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...”

— Adriana Koulias | Author, Biologist, Spiritual Scientist & Clairvoyant

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 26th, 2021 Addition

Keep in mind that the 3rd Holy Night is from midnight on Dec. 26th to midnight Dec. 27th.

Let us add Scorpio into the mix:

27 December - Scorpio: This sign was once perceived spiritually as the Eagle. It is also the Day of St. John the Evangelist, who was always represented by the Eagle, and that is expressed as both the power of the new Christianity and its wisdom of great beauty in the Gospel of St. John and in the Revelations. He was the Apostle of the great Christian vision. The Eagle can be lifted high in the air to the Sun, and it can see the world with a bird’s eye view, in a spiritual sense. For now we have moved from the rhythm of the Moon to the sacred Sun realm.
- Willi Sucher

AND MAY THIS BECOME THE CAMOMILE OF THE OUTFLOWING WISDOM AVAILABLE TO OUR SOULS:

“The Third Holy Night - ARCHANGELS AND THE WORD.

This night is the night of the Word. This is so because the Archangels have a particular relationship to the word. On this night we lay the seeds for the Month of March in the coming year. The name March is derived from the Latin word Martius and so March is named after Mars, the Roman god of war.

Mars however, is also the principle abode of that being we call Buddha, who is performing his own sacrifice on that planet, which transforms the warlike nature of its influence into an impulse of freedom.

"Thus in the Mars sphere men can be emancipated from the tendency to uniformity resulting from the effects of public opinion which are detrimental for their further progress on Earth. Whereas in earlier times Mars was said to be the planet of warlike traits, it is now the Buddha's task gradually to transform these warlike traits in such a way that they become the foundation of the sense for freedom and independence needed in the present age. Whereas nowadays men have the tendency to surrender their sense of freedom and succumb to the fetters of public opinion, on Mars between death and rebirth they will strive to throw off these fetters and not bring them again into life on earth when they return to new incarnations...And as Christ became a Saviour and an Awakener to Life, as that was a mission for the Christ in regard to Earth humanity, so is it a further mission for that Bodhisattva after he became the Buddha, to be a Saviour and Redeemer of Mars men. He has to accomplish on Mars an event similar to the event that the Christ had to bring to fulfilment on Earth." Rudolf Steiner

But Mars also gives us the impulse to fall asleep each night and to awaken again.

“We may therefore say, using the terminology of ancient spiritual science: `Mars' sends man to sleep and wakes him.' Rudolf Steiner.

Mars is also connected to the Astral body and the human larynx in particular Cosmic Speech, which one encounters during the time between death and rebirth.

'The spiritual population of Mars consists of Beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are other Beings too, — for example. Beings who are warlike in nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important Beings in the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word. They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech...During his passage through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of Cosmic Speech." Rudolf Steiner.

The Archangels have a particular relationship to human language.

'Within language lives the Genius of language. Language is not dependent for its evolution on the decision of man. In language lives the Genius of language. And the Genius of Language belongs to the hierarchy of the Archangels. When man speaks — when, that is, an atmosphere is prepared around the Earth within which can live man's utterances articulated into speech, then that atmosphere of speech and language is the element of the Archangels. Hence are the Archangels the Spirits of the different peoples — the Folk Spirits as we call them."

Now we see how the Archangels are connected during this Holy Night with the month of March, Mars, and Buddha.

Let's look at this more closely.

Ordinarily when we use language, it is to describe what we see around us. Language is a sign, one might say, for material things and how we feel about them. If you cast your mind back to the three pre earthly sacrifices of Christ, the Cosmic Word, you will recall that he manifested in Archangelic form to save humanity from egosim. The second sacrifice is particularly relevant here for it was performed on the Sun as a planet and it was accomplished to bring harmony to the seven organs (etheric) so that speech would not merely express the feelings of the inner organs. Freedom of speech this was the gift given to humanity by Christ through his sacrifice.

Through his sacrifice speech could become a way of communicating events of the outer world so that the soul of the disciples would be free to speak about their experience of Christ when he came to Earth.

