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.
January 2nd, 2021 Addition
Keep in mind that the 10th Holy Night is from midnight on Jan. 2nd to midnight Jan. 3rd.Let us add Gemini into the mix:
“3 January - Gemini: Here we have Caspar with the Frankincense, which is an earthly substance that has also that duality, in that it also rises to the heavens as smoke, and then it becomes a quite different substance and consistency. There is that twofoldness within it that we associate with this sign.”
-Willi Sucher
AND MAY THIS BECOME THE FRANKINCENSE OF THE OUTFLOWING WISDOM AVAILABLE TO OUR SOULS:
“The 10th Night - NIGHT OF SERAPHIM - SPIRITS OF LOVE - ST LUKE - NIGHT OF THE FIRE OF LOVE.
I have mentioned that there are various ways to work with the Holy nights, this is but one. We can work from Aries to Pisces and follow Christ's descent to the baptism, or Pisces to Aries following Jesus' ascent to the baptism, or we can begin microcosmically from the 24th or macrocosmically from the 25th that is from the standpoint of the human being or from the standpoint of the angels. Next year I will begin from the standpoint of 'after death mysteries, that is the time before the midnight hour, and the before death mysteries, or the time after the midnight hour. As we know that each night has a dual nature it is the 24th until midnight and the 25th after midnight. There are many more standpoints physical, etheric, astral, ego. In reference to the Luke Gospel Rudolf Steiner tells us this:
'When we rise into the higher worlds in order to investigate the several members of a human being, the individual streams all take different directions, and in following them we come to very intricate processes in the spiritual world. Whoever wishes to understand a human being from the vantage-point of spiritual investigation, must describe him not merely as a descendant of his ancestors, not merely as having derived his etheric body or his astral body from this or that being, but he must describe the paths taken by all these four members until they unite in the present individual. This cannot be done all at once. For instance, we may trace the path followed by the etheric body and reach important conclusions. Someone else may trace the path of the astral body. The one may lay more stress on the etheric body, the other on the astral body, and frame his descriptions accordingly. To those who do not notice everything said about an individual by men who are clairvoyant, it will make no difference whether one says this and another that; it will seem to them that the same entity is being described. In their eyes the one who describes the physical personality only and the other who describes the etheric body are both speaking of the same being — John Smith. All this can give you an idea of the complexity of circumstances and conditions encountered when it is a question of describing the nature of any phenomenon in the world — whether a human or any other being — from the standpoint of clairvoyant research or Initiation-knowledge. '
In a sense, what is important on these nights is not the standpoint so much but knowing what is perceiving is merely from one standpoint. What is important is connecting to higher beings, from whatever standpoint, for at this time of the year they gaze down upon the earth and observe those working with the holy nights as stars in their own firmament. And we must strive to shine for them!
It is therefore no coincidence that on this 10th night we are connecting to the Seraphim or the Spirits of love, for this night has a bearing on October, and October's principle feast day is that of St Luke whose gospel was written from the standpoint of the Nathan Jesus who was the first earthly incarnation of the Archangel who bore Christ in his three sacrifices to earth. He was the soul of Adam possessing the higher ethers that was vouchsafed to the Sun in Lemurian times before the temptation and the fall of the human being. A being possessed of infinite love and innocent inwardness and compassion consistent with a pure etheric body.
It is for this reason that Rudolf Steiner tells the Luke Gospel is a Gospel of love and compassion.
Moreover Buddha, that great teacher of love and compassion, offered up his perfected astral body for the child, his Nirmanakaya, and also his angel (Vidar) to John the baptist who was the Nathan Soul's 'twin' who experienced the fall.
'The Gospel of St. Luke makes us feel as if all the human love that ever existed in the evolution of mankind poured into the Being who lived as Christ Jesus at the beginning of our era.' Rudolf Steiner.
We see here the connection between the Seraphim and the mystery of the Nathan Soul.
For if we look at the Gospels, with spiritual scientific knowledge one thing becomes clear, love is central, that is spiritual love.
The Seraphim are the Spirits of Love and they are the highest beings of the first hiearchy and so the closest to the Realm beyond the stars and the First person of the trinity - the Father. Their impulses come from the realm of Gemini and the Greek myth of the twins Castor and Pollux is a representation of spiritual love, where one twin is willing to sacrifice even his immortality for his brother.
