Thursday, July 31, 2014

Bearing Witness



John 15:26-27


"But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning."

righteousness and peace have kissed each other



Psalm 85:10-11

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.



Related post:

http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-heart-of-yoga-conceiving-son.html

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The Divinity of the World





In pure rays of light
Shines the divinity of the world.
In pure love for all creation
Radiates the divine nature of my soul.
I rest in the divinity of the world;
I shall find myself
In the divinity of the world.


—Rudolf Steiner



Greater love hath no man than this



John 15:1 - 16:3

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 

Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 

If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. 

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. 

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. 

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. 

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. 

These things I command you, that ye love one another. 

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. 

But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me. 

If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin. 

He that hateth me hateth my Father also. 

If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. 

But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated me without a cause. 

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: 

And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. 

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. 

And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.




The Heart of Yoga: Conceiving the Son through the loving intercourse of the Spirit Father and the Earth Mother. THE REVELATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Focus lecture for this evening's meeting of The Olive Branch, a Rudolf Steiner study circle meeting at the Himalayan Institute since 2001


The Four Seasons and the Archangels. Lecture 4 of 5.
Rudolf Steiner, October 12, 1923:


If now we go forward from Easter, the spring festival, we shall need to penetrate much more spiritually into the subject than we had to do in considering the previous seasons of the year. This may sound like a contradiction, but it is not so. In thinking of the Christmas season, we had to start from the way in which earthly mineral limestone is gradually transformed, and we carried this thought over to the time of Easter. In general, we have been turning our eyes on the active working of the spiritual in the material realm. Now in summer, high summer, man is really bound up with the being of Nature. From spring onwards into summer, Nature becomes constantly more active, more satisfied inwardly, and man with his whole being is woven into this mood of Nature. We can indeed say that in high summer man experiences a kind of Nature-consciousness. During spring, if he has the perception and feeling for it, he becomes one with all that is growing and sprouting. He blossoms with the flower, germinates with the plant, fruits with the plant, enters into everything that lives and has its being in the world outside. In this way he spreads out his own being over the being of Nature, and a kind of Nature-consciousness arises in him. Then, since in autumn Nature dies away and thus bears death within itself, man too, if he participates in what autumn — the time of Michaelmas — means for Nature, must experience in himself this dying away; but with his own self he must not take part in it. He must raise himself above it. In place precisely of a Nature-consciousness, a strengthening of his self-consciousness must occur. But in the glow of summer, just because a Nature-consciousness is then at its height in man, it is all the more necessary for the cosmos that — if only man is willing — the cosmos should bring the spiritual to meet him.

Hence we can say: In summer man is bound up with Nature, but, if he has the right feeling and perception for it, objective spirituality comes toward him from out of Nature's interweaving life. And so, to find the essential human being during the St. John's time, at midsummer, we must turn to the objective spirituality in the outer world, and this is present everywhere in Nature. Only in outward appearance is Nature the sprouting, budding — one might say the sleeping — being which calls forth from the powers of sleep the forces of vegetative growth, in which a kind of sleeping Nature-life is given form. But in this sleeping Nature, if only man has the perception for it, the spiritual which animates and weaves through everything in Nature is revealed.

So it is that if we follow Nature in high summer with deepened spiritual insight and with perceptive eyes, we find our gaze directed to the depths of the Earth itself. We find that the minerals down there send their inner crystal-forming process toward us more vividly than at any other time of the year. If we look with Imaginative perception into the depths of the Earth at St. John's-tide, we really have the impression that down there are the crystalline forms in which the hard earth consolidates itself — the very crystalline forms which gain their full beauty at the height of summer. At midsummer everything down below the earth shapes itself into lines, angles, and surfaces. If we are to have an impression of it as a whole, we must picture this crystallizing process as an interweaving activity, colored throughout with deep blue.


