This
lecture [1] by MS is close in time to the previous one. It precedes it by a few days. The themes:
- The use of brutal force
- Beings without an
I
- Meditation as sacrifice
- The Archangel as Spirit of a Nation and the Solar Hero
- The nature of sacrifice
- The force of Logos beyond any paths
Rome, March 11, 1978
[Reading a question] “
A while ago, I stepped in with great energy in defense of someone who was about to succumb to the bullying of many. Is it right to intervene in this way? Or was it an undue interference in the karma of another human being? And is it possible to forcefully restore justice?”
There is only one force, it is the moral force. When we become able to use that force, the opportunity to use brutal force is taken away from us. If someone is drawn to brutal force, it is a sign that one is still connected in thinking - albeit maybe in subtle ways - with that sphere where questions are settled with the use of beating, with duress, with pushing and shoving, with tormenting… and so on. This way doesn't help anyone. Of course, if we notice that someone is in danger, and if we ourselves run a danger by helping the person, we have to face that danger. Nonetheless, since I had experiences of this kind in the past - I have really been able to clarify these relations. If one thinks that it’s possible to defend someone in a forceful way, or by beating, that will happen to him. On the contrary, if the person considers the moral force fundamental, the opportunity to step in with this moral force could present itself to him. Notice, it is possible that one person alone stops the arrogance of the many. With an energetic word, it is possible to muzzle 20 people. Naturally, this topic is multifaceted, it can have various contents. One has to understand what force is, to start with. The link with karma is always present, but it’s our own karma. If for example, one continually thinks: “That one, I’d hit him in the head”, it means there is a persistent link to that thought. To break free from it, perhaps he will need to go through a serious trial, until finally one acquires the certainty that it’s possible to step in with moral force, a force that dominates the situation. We don’t have time now, but I could provide many examples of that.
“
We hear that a child is currently alive who seemingly was born outside of the natural course of the events of procreation, in the act of conception itself. If this was true, how could such an unnatural event be related to the natural cosmic forces? What spiritual entity would this new human being have? And what reincarnation could the child be or represent?”
Nothing. This being wouldn’t have an
I. Instead of the
I, any Ahrimanic or Luciferic entity whatsoever would utilize the sheaths. In any case there is no need to get upset, because this is already happening. We are going more and more towards a time where there are beings who don’t have the
I. Clearly, the problem of how to treat these beings arises. The problem is also to understand that these beings have a function, a provoking function. Thus the wise man never takes seriously beings in which the
I is not present. There are definitely beings who do not have an
I, and new ones will be born, there will be many of them, inhabited by Ahrimanic entities. However, when for example beings who do have an
I are caught in obsessive patterns, it’s as if the
I wasn't there. Therefore, we need to appeal with all our forces to everything that spiritual science can tell us. It’s a matter of operating through the forces of knowledge, never coming to states of aversion, or classification of beings, so as to cut them off from human society. Instead, it’s a matter of understanding what evil we are talking about, and how it can be solved. Indeed, this task is already in the process of being fulfilled by spiritual science.
“
What is the relation - if there is a relation - between a meditation in which this or that figure encourages us to profoundly meditate on this or that serious problem, and our own meditation, our own sacrifice?”
If I understand the question, the answer is simple. Meditation is only worthwhile if it takes on an energy that can overcome the limit of subjectivity. So, any attitude, or demand of this type, any profound meditation, is essentially an appeal to the highest level of energy. But we need to understand that the highest level of energy is nothing titanic. Only when we comprehend this well, can we understand the true meaning of sacrifice, because the highest level of energy is developed when one is able to extract oneself from the decadent being we identify ourselves with, so as to come to an offering, a sacrifice. Meditation in its essence truly is a sacrifice. But because this question cannot be treated in a few words, we will now try to develop this theme through the other questions.
“
Life is sacred in each of its multifaceted aspects, nonetheless we are tasked with holding Christ in it. Why?”