We have spoken about what Spiritual Love is, it is the ability to enter into another for the sake of the other or for the sake of the world. Selflessly.
True love is Selfless Sacrifice.
Now sacrifice is, as we have seen, the foundation of our cosmos, beings sacrifice part of themselves when compelled or inspired by the sacrifices of other beings, in order to advance world evolution and themselves, but it is only on Earth that love is brought to its apogee. For only on Earth does this sacrifice have the potential to be free and without compulsion.
In a sense the potential for this truly begins with Christ during his three sacrifices as He was descending to the Earth where He relinquishes his higher members each time helping humanity and in order to perform a fourth sacrifice on Earth.
During these sacrifices He entered into the Nathan Soul or the Archangelic being who was His vessel. In a sense this being was the highest expresion of what the Archangels must develop, Buddhi or Life spirit.
Then on earth we see sacrifices in many events in Palestine, where the Zarathustra Solomon Jesus freely sacrifices firstly his body and soul to enter into the body and soul of the Nathan Jesus and then sacrifices that body and soul to leave it free for the entry of the Christ Ego.
We see the sacrifice of the Christ in entering the soul and body of a human being, and a human being's sacrifice in allowing a macrocosmic ego to enter into his body and soul, a supremely almost unimaginable experience.
We also see the sacrifice of the Solomon Mary who allowed the Nathan Mary to mediate the Cosmic Sophia into her soul and the sacrifice John the Baptist made in uniting his individuality with Lazarus John.
And so we come to the Seraphim, as Rudolf Steiner tells us in the Foundation Stone meditation these spirits live in that aspect of our physical being that is connected to bones, muscles and blood - our limbs and metabolic system. Rudolf Steiner tells us however, that this region is that part of us that is morally cold and loveless where hatred lives in us!
'In the solid components of our organism, however, we bear moral cold. This is the force which, from the spiritual worlds, welds, as it were, our physical organism together. Thus we bear in ourselves the impulse of hatred. This it is which, from the spiritual world, brings about the circulation of the blood. And whereas we may perhaps go through the world with a very loving soul, with a soul which thirsts for human understanding, we must nevertheless be aware that below in the unconsciousness, there where the soul streams down, sends its impulses down into the bodily nature, for the very purpose that we may be clothed in a body — coldness has its seat.' Rudolf Steiner.
So why do we find the Seraphim here?
They live in that part of our will and in a sense that also includes the etheric body and the human heart, that has to do with our karma, with what we bring back to this earthly life in our limbs.
'And in the moment that we cease to think only with the head, but begin to think with our limb-system, in that moment the whole reality of Karma is opened up to us.'
We find the Seraphim in our metabolic limb system and so we now can see how the Seraphim worked in St Luke through his connection to the Bull - since in the metabolic limb system the cosmos works most especially.
'Everything to do with the cow is of such a nature that the forces of the earth are working into spiritual substance.' Rudolf Steiner.
The cow etherises earthly matter into spiritual substance, which is the task of the Spirit Self or the spirit working in the self. The spirit etherises. Hence Luke's Gospel is a Gospel of etherised love.
Similarly what echoes in the depths rings out in the heights and so during our nightly sleep and during our time between death and rebirth we meet the Seraphim at the midnight hour. Here they are concerned with all that extends from a previous earthly life to the present life, what comes not only from our previous life as karma and how that will be fulfilled as destiny. They are the architects one might say of our destiny - they create the plans that the Cherubim 'produce' and the Thrones 'implement'. Our karma is particularly related to the love we unfold on earth, during our waking day which enters into the spiritual world at night and this has a bearing on our future lives. In a sense to the extent that we love freely so are we moral beings. The Seraphim judge our morality:
'There exists only one true source of the moral-spiritual in mankind, and this is what we may call human understanding, mutual human understanding, and, based upon this human understanding, human love. Wheresoever we may look for the arising of moral-spiritual impulses in mankind, in so far as these play a role in social life, it will invariably prove to be the case that, whenever such impulses spring forth with elemental power, they arise from human understanding based upon human love. These are the actual driving force of the social moral-spiritual impulses in mankind. And fundamentally speaking, in so far as he is a spiritual being, man only lives with other men to the degree that he develops human understanding and human love.'