Plate V
Plate V


I will try to show it on the blackboard, though of course I can do so only in a quite sketchy way (see Plate V). So we can say: On looking downwards, we have an impression of line-like forms, suffused with blue, and everywhere the blue is shot through with lines which sparkle like silver, so that everywhere within the silver-sparkling blue the crystallizing process (white) can be discerned. It is as though Nature wishes to present her formative power in a wonderful plastic design, but a design that cannot be seen in the way we see with ordinary eyes. It is seen in such a way that one really feels oneself dissolved into the plastic design, and feels every silver-gleaming line down there to be within oneself, part of oneself. One feels that as a human form one has grown out of the blue depths of the Earth's crust, and one feels oneself inwardly permeated with force by the silver-gleaming crystal lines. All this one feels as part of one's own being. And if one comes to oneself and asks — How is it that these silver-sparkling crystal lines and waves are working within myself? What is it that lives and works there, silver-gleaming in the blue of the Earth? — then one knows: That is cosmic Will. And one has the feeling of standing upon cosmic Will.

So it is when one looks down into the depths of the Earth. And if one looks up to the heights, how is it then? The impression one has is of outspreading cosmic Intelligence. Human intelligence — as I have often said — is not of much value at its present stage. But the heavens at midsummer give one the feeling that cosmic Intelligence is alive everywhere — the intelligence not of single beings but of many beings who live together and within one another. Thus we have up there the outspreading Intelligence woven through with light; the living Intelligence shining forth (yellow) as the polaric opposite of the Will. And while down below we feel — in that blue darkness everything is experienced only as forces, up above we feel — everything is such that in perceiving it we are illumined, permeated, with a feeling of intelligence.

And now within this radiant activity there appears — I cannot put it otherwise — a  form. When we were speaking of autumn, I had to name Michael as the most significant figure who rises before our souls out of the weaving of Nature. As to how Gabriel — to use the old name — enters into the time of Christmas, we shall have more to say. In the last lecture I showed you how at Easter, the season of spring, the figure of Raphael comes before us. He comes in dramatic guise, as the mediator who arouses in us the rightful approach, through reverence and worship, to what the Easter Imagination, the cosmic Easter Imagination, is. And now, for the St. John's time, there comes before us — to describe it in human terms, which are of course bound to be only approximate — an extraordinarily earnest countenance, which arises glowing warmly out of the pervading radiant Intelligence (red head in the yellow,Plate V). We have the impression that this figure forms its body of light out of the radiant Intelligence. And for this to happen at the height of summer, something I have already described must come in: the elemental spirits of the Earth must soar upwards. As they do so, they weave themselves into the shining Intelligence up above, and the shining Intelligence receives them into itself. And out of that gleaming radiance the figure I have just mentioned takes form.

This form was divined by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and we can give it the same name by which it was known then. We can say: In summer, Uriel appears in the midst of the shining Intelligence.

Autumn
  Michael
Winter
  Gabriel
Spring
  Raphael
Summer
  Uriel


It is with great earnestness that this representative of the weaving cosmic forces, seeking to embody himself in a vesture of light, appears in the time of summer. There are further things we can observe as the deeds accomplished by Uriel in the radiant light — Uriel, whose own intelligence arises fundamentally from the working together of the planetary forces of our planetary system, supported by the working of the fixed stars of the Zodiac; Uriel, who in his thoughts preserves the thoughts of the cosmos. And so, quite directly, the feeling comes: You clouds of summer, radiant with Intelligence, in which are reflected up above the blue crystal-formations of the earth below, just as these blue crystal-formations mirror in turn the shining Intelligence of the summer clouds — out of your shining there appears in high summer, with earnest countenance, a concentrated Imagination of cosmic Understanding.

Now, the deeds of this embodied cosmic Understanding, this cosmic Intelligence, are woven in light. Through the power of attraction residing in the concentrated cosmic Intelligence of Uriel, the silver forces (white) are drawn upwards, and in the light of this inwardly shining Intelligence, as seen from the Earth, they appear as radiant sunlight, densifying into a glory of gold. One has the immediate feeling that the gleaming silver, streaming up from below, is received by the sunlit radiance above. And the earth-silver — the phrase is quite correct — is changed by cosmic alchemy into the cosmic gold which lives and weaves in the heights.

