"Spirit Triumphant! Flame through the impotence of fettered, faltering souls! Burn up selfishness, kindle compassion, so that selflessness, the lifestream of humanity, may flow as the wellspring of spiritual rebirth!" — Rudolf Steiner
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28
"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad" — Matthew 5:12
"Why, you should be leading lives of joy — deep inner joy in the truth! There is nothing in the world more delightful, nothing more fascinating, than the experience of truth. There you have an esotericism that is far more genuine, far more significant, than the esotericism that goes about with a long face. Before everything else — and long before you begin to talk about having a “mission” — there must be this living inner experience of truth." — Rudolf Steiner
The life of man is passed in three states, which are as follows: waking, dreaming sleep, and dreamless deep sleep. One may comprehend how to attain to a higher knowledge of the spiritual worlds by forming an idea of the changes in the conditions that have to be undergone by the aspirant to such knowledge. Before a person has passed through the necessary training, his consciousness is continually broken by the periods of rest which accompany sleep. During these periods the soul knows nothing of the outer world and nothing either of itself. Only at certain times above the wide ocean of unconsciousness there will arise dreams which are related to events in the outside world or to the conditions of the physical body. At first one recognizes in dreams only a special manifestation of the sleep-existence, and commonly men speak of two states only—waking and sleeping. From the occult standpoint, however, dreams have a special significance, apart from both the other two states. It has already been shown in a previous chapter how changes occur in the dream-existence of the person who undertakes the ascent to higher knowledge. His dreams lose their meaningless, disorderly, and illogical character, and begin gradually to form a regulated, correlated world. With continued development this new world, born of one's dreams, will yield nothing to outer and phenomenal realities, not only as regards its inner truth, but also in the facts which it reveals, for these in the fullest sense of the word present a higher reality. In the phenomenal world especially there are secrets and riddles hidden everywhere. This world reveals admirably the effects of certain higher facts, but he who limits his perceptions to the senses alone cannot penetrate into causes. To the occult student such causes are partly revealed in the state already described as being evolved out of his dream-existence. To be sure, he ought not to regard these revelations as actual knowledge so long as the same things do not reveal themselves to him during ordinary waking life as well. But to that he also attains. He acquires the power to enter the state which he had first evolved from his dream-life during the hours of waking consciousness. Then the phenomenal world is enriched for him by something quite new. Just as a person who, though born blind, undergoes an Operation an his sight and finds everything in his environment enriched by the new testimony of visual perception, so does the person who has become clairvoyant in the above manner, regard the entire world around him, perceiving in it new characteristics, new beings, and new things. No longer is it necessary that he should wait for a dream in order that he may live in another world, for he can transport himself into the state of higher perception at any suitable time. This condition or state has an importance for him comparable to that of perception with open eyes as opposed to a blindfold state. One can say quite literally that the occult student opens the eyes of his soul and sees things which must ever remain veiled from the bodily senses.
This state (which has previously been described in detail) only forms the bridge to a still higher stage of occult knowledge. If the exercises which are assigned to him should be continued, the student will discover at the appropriate time that the vigorous changes hitherto mentioned affect not only his dream-life, but that the transformation extends even to what was before a deep and dreamless sleep. He notices that the utter unconsciousness in which he has always found himself during this sleep is now broken by conscious isolated experiences. Out of the great darkness of sleep arise perceptions of a kind which he had never known before. Naturally it is no easy matter to describe these perceptions, for our language is only adapted to the phenomenal world, and in consequence it is only possible to find approximate words to describe what does not appertain to that world at all. Still, one has to make use of these words in describing the higher worlds, and this can only be done by the free use of simile; yet, seeing that everything in the world is interrelated, such an attempt can be made. The things and beings of the higher worlds are anyway so distantly connected with those of the phenomenal world that though in good faith a portrayal of these higher worlds in the words usually descriptive of the phenomenal world may be attempted, one must always retain the idea that very much in descriptions of this kind must obviously partake of the nature of simile and imagery. Occult education itself is only partially carried an by the use of ordinary language; for the rest, the student learns in his ascent a special symbolical language, an emblematical method of expression; but nothing concerning this can at present, and for very good reasons, be openly imparted. The student must acquire it for himself in the occult school. This, however, need form no obstacle to the acquisition of some knowledge concerning the nature of the higher worlds by means of an ordinary description, such as will here be given.