When Christ the Cosmic Word entered world evolution and died at Golgotha, the Cosmic Word united with the earth, and those who experienced this word in life, entered the Mars sphere after death capable of coming into connection with those beings who carried or guarded in their own being a memory of the Cosmic word of Christ and this was a good tiding for that person's next life in the sphere of sleeping and waking.

However freedom also has its negative effect, it led to human beings becoming seduced by matter so that human speech became an expression of physical things alone, causing an effect on sleeping and waking. A disconnection of human beings with the Archangels during sleep is the result.

For each night we fall asleep through the impulse of Mars and our angel offers up all that we have said during our day to the Archangels. But the archangels do not accept language that describes material things. If we have not spoken or written (for in writing we are still speaking in our own souls) anything that is of a supersensible nature the offering is not accepted for language carries in it an element of death - matter.

The consequence of such a disconnection with the Archangels was that in the time between death and rebirth when those human beings journeyed through the Mars sphere they did not come into contact with the beings that are embued with the cosmic word but rather with the warlike Mars beings.

This necessitated a sacrifice. Buddha himself, the God of Peace, performed his own sacrifice on Mars according to Rudolf Steiner. His sacrifice brought peace and freedom to Mars so that human beings might in their next life, might retain the ability to describe things of a supersensible nature, thereby making a connection to the Archangels possible again.

If we cast our minds back to the second Holy Night we begin to understand why the Angels are so desirous that we develop the impulse to brotherhood, seeing the divinity in the other, and acquiring an unquestionable knowledge of the essence of nature, because these are paths to a supersensible experience of Christ either in the soul of the other, in our soul, or in the soul of the world. An experience of Christ is the goal for Christ brings a living quality to our speech so needed by the Archangels!

'There is only one way whereby the speech-creating power can be quickened into life, — and that is through men coming to realise the Christ Impulse as a living Impulse. Then the Christ Impulse can become a power in man that can create speech.'

Rudolf Steiner.

When we develop new senses, supersensible senses, we connect our souls to Christ and instead of the material world being all we speak about, it is Christ who informs our language through our experience of the divinity in the other and of the essential spirit in nature.

Each time we then strive to express or describe a supersensible experience using language Christ is the power of creative speech behind it. When we do this in the day the angels carry it up to the spiritual world at night and offer it to the archangels who elaborate it into imaginations which have a bearing not only on our karma but on the karma of the world. If we do this consciously, then we become co creators of our destiny with the Archangels so that the coming year in March we can bring to fruition our destiny, which will have a bearing on our entire lives. We must make this very clear to ourselves. Each day, each month has a bearing on our entire lives because what we do of a supersensible nature changes the chemistry of our blood, it becomes filled with light and love. And if our blood is thus filled with Christ light and love, since it circulates throughout our body even in our bones we are changed irrevocably. We become transformed, we begin thereby to transform the earth itself through our words which have power.

What our senses experience has a bearing not only on our destiny but on the destiny of the angels and so the entire third hierarchy, what we say about what we sense outwardly and inwardly has a bearing not only on our destiny, but on the destiny of the Archangels and through them the entire second hierarchy! For the archangels can only develop through us, just like the angels. If they have no imaginations of Christ to offer to the second hierarchy they do not develop!

'And when man rises to a higher stage, the higher Hierarchies also reach a higher stage. The Archangels gradually receive more and more of the Christ Impulse, on the other hand they move further and further forward in the direction of freedom. And when man rises to a higher stage, the higher Hierarchies also reach a higher stage. The Archangels gradually receive more and more of the Christ, Who has found His home in the hearts of men on Earth; He enters with His Impulse right into the Imaginations of the Archangels, and these become alive, become quick with immediate present life.' Rudolf steiner.

St John says thus:

In the Beginning was the Word

And the Word was with God

And a God was the Word.

He felt the Word moving and weaving in his soul.

At the time that Christ entered world evolution Michael was the highest Archangel and his task was to prepare humanity to receive Him consciously. When He was present in a human body — men saw Him through the Word because Michael had prepared their souls by relinquishing the cosmic wisdom/ Intelligence. The Word of Love became flesh and men who spoke of what they had seen brought the Gospel to the world. Thus did they bring Christ light and love to the world!