Here we have a chance to continue the discussion we have started about profound meditation and sacrifice. We are in a moment in time when the sacrifice of meditation is requested by the spiritual world, with the purpose of helping the collective destiny, the destiny of the nation we belong to, in connection with other people as well. Therefore, when we say that someone is a great Italian, the spiritual meaning has to be translated in the following terms; a great Italian can be a poet, a hero, an inventor, but in spiritual sense, we can say that a great Italian is the one who enables the national spiritual entity - an Archangel - to read in his soul the needs of the people he belongs to. Tradition teaches us that each of us has a guardian Angel, a sort of deputy-I. This Angel however is “laid off” as soon as one starts to incorporate the
I, in which case this laid off Angel can offer a more powerful help than it could when it was bound to our destiny. As there is a guardian Angel for the individual, in the same way, there is an Archangel for a nation. Every nation has its Archangel, and things go wrong for a nation when the Archangel has lost connection and is prevented from giving the forces. The Archangel can only infuse force if there are beings who establish a relationship, offering the Archangel a vision, so to say, in order for the requested forces to inflow. Whoever attains this level is a true helper - a self helper, and a helper for his nation. In occult terms, this being was called in ancient times the Solar Hero. The Solar Hero was the sixth level of initiation, in line with the possibility for the initiate to attain the sphere of the Sun, and to receive from it the forces to be employed on Earth. This pertains to ancient initiation. Indeed, the expression “Solar Hero” is present in the various traditions. Here we can start addressing the question from our friend. The Spirit of the Sun is transferred to the Earth and the Solar Hero is the one who seeks the Sun principle on Earth. We can say that the middle ground between what is ancient and what is new is the Pentecost, because at Pentecost the twelve were pervaded by the Sun Spirit, by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who was born from the sacrifice of the Being of the Solar Logos.
The present day position of the initiate requires that the Solar Hero is the one who recovers the relationship with the Logos, through the forces of meditation and sacrifice. So you see the connection with what our friend was asking at the beginning. This endeavor restores the grade of Solar hero and corresponds with the passing of the threshold. Some of us can therefore understand what difficulties they have to endure in these times, if they want to be of help to the human collective and to the destiny of their nation. There is a spiritual being of the hierarchy of the Archangels who is in need of such beings, otherwise it cannot act. Or, it can, but only by means of karma, that is, by the crudest means. Now let’s go back to the first question: “
Can we avoid the way of violence, the brutal way, through the real force, that is, the force of Spirit?” The force of Spirit is able to operate much better than any weapons. So, the idea of the Solar hero is alive, and the spiritual world is waiting for beings to appear who are able to conceive an enterprise of this kind.
Here we can attach this question: “
How to connect the events of our life with the Logos?” and this one too: “
Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done. What is the thought that connects this invocation with the miracle of Resurrection?”
We can say that this indeed is realized through the forces of Resurrection, because “to hallow Thy Name” means to enliven the principle through living thinking, in a sphere where the Luciferic intelligence is overcome through the solar powers of thinking. Through powerful thinking, through the highest energy of thinking, man becomes free in the head from the Luciferic deception, the Ahrimanic deception, and that’s when he starts to hallow the name of the Lord, because he can consecrate, dedicate his thinking. In this manner, the way to the heart is opened, the way to the true domain of the Divine. Thy Kingdom come: the Kingdom is the kingdom of the median system, the kingdom of the heart. In this way we understand how the power of Logos is transferred to the will. So: Manas, Buddhi, Atman. That is, once the Name is hallowed, we can be worthy of accessing the Kingdom, because the Kingdom asserts itself in us through the system of rhythm, so that the will is consecrated. Today, this possibility is realizable through the idea of Solar heroicity, that is the possibility to realize what the ancient initiate could attain by escaping the Earth and immersing himself in the Solar domain. Today, this domain is to be found on Earth.
It remains to say what sacrifice consists of. Sacrifice is imitation of the divine, because all that is gifted to man, the entire creation in the universe, all that man can make use of, comes from the sacrifice of God. How? We can use an image. Let’s imagine a powerful lord who possesses lands, who is a just lord, one who puts himself in the service of others, someone who holds together all the beings who work the land. Let’s imagine that these peasants feel the need to bring him gifts, as a sign of their loyalty, and so they do a minimal sacrifice to give him the highest thing they are able to give. And let’s imagine that the lord does not accept those gifts. Better said, he accepts them, but not for himself. He says: “There are peasants who are less provided than you are, thus I will give these gifts to them. So, you gifted me, but the gift will only find its right place if I pass it in turn to those who stand lower. Notice, this is simply an image I use to express something that is terribly metaphysical. If you consider occult science, if you understand how the forces of the Sun have reconquered the absolutely transcendent warmth coming from Saturn, then you will discover this really mysterious event: at some point, the Spirits of Wisdom make a sacrifice, that they offer to the higher hierarchies, the first hierarchies, that is the Thrones and the Cherubs. This sacrifice ascends and is embraced by these Cherubs and Thrones. But what is really embraced is the renunciation, which means to transfer the gift of this sacrifice to beings who are ascending the ladder of the hierarchies.