On earth this judgement becomes karma but the Seraphim don't as we said, merely work on karma but also our destiny and so on earth they work on our developement of the Spirit Self or Manas. For it is through the Spirit Self, that is by taking the spirit of the other or the spirit of nature into the self freely that we truly love.
'Every esoteric who's trying to develop himself inwardly must know about his connection with spiritual powers who live in the surrounding world and who stream in and out of him continually. When we look at a human being we first have his physical body. It's due to the working of spiritual beings that the physical body is put together the way it is. Archai work in the earth, water, air and fire elements. They stream in and out of his physical body. Likewise archangels are at work in his etheric body, and angels in the astral body. The sentient soul that developed out of the latter is worked on by the Exusiai. Dynamis work on the intellectual soul and Kyriotetes on the consciousness soul. Even high beings work on man's higher members: Seraphim on spirit self, Cherubim on life spirit and the Thrones on spirit man.' Rudolf Steiner.
For spiritual love requires that the Spirit of the of other and of nature enter the Self and it is by doing so that we come to the highest manifestation of morality on earth - Christ Himself!
In the spiritual world this communion happens all the time, beings are constantly interpenetrating one another. On earth we have a lower reflection in sexuality, when the male penetrates the female and a child is born from that union. We must raise this in initiation to a higher level through the inspiration of the Seraphim so that 'intercourse' occurs between soul and spirit and Christ is born from that union!
This is what we said on the first night the angels are striving to inspire us to do when they create pictures in our astral bodies. They wish us to develop true brotherhood which is a free moving out of ourselves and into the other, thereby allowing the other to enter into us selflessly. In this way we finally come to the divinity in the other. If we do this with nature we find the divinity in nature. In both instances this is Christ Himself.
The fire of the Seraphim can also be observed this night when we step out and look at the stars. If use all we have learnt over the last 9 nights if we go out this night and look up, we shall be able to quieten our thoughts and open our gaze to what lives between the stars, this is the spark or fire which lights up and weaves from star to star! We see the spark as the Seraphim, the light as the Cherubim and the movement as the Thrones! This then becomes the content of the Cosmic Intelligence which the Spirits of Wisdom, in particular the divine Sophia administers!
Hence in First Class we are told the Seraphim tell us:
'Waken! within inner light in your divine cosmic light.'
Rudolf Steiner goes on to say,
"Now we are exhorted to waken self-consciousness at a higher level, in that we have felt our merging in the cosmos, our dedication to the cosmos, through the magical words of the second hierarchy."
And again:
'Seraphim:
Awaken within inner light in your divine cosmic light.'
If we gaze upwards with love having kindled our inner light, that is, so that we freely move out of our bodies and into the world we are doing microcosmically what the Seraphim are doing macrocosmically! If we don't focus but just allow our light to step out of the body through an open gaze, we will perceive the movement between the stars as cosmic light, we will perceive love weaving from star to star and then we shall realise that in our hearts too this love weaves, this light etherises! May the love in us shine upwards to the Seraphim on this night! May we light up the world and be the heralds of Christ for all three hiearchies!
St Luke Himself felt this weaving of love in his heart, and he wrote his gospel about the highest intercourse of human love on Earth which occurred with the marriage of Jesus's soul with the ego of Christ.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son to the world!
On this night may we remember the sacrifices that have been made, and may we be willing to sacrifice ourselves through freely loving the world and others. For we are about to enter the realm beyond the Zodiac and we must have 'clean' feet.
With love and deepest respect, for you dear friends and for dear Stephen Lesiuk who loved deeply and loves still.
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 10
“I ANALYZE.”
How can I ANALYZE beyond matter in order to behold the light & perceive the Spirit?
“In stillness of thought,
Where the Eternal Aims of Gods
World Being’s Light
On thine own I bestow
For they free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In Human Spirit Foundations.”
Bring over the fruits of your labor from yesterday as you read the following WORD:
Spiritualize us, O Infinite Alchemist!
“O Infinite Alchemist, spiritualize us! Turn our weakness into strength, our wrong thoughts into truth perceptions.
Transform our ugly demons of selfish ambitions into fairies of soaring aspirations; our painful ignorance into blissful wisdom; and our base ores of inertia into the purified gold of spiritual accomplishments. ”
What is the Essence of Day 10?
“Night of the Holy Spirit.