If we follow these happenings further, on through August, we gain an impression of something that completes the form of Michael, already described. I told you what the sword of Michael is made of, and whence the dragon draws his coiling life. But now, in the radiant beauty which appears spiritually out of the cosmic weaving at the height of summer, we ask ourselves: Whence does Michael, who leads us over to the autumn time of Michaelmas, derive his characteristic raiment — the raiment which first lights up in golden sunshine and then shines forth inwardly as a silver-sparkling radiance within the golden folds? Where does Michael acquire this gold-woven, silver-sparkling raiment? It comes from that which is formed in the heights through the upward-raying silver and the gold that flows to meet it; from the transmutation by the Sun's power of the silver sparkling up from the Earth. As autumn approaches we see how the silver given by the Earth to the cosmos returns as gold, and the power of this transmuted silver is the source of that which goes on in the Earth during winter, as I have described. The Sun-gold, formed in the heights, in the dominion of Uriel, during high summer, passes down to weave and flow through the depths of the Earth, where it animates the elements that in the midst of winter are seeking to become the living growth of the following year.

So you see that when we come to the time of sprouting, springing life, we can no longer speak of matter permeated by spirit, as we speak of the Earth in winter. We have to speak of spirit woven through with matter — that is, with silver and gold.

Of course you must not take all this in a crude sense; you must think of the silver and gold as diluted beyond human measure. Then you will come to feel that all this is a kind of background for the cosmic, light-filled deeds of Uriel, and a clear impression of the countenance and gaze of Uriel will come before you.

We feel a deep longing to understand this remarkable gaze, directed downwards, and we have the impression that we must look around to find out what it signifies. Its meaning first dawns upon the mind when as human beings we learn to look with spiritual eyes still more deeply into the blue, silver-gleaming depths of the Earth in summer. And we see that weaving around these silver-gleaming crystalline rays are shapes — disturbing shapes, I might almost call them — which continually gather and dissolve, gather and dissolve again.

Then we come to perceive — the vision will be different for everyone — that these shapes are human errors which stand out against the natural order of regular crystals here below. And it is on this contrast that Uriel directs his earnest gaze. Here during the height of summer the imperfections of mankind, in contrast to the regularity of the growing crystal forms, are searchingly surveyed. Here it is that from the earnest gaze of Uriel we gain the impression of how the moral is interwoven with the natural.

Here the moral world-order does not exist only in ourselves as abstract impulses. For whereas we habitually look at the realms of Nature and do not ask — is there morality in the growth of plants, or in the process of crystallisation? — now we see how at midsummer human errors are woven into the regular crystals which are formed in the normal course of Nature.

On the other hand, all that is in human virtue and human excellence rises up with the silver-gleaming lines and is seen as the clouds that envelop Uriel (red). It enters into the radiant Intelligence, transmuted into cloud-shaped works of art.

It is impossible to look toward the increasingly earnest gaze of Uriel, directed toward the depths of the Earth, without also seeing there something like wing-like arms, or arm-like wings, raised in earnest admonition, and this gesture by Uriel has the effect of imparting to mankind what I might call the historic conscience. Here at high summer appears the historic conscience, which at the present time has become uncommonly feeble. It appears, as it were, in Uriel's warning gesture.

Of course, you must picture all this as an Imagination. These things are quite real, but I cannot speak of them in the way a physicist speaks of positive and negative, of potential energy and so on. I have to speak in pictures that will come to life in your souls. But everything expressed in these living pictures is reality; it is there.

And now if we have gained the impression of the connection of human morality with the crystalline element below and of human virtues with the shining beauty above, and if we take these connections into our inward experience, the real St. John Imagination will come to meet us. For the St. John Imagination is there, just as we have the Michael Imagination, the Christmas Imagination, the Easter Imagination.

So to spiritual observation there appears, as a kind of culmination, this picture: Above, illuminated as it were by the power of Uriel's eyes, the Dove (white). The silver-sparkling blue below, arising from the depths of the Earth and bound up with human weaknesses and error, is gathered into a picture of the Earth-Mother (blue). Whether she is called Demeter or Mary, the picture is of the Earth-Mother. So it is that in directing our gaze downwards we cannot do otherwise than bring together in Imagination all those secrets of the depths which go to make up the material Mother of all existence; while in all that is concentrated in the flowing form above we feel and experience the Spirit-Father of everything around us. And now we behold the outcome of the working together of Spirit-Father with Earth-Mother, bearing so beautifully within itself the harmony of the earthly silver and the gold of the heights. Between the Father and the Mother we behold the Son (see Plate V). Thus arises this Imagination of the Trinity, which is really the St. John Imagination. The background of it is Uriel, the creative, admonishing Uriel.