If we wish to give some suggestion of the experiences mentioned above as appearing from out of the sea of unconsciousness during the period of deep sleep, we may best liken them to those of hearing. We can speak of perceptible sounds and words. If we may liken the experiences of dreaming sleep to a certain kind of seeing comparable to the perceptions of the eyes, the experiences of deep sleep allow of similar comparison with oral impressions. It may be remarked in passing that of these two faculties that of sight remains the higher even in the spiritual worlds. Colors are there still higher than sounds or words, but the student at the beginning of his development does not perceive these higher colors, but merely the inferior sounds. Only because the individual, after his general development, is already qualified for the world which reveals itself to him in dreaming sleep, does he straightway perceive its colors, but he is still unqualified for the higher world which is kindled in deep sleep, and in consequence this world reveals itself to him at first as sounds and words ; later an he can mount up, here as elsewhere, to the perception of colors and forms.
If the student now realizes that he passes through such experiences in deep sleep, his next task is to make them as clear and vivid as possible. In the beginning this is very difficult, for remembrance during the waking state is at first extraordinarily scanty. You know well on waking that you have experienced something; but as to its nature you remain completely in obscurity. The most important thing during the beginning of this state is that you should remain peaceful and composed, and should not allow yourself, even for a moment, to lapse into any unrest or impatience. Under all circumstances the latter condition is injurious. It can never accelerate any further development, but in every case must delay it. You must abandon yourself calmly, as it were, to what is given to you: all violence must be repressed. If at any period you cannot recall these experiences during the deep sleep, you should wait patiently until it becomes possible to do so, for such a moment will certainly some day arrive. If you have previously been patient and calm, the faculty of remembrance, when it comes, will be a securer possession; while, should it for once appear, perhaps in answer to forcible methods, it would only mean that for a much longer period it would afterwards remain entirely lost.
If the power of remembrance has once appeared and the experiences of sleep emerge complete, vivid, and clear before the waking consciousness, attention should then be directed to what here follows. Among these experiences, we can clearly distinguish two kinds. The first kind is totally foreign to everything that one has ever experienced. At first one may take pleasure in these, may let oneself be exalted by them; but after a while they are put aside. They are the first harbingers of a higher spiritual world to which one only becomes accustomed at a later period. The other kind of experiences, however, will reveal to the attentive observer a peculiar relationship to the ordinary world in which he lives. Concerning those elements of life on which he ponders, those things in his environment which he would like to understand, but is unable to understand with the ordinary intellect, these experiences during sleep can give him information. During his daily life man reflects on that which surrounds him and he arrives at conceptions which make comprehensible to him the interrelation of things. He tries to understand in thought what he perceives with sense. It is with such ideas and conceptions that the sleep-experiences are concerned. That which was hitherto merely a dark and crepuscular conception now assumes a sonorous and vital character which can only be compared to the sounds and words of the phenomenal world. It seems to the student ever more and more that the solution of the riddle upon which he ponders is whispered in sounds and words that proceed from a finer world. Then ought he to relate what has come to him in this way with the matters of ordinary life. What was hitherto only accessible to his thought has now become an actual experience for him, living and significant as can seldom, if ever, be the case with an experience in the world of sense. The things and beings of the phenomenal world are shown thereby to be more than merely what they seem to the perceptions of the senses. They are the expression and the efflux of a spiritual world. This spiritual world which lay hitherto obscure now reveals itself to the occult student in the whole of his environment.