On this night we enter the starry spheres.
If we have planted the seed of Atma, that is the spirit of brotherhood which connects all physical bodies on earth we now enter into the sphere of the Spirit which one can characterise as the breath of God...the Holy Spirit...
In the human being The Holy Spirit is connected to Manas (purified Astral Body) and therefore to the entire development of the human soul and in particular to that aspect of the human physical body connected to the soul the head, the nerves and senses in particular with the elaboration of imagination which in this sense is an inner picturing or the forming of meaningful, living inner images. Rudolf Steiner calls this Spirit Vision.
Spirit vision allows the spirit to move into the head because it is resting. Because it does not move, that is, when the head is a vessel. In this case the eyes and ‘I’ consciously perceive the light of the spirit that enters the soul with every sense impression. In the Grail legend the head is this vessel which carries the Manna or Manas, the purified Astral body, that can feed the human being. Truly our body is fed not from food but from the spirit, which brings us a form of cosmic nutrition.
Imagination experienced inwardly perceives the etheric body according to Rudolf Steiner. How? The light of the spirit lights up in our etheric body!
Rudolf Steiner tells us:
’Imagination in this sense, reveals not what is externally visible to the senses but something that belongs to the human being although it is not physically visible. This element, which is the first thing to be perceived by such newly awakened consciousness is what I have been referring to recently as the body of formative forces. This is he super sensible body of the human being which is active throughout our whole life from birth, or one should say from conception, right up to our physical death. It is also the bearer of our memories, and as a super sensible being it is linked to a super sensible world that is external to it...this is the bearer of our thinking and our thoughts are formed within this body of formative forces, so that in the activity of thinking the human being lives within this body of formative forces.’
Here we see the connection between vision and thinking.
In the past the Holy Spirit lived in the air. In those days human beings did not need to think clearly, they simply breathed in the air and the spirit entered into their souls and pictures arose about when it was an appropriate time to plant and when to procreate etc...but human beings had to become free and this could only be accomplished through thinking..
If we now return to our First Holy Night on the 25th of December we will better understand this on a higher level:
’In our time the world around us has changed, the spirit has moved a step higher, it is no longer found in the air we breathe but only in the spiritual light and we have no markers to fall back on, unless we create them ourselves through our own efforts. This means that we must work all year to rise up to that sphere where the spirit is found, we can no longer breathe it in passively, we must have consciousness of the wisdom that we breathe in through our eyes...’
To do this necessitates that we change our thinking into an organ of perception, and this takes courage, for we must sacrifice or quiet our personal earthly thoughts and observe with the faculty of imagination, what enters our etheric body, and which is the genesis of all our thinking - the spirit in all we see!
This sacrifice of our earthly thoughts is connected to our sacrifice of our lower ego, which lives in those thoughts.
The Holy Spirit is the spirit we breathe in through our eyes. If we managed to achieve something of this on the First Holy Night, if we surrendered our lower ego, then on this night we can consciously enter into the sphere of the Holy Spirit, Ruach, the awesome spirit which will illuminate the True Ego for us.
Take courage!
The angels help us with this...
They wish to create the right pictures in our souls so that we can achieve this but we can only do this by observing their pictures which are created with the light of the Holy Spirit, consciously...
On this of all nights we must not ‘fall asleep’ to the spirit, but remain awake, bring its light which the angels mediate into our souls, consciously, lest the spirit flee from us throughout the coming year.
The world fills us with fear and fear is what makes us sleepy. We must have courage to face the spirit, and in turn the spirit will give us courage for we shall through its agency find Christ!”
What does Inspirited Vision LOOK and FEEL like?
SEE into what you FEEL as you read the following:
“Jesus said, from his position ahead of them,
‘You are sad now, I know it, and I tell you that you shall be even more sad later, but your distress will be turned into elation. Have courage! Do not let yourselves be afraid, for fear will make you sleep and I need you awake! Is it not true that when a woman labours she is full of sorrow because her hour is come, and then as soon as the child is born she is full of joy? I will die, that is certain, but what is death if not a spirit birth? Death, my brothers, is only semblance. I say to you, I was born from the spirit and again I shall leave the world, through death, and I shall return to the spirit and I will live again!’
John had known it all along, but only now did the others understand that their master was indeed going to his death. To this was added the understanding that his death would bring forth new life.
