facts - that he may consciously receive these insights as nourishment for his immortal soul and as guidance, even in this lifetime, to tread the path of initiation.
It is a matter of world destiny that it be so, and this destiny is made manifest in the minds and hearts and deeds of Rudolf Steiner and others who are capable of carrying and selflessly devoted to the task of Christian salvation.
The apostle Paul speaks of the future, a future that unfolds perpetually yet in distinct stages, in these words:
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
1 Corinthians 13:12-13
The human being, enmeshed unknowingly, unwittingly, in sense-life is like a child, and he does childish things. To become a man in the occult sense, is to awaken to the reality of the spirit, esteem it correctly, and to work courageously towards it and for the sake of all. And though our knowledge is incomplete, we shall, as striving adults, come face to face with God, in the Light of the Spirit, and we shall know the Spirit of God in the Spirit, even as we are known by Him.
The development of our higher members, Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man is the perfection and completion of our knowledge and of our humanity. These can be conceptually grasped to an ever greater extent through study, and this works upon our latent faculties constructively.
Study can become meditation when we lift ourselves into a wholly inner, willed activity and cease our involvement in perceptions compelled by sense-appetite. In doing so, we create the conditions whereby the subtle impressions of soul-spiritual forces can be perceived, lifting ourselves into the spirit in accord with Divine Providence.
The vigil for the Light of the Spirit is a definite activity, it puts aside distractions, it is wakeful devotion towards the higher, it is a decision...to step fully on one side of the fence.
The hour of solemn meditation passes, and we go on to meet the demands of outer life with greater strength and clarity - in time to perceive even there the working of the spirit into matter, the illusion of Maya loosening its grip while we become all the more firm (not hard) in our being.
The more this awakening becomes the focus, the fulcrum, of our anthroposophical life and discourse, the more we will find one another united, united from out of those worlds which cannot be reached via sentimentality, but only through earnest, heartfelt striving, experience, and knowledge. Then our daily bread, the spiritual nourishment that is given superabundantly will be in our hearts, our hands, our lips, passing between one another.
Today the Sun will reach its apex in the vault of heaven, and persist there for several days, heralding the inner spiritual reality of St. John's Tide.
Rudolf Steiner speaks of Uriel, earnestly gazing, at this time, as if with winged countenance, down, into the depths of the crystalline earth, into the depths of the human soul, surveying the moral perfections and imperfections of mankind. These soul pictures mount to the heavens, some passing and uniting into the stream of divine activity, others reeking disturbances in the atmosphere, which must be thrust back down, rejected.
The Staff of Mercury, its straight and narrow rod can be for us, our path ahead, the self-imposed trial we place before ourselves; so that we can rise to moral insights of world being and world relating, and as meditative symbol, help to awaken and serve to attain to what the gods have planted in us, the slumbering faculties of spirit vision, hearing, and touch, which fashion the form of one's Higher Self.
Come along with me, and jump over the bonfire this year, over the fence of lukewarm indecision!
from the Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa
~ Anthony
"They only can acquire the sacred power of self-intuition, who within themselves can interpret and understand the symbol... those only, who feel in their own spirits the same instinct, which impels the chrysalis of the horned fly to leave room in the involucrum for antennae yet to come."