It is easy to see that the possession of this perceptive faculty can only prove itself to be a blessing if the soul-senses of the person in whom they have been opened are in perfect order, just as we can only use our ordinary senses for the accurate observation of the world if they are in a well-regulated condition. Now these higher senses are formed by the individual himself in accordance with exercises which are given to him in the course of his occult training. As much concerning these exercises as may be openly said has been already given in The Way of Initiation. The rest is imparted by word of mouth in the occult schools. Among these exercises we find concentration, or the directing of attention upon certain definite ideas and conceptions that are connected with the secrets of the universe ; and meditation, or the living within such ideas, the complete submerging of oneself within them in the manner already explained. By concentration and meditation a person works upon his own soul and develops within it the soul-organs of perception. While he applies himself to the practice of meditation and concentration his soul evolves within his body as the embryo child grows in the body of the mother. When, during sleep, the specific experiences above described begin to occur, the moment of birth has arrived for the full-grown soul, who has thereby become literally a new being brought by the individual from seed to fruit. Instructions concerning the subject of meditation and concentration must therefore be very carefully prepared and equally carefully followed out, since they are the very laws which determine the germination and evolution of the higher soul-nature of the individual; and this must appear at its birth as a harmonious and well-formed organism. If, an the contrary, there were something lacking in these instructions, no such being would appear, but in its place one that was misborn from the standpoint of spiritual matters, and incapable of life.
That the birth of this higher soul-nature should occur during deep sleep will not seem hard of comprehension if we consider that the tender organism, still unable to withstand much opposition, could hardly make itself noticed by a chance apparition among the powerful, harsh events of workaday life. Its activity cannot be observed when opposed by the activity of the body. In sleep, however, when the body is at rest, the activity of the higher soul, at first so faint and unapparent, can come into sight in so far as it depends upon the perception of sense. A warning must here again be given that the occult student should not regard these sleep-experiences as entirely reliable sources of knowledge so long as he is not in a position to transport himself to the plane of the awakened higher soul during waking-consciousness as well. If he has acquired this power he is able to perceive the spiritual world between and within the experiences of the day, or, in other words, can comprehend as sounds and words the hidden secrets of his surroundings.
At this period of development we must clearly understand that we are dealing, at first, with separate, more or less unconnected, spiritual experiences. We must be on our guard against the erection of any system of knowledge, whether complete or only interdependent. By so doing we should merely confuse the soul-world with all manner of fantastical ideas and conceptions ; and thus we could very easily weave a world which has really no connection what ever with the true spiritual world. The occult student must practise continually the strictest self-control. The right method is to grow clearer and clearer in one's realization of the separate and veritable experiences which occur, and then to wait for the arrival of new experiences, full and unforced in their nature, which will connect themselves, as if on their own account, with those that have already occurred. By virtue of the power of the spiritual world in which he has now once found his way, and by virtue, also, of practising the prescribed exercises, the student now experiences an ever-enlarging, ever more comprehensive, outspreading of consciousness in deep sleep. Out of what was erstwhile mere unconsciousness, more and more experiences emerge, and ever fewer and fewer become those periods in the sleep-existence that remain unconscious. Thus, then, do the separate experiences of sleep continually close in upon each other without this actual interlocking being disturbed by a multitude of combinations and inferences which would still arise from the meddling of the intellect accustomed to the phenomenal world. The less one's ordinary habits of thought are mixed up in some unauthorized manner with these higher experiences, the better it is. If you conduct yourself rightly, you now approach nearer and nearer to that stage of the way at which the entire sleep-life is passed in complete consciousness. Then you exist, when the body is at rest, in a reality as actual as is the case while you are awake. It is superfluous to remark that during sleep we are dealing, at first, with a reality entirely different from the phenomenal environment in which the body finds itself. Indeed we learn—nay, must learn if we are to keep our footing an firm ground and avoid becoming a fantastic—to relate the higher experiences of sleep to the phenomenal environment. At first, however, the world which is entered in sleep is a completely new revelation. In occult science the important stage at which consciousness is retained interiorly through the entire sleep-life is known as the “continuity of consciousness.”1
In the case of a person who has arrived at this point, experiences and events do not cease during the intervals when the physical body rests, and no impressions are conveyed to the soul through the medium of the senses.