That which the Trinity truly represents should not be placed dogmatically before the soul, for then an impression is given that such an idea, or picture, of the Trinity can be separated from the weaving of cosmic life. This is not so. At midsummer the Trinity reveals itself out of the midst of cosmic life, cosmic activity. It stands forth with inwardly convincing power, if — I might say — one has first penetrated into the mysteries of Uriel.

If we were to present St. John's-tide in this way, there would have to be an arched or vaulted background, with the figure of Uriel and his gesture in the manner I have described. And against this background a living picture of the Imagination of the Trinity would have to emerge. Special arrangements would be necessary; the effect would have to be that of painting done instantly, perhaps by making artistic use of vaporous substances or the like. And if the true Imagination of these things is to be called up for people to witness, it must be at St. John's time. At Easter we have the complete picture only when we bring it into dramatic form, with Raphael present as a teacher in the Mystery Play that would have then to be presented; Raphael who leads man into the secrets of healing nature, of the healing cosmos. In a similar way, at St. John's time, all that can then be seen in weaving pictures would have to be transposed into powerful music, so that the cosmic Mystery, as it can be experienced by man at this season of St. John, would speak to our hearts.

We must imagine how all that I have described should find artistic expression, on the one hand, in pictorial and plastic art. But what is experienced in this way must be given life by the musical tones that embody the poetic motif which plays through our souls when we feel our way into great Uriel, active in the light, who calls up in us a powerful impression of the triune, the Trinity. The silver-shining that rays up from below, and is revealed in the form-giving beauty of the light above, must be expressed at St. John's-tide through appropriate musical instruments. Thus we should find, through these musical harmonies, our own inner harmony with the cosmos, for in them the secret of man's living together with the cosmos at St. John's-tide would have to sound forth. All this would have to be given voice in the music, so that in looking up to the heights we would be looking at the weaving gold of the cosmos, and would see the glowing form of Uriel emerging from the light-filled gold and directing his gaze and his gesture down to the Earth, as I have described it. All this would have to be not in any fixed form, but in living movement. That would be one motif, a heavenly motif through which a man can feel himself united, on one side, with the shining cosmic Intelligence.

On the other side, down below, he feels himself united with the tendency to fixed form; with that which is immersed in the bluish darkness from out of which the silvery radiance streams forth. Down there he feels the material foundation of active spiritual being. The Heights become Mysteries, the Depths become Mysteries, and man himself becomes a Mystery within the Mysteries of the Cosmos. Right into his bony system he feels the crystal-forming power. But he feels also how this same power is in cosmic union with the living power of light in the heavens above. He feels how all that comes about through mankind as morality in these Mysteries of the Heights lives and weaves in these Mysteries of the Depths, and in the conjunction between the two. He feels himself no longer sundered from the world around him, but placed within it, united above with the shining Intelligence, in which he experiences, as in the womb of worlds, his own best thoughts. He feels himself united below, right into his bony system, with the cosmic crystallizing force — and again the two united with one another. He feels his death united with the spirit-life of the universe; and he feels how this spirit-life craves to awaken the crystal forces and the silver-gleaming life in the midst of earthly death.

All this, too, would have to sound forth in musical tones — tones which carry these motifs on their wings and make them part of human experience. For these motifs are there. They do not have to be sought out; they can be read from the cosmic activity of Uriel. Here it is that Imagination passes over into Inspiration.

Man, however, lives in a certain sense as an embodied Inspiration, as a being brought into existence by Inspiration, in the Mysteries of the heights and depths and in the Mysteries of their conjunction. He lives in the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Father points upward; the Mysteries to which the Spirit-Mother points downward, the Mysteries which are united by the fact that the Christ, though the working together of the Spirit-Father and the Spirit-Mother, stands directly before the human soul as the sustaining Cosmic Spirit.

