Rome, December 13, 1978[1]
- Christmas quarrels
- Luciferic feeling and true feeling
- Prayer has to be deserved
- The fundamental immobility of the
I
- Human love,
I-love, sacred love
“
How to avoid the usual quarrels at Christmas due to the new year resolutions?”
I start with this question because it’s extremely important. The days around Christmas are days of peace, but not in a sentimentalistic sense. They truly are days of Cosmic peace, days of peace on Earth, peace for our souls. And it’s exactly in those days that the adversarial forces lash out. It’s been so for centuries, because behind all the good intentions - for instance the good will to express one’s affection, one’s wishes, one’s gifts - behind all that, there eventually appears a sort of… orgasm, a sort of convulsive activity, that goes crescendo, until someone says “I so much look forward to the end of this all!”. There’s this inevitable congestion of giving… taking… wishes… gifts… meetups… dinners… preparations… desserts… day trips… Really, you see, it becomes a scene of absolute beneficence for the physical body, a state of absolute satisfaction, and a kind of give and take orgy. Add to that the thirteenth salary [traditionally the December salary is a double salary in Italy], all the shopping to be done, and you can see how those days are rather engulfed days. There are the family gatherings, with relatives that meet maybe only once a year, and maybe their relationships are not the best imaginable. On that day they hug each other, but by the end of the meal they have already started to argue, because we drink, we eat, we drink again, and the peace of mind is lost. Then, a few words are enough. Words are misunderstood, then comes the sharp reply, and that’s it. The quarrel has already begun. It’s been like that for years and years, that people fight precisely on Christmas day. Our friend asks: “
How to avoid quarrels at Christmas?”. Well, I know from personal experience that the way to go is as follows. Whatever is said or done, one should reply: “Yes, it’s all good”, “Perfect”, “Absolutely”, unless they offer you whisky, to which you can definitely reply: “No, thank you”, though, of course, everyone decides for themselves.
Anyway, it’s really important to be prepared and forewarned, so as to defend the chance to perceive the peace and the quiet of Christmas. This peace is really there, it’s an exceptional Cosmic force that pervades the Earth in those moments, though very few notice it. It would be a good idea to take a day trip to the sea, contemplate the sea, and watch the sunrise over the sea on Christmas day, for example. One would feel infinite peace. Or one could go to the mountains, or stay home. What’s important is not to lose contact with the mysterious quiet of those hours, a quiet that repeats itself for several days. Even Nature becomes benign. It’s rare that the weather is really bad at Christmas. There might be north wind or sirocco, but the winds are temperate, there is respite from the violent forces of Nature. Christmas is the moment of birth of the child, and the birth always happens, since the rite is occultly out of spacetime, it repeats itself and the birth is continuously real.
At Christmas time it’s important not only to avoid fights, but also to avoid spending time in silly ways, not to waste the opportunity enclosed in that period. We can say, it begins with the solstice, on the 22nd, and goes on towards the end of the year and beyond it: there are thirteen Holy Nights. So it’s important to start with such thoughts, and to avoid all conflicts with family, friends, people we dine with, and so on. Moreover, we should try to find moments of solitude, in order to operate through meditation. Then the possibility arises to really meet the principle of force that is active at the core of the world. This force is perceptible as something that is born precisely through the forces of Nature, something that is born in the same way that a child comes to life, dressed in a synthesis of all forces of Nature. This event is alway there, because this is an everlasting birth, coincident with the birth of Light, the new ascent of the Sun, after it has reached its lowest point on the ecliptic. Indeed, Christmas is the celebration of Light, the birth of Light. This is a task that one should not give up on, regardless of the commitments one may have at Christmas.
“
Shyness and the power of feelings - do feelings signal arrogance, in the sense of mistaken self assessment, or inner richness?”
The seat of feeling contains both shyness and its opposite. Feeling is naturally the seat of the power of Lucifer. Feeling is that soul faculty that man actually has nothing to do with, because he’s continuously dominated by the personality with which he is so much identified that he takes those feelings for his own. Indeed, we could say that feelings, in a sense, are absurd. Searching for some logic in feelings, we realize that there’s not much to be found. Feelings are in perpetual mutation, they are unstable, constantly swinging between one pole and its opposite. In modern man, feeling has become pretty sick. Because it’s not any longer enlivened as it was in the past - when people were still capable of lyric enthusiasm for certain values - feeling is confined to the instincts, that is, to cerebralism. This modern quality of feeling is a major weakness of man. Whenever a pure feeling timidly begins to appear, it lacks the strength to really emerge and become stable, and it dies out.