In this way this sacrifice of the Spirits of Wisdom is poured in the Archangels, who accept, and rejoy, and acquire endless force. And as soon as the Archangels are charged by the sacrifice of the Spirits of Wisdom, they explode in an act of love from which the light of the Sun is born - which is not the physical light, of course. So, that Light is a Power of Love. It is born in the Sun, as the consequence of the sacrifice of the Spirits of Wisdom.
If you read the pages our Doctor has written, you will find that he sometimes recommends the meditation: “In light, wisdom flows”. Now, it’s not that we are supposed to analyze these images, Woe if we do, we would then kill them. Still, knowing certain behind-the-scenes is a power system that builds up in us, and enables us to intensely experience the content of meditation. In this way we can comprehend the whole creation, the birth of space and, in the sphere of Saturn, the birth of warmth, that is the sacrifice of the Thrones, as narrated by our Doctor. Then the sacrifice goes on, until the sacrifice culminates with Christ. Everything that is occult history of the Earth is lived through imaginations. You see, all the ancient world, all the pre-Christian traditions, are nourished by a vision that is naturally initiatic. It is a power of vision in movement, transferred from school to school, from initiate to disciple, and articulated through this etheric power of the mission. Having time, it would be possible to interpret all the initiatic movements of the East and of the West in this way, because this vision is connected with the intuition of sacrifice, except that it doesn’t have the power to reproduce it on Earth. This terrorized all spiritual seekers, who tasked themselves with escaping the Earth, ending reincarnation on Earth, finding a way to cut ties with Earth, so as to avoid the Earthly flows. In all the Yoga-asanas, starting from Padmasana, the Yogi has the shrewdness not to give hold to the currents emanating from the Earth, because they are Ahrimanic currents, and they knew that, if these Ahrimanic currents prevail, they would be forced to face the demon of the Earth. And they lacked that strength. But they didn’t know that the coming of the one who would have the force to dominate Ahriman was being prepared, and that He would accomplish the highest divine sacrifice, the highest offering to man, in order for man to recover his own being.
This is naturally a difficult theme to treat briefly. But, in essence, what does that mean? What is the difference between the various forms of initiations and the situation after the birth of the I? Notice, the I was born in a barbaric manner, because it was born as materialistic I, it was born in a really somber and dangerous way. Nevertheless, whoever truly follows the occult needs to know what lies behind all that. The destiny of Man is at stake. All the false elements in the various occultisms that are told and handed down can paralyze the path of man by making man either an agent of Lucifer, or an agent Ahriman. An agent of Ahriman is able to see by magical means, because Ahriman is a powerful magician, a bestower of magical powers, and when he finds his agents, he also bestows them with a power of will having the same intensity as a force of nature. We, from our side, have to gain the will crumb by crumb, little by little, through formidable efforts, but the one who follows Ahrimanic currents, and is indulgent with morality, receives formidable magical forces. The problem is, it’s a pact. A pact is signed, and then one is in big trouble, if one wants to be free. However, a pact of this sort cannot have anything to do with those who follow the ways of the spirit with a pure heart. Those can possibly err, but erring in good faith, they will always find the way again. On the other hand, we have to say that there are series of beings - here we are considering human groups, not initiates - who, mechanized, mentally sclerotized by the materialistic ideologies, get into the habit of becoming instruments, they are beings at the service of Ahriman, because for them in life there is nothing else than terrestriality, there is no possibility whatsoever to see anything beyond. These beings, after death, don’t go to the spiritual world, they remain attached to the Earth. We can say that they die in half. Something happens, a sort of initial immortality, connected with Ahriman’s command on Earth. This group has already started to appear. There are beings who, after death, don't do the post mortem journey described not only in the Egyptian book of the dead, the one of [----], but also in the Occult Science of Steiner. They remain in the halo of the Earth, and they tend to reincarnate. These are the beings who lose the
I. This is why it is possible to produce a child in vitro. Absolutely, we will certainly come to that. Of course, let’s look at Goethe’s homunculus. Goethe had foreseen that. In this situation, we have to understand what the era of redemption means, because the world is cut in half. This used to much sadden my friend Evola. My friend Evola was a great admirer of Bachofen. Evola has raised awareness of the work of Bachofen in Italy, which is a great work. Nevertheless he has always carefully omitted to say that Bachofen, like Hegel, used to argue that the history of man was divided in two, and that Christ represents the new history of Earth. Evola was really agreeable, because he was always pulling everyone’s leg, he always did as he pleased. He used to present authors in the way he personally liked. And he presented Bachofen in a way that one would ignore his marvelous Christianism. And his statement - that Steiner later developed and clarified - that Christ is at the center of human evolution, really is discovered by whoeve truly follows the ways of the Spirit. See, one can discover that in a truly wonderful way, even if one does not know Steiner, even if one knows nothing about Christ, even if one follows a pagan way. If one really searches, one comes to the understanding that the time of force has begun. The time of imaginations is over. Hence, the time of apparitions is over, and so is the time of escapes, and ecstasies… the time of samadhi, the time of ruptures. This is the time in which man can finally incarnate the force.