That which is woven out of all these cosmic secrets I may put before you somewhat in the following way. It is as though the human being, placed in the midst of all that goes on in high summer, were to feel something like this. The first words endeavor to represent how the gaze of Uriel concentrates itself into Inspiration, united with the Spirit-tones of the whole choir:

Schaue unser Weben
Das leuchtende Erregen
Das wärmende Leben
}The Heights
Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes
Und atmend Gestaltetes —
Als wesenhaft Waltendes
}The Depths
Fühle dein Menschengebeine
Mit himmlischen Scheine
Im waltenden Weltenvereine
}The Midst
The inner being of Man.















Behold our weaving, the kindling radiance, the warming life.

Live in the earth's sustaining, and in the form-giving breathing,
with the power of true being.

Feel your very bones suffused with heavenly glory
in the presiding yoga of the worlds.

Here in these nine lines are the Mysteries of the Heights, the Mysteries of the Depths, and the Mysteries of the Midst, which are also those of the inner being of man. And then we have the whole gathered up as a cosmic statement of these Mysteries of the Heights, the Depths, and the Midst, sounding out as though with organ and trumpet tones:

Es werden Stoffe verdichtet
Es werden Fehler gerichtet
Es werden Herzen gesichtet.






Substances are densified, errors are judged and rectified, hearts are sifted.


Here you have that which can permeate the human being at midsummer, supporting him, exalting him, confirming him — the St. John Imagination filled with Inspiration, the St. John Inspiration filled with Imagination — in these words:

Schaue unser Weben
Das leuchtende Erregen
Das wärmende Leben
}The Heights
Lebe irdisch Erhaltendes
Und atmend Gestaltetes —
Als wesenhaft Waltendes
}The Depths
Fühle dein Menschengebeine
Mit himmlischen Scheine
Im waltenden Weltenvereine
}The Midst
The inner being of Man.
Es werden Stoffe verdichtet
Es werden Fehler gerichtet
Es werden Herzen gesichtet.




Behold our weaving, the kindling radiance, the warming life.

Live in the earth's sustaining, and in the form-giving breathing,
with the power of true being.

Feel your very bones suffused with heavenly glory
in the presiding yoga of the worlds.


Substances are densified,
errors are judged and rectified,
hearts are sifted.


Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Be Patient


"The good effects that confidence can bring are driven away by impatience; the enlightenment that comes through confidence is darkened by impatience. Nothing is worse than letting impatience conjure up a mist before the soul."  — Rudolf Steiner



"Come, Lord Jesus!" — a meditation for the pineal gland


"And so all the blood that was contained in this body [of Jesus on the Cross] flowed out of it: around four to five liters of living, foaming blood poured into the basin of rock at the foot of the Cross. We have already said that this rock was green in color. But this was not so beforehand. Before the holy blood touched the stone it was yellowish white in color, like all the other rocks in Jerusalem. When the living blood touched it, however, the rock sank down, forming a vessel-like basin, and changing its color to green." —Judith von Halle, Secrets of the Stations of the Cross and the Grail Blood, pp. 80-81.

Monday, July 28, 2014

The Ascension of Christ: The New Adam


"At the place where Christ goes to after the Resurrection, space does not exist. Coming from the Sun, Christ, the bringer of time, carries this Sun into the Earth. In the place from which time comes, however, time is not as it is for us, because it has no space to overcome. Space as we know it does not exist. Seen from our perspective, time there runs backwards. You experience this every night when in sleep you enter the spiritual world, or after death, when you first live though your experiences on Earth in reverse. If you encounter a spiritual entity beyond the threshold, then it is not as though you approach it, but as though it approaches you from the depths of the spiritual being of time.

Now Christ, the Sun-Time Being, has through His connection with the Earth brought His time to the Earth. In the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, you have a certain interpenetration of both principles of space and time. Subject to the laws of the Earth, conceived, incarnated, and died, the divine being wanders through space. However, this God carries His cosmic time, the backwards flowing, spaceless time, with Him in all these processes. That is why that happens which I have mentioned previously: the inversion of the 'sequence of events' in Christ's life.