"Behold, I make all things new." — Revelation 21:5
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland
First-Class Lesson #19 of 19
August 2, 1924
My dear friends! Once again, we will begin by allowing the verse to flood into our souls, the verse that can presently bring to us how all that is and is becoming in the world, what has been in times long past, is in the present, and will be in the future, how out of all sounds forth to us, evermore resounds in us, and calls out to us to seek self-awareness, and as such is the foundation for true, for truly balanced world-awareness.
O Man, know yourself! So sounds the word of worlds.You hear it soul-forcefully, You feel it spirit-powerfully.Who speaks so world-mightily? Who speaks so heart-inwardly?Does it work streaming through space Into your sense’s self-experiencing?Does it sound weaving through time Into your life's evolving stream?Are you the one, who yourself In sensing space, in experiencing time Creates the word, feeling yourself Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness, As you lose the power of thinking In time’s destroying stream?
Well, my dear brothers and sisters, we have allowed mantric verses to pass by our souls, which in their craft comprise the way forth into spirit-land, past the Guardian of the Threshold, into what is at first the dim, dark, night-bedecked spiritual world, which at first just feels light, then for soul-perception becomes light. In this spiritual world we have seen how a person partakes, generally unawares although he can become aware, how a person partakes of the dialogue of the higher hierarchies among themselves, which the hierarchies among themselves work on and interweave into the world, which itself is spoken forth in word-of-worlds. And finally, we have been able to situate ourselves in that world-domain in which the various hierarchy choirs ring all together. Let us bring to mind once more how the choirs of the various hierarchies resound within one another, there, where we are infused with what the high beings of the Second Hierarchy are saying, where we are infused with what the beings of the First Hierarchy are speaking forth. As they speak, we presently begin to hear them resounding together as a choir.
The Guardian makes us mindful, as we have already become acquainted with in previous lessons, of the following:
See the ethereal iris’s Light-abundant round. Through your eyes’ Light-forming force Let your “I” penetrate through the arc, And then behold from yonder watch Color flooding the world’s chalice.
After the Guardian of the Threshold has advised us about the spirited mystery of the rainbow, the Angels, Archangels, and Archai peal forth as if from a choir:
Sense our thoughts Color breathing living In the chalice's flood of light; We carry the sensory-semblance Into spirit-being-realms And turn ourselves world-infused To the service of higher spirits.
The spirits of the third hierarchy clarify how in service to humanity they apply in supplication to the Second Hierarchy, to the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes. Out of their domain we hear, once again in chorus:
What you have taken up, Enlivened from dead sensory-semblance We wake it in existence; We add it to the rays of light, So that the emptiness of matter Will bear spirit nature And manifest endowed with love.
And when we have heard how the spiritual beings of the Second Hierarchy align with our “I-am” in world-creativity, then the Thrones, Seraphim, and Cherubim of the First Hierarchy peal forth in choir:
In your worlds of will Feel our world-wide impact; Spirit shines in matter, When we are thinking working; Spirit works in matter, When we are willing living; World is I-willing spirit-word.
And now we stand within the spirit word, within the spirit word that lies at the foundation of world formation. We feel this spirit word around about us. We feel the world infused throughout with this spirit word. We feel ourselves interwoven with this spirit word. We feel the influx of this spirit word into our most intimate human nature. And finally, we feel this world-wide spirit word streaming into our hearts. We feel ourselves there with the whole of our human nature in the surging of this spirit word. We feel ourselves there in spirit in the word-interlaced world spirit.
There is the Guardian in the distance. We have walked past the Guardian. Presently he is quite distant. We hear him yet softly, as he now allows a final admonishing word to stream forth to us from his distant reach.
The Guardian speaks from afar. The human I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Spirit-Word. The Guardian speaks:
Who speaks in spirit-word With voice That blazes in world-fire?
There sounds forth in answer from the realm of the First Hierarchy:
Speaking is star-flaming, Flaming are Seraphic fire-powers; They flame also
– we feel the world-speech, the language of the world-word within ourselves –
in my heart. In the primal source of love1 The human heart finds Creative spirit-flaming-speech: It is I.