When the Word died on the Cross it entered into the earth to spiritualise it and to spiritualise the human soul of every human being who consciously accepts the Word.

Our task is to be like St John, to experience this moving and weaving through our connection with others and with nature. Then when we speak out of this sense - we will be taking a Gospel not merely to the world but also to the supersensible worlds - the good news of Christ!

May our speech on this day unite us with the spirit of Christ so that in the night we can create our future yearly destiny with the Archangels and thereby help them to fulfil their destinies interwoven as it is with the destiny of the entire cosmos.

With love and deepest respect for you dear friends and for Stephen Lesiuk whose own speech when alive was filled with Christ though he never uttered his name in my presence.”

-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 3

“I KNOW.”

How can I KNOW beyond the shadow of doubt into the light-filled realm of reality?

“Human Soul!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the Rhythm of Time
Into the realm of thine own soul’s feeling.”

— Excerpt from the Foundation Stone Meditation | Rudolf Steiner

**Bring over the fruits of your labor from yesterday as you read the following WORD:**

I beheld Thee hiding in a flower.

“I looked at a flower and prayed. Suddenly, O Spirit, I beheld Thee hiding there. It exhaled the perfume of Thy presence. The blush of Thine innocence colored its petals; the gold of Thy wisdom shone in its heart.

The slender stem and delicate green calyx were upheld by Thine omnipresent power. The mystery of life and immortality lay in the pollen; and Thine infinite touch transfigured the breast of the bee tasting Thy sweetness.

Oh, reveal to me the wonders of creation. Thine endless secrets that even the tiniest roadside weed bears in its bosom!”

— Paramahansa Yogananda | Whispers from Eternity

What is the Essence of Day 3?

“If we have been observing the 12 Holy Nights we have travelled upwards macrocosmically from Human (Christmas Eve) to Angel (25th - First Holy Night) to Archangel (26th Second Holy Night) and now we come to the Third Holy Night, where we must work in developing intuition in the day so that we can draw close to the Archai in the Night.

Microcosmically in the day we have been elaborating in our souls the faculties of Imagination through a transformation of our thinking from abstract to picture quality and Inspiration through a transformation of our speech and now we must develop intuition by working on a transformation of our will our movements. This will bring us close to the Archai in the night.

Imagination is not so difficult for us to grasp, it is an inner seeing, nor is inspiration so alien to us it is like an inner feeling. But intuition feels more elusive, less easy to ‘pin down’.

Let us look at these three in a different way.

Let us imagine we have a painting before us. When we marvel at its beauty, its colour and form, using our ordinary senses we are living with what the soul of the painter elaborated from his active relationship with the world. We experience, his past! What he once accomplished. We know that what we are seeing is not the painter himself, but what he created and left behind for us.

This is imagination. In imagination we see the ‘footprints’ the gods leave behind. These footprints are beings of soul. With imagination, our transformed thinking enters into a world created from will, a world of will beings. For instance, after images are, one might say, the willed imprint of soul beings, which enter us with every perception. They ‘light up’ in us, and then die away...

Inspiration is like talking to the painter himself. It is like being with the painter at the same moment he is painting his painting. We can ask him how he mixes his colours, we can talk with him about form, light and shadow and how he chooses his subjects. We can exchange through conversation, our feelings. This is wisdom gathering.
If we equate this to the spiritual world, through inspiration we enter the world of wisdom, the etheric world, the world of dying and becoming.

Inspiration is an elaboration of our feelings. And what are feelings?

We often believe that our feelings, our sympathies and antipathies are purely ours, and in one sense they are, but in another they are not. Every being of soul that enters us engenders a feeling in us and we are swayed this way and that by what we see and hear. For instance when you see someone coming towards you wearing brash colours, this has an impact on your soul, it moves you. You either like it or you dislike it.

This is even more noticeable with music, you may listen to Bach for instance and feel something in your soul, and you may feel different listening to Jazz or to heavy metal, you feel emotions.

The reason you feel the way you do, is that what lives in the music, are beings of soul and spirit, and they enter you, and interact with your soul constitution, and this creates sympathy and antipathy, light and shade, a feeling of excitement in red, or bourgeoning life in green, or dying away in blue. Music enters even deeper into us, into our hearts and dies away. We don’t merely see it, we feel it. We feel oneness with it. We realise that we are always one with the world of sympathies and antipathies, which weaves in and out of us in colours, light and shadow, we just don’t notice it.

