Behold the 12 Holy Nights CONCENTRATION.
A Complimentary Spiritual Exercise & Twelve Day journey into the Heart of the Matter…into the Arms of the Mother, Father, Friend, Beloved God.
This journey is meant to enliven & revivify the blood, to dissolve doubt & fear, to midwife the birth of the Higher-Being through the Womb of Remembrance, to bring clarity regarding the Tasks at Hand & to develop the INNER capacities to PERCEIVE what stands behind the material world.
Each concentration will provide a series of short readings that merge to reveal a Sacred Task given through THE WORD.
The readings will be a marriage of voices from those who are pioneering the Science of Spirit, or HEART-thinking.
“May you come to KNOW the true meaning of Christmas!”
The Over-arching TASK at hand:
“To penetrate to the reality of the world...is the task of this post Atlantean Epoch, and Rudolf Steiner tells us, we can only do this by developing the mood of ‘wonder’ through a reverent devotion to the world of reality, which eventually leads us to...loving ‘surrender’.
We must surrender our lower egos by changing our thinking...
When we develop a feeling of ‘loving surrender’ we are transforming our thinking into a faculty that allows the world itself to teach us something of its nature...
One who has practised surrender rises to an imagination of the flourishing will in all things...
To develop imagination one must learn to think differently, that is one must learn to forget the lower ego for a time, so as to find the higher self...
What helps us to achieve this? Anthroposophia, she opens our hearts and births our Higher egos...”
Through this cascade of readings, you are being asked to read between the stars.
You are pioneering a new way of thinking.
It may not be easy to weave the golden thread, but keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Allow the "mood of soul” that births within as you read one passage to merge with the “mood of soul” from the next.
In the end, practice uniting all soul moods that have arisen into ONE. You do not have to understand every word with your mind, but rather bring the questions (perhaps intense questions or confusion) into your heart and let them gently work upon you.
Ponder in your heart.
Take this with you into dreamtime…into night school.
Ask your guardian angel to reveal to you what you need to KNOW in the light of your work here.
If all else fails, go outside at night, find two stars side by side & allow your gaze to rest between them. Notice what you see. Notice what you feel.
You will begin to FEEL what I mean when I say “weave the golden thread.”Bring this feeling into your reading.
December 31st, 2021 Addition
Keep in mind that the 8th Holy Night is from midnight on Dec. 31st to midnight Jan. 1st.Let us add Aries into the mix:
“1 January - Aries: This is New Year’s Day, and the Baptism Day of the Jesus Child—The Names-giving Day. This conjures up mighty Christian Imaginations. The Child was named Jesus, and the naming of the Child then was a much deeper event then it is now. Much had been perceived supersensibly by Mary at the Annunciation. It was this Jesus who was later the bearer of the Christ. Then it was John the Baptist who cried out, “Behold the Lamb of God”, as Jesus advanced to the Baptism at the Jordan, when he was prepared to receive the Christ Ego. In Hebrew he would be called the “Ram of God”, and it is this event and knowledge that illuminates the constellation of Aries for us.”
-Willi Sucher
AND MAY THIS BECOME THE OAK BARK OF THE OUTFLOWING WISDOM AVAILABLE TO OUR SOULS:
“The 8th Holy Night - THRONES, SPIRITS OF WILL - LION - MONTH OF AUGUST
This night is the Eighth and from a Macrocosmic point of view is connected to the region of Lion. It is related to the Hierarchy that is known in Christian mysticism as Thrones, or Spirits of Will who receive their impulses from this region. This night is connected to the Month of August and the principle feast in August is the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
'The three disciples Peter, James, and John prove themselves to be capable of being initiated into the deeper secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. To the clairvoyant eyes of these three which were now opened there appeared, transfigured, that is in their spiritual nature, Elijah on the one side and Moses on the other, with Christ Jesus Himself in the middle. And it is imaginatively indicated in the Gospel that Christ was now in the form in which in His spiritual nature He could be recognized.'
What is this spiritual nature? His etheric body.
Why Moses and Elijah?
Moses had been possessed of the Etheric body of Zarathustra, who became the Matthew Jesus.
'The etheric body of Zarathustra reappeared in Moses. [ 3 ] It was the same etheric body. If we were to seek out the physical ancestors of Moses this would give us one line; if we were to seek out the ancestors of the etheric body of Moses we should get another, quite different line; here we should come to the etheric body of Zarathustra and to other etheric bodies.' Rudolf Steiner.
And so Moses was responsible for instructing the Hebrew people in the Laws that maintain the integrity of the etheric 'body', for the etheric body builds and moulds the physical body and the physical body that would be the vessel for Christ Jesus was destined to be prepared by the Hebrew people. We must not forget Moses saw Christ in the burning bush or the warmth ether showing once again his affinity with the ethers.