My dear brothers and sisters! Whoever would penetrate into the esoteric realm should certainly feel at once the primeval sacred ehyeh asher ehyeh,2 the I am which is a sacred holy word, that resounds here but emerges from a reality on the other side. The I am that we take hold of in fleeting thoughts is merely a reflection.
We must most certainly make ourselves aware that the true I am does not emerge from us in speech within the earthly realm, initially. If we are worthy and would say the I am, we first must come into the realm of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, for there the I am rings true. Here in the earthly realm, it is somewhat illusory.
But there, in yonder watch, in order to experience truly and inwardly the I am, there we must hear world-words. We must solemnly hear the question of the Guardian of the Threshold, who most certainly speaks there in world-words. With thunderous flaming — spiritually thunderous flaming — the Seraphim, who forge their way through the world, there where we now stand the Seraphim speak the world-word’s fiery speech. The word is flame, flaming voice. And as we experience ourselves in this blazing world fire, in this fiery speech speaking in flaming voice, then we experience the true I am.
That is contained in these words, which come now as a question from the distant Guardian of the Threshold, whom we have long ago passed by, and then in answer comes forth from the domain of the First Hierarchy:
Who speaks in spirit-word With voice That blazes in world-fire?Speaking is star-flaming, Flaming are Seraphic fire-powers; They flame also in my heart. In the primal source of love The human heart finds Creative spirit-flaming-speech: It is I.
[The first part of the mantra was now written on the board.]
The Guardian speaks from afar (The human-I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Spirit-Word.): Who speaks in spirit-word With voice That blazes in world fire?
From the realm of the first hierarchy: Speaking is star-flaming, Flaming are Seraphic fire-powers; They flame also in my heart. In the primal source of love The human heart finds Creative spirit-flaming-speech: It is I.
When a person’s customary word resounds, then what speaks by means of the person’s word is human thinking. And when the spiritual world-word resounds, then what speaks by means of spiritual world-word is world-thinking. This lies embedded within the following question of the Guardian, that he now sets forth as a second from the distance.
The Guardian speaks from afar. The human-I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Spirit-Word:
What thinks in spirit-word With thoughts That form out of world-souls?
These are the very thoughts issuing, coming forth, of world-souls, from all world-souls, from all the beings belonging to the various hierarchies. They sculpt, form, fashion everything that exists in the world’s realms. Therefore, the Guardian asks who it is that thinks the potent thoughts that form and fashion all things:
What thinks in spirit-word With thoughts That form out of world-souls?
Again, coming to us from the realm of the First Hierarchy:
Thinking are stars luminaries,
First it was the flaming speaking the words. The stars flaming speak the words. The luminaries, from which the flaming comes, think.
Thinking are stars luminaries, Illuminating are cherubic form-forces. They illuminate also in my head.
—So says the person to himself, standing within it all.—
In the primal source of light3 The human head finds Thoughtful soul-forming work: It is I.
That is the second colloquy, the second call, as if the beings of the First Hierarchy were giving us world-permission, that we within ourselves may experience the "I am".
What thinks in spirit-word With thoughts That form out of world-souls?
Thinking are stars luminaries, Illuminating are cherubic form-forces. They illuminate also in my head. In the primal source of light The human head finds Thoughtful soul-forming work: It is I.
[The second part of the mantra was now written on the board.]
The Guardian speaks from afar:
What thinks in spirit-word With thoughts That form out of world-souls?
From the realm of the first hierarchy:
Thinking are stars luminaries, Illuminating are cherubic form-forces. They illuminate also in my head. In the primal source of light The human head finds Thoughtful soul-forming work: It is I.
The world-spirit-word must speak. From it, thoughts stream forth. But the thoughts are formative, the thoughts are infused with force; the thoughts stream forth and world beings and world events thereby come into being, becoming all that is. In it the word-formed world-thoughts live, the thought-laden world-words. It is not a simple sort of thinking; it is not a simple sort of speaking; it is formation, creative forceful crafting, forces streaming forth in words. Forces imprint the thoughts out into world-beings, into world-events.
All this is indicated, pointed to, in the third question which the Guardian of the Threshold puts to us from afar:
What crafts4 in spirit-word With crafting strengths5 That live in the body of worlds?