In imagination we develop an astral body that is conscious of what lives in the world that enters into us through the pinions of light, beings of will. In Inspiration we become conscious the thoughts of the gods which live in these beings of soul and which resound in us as colour, which is just audibly silent music.

Is it any wonder that musicians often speak of music in terms of colour? The Blues for instance...what enters us has the quality of blue in our souls.

Spiritual colour and physical sound are two sides of the same coin, just as spiritual Light and physical shadow ( the physical world) are.

So what is intuition?

If we continue with our analogy intuition is like entering into the soul of the painter at the germinal moment before the painting is created. It is like looking into the future.
We don’t just see the footprints he has left behind in the painting, we don’t just speak to the painter about what inspires him to gather wisdom, now we have drawn closer, we have become one with the artist through love and we understand what lives in him that enables him to see the world the way he does, his intention.

To do this we crawl into his limbs.

Macrocomsically Intuition connects us to the Archai who are the ‘gods’ of memory, the word Archives is derived from this knowledge. The Archai are the representatives of the First Hierarchy, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim.
So intuition is really willed harmonious love...A willed loving, harmonious interest in the other.

If we desire to understand what a person will do in the future we need to walk in his shoes now, in other words, understand what moves his hand, what lives in him in the way he walks, why he goes here or there because this is related to his karma and what he brings from previous lives, hence the connection to the Archai. But it also has a relationship to his destiny. We move towards our destiny. Every morning we wake with intentions that are born of our karma. Whether we carry them out or not is our destiny because we are free beings.

To develop intuition we can do exercises such as drawing with light and colour in the soul. Such exercises help us to be able to look up at the night sky and to observe the movement of light and colour from star to star. The patterns these movements make are the conversations of the gods. All symbols including the images associated with the zodiacs and the Alphabet come from observing the movement ‘between’ the stars. In the dark spaces from star to star.

So too in our own dark spaces there lives the possibility of light and colour of movement and pattern.

On this day where we go and what we do with our hands and with our legs is very important. These create patterns that the Archai observe in our souls at night. They see how close we have come to our intentions.

Intuition personally then is understanding what is the source of what lives in our souls, which move us, only this understanding can bring us true freedom. Like a painter who is conscious in the moment he creates the ‘idea’ for a painting, if he had intuition he would see with his mind’s eye the finished painting which is already created by him and which now merely needs to be brought down into an earthly form. The most intuitive artists are those who come the closest to their intention, they are free of sympathies and antipathies, hence they can use all colours and light and shadow without preference, but according to what benefits the painting.

Intuitively we sense this, when we look at a painting. We move with each stroke and each colour and we can follow that to the artist and then to the intention he had in the spiritual world before he even placed a brush on his canvas. We sense its truth. We do this unconsciously and so we recognise great masters!

The task is to become conscious of why we feel this way, not so that we can apply judgement, but merely so we can understand.

This is the only way to know the truth. For the truth is what is closest to the spiritual reality. That is, It is to know the moral nature of a being, or person. It is the only way to coming close to our intention as creators of the future.
This is truly to know ourselves by willing ourselves out into the world, and knowing the world by entering into the self.

Christ came into the world and lived in Jesus. Those who did not have intuition saw only Jesus, but those who had developed intuition saw the Christ. He came into the world, not to teach, not to create, but merely to manifest himself to those who could see Him. And those who could see Him were his witnesses to the world, they would proclaim his words having seen Christ, and in their words, lived Christ and so those who heard their words (speaking to every tongue) soul understood this, and could see it the truth!

Such is the power of love which understands the truth and still loves for the sake of the beloved.”

— Adriana Koulias | Author, Biologist, Spiritual Scientist & Clairvoyant

**What does Loving Understanding LOOK and FEEL like?**

SEE into what you FEEL as you read the following:

“Pilate turned an eye to Jesus of Nazareth before ordering Cassius to bring him to an adjoining apartment.

Here, away from the priests, the man stood before him in his much-abused state, with spit and blood mingled in his hair.