Now, spiritual discipline absolutely requires the forces of feeling. Part of our work plan is the rebirth of true feelings, but supporting these true feelings with the strength they require is an incredibly difficult task. The difficulty is, powerful are the feelings by which we are overwhelmed, rather than the ones we would like to nurture. Therefore, the whole point with meditation and concentration is to evoke new feelings, feelings that are spiritual powers, rather than spiritual submission to Lucifer. As a matter of fact, Lucifer dominates the astral body, which is entirely governed by feeling, and sickened feeling spans our entire being: we have it in the brain, we have it in the sphere of metabolism, and we have it primarily in its seat. This sort of feeling is far from helpful, it rather brings confusion to our thoughts, to which man usually responds with intellectualism and cerebralism. That’s why the task is extremely difficult. Nevertheless our spiritual work only is correct when the content of meditation elicits the birth of feeling, every time. Then we can say that the work is taking the right direction. It’s the same with concentration. Since concentration is a work of pure thinking, one may wonder what kind of feeling concentration could evoke. Indeed, concentration can surely evoke true feeling.
When concentration succeeds in giving our thinking the possibility to be itself, the possibility to live in us as a pure force, it inevitably ends up joining its opposite pole, that is, the will. In normal conditions thinking does not impact the will. The will converges entirely into the sphere of metabolism and becomes instinct. But through the exercise of concentration - if we are doing a good job - we come to a point when we feel that thinking tends to connect with something that is its opposite - that truly feels like an opposite inner space. From this conjunction a thinking force of will is born, that brings in it a subtle joy, a profound joy. In that space, feeling is like a subtle force in the process of recovering its true worth. So, if we want to nurture pure, marvelous feelings we have to master concentration. And we should not indulge ourselves with meditation if we are not able to concentrate.
This is the case of many, who find meditation easier, since they immediately enter a kind of state of commotion. In that way, however, they are not really connecting with the true force of feeling. In that sort of commotion, there is still that dispersive, Luciferic element. True feeling only arises as a consequence of pure, terse, luminous, intense work of thinking. From it, a feeling emerges that is given as a state of subtle bliss. Only when this is achieved, we can proceed to strengthen that bliss through meditation. And here we have a question that I had planned to address towards the end, but maybe we can tackle it now: “
Prayer and knowledge”.
We can say that prayer is a great force. So great that, I would dare to say, we have to deserve to pray. Otherwise we are not praying. In prayer, there is the possibility of an intimate contact with the divine, and we cannot have the presumption of effecting it at will. Here I should open a brief aside, because Walter is giving me a frowning look. We surely have to be able to pray in any situation, especially if we are in trouble, especially if we have to help someone who is in danger. Here I recall - I’m not sure if Francesca is here - she has witnessed a recovery from an inoperable cancer, realized through prayer. That was the intense, day and night prayer of a mother who wanted to save her daughter. That kind of prayer we must be able to do in any situation. But here, we are rather talking of prayer as a method of spiritual communion with the divine. We have to understand that in us there lies the possibility to approach the spiritual world in extreme sincerity, with the courage of the highest sincerity, that is with the recognition, the conviction, that the spiritual world needs human prayer - true prayer, not the egoistic type. Through prayer, a being helps the spiritual worlds operate on Earth. However, this is very difficult. It means to access through prayer an utterly pure part of oneself, only accessible if one is capable of that purity and brightness of thinking we have spoken of. Such space has to be deserved, it is not at our disposal.
We have to come to feel that our shoulders are not laden with error or wrongdoing, otherwise it’s impossible to feel brave enough to evoke the divine in ourselves. In this sense, I insist: we need to deserve to pray. That type of prayer truly is a great activity, similar to the prayer of bygone saints, because it helps everyone. One helps both oneself and one’s neighbors also. At Christmas time, for instance, we can prepare for this quality of prayer. Prayer, in its essence, is meditation brought to its truest and highest expression. Prayer is in meditation, if it’s not in meditation, it’s not prayer. Everything we are able to gain in terms of inner strengths can eventually find expression in prayer. We can connect this with what our Doctor says in “Initiation”: that prayer is a moment of silence, a moment of “
meekness and silence”, as it were, when one quietly waits for the descent of the spiritual world. At this point we can even consider the value of prayer in this way: we simply ask for a contact with the divine, and the divine responds in the way it decides to respond. It’s not up to us to suggest how it should respond. Only in this way can we truly educate our feeling.
“
The activity of the astral and etheric forces, against which the I has to realize its fundamental immobility”.
Here we have to say that the
I is a great mystery. If you think about it, there is a part of it where it is already within the spiritual world, where it knows everything, in agreement with the Logos, as a descendant of Logos, in profound union with it. Only subsequently it becomes particular, it descends. The
I really is the immobile engine of the three forces: thinking, feeling and will. However, this happens outside of the conscious personality. At the border area, when the
I becomes aware of itself, an inversion takes place. This is our peculiar human condition, where we hold everything in reflection. We only perceive the reflection of our
I, that is its contrary, the exact opposite of the
I we have just described. We have reflected thought - that you know well, we have many times discussed reflected thought, abstract thought, and so on. And we also have reflected feeling - the Luciferic one - and reflected will - the Ahrimanic one.