The whole world, which there resounds with the world-word, which there is thoroughly illuminated with world-thinking, is just the same as what thinks and speaks in human beings, is incorporated or embodied, is just the same as what resounds in the world-word. What shines thoroughly illuminated by thinking is world-embodiment. The Thrones carry it, bear it, or said somewhat better, it is that within which the Thrones bear the thoroughly thought-illuminated, world-spirit-word.
To this the answer comes, from the realm of the First Hierarchy, to the question of the Guardian:
Crafting is star-world-embodiment,6 Embodying7 are thronal bearing-powers;
We must build a word that is rather uncommon. But just as one illuminates by light and as the verb to live is built from the noun life, likewise in what emerges as a force in what is borne by the body, likewise one can build the word abide, or embody. Then to embody is nothing that is dead, to embody is nothing that is finished, to embody is something that is active at all times, is versatile, is moving, it embodies.
Embodying are thronal bearing-powers; They embody also in my limbs. In the primal source of life8 The human limbs find Crafting world-bearer-power. It is I.
World-word, world-thinking, then world-embodiment. Speaking, then thinking, and in the third question the Guardian refers to world-embodiment:
What crafts in spirit-word With crafting strengths That live in the body of worlds?
Crafting is star-world-embodiment, Embodying are thronal bearing-powers; They embody also in my limbs. In the primal source of life The human limbs find Crafting world-bearer-power. It is I.
[The third part of the mantra was now written on the board.]
The Guardian speaks from afar: (The human-I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Spirit-Word.)
What crafts in spirit-word With crafting strengths That live in the body of worlds?
From the realm of the first hierarchy: Crafting is star-world-embodiment, Embodying are thronal bearing-powers; They embody also in my limbs. In the primal source of life The human limbs find Crafting world-bearer-power. It is I.
In a certain way, my dear brothers and sisters, it is a sort of closure along the path, the path that began in the realm of illusion, in the realm of maya, that has led us to the Guardian of the Threshold, that has led us in self-awareness through to self-awareness in the spiritual realm, and that has allowed us to hear the choirs of the Hierarchies. In a certain way it is a closure, for we now stand in the position of being allowed to experience in ourselves the true I am, the ehyeh asher ehyeh.
We are able to experience it in this dialogue, as the threefold It is I springs us forth from the heart, allows us to spring forth from the heart, so that when it springs us forth from the heart, it will allow into our heart the echo of what the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones allow to resound within this heart.
Who speaks in spirit-word With voice That blazes in world-fire? Speaking is star-flaming, Flaming are Seraphic fire-powers; They flame also in my heart. In the primal source of love The human heart finds Creative spirit-flaming-speech: It is I.
What thinks in spirit-word With thoughts That form out of world-souls? Thinking are stars luminaries, Illuminating are cherubic form-forces. They illuminate also in my head. In the primal source of light The human head finds Thoughtful soul-forming work: It is I.
What crafts in spirit-word With crafting strengths That live in the body of worlds? Crafting is star-world-embodiment, Embodying are thronal bearing-powers; They embody also in my limbs. In the primal source of life The human limbs find Crafting world-bearer-power. It is I.
With that, my dear brothers and sisters, the first stage of the school’s First Class has in a certain sense been completed.
We have allowed those impartations that we could receive from the spiritual world — for this school is a school constituted by the spiritual world itself — we have allowed those images and inspirations that can come from the spiritual world to be drawn into us. They constitute what for our souls is the way to go forth in capturing the true human "I" in the vicinity of the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones.
My dear brothers and sisters, as you have heard in general anthroposophical proceedings concerning the supersensory School of Michael, it had initially resounded inwardly in such heart-felt lessons. The mighty images, cultivated imaginatively at the start of the nineteenth century, and then placed before the soul, if one was so destined to be in the vicinity of Michael, the revelations of the school of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, which in the supersensory world was led by Michael himself and high spiritual beings, in the aforementioned sense. And now we stand before this anthroposophical school founded by Michael. We feel ourselves within it. Michael-words they are, Michael-words that ought to characterize the way that leads forth into the spiritual world and into the human "I". These Michael-words of the esoteric Michael-school have built, so to say, the first stage.