Pilate took a moment to formulate his thoughts.

‘Well then …’ he said to him in Latin, ‘they say you call yourself the King of the Jews. Is that true?’

Jesus lifted his good eye to look at Pilate. The other was bruised and closed shut. In that open eye’s many coloured profundity Pilate saw something.

‘Do you say this of me because you believe it? Or do you say it because others have said it to you?’ Jesus asked.

Pilate was taken back for the man spoke in perfect, learned Latin. His voice was full of certainty and calm and it seemed to be challenging him to see for himself who Jesus truly was.

‘Why should I believe you to be the King of Israel?’ he told him, disconcerted, put off balance. ‘I am not a Jew! Your own priests have delivered you to me and they seek from me a sentence of death. I only mean to ascertain for myself what it is that you have done. Are you a pretender to the Kingdom of David?’

‘My kingdom is not of this world, for if it were, my servants would have fought for me and prevented me from being delivered to you.’

Pilate felt something in his heart and he was amazed to feel it! A feeling for the truth of his words! An Intuition!

He did not think before he said, ‘You are a king!’

‘You recognise what I am,’ Jesus said to him, a little breathless, ‘And I tell you, for this reason was I born, for this reason did I come into the world, that men might see what lives in me. That I should come and be among them, that with their own eyes they might see the truth as it stands before them.’

Words were caught in Pilate’s throat now and he held them, scarcely knowing how to formulate them, for here was that very question on the tip of his tongue!

‘What is truth?’ he blurted out.

Jesus swayed and steadied himself, and it was a moment before he could speak, ‘It lives beyond this world, beyond your reason,’ he said. ‘With reason, you know only what you see of this world, and with faith you believe what you cannot see … which is higher than this world. But reason and blind faith will last only until you can make eyes that can see the truth of the spirit in all its glory – then you shall know it because you can see it, that I am the truth embodied in a human being. Every man that sees what lives in me, sees the truth, and will also hear its voice when I speak.’”

— Adriana Koulias | The Fifth Gospel: A Novel

CONCENTRATE upon the following as you practice Loving Understanding:

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.”

“Someone is led to have a vision. Instead of remaining calm before it, and contemplating it inwardly, he applies it in some way to the physical world — although it should be applied only to the spiritual world — and acts accordingly with his body. He begins to act wildly, because the vision penetrates and stirs his body in a way it should not do. There you have the crudest example. The vision should remain within the region to which it naturally belongs. It does not do so if today, as an atavistic vision, it is not tolerated by the physical body. If the physical body is too weak to prevail against the vision, a state of helplessness sets in. If the physical body is strong enough to prevail, it weakens the vision. Then it no longer has the character of pretending to be the same as a thing or process in the sense-world; that is the illusion imposed by a vision on someone made ill by it. If the physical organism is so strong that it can fight the tendency of an atavistic vision to lie about itself, then the person concerned will be strong enough to relate himself to the world in the same way as during the Old Moon period, and yet to adapt this behaviour to his present organism.

What does this mean? It means that the person will to some extent inwardly alter his Zodiac, with its twelve sense-regions. He will alter it in such a way that in his Zodiac, with its twelve sense-regions, more life-processes than sense-processes will occur. Or, to put it better, the effect is to transform the sense-process in the sense-region into a life-process and so to raise it out of its present lifeless condition into life. Thus a man sees, but at the same time something is living in his seeing; he hears and at the same time something is living inwardly in his hearing; instead of living only in the stomach or on the tongue, it lives now in the eye and in the ear. The sense-processes are brought into movement. Their life is stimulated. This is quite acceptable. Then something is incorporated in these sense-organs which today is possessed only to this degree by the life-organs. The life-organs are imbued with a strong activity of sympathy and antipathy. Think how much the whole of life depends upon sympathy and antipathy! One thing is taken, another rejected. These powers of sympathy and antipathy, normally developed by the life-organs, are now poured into the sense-organs. The eye not only sees the colour red; it feels sympathy or antipathy for the colour. Permeation by life streams back into the sense organs, so we can say that the sense-organs become in a certain way life-regions once more.