‘What do you wish us to do?’ asked Bartholomew, between tears.
‘Tell us, and we will do it because we love you!’
‘As I have told you, I am like a man taking a long journey. I leave my house and I command the porter to watch the gates until I return.’ He paused now to say to them, ‘You are my porters … if you love me keep watch! Do not let me find you sleeping … do not be tempted to sleep!’”
CONCENTRATE upon the following as you practice Inspirited Vision:
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.”
“FROM the present time onwards it will be impossible for man to acquire any real self-knowledge or feeling of his own being without approaching the science of Initiation, for the forces out of which human nature actually takes shape are nowhere contained in what man is able to know and experience in the material world...
You must remind yourselves that as well as living through his life here between birth and death, man passes again and again through the life between death and a new birth. Just as here on earth we have experiences through the instrumentality of our body, we also have experiences between death and a new birth, and these experiences are by no means without significance for what we do during our earthly existence in the physical body. But neither are they without significance for what happens on earth as a whole. For only part — and indeed the rather lesser part — of what happens on the earth originates from those who are living in the physical body. The dead are perpetually working into our physical world. The forces of which man is unwilling to speak to-day in the age of materialism are nevertheless at work in the physical world. Our physical environment is fashioned and permeated not only by the forces emanating from the spiritual world, from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, but forces proceeding from the dead also penetrate into what surrounds and overtakes us here. So that a full and complete survey of man’s life is possible only if we look beyond what can be told us by knowledge obtained through the senses and through history, here on earth.
The existence of such forces is in the end the one and only thing that can explain man in his whole being and the whole course of human evolution on the earth. A time will come in the physical evolution of the earth...when, if he fulfils his rightful evolution, man will no longer tread the earth by incarnating in bodies derived from physical parents. In that epoch, women will be barren; children will no longer be born in the manner of to-day, if evolution on the earth takes its normal course.
Without the science of Initiation, understanding of these things lies leagues away...
Think only of the most elementary experiences connected with crossing the Threshold of the spiritual world and you will be able to gauge the importance of these things. In our life by day — or also by night, for then there is electric light — the sun, the light of the sun, illumines the objects around us; the sunlight makes them visible. In a similar way the other senses become aware of surrounding objects. If I limit myself at the moment to the example of the sunlight, directly the Threshold is crossed - man must become one with the light in his inmost being. The light cannot enable him to see objects because he has to pass into the very light itself. Objects can be seen with the help of the light only as long as the light is outside. When man is himself moving together with the light, the objects illumined by it can no longer be seen. But when, in his being of soul, he is moving in the light itself, then for the first time he becomes aware that thinking is, in reality, one with the light weaving in the world.
Thinking that is bound up with the body is proper to physical life only. Directly we leave this body, our thinking loses definition; it weaves into the light, lives in the light, is one with the light. But the moment our thinking is received into the light, it is no longer possible to have an ego as easily as man has one between birth and death, without doing anything towards it. His body is organised in such a way that his being reflects itself through the body, and he calls this mirror-image his ego. It is a faithful mirror-image of the real ego, but it is a mirror-image, a picture only, a picture-thought, a thought-picture. And the moment the Threshold is crossed, it streams out into the light.
If another anchorage were not now available, man would have no ego at all. For this ego, this ‘I’, that he has between birth and death, is furnished for him by his body. He loses it the moment he leaves the body, and then he can be conscious of an ego only by becoming one with what may be called the forces of the planet especially the variations of the planet’s force of gravity. He must become so entirely one with the planet, with the earth, that he feels himself to be a part of the earth, as the finger feels itself to be a member of the human organism. Then, in union with the earth, it is possible for him again to have an ego. And he perceives that just as here in earthly life he makes use of thinking in the physical body, after earthly life he can make use of the light.
From the standpoint of Initiation, therefore, one would have to say: Man is united with the earth’s force of gravity and through radiating light concerns himself with the things of the world. Applied to the experience beyond the Threshold, this would express the same fact as when one says here on earth: Man lives in his body and thinks about the things of the world. Of the life between birth and death we say: Man lives in the body and concerns himself with things through thinking.
As soon as he leaves the body, we must say: He is united with the earth’s force of gravity or with its variations, with electricity or magnetism, and through radiating light, inasmuch as he is now living in the light, concerns himself with the things of the world...