In Elijah we have the previous incarnation of John the Baptist who also had a particular affinity to the etheric world. Water is the physical manifestation of the etheric, and therefore John the Baptists Baptisms loosened the etheric bodies of those he baptised. He could do such baptisms because he received his initiation from the region of Waterman, through his angel, who opened his etheric eyes so that he might recognise Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus of Nazareth lived the Nathan soul whose etheric body was Adam/John the Baptist's etheric twin - and possessed of the ethers which had been vouchsafed to the Sun before the fall and which had been taken from human beings and the earth itself - the sound and life ethers.
In a sense Moses and Elijah we have two human representatives of both the etheric body and the etheric world, so inner and outer ether.
Now the etheric body is very important for intiation and the Thrones or Spirits of Will are deeply connected with it from the standpoint of the will.
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
'Clairvoyance cannot arise until what is experienced in the astral body makes its ‘impress’ in the etheric body.'
Now let's look at the Transfiguration.
One must imagine that on the mountain of transfiguration one has Christ in Jesus manifesting His etheric body of warmth light, sound and life willed out by the Christ Ego, while below you have John, Peter, and James - all fishermen whose affinity with the ethers and connection to the human hierarchy of Fishes, is self evident.
So what has this to do with the Thrones or Spirits of Will?
The substance of warmth on Old Saturn came from the Spirits of Will who sacrificed their warmth bodies. This sacrifice of warmth was what motivated the sacrifice of the Kyriotetes on the Old Sun where we human beings first elaborated our etheric bodies and our heart, according to Rudolf Steiner and for this reason the Lion is associated with Sun forces in the outer Macrocosm and inwardly, Microcosmically, with the human heart - the inner Sun, which is an organ of will.
On Old Saturn there was an active co-operation between the Spirits of Will and the Archai who were then undergoing their human stage and also the human being today who was then developing out of the warmth of the Spirits of Will a physical body. So today their influence lives in the region of the limbs but it is mostly in sleep that it has a bearing on our lives. We would not be able to move in sleep if not for the activity of the thrones but there is more to it:
When we walk our I perceives that we are walking and that is how we can make contact with the earth - through perception. Our contact with the higher worlds also requires a kind of perception or consciousness and as we do not have our 'I' in our physical bodies at night we perceive through the thrones. To become conscious of this perception, is called Intution.
'The sensible organization is only present in order that the walking be perceived, because it can be accomplished only when it is perceived...'We are able to move, I said, in physical life because the movement becomes conscious through the physical legs. Who, my dear friends, does that instead when we are sleeping? Those beings who connect with us for the purpose of movement when we are sleeping. They are the Thrones, beings of the First Hierarchy. However, with normal consciousness, with normal sleeping consciousness, man cannot perceive the Thrones; therefore, it doesn't help. But when through intuition he is capable of perceiving what happens during sleep, he becomes aware that during sleep he is in contact with a higher world through the Thrones, just as in physical life he is in contact with normal earth life through his physical legs.' - Rudolf Steiner - First class.
Let us look at perception from the standpoint of the Will.
We find that in ordinary life we really only know what our senses bring us. What we see is illuminated by sunlight but as we have already seen in order to see we have to will our astral and etheric bodies out of us, we just don't notice it except when we become conscious of the after image and complementary colours they are the evidence that beings of will have carried the thoughts of the third hiearchy into us. These are imprinted for only a short time in our etheric body and disappear into our will to leave us free but they light up the etheric body and through becoming conscious of this mystery we become aware of our inner life.
This awareness is only experienced because the will has created a resistance, like the earth creates a resistance for our legs and bring about a consciousness that we are walking.
The Spirits of will in this way are responsible for creating a resistance that brings about an awareness of where our etheric body lives in us for they have that kinship with the etheric body! Now we can turn to the inner life to develop a new kind of self-consciousness.
"The experience then arising can be described somewhat as follows: — As we look into the external world, the sun or some source of light must be there to illumine the objects around us. Through the light that is outside us, we perceive these objects. When, in the process of pure thinking, consciousness of this second existence awakens — it is however a process of actual “beholding” as colourful and rich in content as sense-perception — then we can become aware of an inner light ... not in a figurative sense but as a spiritual reality ... a light which illumines our own inner life and being just as in the ordinary way objects are illumined for us by some external source of light." Rudolf Steiner.
The above process is fleeting, the after image and complementary colour die away. This is only so we that we are left free in the darkness of the etheric body. For here we must kindle our own light which now unites with our ordinary senses, for it can be willed out to perceive the etheric world.
Rudolf Steiner gives exercises in creating inner images with light because this strengthens the will to achieve this, but then the images too must die away through the activity of the will, thus are we able to control our inner life or light to such an extent that we can will it out of ourselves.