In a certain sense, by becoming man, we have become the enemies of the Spirit. But man has ended up being this remarkable blend under certain guidance, and now that this human remarkable mixture is coming to a certain level of completion, elaborating his machine-based civilization entirely based on extra-refined wisdom of the physical world, there emerges an activity able to operate the conjunction between the
I we have described - the marvelous one, the divine one - and the immanent one. We have the transcendent
I and the immanent
I. This activity is of course thinking, in which man has the possibility to be the free bearer of the
I, even in the context of the current, rather intricate situation.
Whoever does the exercise of concentration knows that. Let’s take this beautiful human specimen we have described, who holds everything in reflection. Let him do the exercise of concentration. At the beginning, it will work well for him, before a surprise attack by the adversarial forces strikes him. These beings are incredibly clever, but also, in a certain sense, naive. When someone all of a sudden initiates a certain activity, they are not prepared to block him, so at the beginning concentration works well. Then, as soon as the adversarial forces realize that he’s actively working at something specific, they do all in their power to impede him to pursue that work. That’s when concentration becomes difficult. As an aside, I would say that, when one experiences big difficulties, an advisable strategy is to change the type or form of exercise. It’s a good idea to tackle a different work, unplanned, if one is knowledgeable in a variety of exercises - our Doctor has provided many of them, indeed. Suddenly working with something that the adversarial forces don’t expect is an effective defense strategy. In this way, one can make progress. And once the enemies rewire their attack to hamper the new efforts, then one should come back to the initial exercises. You see, I am saying it rough and ready, but this is absolutely true. By the way, I can assure you that I never dare to offer technical advice without careful and precise consultation with our Doctor. You can have complete trust in that. End of side note.
So we discover this activity - thinking - that connects the true
I with the reflected
I. We are free to do this operation. If man was thoroughly logical, completely logical - all ‘logical’ thoughts, used instrumentally in order to affirm this or that cultural value, are inevitably incomplete, they are half-thoughts, they only provide the short-sighted satisfaction of serving a certain worldview - so if man really thought the thoughts of materialism, the thoughts of positivism, all the way through, one would come to the discovery that standard thinking activity just stops at a certain level. Normally one is drawn to avoid reaching the true reality of thinking. We prefer to stop the process at a certain stage that satisfies the particular aspiration, be it social, political, philosophical or psychological.
On the contrary, the education of thinking works at the task of knowing thinking in its true nature, and we discover that it’s a scientific task. In other words, if science is absolute logic and empiricism, if it aspires to absolute accuracy, then we have to admit that science today still knows nothing about thinking. If we apply to thinking the principle of empiricism, of absolute objectivity - thereby realizing the principles of natural science as we can read in the Philosophy of freedom - then we discover a force of thinking that really leads man to become the determiner and the knower of his destiny. Thinking leads man to understand the
I, who really stands at the origin of everything. When we start to have that particular relationship with will, as we have described, such will is the true expression of the
I. Once we know that polarity of will, we are already in connection with the
I. We could even boldly say that we are already in connection with the Logos, because the will that man can activate comes from the highest power in the spiritual worlds. Now, let’s read again the question: “
The activity of the astral and etheric forces against which the I has to realize its fundamental immobility”.
Yes - when the
I begins to awaken, the human mistake usually depends on the fact that the
I is moved by that which itself should move. For instance, the reflected
I continually obey corporeal demands. It continually obeys everything coming from the side of feeling, from perception, from the instincts, from habitual thoughts. We could say that such an
I is the epiphenomenon of physical life, that is, a production, an outgrowth of physical, animal life. In this sense materialists are not wrong when they state that our
I is the sum total of this beautiful human soup of instincts, sentiments, etcetera. In reality, we discover that they are right because that’s exactly the area where they themselves live, and that our thinking can quit that zone and enter another zone, where thinking is free. So we realize how much the
I is maneuvered, moved, humiliated. When one becomes angry, for example, the
I is pretty much like a puppet. Under the instinct of anger, one can do really reprehensible things. And here we understand the suggestion in the question: the
I has to realize its fundamental immobility. This becomes finally possible when - through the intensity of thinking and through the strengthening of the thinking will - the I starts to have a tool with which it can pierce into human nature. Finally, the ego experiences moments, sometimes minutes, when it overcomes that dispersion and is able to identify itself with the higher self that can’t be seized by astral forces, passions, or instincts. The ego finds itself in a sort of central place that is a center of divinity in the world, thereby realizing that immobility, or stability. Aristotle understood that, when he spoke of ‘nous’ as the immobile engine. It sounds like a poetic expression, but that’s exactly how things are. Facing the chaotic mobility of instincts, passions and thoughts, the
I creates immobility and brings order. One is enabled to identify with one’s foundation, from which there is no need to fight. The
I has no need to fight passions and instincts. We start by fighting our passions and instincts, but the wiser we become, the less we do it. What we need to fight instead are the adversarial forces. This identification with the force of the
I is not a continuous experience, though, but as much as we become able to experience it, we become one with a force that doesn’t need to battle, and everything instantly becomes quiet.