When things that have been illumined in this way — instead of being merely thought about, as is generally the case — are put into words, they are entirely comprehensible to the healthy human reason. And even the Initiate, if he has not developed his reason in the right way, gains nothing whatever from his super-sensible experiences. When someone to-day — please take what I am now saying as a really serious matter — has learnt to think in a way perfectly adapted to meeting the demands of school examinations, when he acquires habits of thought that enable him to pass academic tests with flying colours — then his reasoning faculty will be so vitiated that even if millions of experiences of the super-sensible world were handed to him on a platter, he would see them as little as you could physically see the objects in a dark room; for that which makes men fit to cope with the demands of this materialistic age darkens the space in which the super-sensible worlds come towards them.
Men have become accustomed to think in the one and only way that is possible when thinking is based on the bodily functions. This kind of thinking is ingrained in them from their youth onwards. But healthy human reason does not unfold on bodily foundations; it unfolds in free spiritual activity. And even in our Elementary Schools to-day children are educated away from free spiritual activity. The very methods of teaching hinder the development of free spiritual activity. Dare one incur the responsibility of concealing from the world these vital truths of the age? People may not realise why it was thought necessary to set into active operation an institution such as the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. But through this Waldorf School some at least of the children of men will be given a real chance to discard the bigotry of the times and to learn how to move in the element of thinking that is truly free. As long as such things are not regarded in this serious light, we shall make no progress...
If it is desired to approach the super-sensible world in the right way, we must have interest in all things — but never mere curiosity. People are so ready to confound curiosity with interest. They must learn not only to think differently but to feel differently about all things...
The reason for the hostility that is asserting itself at the present time in such ugly forms is simply this: People realise that here it is not a matter of a sect, or of a happier “family circle” such as many desire, but that something is truly striving to activate the impulses needed by the times. But what interest have the majority of people to-day in these impulses? If only they can bask in happiness or have something in the nature of a new religion! This egoism of soul, which impels very many people to anthroposophical Spiritual Science, must be overcome. Interest in the great affairs of humanity is necessary for any true understanding of Anthroposophy.
These great concerns of the life of humanity are clearly to be discerned in the most seemingly trivial facts of life. But in one respect our whole life of perception and feeling must change if we want so to orientate healthy human reason that it functions in the right stream of Spiritual Science. Let me repeat: The whole of our life of soul must change in one particular respect if our healthy human reason is to function within the stream of spiritual life that is to be brought to mankind through Anthroposophy. What is the orientation given us here on earth by the culture that is smothered in materialism? Our orientation is such that we feel ourselves as bodily men — with bones, muscles, nerves. And our body acts as a mirror, reflecting the image of our ego to us — schematically, like this:
Your true being is somewhere in spiritual regions. Here, in the physical world, is your body. It becomes a mirror, reflecting back to you the image of the ego. The ego itself is here (= = =), but the image of the ego is reflected back to you by the body. You know of this ego-image when you look at the body with that centre of your being of which most people at present know nothing, but in which they nevertheless live. So the ego, together with the thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, is mirrored by the body. Behind this ego-image is the body, and man calls these mirrored images his soul; behind the soul he perceives the body and uses it as his support.
But this picture: There, down below, is the body; there the ego emerges ... this picture must be entirely changed. It is a picture perceived in complete passivity, and is indeed perceived only because the body is behind it...”
“We must learn to perceive quite differently. We must learn to perceive (below): You are there in your spiritual world, a world in which there are no plants, minerals and animals, but Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and the other Beings of the Hierarchies; in them you live. And because these Beings permeate us through and through, we ray forth the ego:”
“We ray forth this ego from the spiritual world. We must learn to feel this ego, to feel that we have within us the ego behind which stand the Hierarchies, just as the body, composed of elements of the three kingdoms of nature, is behind the ego that is an image only. We must pass out of the passive experience into activity in the fullest sense. We must learn to feel that our real ego is brought into being out of the spiritual world. And then we also learn to feel that the mirror-image of our ego is brought into being for us out of the body that belongs to physical existence.