In the East, there is a very interesting figure called Aurobindo. In essence, he looked at the Christ and said: “Christ, and all that, very well, but I am in contact with a force.” and it’s very interesting how he describes this force. He says, it’s a force that has to transform the matter of the Earth, and this force has just sprung into action, right now. Whoever knows how things stand, understands what he’s talking about. There is another very sympathetic figure - Ramana Maharshi. He says that we are searching for the I. We have it, and we have to grasp that we can realize everything, if we realize the I. In essence he has summarized all the Eastern methods, including the monistic, Islamic ways. He has summarized all those ways in a quest for the I through the question of thinking. How not to notice that there’s something new in the East as well?
So these questions enable me to further indicate the meaning of a way that searches for the Logos through living thinking. In essence, it’s a way where one feels that something decisive, something that really has never had anything to do with initiation, is about to happen. As I said, even if one doesn’t know Steiner, the Gospels, or Christianism, provided that one really operates this liberation of thinking, the way will be found. Many years ago, I came to know… I can say that, he was a dentist - though he wasn't even officially qualified as a dentist - and he explained to me that he had an inner method. I had noticed he had a profound calmness, he had something angelic in him. He was an old man, about 60 years old. He had something of the quality of a saint, and he was fantastic as a dentist also. We started talking, and he told me that he had started suffering from insomnia, but because of diabetes and other conditions, he couldn't take remedies for insomnia. So he was in a bad position and decided to study in himself the process by which insomnia arises. He soon realized it was arising from thoughts that, by themselves, were tyrannizing in the brain, making it impossible for him to melt into sleep. So he started to operate on those thoughts, by dampening one thought, and then another one, and another one, finally being able to enter sleep. He ended up appreciating the activity, and decided to push it further. In this way he realized that as long as he was able to maintain this neutrality of rational thought, a sort of light of thought would appear, and pervade him. After two minutes of this activity he would be more rested than after a full night of sleep. He continued this practice. He told me: “It’s exactly as you explain it, I am connected with a marvelous force that is always there to help me. But I am afraid of this force.” Then I told him a few things. So, this being, a self-healer, with no esoteric culture, through such a simple operation had started to understand that the force of thinking is a divine current. If he had turned to really look at it, he would have discovered the Lord. And exactly in that circumstance, he could have said: “Hallowed be Thy Name”, and then also: “Thy Kingdom come”, and then: “Thy will be done”.
I believe I have answered the question. Let’s conclude with “
How to connect the events of our life with the Logos?”
By extinguishing any fear. It is necessary to come not to fear anything anymore. Then one finds connection with the Logos. Fear takes us away from Logos, because it does not belong to us. The I cannot fear. Now, we can definitely feel fear - who doesn’t? - but we also have to immediately say “It doesn’t belong to me, it is not part of my spirit, it is foreign to my spirit, it is contrary to the spirit, I have to reject it”. These are trials that face us, but we have to maintain this certainly, that whoever faces a trial is sacred, and the power of spirit will assist him. Absolutely everyone who goes through a trial is surrounded by those assisting beings who are ready to help him. The thing is that he has to remember that, and not to forego the help.
We have mentioned that intensity and energy are necessary, but we can’t close this discussion without saying that everything done with less than the highest level of energy doesn’t reach through, doesn’t come to honor’s bowers. “By toil and travel, not by sitting still In pleasure’s lap, we come to honor’s bowers” This is Dante. In this verse there is a small intuition of that [it is actually Torquato Tasso, in the poem "Jerusalem Delivered"].
In this way, after this little digression, we are back to the theme we have begun with, because the highest level of energy is the gift of oneself, that is, sacrifice. And we can always learn by observing, if possible, the gifts of the gods.
***
[1] Thanks to Piero Cammerinesi for making this recording freely available to the public at
Libero Pensare.
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