'This condition is not induced unconsciously as in the case of a medium, but in full consciousness. An ethereal quality is poured into the ordinary human faculties. This enables us, too, to understand something of great importance, namely, how we can “keep hold” of a supersensible, etheric world (later on we shall be speaking of other supersensible worlds) ... a world which embraces the course of our life hitherto and also the etheric realities of outer nature extending to the sphere of the stars.This ether-world becomes a reality and consciousness of the self within this ether-world arise...He thus learns to know the reality of a second man within himself. This second man is conscious of living within a delicate, ethereal world of light — just as the spatial body lives in a physical world. The world is revealed in its finer, more delicate formations; the delicate, ethereal formations perceived in this way underlie everything physical.' Rudolf Steiner
To perceive the ethereal formations of everything physical outside us in nature and in the human beings around us consciously requires us to will out our soul.
'This condition is not induced unconsciously as in the. case of a medium, but in full consciousness. An ethereal quality is poured into the ordinary human faculties. This enables us, too, to understand something of great importance, namely, how we can “keep hold” of a supersensible, etheric world (later on we shall be speaking of other supersensible worlds) ... a world which embraces the course of our life hitherto and also the etheric realities of outer nature extending to the sphere of the stars. This ether-world becomes a reality and consciousness of the self within this ether-world arises.' Rudolf Steiner.
But there is a creative side to this.
Rudolf Steiner tells us this entire process from the perspective of the spirits of Will, for our will is one with the will in the world and what we do in our souls affects the world it becomes creative:
In your worlds of will
Feel our cosmic working:
Spirit glows in matter,
When we create thinking;
Spirit creates in matter
When we willing live;
World is I-Willing Spirit-Word.
When we see how the spirit glows in matter, we are living with the cosmic working of the Thrones, who work through our spiritualised organ of thought willed out to help us become creators not merely of our destinies, but the world of matter itself. We create the world that our karma will bring us to in our next life we create the outer world, by developing our inner life for by doing so we find Christ in the the Spirit creative word in us which not only transforms our physical substance but when we will it out to the world transforms it into a more spiritual substance.
Christ Jesus stood upon the mountain of transfiguration and manifested his transfigured etheric body. For what is transfiguration if not a complete change of form into a more beautiful and spiritual state? Christ Jesus poured out the perfected etheric body of Jesus into the world to exemplify what we must one day do.
May we realise how important this work is for the world, may we work consciously with the Thrones or Spirits of Will so that Good Will may be poured out into the world when we with Christ live!
With love and deepest respect, for you dear friends and for my dear friend Stephen Lesiuk who is with me as I write this.
Namaste,”
-Adriana Koulias | Holy Nights 2021
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Here begins the body of work created in 2020.
The 12 Zodiacal Signs by Rudolf Steiner are presented throughout this journey in Sidereal Astrology style & order, beginning with Sagittarius.
PLEASE SEE THE COMMENT SECTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DAY 1 POST FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION AS TO WHY THIS CONCENTRATION PURPOSEFULLY BEGINS WITH THE ZODIACAL SIGN OF SAGITTARIUS.
Day 8
“I FEEL.”
How can I FEEL my way through the corpse of thought to the living truth?
“O Light Divine,
O Sun of Christ,
Warm Thou our hearts,
Enlighten Thou our heads,
That Good may become -
What from our hearts we found
And from our heads direct
With single purpose.”
Bring over the fruits of your labor from yesterday as you read the following WORD:
Thy light transfigures all creation.
“O Transubstantial Light! Thou art unseen, imperceptible, whether in warm rays of the sun or in cool moonbeams. The skyey lamps disclose only Dame Nature, not Thee.
The world of matter revealed by gross luminaries is but darkness to me. Train my vision to see Thy hidden effulgence, transfiguring the whole of creation.
When I sit with eyes closed, enveloped in self-created shadows, cause Thou to blaze upon me in splendor the aurora of intuition. With worshipping gaze may I watch Thee in Thy ritual dance of cosmic activities. ”
What is the Essence of Day 8?
“Night of the Cherubim.
In the first hierarchy the Cherubim are representatives of harmony in the cosmos.
We know that harmony is the result of balance. For instance in a choir it is the balance of different voices united as one that creates harmony. Harmony is not something that can be achieved alone, it is a concert of voices. In the physical body harmony occurs when each organ is balanced in the right way, when our nerves and senses, our rhythmic system and metabolic system are balanced, in the soul it is the harmony between our thinking feeling and will. Our road to developing Atma (purified physical body), relies on a harmonious interplay between physical, etheric, astral and the only way to achieve this harmony is by way of the human ego.
When we began on this journey we faced trials, these trials helped to strengthen our ego so that it could maintain harmony in physical body, while we loosen the etheric and astral bodies to rise to spiritual experiences.