This is a reversal of the usual feeling, and to this reversal we must habituate ourselves. That is the important thing — not the amassing of facts and data. They will be there in abundance once this reversal of feeling has been experienced. Then, when thinking is active in the real sense, those thoughts are born which can fertilise social thinking. When the ego is allowed to remain a mirror-image, thinking can take account only of those social matters which are (as I said yesterday) merely the outcome of changes in phraseology. Only when man is active in his ego can his thoughts be truly free.
In past centuries, not so very long ago, this freedom in thinking was still present in men, although springing, it is true, from atavistic qualities of soul. Instinctively, they regarded it as an ideal to achieve this freedom in their thinking, whereas we have to achieve it in the future by conscious effort. There is an outer illustration of this. Just look at the diplomas conferring the Doctor’s degree at universities in Middle Europe. As a rule, people are made not only Doctors, but Doctors and Masters of the Seven Liberal Arts — Arithmetic, Dialectic, Rhetoric, and so on. This no longer means anything, for the Seven Liberal Arts are nowhere included in the curriculum of modern universities. It is a relic, a heritage from an earlier period when through university life men strove to liberate their thinking, to develop a life of soul able to rise to truly free thinking.
At the universities to-day the degrees of Master of the Liberal Arts and Doctor of Philosophy are still conferred. But this is no more than a relic, for nobody understands what the Liberal Arts really are. They are justly named ‘Arts’ because they were pursued in a sphere lying above that of sensory experience, just as the artist’s imagination unfolds freely and independently of material existence. The degrees inscribed in university diplomas once represented a reality, just as many other things still surviving in the formula current at universities were once realities.
This living grasp of the self (Sicherfassen) must again be achieved. But it goes against the grain, because people to-day prefer to move about on crutches instead of using their legs. Their ideal is to have what they are to think conveyed to them by the outer, material facts. It is unpleasant for them to realise that thinking in the true sense must be experienced in free spiritual activity, because it means tearing themselves away from the convenient things of life, from all props, all crutches in the life of soul. Whenever things are said from the standpoint of a kind of thinking that has nothing whatever to do with the sense-world, but in complete freedom created out of intuitions, people do not understand it. My ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’ (Philosophy of Freedom) was not understood because it can be grasped only by one who is intent upon unfolding really free thoughts, one who is truly and in a new sense a ‘Master of the Liberal Arts’.
These are the things that must be understood today with the right feeling and with the earnestness that is their due. Especially to the English friends who are here for a short time only, I want to say this: The Building we have erected on this hill (the Goetheanum) must be regarded as an outer beacon for the signs of the times. This Building stands here in order that through it the world may be told: If you go on thinking in the old way, as for four centuries you have become accustomed to think in your sciences, you will condemn humanity to destruction. With the help of crutches you may seek in the easy way to establish principles of social life, but in so doing you will only be preserving what already has death within it.
For the life of soul to-day it is essential to unfold thinking that is as free as are those forms out of which, in architecture, sculpture or painting, the attempt has been made to create this Building. Its purpose is that at one spot on the earth these things shall be said not through words alone, but also through forms. Men should feel that here, through these forms, something different from what can be heard elsewhere in the world to-day is intended to be said, and also that what is said is urgently necessary for the further progress of mankind in respect of knowledge and social principles, in respect of all the sciences and of all branches of social life.”
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:
“The reality of the Holy Spirit’s existence is revealed by the AWAKENING of the soul to new tasks, new spheres of life - even new worlds. And this awakening takes place through the activity of the Spirits of Soul, who receive the radiant light of the Holy Spirit and pour it into civilization, into groups of human beings, and into individuals. By this means men and women awaken to the tasks of their age, to social tasks, to their tasks as individuals. Through the activity of the Angels the individual human being is awakened to his or her destiny; the Archangels awaken souls to one another; and the Archai, the Time - Spirits, are active in awakening human souls to the needs of the age in which they live. The Archai awaken the soul to world concerns; the Angels help the soul to be awake to its own spiritual needs; and the Archangels awaken the soul to other souls...Once more, our comprehension of these words can be deepened, when, in the word ‘awakens,’ we find three stages:
The soul awakens - for itself - through the light of the Angels.
The soul awakens - for humanity - through the warmth of the Archangels.
The soul awakens - for the world - through the fire of the Archai. ”
May you be held in the womb of 𝒮𝑜𝓅𝒽𝒾𝒶 & filled with the Light of ℭ𝔥𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱 today & always.
Image by @waldorfchalkboarding
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