The phantom body [of Christ] now merges through the Ascension into the sphere surrounding the Earth, where it replicates itself. Here lies an important and wondrous Mystery, because for the first time through the passage of God through earthly, material death and through the subsequent Resurrection, the spiritual archetype of the physical body was able to overcome this death, this imprisonment in space. You could say: the spiritual essence of this physical human body was able to merge into cosmic time from the dimension of space, just as the salt crystal merges into a liquid. As a result, the spiritual expression of the physical body became free. It was the counter image to the old, first Adam, which became embedded into space as it sank down to Earth. This is why Paul speaks especially of the 'second' or 'new' Adam, as he was aware precisely of this difference (1 Corinthians 15:45-49; Romans 5:14)."


--Judith von Halle, "The Whitsun Event at the Time of Christ," in And If He Has Not Been Raised, pp. 164-65


Christ the Source of Love, the Eternal Majestic Flame



Judith von Halle, "An account of the events between [Jesus Christ's] Death and Resurrection (The Descent into Hell)" in And If He Has Not Been Raised..., pp. 89-90:

Christ will reveal to mankind the secret of his remaining macrocosmic bodies on the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan incarnations of the Earth [the future fifth, sixth, and seventh incarnations of the Earth], when mankind will put on the phantom of Christ. The coming of the Antichrist while the human is still in the [present] fourth incarnation of the Earth is then inevitable if he wishes to have these fifth, sixth, and seventh bodies. The way Lucifer woos the human soul is by blinding him with the light of his grandiose delusions so that for many humans a world of illusion appears before their eyes and it becomes clear to them: 'Christ only gives me what belongs to the fourth incarnation of the Earth. Lucifer is actually much higher than Christ, as I can reach the goal faster with what he gives me.' That is the temptation! It is a temptation to believe that fundamental steps in development must not be worked for by the human being, that he is given these as a gift from beings he does not know and through processes of which he cannot become aware. This is an eminent way of preventing the development of the self. 

That is why, one day when you are so tired of all the problems, tired of praticing the exercises, and expecting quicker results from yourself in the field of spiritual science, it is of great help to consider the immense path of sacrifice of the Christ Being and to let the realization flow through you that results only arise through steadfast faithfulness to the spirit. These results will be impressed--and here the human being has to bring himself to look beyond his current incarnation--like a seal into the substance of one's being. This can also be read in [Rudolf Steiner's book] An Outline of Esoteric Science. 

Faithfulness to the spirit can and must mean sacrifice. Comfort has to be sacrificed to the spirit, but the human being must also be prepared for a much more serious sacrifice. A sacrifice is always something one is prepared to make for an altruistic purpose. This is why a true increase in awareness will never result in a purely personal sense of satisfaction in someone. Only the hard path, with the readiness to help others as well as oneself and the deeply felt aspiration of wanting to advance the evolution of the Earth, will extinguish the sickness at the root of the desire to increase personal awareness in order to attain the goal ahead of someone less spiritually developed. A wholly selfless kind of joy arises through this readiness to make a sacrifice of love.

Christ gives Himself totally to this path of sacrifice for the Earth and for mankind. When He reaches the lowest point at the physical and spiritual core of the Earth He reaches the culmination of His sacrifice of love. The consequence of this journey through Hell is the Resurrection. The human being lives from it, we all live from it. The Resurrection conquers death--all the forces of becoming are created from it. 

At dawn on the first day [Easter Sunday] a light shone, rose up out of the grave and permeated all earthly matter. It is Christ Himself who merged with the Earth and became the source of love, became the eternal majestic fire. He is with mankind and will remain with it in a constantly metamorphosed form till the end of its days.





Sunday, July 27, 2014

Anthroposophia: "A Holy Reverence"


Judith von Halle:  "... a holy reverence towards the Christ Being should be present. This is the only possibility for experiencing consciously the meeting of His Being and yours. Only when the most precious element of the soul ... opens itself can the intellect withdraw into the background in favor of an awareness of the spirit. Whoever has the courage to look deep into his own soul, into his own abyss, will open his heart to Him — to Him and to the mystery of His former, present, and future epiphanies. From this innermost light, from the recovery of this light in our innermost holy places, arises the seed which will unite us with His Being."






Saturday, July 26, 2014

Browing Bad

Frida Kahlo. "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter."


There was a little gal who had a unibrow
Extending the width of her forehead;
And when she was good she was very very good — 
But when she was bad she was torrid.