In the past initiation was conducted in mystery centres. The acolyte would be placed in a trance and the priest’s task was to maintain the bodily workings while the acolyte loosened the etheric, astral and ego from the body.
In our time we are asked to be our own priests, our ego must remain with the physical body, maintaining the balance and harmony of our organs. That is why we must never lose our consciousness when we practise esoteric exercises. It is also the reason that we use the senses as our starting point, for these ensure that our ego is firmly grounded in the physical world.
But balance can only be achieved through incremental movements, so there will be times when the harmony in our physical body is disrupted by a loosened etheric body and a loosened astral body. It is for this reason that we might feel discomfort in our physical body at times. This is an indicator that we must strengthen our ego in such a way that it can once again take up the reins and bring harmony to the working of our organs.
There is no spiritual development without pain and suffering.
Those who seek only comfort cannot embark on spiritual training.
In the cosmos the harmonious working of the beings that guide the planets is called the Harmony of the Spheres. In ancient medicine the connection between music and well being was understood to be connected with this Harmony of the Spheres.
Up until now we have sojourned in the lower regions of the Third and Second Hiearchies, where light, and colour abound, but in these higher spheres we begin to hear the ‘harmony of the spheres’ and in it the the warning of the Cherubim with fiery sword who stands at the gates of paradise:
’For every step upwards in advancement you human being, must take an equal step downwards in service. Without this there is no harmony! And without harmony you may not pass without losing your connection to the world and you cannot develop further!’
What is above must be like that which is below, as Hermes has indicated, for we cannot create harmony alone, we cannot rise without taking our ‘brother/sister’ with us. We only develop so that we can help the other. We need one another!
When Jesus of Nazareth was on his way to his baptism he met with the Essenes, who lived in close communities. Theirs was an egoistic advancement. They left the tempters at the gate, but did not care if these tempters were all the more active amongst those who did not belong to their communities.
Christian Rosencreutz, the reincarnation of Lazarus John, is the representative of those who do not seek to separate themselves from others but who, in the midst of life, go quietly about developing their spirituality. Those who are capable of both working and praying. The Templars were the first to attempt it, both in battle and in their churches they worked together as one, harmonising their voices - in the midst of life they worked for the betterment of the communities in which they lived. The Cathars too, worked in the world, as doctors. They were known as weavers because they could weave the spiritual life and the working life.
The Cherubim are the representatives of harmony and conscience, because harmony can only be achieved when we are conscious of the need of others, just as in a choir one must adjust one’s voice to the voice of others.
On this night may we remember not merely our responsibility to our selves but our responsibility to others.”
What does Loving Remembrance LOOK and FEEL like?
SEE into what you FEEL as you read the following:
“‘But as the man spoke, before Jesus’ eyes the image of the Essene softened into the green foliage, and in its place came the image of another being.
The figure wore a smile that conveyed a likeness of all the love in the world, all that was valued as worthy and holy. He spoke even as the other man did, but his words were heard in the heart and not the ear.
‘I was born on the night of a full moon in far distant lands, long before this time, Jesus. I was the son of a wealthy king and queen. When I was your age, full of thirst to know the world, I too left my home, just as you have done, and what I saw was full with ills. Yes, I saw the pain of disease and the ravages of old age. I saw poverty and hunger and pain. I saw women crying for their lovers and mothers crying for their children and drunkards crying for their drink. I saw the cold, the weary, the beaten, the helpless and the hopeless. I saw these things as you have seen them and I too mourned for those I could not help. The truth is, Jesus, I would have returned home to the palace of my father, feeling despondent, had Vishva Karman, the artist of the gods, not appeared to me. After that, I sought enlightenment as you have done. I sat beneath the Bodhi tree where I was transfigured and it was through this illumination that a light was shed upon the ultimate truth: ‘Birth is suffering. Illness, thirst and hunger are suffering. Old age and death are suffering. Separation from loved ones and unification with those we do not like is suffering. Pain is suffering and the absence of pleasure is suffering. Attaining what is desired is suffering, and attaining what is not desired is suffering. Ignorance is suffering and knowledge is suffering, craving and grasping and consciousness are suffering. To end suffering, to release the soul from the eternal chain of incarnations, to find salvation, I realised that one had to extinguish the self, and blot out the thirst for existence. And so this is what I, the Enlightened One, went on to teach men.
But now, Jesus, the time for such a teaching is ended. For just as there are those who follow the path willingly, relinquishing all earthly things, walking with their white robes carrying their bowls in their hands, not labouring for their meals but living only from the alms that others deign to give them, so there must also be those who cannot follow the path, those who cannot relinquish earthly things. The world needs labourers and street vendors and women who can bear children and cook meals. There must always be those who do not wish to escape the endless wheel, for without them who would support those who walk the path? The priests could not collect alms if all men were to relinquish the world for enlightenment! The fulfilment of these doctrines would force all people to be like the elders of this order, but this is no longer lawful.