As will then be announced, when we meet once again in September for these Class lessons, then it will be the will of the Michael-power to begin by highlighting the imaginative cultus-revelations from the beginning of the nineteenth century. That will be the second stage. All that has now been brought before our souls as mantric words will stand before our souls more fully in imagery which, insofar as is possible, will be the imagery as brought down here of the supersensory imaginative cultus from the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The third chapter of this school will build what will lead us on to those interpretations that were given to the mantric words in the supersensory Michael School of the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.
We should feel that we place ourselves in the midst of all that is within the spiritual world itself. Ever and again, however, we should look back upon the physical-sensory world, and in exemplary-unassuming fashion accommodate ourselves to that which has dominion in the sensory-physical earthly world. To this end, and in closing, let us once more allow to sound before our souls all, if we are capable of receiving it, if we are able to sense it, all that sounds forth from every stone, from every plant, from every animal, from every billowing cloud, from every bubbling spring, from every rushing gust of wind, from the woods and mountains, and everywhere from the things and events of the earth all around, if we can sense it there as it sounds forth.
We were in the realm of the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones. By itself the voice of the Guardian sounded forth from afar. We go in modesty back again, past the Guardian, back into the realm of the sensory show, into what is apparent to the senses. And again, we allow the words to reverberate within us:
O Man, know yourself! So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully, You feel it spirit-powerfully.
Who speaks so world-mightily? Who speaks so heart-inwardly?
Does it work streaming through space Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time Into your life's evolving stream?
Are you the one, who yourself In sensing space, in experiencing time Creates the word, feeling yourself Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness, As you lose the power of thinking In time’s destroying stream?
Blackboard (left side)Blackboard (right side)
Blackboard Text for the Nineteenth Lesson
Der Hüter spricht aus der Ferne: Das Menschen-Ich weiß sich im Bereich des seraphisch-cherubinisch-throne getragenen Geistes-Wortes: Wer spricht im Geistes-Wort Mit der Stimme, Die im Weltenfeuer lodert? Aus dem Reich der ersten Hierarchie: Es sprechen Sternen-Flammen, Es flammen seraph’sche Feuer-Mächte; Sie flammen auch in meinem Herzen. In des Urseins Liebe-Quell Findet Menschen-Herz Schaffendes Geistes-Flammen-Sprechen: Es ist Ich.
Der Hüter spricht aus der Ferne: Das Menschen-Ich weiß sich im Bereich des seraphisch-cherubinisch-throne getragenen Geistes-Wortes: Was denkt im Geistes-Wort Mit Gedanken, Die aus Weltenseelen bilden? Aus dem Reich der ersten Hierarchie: Es denken der Sterne Leuchter, Es leuchten cherubin’sche Bilde-Kräfte; Sie leuchten auch in meinem Haupte. In des Urseins Lichtes-Quell Findet Menschen-Haupt Denkendes Seelen-Bilde-Wirken: Es ist Ich.
Der Hüter spricht aus der Ferne: Das Menschen-Ich weiß sich im Bereich des seraphisch-cherubinisch-throne getragenen Geistes-Wortes: Was kraftet im Geistes-Wort Mit Kräften, Die im Weltenleibe leben? Aus dem Reich der ersten Hierarchie: Es kraftet der Sternen-Welten-Leib, Es leiben der Thron Trag-Gewalten; Sie leiben auch in meinen Gliedern. In des Urseins Lebens-Quell Finden Menschen-Glieder Kraftendes Welten-Träger-Walten: Es ist Ich.
The Guardian speaks from afar: The human-I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Sprit-Word: Who speaks in spirit-word With voice That blazes in world-fire? From the Realm of the First Hierarchy: Speaking is star-flaming, Flaming are Seraphic fire-powers; They flame also in my heart. In the primal source of love The human heart finds Creative spirit-flaming-speech: It is I.