Look at the statue of Christ in our Doctor’s The Representative of Humanity. His gesture expresses the
I. This powerful being shows what the
I is, still, dominating the entire Luciferic and Ahrimanic worlds, standing as representative of humanity. That is the image. So yes, the astral and etheric impulses do contain the adversarial forces. But they can’t do anything, once we succeed in our identification with the
I. For concrete purposes, we have to clarify though, that we can’t remain in that awareness indefinitely. We achieve it once, then it becomes harder and harder, because the enemies naturally do all in their power to impede our work. They provoke a series of accidents or anything else that could prevent us from experiencing that condition again. Despite that, the condition is always recovered. In the end, we always win. I think there is nothing more to add.
“
Does the knowledge of the original coincidence of thinking will and corporeal will illuminate the way of the Grail, as a feat of the I who recognizes that initial coincidence and penetrates the sensory currents, thereby operating the resurrection of feeling?”
This is a question and an answer all in one. It lightens my work, but still requires some development. It connects with our discussion so far, on the
I who eventually realizes its power in its fundamental immobility. Here we receive the image of the restauration of the order of the cross. The cross symbolizes the four elements - water, air, earth, fire - that are in disarray on Earth, and in man as well, due to Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences. The cross is the symbol of a force that sets them all back into order, according to the Logos. So at the center of the cross is the force of the
I. This explains why, across the centuries, the sign of the cross always wins over the demonic forces.
But when can we be sure that the order of the cross is realized in the immobility of the transcendent
I, who appears in the soul, thus dominating all other forces? Let’s say that we are encouraged to understand that this is the way of the Grail. Indeed, our friend here wrote “
The way of the Grail as the enterprise of the I”. You see, the way of the Grail truly is the enterprise of the
I. It can’t be the enterprise of the astral body. When the relationship between the two is astral, it is based on fluctuating feeling, duality, opposites, sympathies, antipathies, love… There are tragic love relationships where beings love and hate each other, the opposite feeling continually prevails. They can’t live separated, but when they are close they fight. That’s the astral, not the
I. That’s why we speak of conquering the
I out of love for the other being. That’s the true relationship of faithfulness, where the whole drama of jealousy vanishes.
The problem is that it is believed that the
I is an abstract entity, and the
I is frozen up. It’s understood as the philosophical
I, the
I of idealism, and so we fall back into intellectualism, where there’s not even an atom of inner power. In German language,
I is said “
ich” where we can recognize the initials of Christ - Iesus Christ. And even the word “
io” [Italian for
I] becomes "
Dio" [God] if we add a “d”.
When we live in the
I, we really are in the ocean of force. This was understood by an Indian, a beautiful, marvelous figure - Ramana Maharshi. He is an exception in the East. At a time when he was still completely ignorant of Yoga, he was caught by the terror of his own death, then by the terror of the death of his loved ones. How to overcome this terror of death? - he wondered. So he started praying, noticing an impulse in himself, and so he innerly moved in the direction of seeking the
I. That’s how he started to experience the
I - the Eastern way: he sat down there and never moved again. For us in the West that would not be the right way. Here, we truly need to put our thinking at work, and then we need to get this
I to cope with life. However, we can learn from the experience of Ramana Maharshi and see that this
I is really the guarantor of authentic love. Love is indeed woven in the fabric of the astral body, but without the emergence of the
I, it can’t work.
In this sense, the enterprise of the Grail is the enterprise of the
I. Sacred love is the great courage of the
I, the courage to be the witness of Light, the independent bearer of Light. That’s when the
I-force becomes Logos. That’s where true love is born between two beings also. Love is difficult because the astral body always wants to come in and replace the
I. So we see that the initial enthusiasm and the poetic impulses get damped. The only way to recover the truly loving relationship is to recreate it through the
I. Initially, the relationship triggers the astral body as something that comes from karma, and it really has the power to become something wonderful, but then it has to be enlivened through the
I. Those who care about the experience of the Grail need to hear this: the marvelous union of love that they have known needs to be found again by the
I, in great autonomy. This gives us another chance to recall that when
I-love is true, that is the love of Christ that finally enters humanity, to operate as the savior of humanity.
***
[1] Thanks to Piero Cammerinesi for making this recording freely available to the public at
Libero Pensare.
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