A work of art by a first-grader



We did the soft wind
We danst   slowly  We swrld
Aroned  We danst soft
We lisin to the mozik
We danst to the mozik
We made personal space.






Source: Carolyn Jourdan

"Late Fragment" by Raymond Carver








And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

"An imagination of the spiritual pupil at the seventh stage of initiation" by Judith von Halle

Ex Deo Nascimur        In Christo Morimur        Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus

"I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes unto the Father except through me." — John 14:6


"In an impulse of love as impetus for a new race to become divine, God the Son originally detached Himself from the Trinitarian primal unity, from the supra-cosmic or 'trans-devachanic' realm in which divine beings are bound by neither time nor space. It was this that first allowed the primal godhead to manifest in the form of the Trinitarian principle within the macrocosmic world. The primal godhead's unified totality released its middle member, God the Son. This Son of God contracted from His state of endless expansion in order to immerse Himself in macrocosmic space and become part of it. And He continued contracting His being until He descended into the planetary spheres. There He narrowed and condensed His high being to be fraternal with or guide the spirits of the Elohim. Ultimately He allowed the sun to bear Him forth at the baptism of Jesus, in order to assume the lowest form of manifestation in which an I can live: the human form, the level of humanity. . . .

The most arduous part of His mission only began when He passed through human, corporeal death. Out of immeasurable love, the Son God contracted even further than human corporeality by entering the layers of the earth. . . . for the occult gaze, this process of contracting beyond corporeal death into the abyss of the earth's layers is depicted as a reversed funnel because, in penetrating ever deeper into the microcosm, its matter becomes ever less material, and increasingly of finer spiritual substance.

Now, the Christ being permeated the entire microcosmic earth body in the same way as He once permeated the macrocosm when He departed from the Father. This journey can be termed 'going to the Father.'

Through initiation, the spiritual pupil finds that, by leaving His supra-cosmic dwelling and penetrating the microcosm right through to the very center of the earth, God the Son returned again to His supra-cosmic dwelling place. The two ends of the funnels meet and merge. The descent has become an ascent, and the sun has created a new sun."



—Judith von Halle, Descent into the Depths of the Earth on the Anthroposophic Path of Schooling, pp. 125-128


Friday, July 25, 2014

The Goal of Yoga: Becoming Anthroposophia





"Since the day of the Resurrection specific influences can emanate from the points of the stigmata in humans — for every human, even those who do not bear the stigmata in a way that is visible to the senses. To the extent that we 'bring ourselves into the right relationship to Christ' we put on and attract the 'new Adam' (1 Corinthians 15:45-49; Romans 5:14) which bears these stigmata (the German verb anziehen means 'to put on, to clothe,' and 'to attract' like a magnet). We incorporate this Christ seed into us, bring it to flower, through the devotion of our spirit and soul to Him. And the more this new garment, the new temple of man, resembles this Resurrrection body the stronger the process becomes of unification of the human being with Christ. In his own individual way he is penetrated by the influence of this first phantom, which arose at that time from the grave. And for each one of us who 'brings himself into the right relationship with Christ' the corresponding points on the hands and the feet (the wound on the side as well) also acquire a highly important significance.

Because of the Resurrection, the human being can send his individual self, by means of the etheric body, out into the world from these points. At no other point on the body does the etheric body project so strongly into the outer world as the hands. If you look again more closely at the altar painting of Grünewald you can then recognize the fine rays projecting from the stigmata. They shine like small suns. The sense of touch for human beings, for all of us, is weak at those points where the stigmata are located. But if we relax and tune in to our perceptions we have more a sense that these points radiate into the etheric the transformed substance of our own individual self, just like the sun sends out its rays. The human being can move around in his surroundings by means of the points of the stigmata on the palms and the backs of his hands, through totally new etheric sense organs. These are not weak, passively functioning sense organs, they exert a powerful influence if you cultivate and develop them. They are the condensed substance of your individual self actively radiating and giving. This is a significant transformation in the spirit of the Christ impulse, as it involves the active participation of the will in shaping the outer world."


--Judith von Halle, "The Easter Event at the Time of Christ," in And If He Has Not Been Raised, p. 142