Something new is entering into the world, Jesus, and I have prepared for it. The most excellent of spirits will soon come. He was known in ages past as Vishva Karman and Rama and Krishna, and when he descends into the body of a man, He will be called Christ. He will bring with Him this understanding: that it is by way of death that man is born again; it is by way of suffering that compassion arises; and that it is by way of compassion that conscience can come into being. You see, conscience comes when we feel the pain of another. This voice of conscience now asks: how pure is enlightenment, if it is selfish and leads to the exaltation of a few through the suffering of many? He is near at hand, Jesus, and only conscience will recognise Him.’
Jesus felt the majestic truth of these words and asked, full of wonder, ‘Who are you?’
‘I am called Buddha, because I have sat under the Bodhi tree and I have been enlightened, and so I have escaped the endless round of incarnations. Long ago, it was I who made smooth the way for Christ! He will not escape the world but He will unite Himself with it for all times, not to save a few, but to save all.’ ”
CONCENTRATE upon the following as you practice Loving Remembrance:
Lovingly Surrender the lower ego (i.e. judgement, opinion & one-sidedness) for but just a moment…a Divine Breath.
Behold THE WORD with the immaculate Heart.
Invite ANTHROPOSOPHIA to Baptize you in the New Water, the “Draught of Remembrance.”
“It is our intention today to begin by considering the soul’s progress through successive earth lives...
As you know, when the human being goes through the portal of death, he first lays aside his physical body; then he is in possession of what we call the ego. Besides this he has his astral body, and at the beginning, although only for a short time, the etheric body also. This brief period during which the human being still has an etheric body is devoted to a retrospective view of his last earth life, which appears before his soul like a panorama. This period ends when the etheric body is, one might say, pushed upward into cosmic space, just as the physical body is pushed downward towards the earth.
The human being is then left with his astral body. In this astral body we still find the after-effects of the etheric body, that is to say, all that this astral body has experienced by being linked in the last earth life with the etheric body, and also with the physical body. As you know, considerable time elapses before the astral body is also stripped off.
I have already drawn attention in our literature to the fact that one cannot simply speak sweepingly of dissolution of the etheric and the astral bodies, but that this dissolution is in reality a releasing into the cosmos of those forces which the human being has within himself. The etheric body bears within itself, as it were, the imprints of all that the human being has gone through in life. This is an aggregate of what I would call form structures. This aggregate of form structures, becoming ever more widely diffused, actually stamps itself upon the cosmos; what has thus happened in our life and what has imprinted itself upon the etheric body actually continues to work within the cosmos as forces. We commit to the cosmos the nature and mode of our behavior towards the etheric body. Our life is not without moment for the entire universe. It is precisely through the knowledge of anthroposophical spiritual science that the human being acquires a strong feeling of responsibility, because he is compelled to realize how that which he incorporates into his etheric body by means of his intellectual life, his feeling life, his will, that is, by means of his morality, is imparted to the whole cosmos. In the cosmos is contained, if I may put it that way, the conduct of those human beings who have lived in former times. That which through our conduct in life contributes to the configuration of the etheric body, detaches itself in a certain way only to be gathered up into the whole great universe. In reality we participate in the making of the world! And we must develop this sense of responsibility that makes us feel ourselves as participants in the creation of the world.
That which we continue to bear as our astral body must not be looked upon as something merely to be dispersed later on, merely to be dissolved in the cosmos. This is not the case. The astral body also imparts itself to the universe, though to be sure, to the spirit-soul part of the universe.
And when the ego has freed itself from this astral body, after the transition through the soul world has been accomplished, then what we have incorporated into our astral body is to be found outside in the universe, — only now the ego and the astral body take separate paths. The astral body, divided from the ego, now goes its own way, and in a similar manner the ego takes its own course. We cannot, however, speak of the destruction of the astral body; on the contrary, this astral body continues to evolve. Through its interrelationship with the universe, it continues to evolve simply as a result of our having implanted into it the effects of certain moral impulses; and with the form it has acquired as the result of these moral impulses, it imparts itself to the cosmos, — it inserts itself, so to speak, into the spirit-soul part of the universe with which it enters into reciprocal activity. Indeed one can even put it this way (although half figurative, it, nevertheless, corresponds to the facts): the astral body expands more and more, but it reaches a certain limit in this expansion; and when it can expand no further, it begins to contract. And the speed or slowness with which it expands or contracts depends essentially upon what has been incorporated into it in the course of life. One can thus say that the astral body imparts itself to the universe; if I may use the expression, it strikes against the outer limits of our spiritual-soul cosmos and is thrown back again.