The life-processes, too, then have to be altered. They acquire more activity of soul than they normally possess for life on earth. It happens in this way: three life-processes, breathing, warming and nutrition, are brought together and imbued with heightened activity of soul. In ordinary breathing we breathe crude material air; with the ordinary development of warmth it is just warmth, and so on. Now a kind of symbiosis occurs; when these life-processes form a unity, when they are imbued with activity of soul, they form a unity. They are not separate as in the present organism, but set up a kind of association. An inward community is formed by the processes of breathing, warming and nutrition; not coarse nutrition, but a process of nutrition which takes place without it being necessary to eat, and it does not occur alone, as eating does, but in conjunction with the other processes.

Similarly, the other four life-processes are united. Secretion, sustenance, growth and reproduction are united and also form a process embracing activity of soul. Then the two parties can themselves unite: not that all the life-processes then work together, but that, having entered into separate unities of three and four processes, they work together in that form.

This leads to the emergence of soul-powers which have the character of thinking, feeling and willing; again three. But they are different; not thinking, feeling and willing as they normally are on earth, but somewhat different. They are nearer to life-processes, but not as separate as life-processes are on earth. A very intimate and delicate process occurs in a man when he is able to endure something like a thinking back into the Old Moon, not to the extent of having visions, and yet a form of comprehension arises which has a certain similarity to them. The sense-regions become life-regions; the life-processes become soul-processes. A man cannot stay always in that condition, or he would be unfitted for the earth. He is fitted for the earth through his senses and his life-organs being normally such as we have described. But in some cases a man can shape himself in this other way, and then, if his development tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creativity; or, if it tends more towards comprehension, towards perception, it leads to aesthetic experience. Real aesthetic life in human beings consists in this, that the sense-organs are brought to life, and the life-processes filled with soul...”

— Rudolf Steiner | The Sense-Organs and Aesthetic Experience

Venus of Milo_ Paris, Louvre Museum.jpeg

“Take a work of art...the Venus of Milo — if it is really a work of art, it does not entirely belong to the earth. It is raised above the events of earth; that is quite obvious. What sort of power, then, lives in it...in a Venus of Milo? A power, which is also in man, but which is not entirely fitted for the earth. If everything in man were fitted only for the earth, he would be unable to live on any other level of existence as well. He would never go on to the Jupiter evolution. Not everything is fitted for the earth; and for occult vision not everything in man is in accord with his condition as a being of the earth. There are hidden forces which will one day give man the impetus to develop beyond earth-existence. But art itself can be understood only if we realise that its task is to point the way beyond the purely earthly, beyond adaptation to earthly conditions, to where the reality in the Venus of Milo can be found.

We can never acquire a true comprehension of the world unless we first recognise something which there will be increasing need to recognise as we go forward to meet the future and its demands.

It is often thought today that when anyone makes a logical statement that can be logically proved, the statement must be applicable to life. Logic alone, however, is not enough. People are always pleased when they can prove something logically; and we have seen arise in our midst, as you know, all kinds of world outlooks and philosophical systems, and no-one familiar with logic will doubt they can all be logically proved. But nothing is achieved for life by these logical proofs. The point is that our thinking must be brought into line with reality, not merely with logic. What is merely logical is not valid — only what is in keeping with reality.

Let me make this clear by an example. Imagine a tree-trunk lying there before you, and you set out to describe it. You can describe it quite correctly, and you can prove, beyond a doubt, that something real is lying there because you have described it in exact accordance with external reality. But in fact you have described an untruth; what you have described has no real existence. It is a tree-trunk from which the roots have been cut away, and the boughs and branches lopped off. But it could have come into existence only along with boughs and blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of the mere trunk as a reality. By itself it is no reality; it must be taken together with its forces of growth, with all the inner forces which enabled it to come into being. We need to see with certainty that the tree-trunk as it rests there is a lie; we have a reality before us only when we look at a tree. Logically it is not necessary to regard a tree-trunk as a lie, but a sense for reality demands that only the whole tree be regarded as truth. A crystal is a truth, for it can exist independently — independently in a certain sense, for of course everything is relative. A rosebud is not a truth. A crystal is; but a rosebud is a lie if regarded only as a rosebud.”