The ego follows its path in a world very different from that of the astral body...the ego develops a certain kind of inward craving. And it is chiefly this craving that makes the ego feel attracted to just this particular returning astral body, which however has now become something different. Indeed there takes place a kind of union between the metamorphosed, transformed astral body and the ego. It thus comes about that when the human being approaches the time for his return to earth, he acquires certain inclinations, I might say, in diverse directions.
I have indicated how the astral body expands into the universe, then returns, and how the ego in a certain way finds it again. We can follow this up in the outer human form, if we look at the being of man in its totality.
For we must imagine that the human being, as he appears when he is born on earth, is really formed from two directions. I have described to you just now how the astral body expands into the universe and how it returns again; this astral body, so to speak, now meets the ego. Figuratively speaking, it approaches in the form of a hollow sphere, — a sort of hollow sphere that grows ever smaller and smaller. Thus it approaches the ego. It has kinship with the planetary system. The ego on its way between death and a new birth develops quite another kind of longing. Although it has a longing for the astral body, it develops an even greater longing for a certain spot on earth, for a certain people, a certain family. On the other hand there is a drawing together of what comes from without as the transformed astral body, and the ego after having completed the period between death and a new birth with its strong inclination toward the earthly realm, toward a people, a family, and so forth. If we look at the human being after birth with special reference to the outer surface of his body, we can see just what is subject to the forces of the metamorphosed astral body. What is organized from without, from the skin inwards, including the sense organs, is built for us from out of the cosmos. But what is brought forth organically through the ego’s feeling itself linked with the earth, feeling itself drawn toward the earth, creates the organization from within outwards, which is counter to the other organization; it creates rather the bone-muscle organization, and so forth, the part which radiates from within, so to speak, against what radiates inward from the skin and the senses. So far as the outer periphery of our body is concerned, we are organized by the macrocosm, but what streams through our ego, what grows from within outward against the skin-sense formation, is organized by the earth.
Thus the human being is really born out of the universe. And his sojourn in the maternal body provides only the opportunity for these two forces, one a macrocosmic and the other an earthly force, to unite. But man is definitely a being who does not spring from one point alone, from the germ. He is rather the fusion of the extra-earthly forces, which are held together by his metamorphosed astral body, and that force which, bearing the influence of the earth, grows counter to these extra-earthly forces. What we call our mental faculty, our intellect, our power of forming mental pictures, is deeply akin and intimately connected with what comes to us from the cosmos. Our power of forming mental pictures points in fact to our previous earth life. We acquire this power of forming mental pictures by virtue of the fact that what we have woven into our astral body in our previous earth life has expanded into the cosmos, has come back again, and now chooses our head, so to speak, as its chief organ, our head which has been formed from without as a skin-sense organ. The rest of the skin-sense organization is, so to speak, only an appendage of the head. Our will organization, however, expresses itself in what is related to the earth forces, because the human ego on approaching birth feels attracted to a particular spot on earth. So we can say that when we are reborn, we receive our mind from the heavens; our will from the earth. Between the two lies feeling, which is given to us neither by heaven nor by earth, but is based on a kind of continuous swinging back and forth between earth and heaven, and which has its outward organ chiefly in the rhythmic system of man, the breathing system, the blood circulation, and so forth. It stands in the middle between the head organization proper, which is essentially the product of the macrocosm acting upon the great circuit of the former astral body, and our will organization, which comes to us from the earth. Between these two stands our rhythmic system, stands our feeling life, which can develop on the foundation of this rhythmic system and which, I might say, we also bring to outer visible expression between heaven and earth. Our head points more to our extra-earthly origin; our will is intimately related to what is ours from the earth. Between the two stands our feeling life and, from a physical point of view, our circulation, our breathing life.
No thorough and comprehensive view of man can be taken one-sidedly either from the soul aspect or from the physical aspect, for these two, the soul and the physical nature in such a total view, must interpenetrate one another.
Furthermore, because we are connected with the entire macrocosm, bearing within us just in our head organization something formed by the macrocosm, we can see that we are directed back to our past through our intellect; only, with our ordinary consciousness we do not discover how we are thus referred to our former earth lives.
In the ancient oriental striving for wisdom, the pupils of the initiates tried to establish a connection between their rhythmic life and their head life. For the epoch in which the ancient oriental wisdom flourished, it was natural to seek a higher stage of human development by making breathing a conscious process, and thereby also the process of circulation; breathing in accordance with definite rules raised the breathing process as well as the circulation to consciousness. The old Oriental could do that because his soul and spirit were not yet so intensely linked to the body as they are in the man of today. If, applying a sort of anachronism, anyone were simply to practice this old oriental method today, without attaining to higher knowledge, he would, more or less, ruin his human body; for it would be interfering too much with the health of the physical body, now that the human being is so much more intimately connected with his body than was once the case, for instance, at the time when the ancient Indian sought after wisdom.
But what did a student acquire by going through these exercises in ancient India? He made the breathing process into something conscious, that is, he inhaled consciously. Through these exercises he gradually acquired the possibility of following the process that takes place when the pressure of inhalation causes the brain fluid to oscillate toward the brain through the spinal canal, and to strike, as it were, against the brain. It is this impact of the brain fluid against the solid parts of the brain (this brain fluid, which rushes upward during inhalation, falling again during exhalation), it is this impact that causes mental pictures to arise. The production of mental pictures is something much more complicated than is imagined today, when everything is thought out materialistically. Today it is thought — or at least it was until recently, for today people are no longer interested in thinking in clear concepts — it is thought that some kind of evolution, some nerves underlie the forming of mental pictures. This is nonsense. The real fact is that there is actually a constant striking of the brain fluid against the nerve system taking place which starts off those processes underlying the forces of the nervous system. The ancient Indian student of wisdom raised this activity to consciousness. What did he learn by following this whole process consciously? He learned from it how the underlying processes which had formed his brain really point back to former earth lives. Through his present rhythmic system he experienced, so to speak, his former earth life; this past earth life became a certainty to him. For such a student of wisdom it was simply self-evident that he had had a previous earth life. He could perceive it, you understand, by raising his breathing process to consciousness. Today this must be accomplished in another way. It cannot be brought about today by meditation that arises from a special way of shaping the breathing process; for this method must not be used by the modern human being. Quite the contrary, meditation today should proceed from a quiet dwelling on mental pictures: thus it starts out from the opposite side, and thereby takes into consideration the fact that modern man is much more closely united with his physical body. But by dwelling quietly on a mental picture, we learn to know this nuance of the rhythmic system from the other side, from the spirit-soul side. We come to know the process from the other side; in such a way, however, that we do not penetrate deeper into our body, as did the ancient Indian, — indeed we must not do so, because we have already penetrated into it deeply enough; but by freeing ourselves from the corporeal nature, we trace out the whole cosmos in the realm of spirit and soul, and the cosmos teaches us how the former earth life is connected with this life.
You can see, my dear friends, the statements made in Anthroposophy are not abstract and fanatical, but are founded upon a penetrating knowledge of the human organization as seen from within; they are not based on an external examination of the organism as a corpse, — or, even if not as a corpse, still from without — but upon a knowledge of it coming from within, from intimate contact with both aspects, the reciprocal action between the rhythmic and nerve-sense systems on the one hand and on the other between the rhythmic and metabolic systems (for the rhythmic system also has an impact upon the metabolism). And by coming to know from the other side this interweaving of the rhythmic with the metabolic processes, we become certain that the germ of the next earth life lies buried within us, for the metabolism in its spiritual aspect contains the germ of the next earth life. Even though it is the lowest part of the human organism for this earth life, from the spiritual aspect it contains the germ of the next earth life. Thus we rise to a consideration of the human being as a whole.
You see, in this respect those people especially who are living within the realm of western civilization are often really like a blind man confronting color. Perhaps what I am about to say is far from the thoughts of many of you, but I should like to call your attention to the following: All that we conceive as mathematics, all that comes into play in linear or angular forms, in the vertical or the horizontal, as well as all that we measure, all that we conceive mathematically, we develop really out of our inner being; it is the foundation of our inner life. The moment we learn to perceive what underlies our inner being, we no longer speak in the Kantian fashion, simply pouring that which springs up within the inner being of man into some kind of unintelligible expression. Mathematics is said to be “knowledge a priori.” A priori! Now, that is a word for you, is it not? It means “there from the very beginning,” a priori. But if one learns to see inwardly, then one knows whence this curious mathematical knowledge springs. The astral body has gone through the mathematics of the whole universe, and all this has condensed again. We simply let that rise out of the soul which we have experienced in a former incarnation, which has then passed through the whole cosmos, only to emerge once more in the purity of mathematical-geometrical lines.
You thus see that in this a priori conception of the world is expressed analogous to the blind man’s conception of color, Otherwise one would have to say that what is called in the Kantian sense “a priori” arises out of our former incarnations and appears in this incarnation in a metamorphosed form, after having gone through the entire macrocosm.
I have been speaking to you here, my dear friends, about the laws underlying the whole human being which reveal themselves when we consider life as it passes through repeated incarnations. Our modern age is very reluctant in giving heed to such things. That is why our present world conception remains external. I should like to make this clear to you by an illustration.
Let us assume that we are now examining — according to the prevailing method — a people belonging to a certain locality on earth. Now what do we do today as historians? We say: there lives the present generation; another preceded it; this generation was in turn preceded by one still further back. We thus go back to former centuries, back to the Middle Ages, and, I might say, we follow the blood streams down through the generations, follow all that is transmitted down through external heredity, and come to the conclusion that what lives in the present people can be traced back to the earlier phases of development of this people.
Thus is history regarded today. If a typical historian wishes to follow German, French, or English history as far back as possible, he does so by going back through the chain of ancestors according to their physically inheritable characteristics. What a present-day generation of a certain people manifests in life is supposed to be understood from what former generations of this people have experienced, that is, from what can be inherited physically; this is the way people talk. This is, however, nothing but materialistic thinking applied to history. For if you consider what anthroposophical spiritual science offers you, not as a mere theory, but as something to carry over into your view of life, then you must not be content to speculate upon the repetition of earth lives, to consider as something isolated the fact that your soul has gone through previous earth lives, and will go through others in the future, but you must also consider with this in mind what takes place all over the earth. For if we look at one or another generation living today, we can certainly trace it back to former generations through the blood — through external, physically inheritable characteristics; these former generations may have lived in the same part of the earth or, if we consider the streams of migrations, they may be traced back to ancestors who at an earlier age lived in another part of the earth; but in doing all this we remain entirely in the realm of the physical-material.
There is, however, more to it. In this present age we have before us a generation of people who, in regard to what concerns its physical bodily nature, descends from its ancestors; but the souls that dwell in the individual human beings need not at all be related to these ancestors. In fact the soul has not co-experienced with them on earth what has happened in the course of the many generations, and what outwardly represents the destiny of these ancestors; this the soul has experienced in the spirit-soul world during life between death and a new birth.
We look back upon our grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather. Well, we were then not yet born; our soul was still in the spiritual world. Our body has inherited from all of them, but our soul — nothing! It has lived in an entirely different world during all this time; in its own experiences it need have nothing to do with what our body has inherited from our forefathers. And if research into these things is made in the realm of the spirit, the results often appear paradoxical to outer observance. In general one must clearly realize that speculation or philosophizing on the true facts of life usually gives rise to absurdity. Spiritual perception alone reveals the truth. And a spiritual researcher is often himself astonished at his own results. Indeed he finds in the very surprise awakened by his results a sort of verification of them; for, if he found only what he had already anticipated in his thoughts, he might not feel so strong a confirmation. Just the fact that things are, for the most part, different from what one imagines, usually makes it possible to see that, by being devoted to true spiritual research, one is working not in a subjective, but in an objective realm.”
Think with your HEART all the way through to the other side of the above wedded WORDS.
Weave the Golden Thread.
Take the fruits of your labor into dreamtime with you tonight.
Allow your Higher Being to begin to inform your inner most movement.May you come to hold the FAITH in the following:
“Doubting can ultimately develop into something immense; indeed, consciousness can as it were finally drown in a sea of doubt. And this path can lead to another pathological state: what was originally felt as inner comfort can become lack of courage in knowledge. This lack of courage in knowledge can then lead to a skepticism that, as its last stage, assumes the soul condition of despair now turned pathological. This is commonly termed ‘black melancholy.’
Fixed ideas, dullness (apathy), and melancholy are the three spiritual diseases that threaten those who do not wish to make use of the means that can lead them to the spring of ‘faith,’ ‘love, and ‘hope.’ These are the three rays of the healing Christ-impulse. Just as faith, as a force, protects us from fixed ideas by way of the twelve fundamental outlooks of the world, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac; just as love, in fullness of selfless interest for the moral spheres of space of the seven ‘planets’ rescues us from a threatening sense of dullness; so hope, as the capacity to let the SPIRITUAL SUN rise up in our souls and remain there untarnished, rescues us from the danger of the ‘inner solar eclipse’ of black melancholy...
Just as what counts with faith and love is the spiritual regulation of the relationship to the zodiac and to the planetary spheres, so what counts with faith is the spiritual regulation of the relationship to SUN, EARTH, and MOON. We are in truth dealing now with a spiritual regulation of this relationship. When we abandon the firm ground of our physical organization and the earthly domain of experience, we face the task of not lapsing into the horizontal direction of what is moon-like; instead we must raise ourselves into the vertical as a ray of the spiritual sun. The upright stream of ‘hope’ is sun-like: it is the INNER spiritual standing that must be learned through meditation, over and above the bodily physical standing...
Hence the possibility arises for us to direct our thinking beyond the objects of ordinary thinking to their origin, that is to say to live in a thought not for its relationship to the outer world of experience (for its knowledge value) but in order to pass through the threshold of that thought into a conscious relationship with the sources from which it has flowed.
This is the task of MEDITATION: by means of a thought to arrive at the experience of the forces of which that thought is an inner reflection.”
May you be held in the womb of 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝒶 & filled with the Light of ℭ𝔥𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱 today & always.
Image by @waldorfchalkboarding
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