The Guardian speaks from afar: The human-I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Sprit-Word: What thinks in spirit-word With thoughts That form out of world-souls? From the Realm of the First Hierarchy: It is stars luminaries thinking, Illuminating are Cherubic form-forces. They illuminate also in my head. In the primal source of light The human head finds Thoughtful soul-forming work: It is I.
The Guardian speaks from afar: The human-I knows itself in the realm of the Seraph-Cherub-Throne borne Sprit-Word: What crafts in spirit-word With crafting strengths That live in the body of worlds? From the Realm of the First Hierarchy: Crafting is star-world-embodiment, Embodying are Thronal bearing-powers; They embody also in my limbs. In the primal source of life The human limbs find Crafting world-bearer power: It is I.
Let us begin today by considering certain questions connected with this time of festival, with this season which yearly renews the memory of the Mystery of Golgotha, renews also a direct experience of it in our feeling. We really have three such times of festival in Christian tradition: the Christmas, the Easter, and the Whitsuntide festivals. And we may say that, each in a different way, these three festivals bring man into connection, into relationship, with that in which the Christian tradition sees the meaning of all Earth-evolution. These three festivals also differ as regards the human soul-forces. Christmas appeals more to the feeling and in a certain sense is the most popular festival, because to understand it requires a deepening of the feeling-life, and because it is the most readily approachable for the large masses of humanity. The Easter festival, which requires that we raise ourselves to an understanding of the real Mystery of Golgotha, of the entrance of a supersensible Being into human evolution, is the most challenging to the human powers of understanding. It is a festival which lifts human understanding to the highest level, and which, although it is also generally celebrated, cannot however be popular in the same sense as the Christmas festival. The third, the Whitsun festival, establishes a relationship particularly between the human will and the supersensible world, the world to which the Christ-Being as such belongs. The carrying over of will-impulses into execution in the world is brought to human consciousness through a right understanding of the Whitsun festival. Thus what we may call the secret of Christianity is given form in these yearly celebrations. The way in which the Christmas mystery touches man can be brought before our consciousness in the most manifold ways; and with the recurrence of the Christmas festival during the course of the years, we have considered the Christmas-Thought from the most varied standpoints. This time let us call to mind something which can become clear to any one who considers the Christmas mystery in the light of the Gospels. In the Gospels we find a twofold announcement of the birth of Christ Jesus. One annunciation is made to the poor shepherds out in the fields. An Angel announces the birth of Christ Jesus to them — in a dream, or however one may wish to call it. Here we have to do with the perception of this event through inner soul-forces, soul-forces which, in the case of these shepherds in the vicinity where Christ Jesus was born, were in a special condition. And a second annunciation is set forth in the Gospels, the annunciation to the Three Kings, the Three Wise Men from the Orient. We are told that they followed a star which announced to them the advent of Christ Jesus on Earth. Thus we are shown two ways by which this earlier humanity reached what we may call its higher knowledge. This is another example of something which is never properly grasped in the present age. Today we usually conceive of human beings as possessing thought and perception, and we imagine this thinking and perceiving, in fact, all use of the inner soul-forces, to have been in all past centuries and millennia essentially the same — only more primitive — as it is today. We know from anthroposophical spiritual science how the soul-constitution of man has changed with the passage of time; how differently in ancient times — for instance, seven or eight thousand years after the beginning of the post-Atlantean period, or even earlier — humanity regarded its own life and the nature of the surrounding universe. Moreover we know how this soul-constitution underwent many changes before it became that reasoning analytical faculty existing today, which in its approach to the outer world knows only the purely sense-perceptible aspect of things. This evolution takes its starting-point from a certain ancient instinctive clairvoyance and proceeds through the state found in our modern soul-condition, to return again in future to a clairvoyant perception of the world which will be permeated by full human consciousness. At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place on Earth the ancient instinctive clairvoyance was already greatly dimmed. Men's souls were indeed differently constituted than they are today, although they no longer had the old clairvoyance; gone also were their old wise ways of fathoming the universe. The ancient wisdom-teachings as well as the old instinctive clairvoyance had grown very dim as the Mystery of Golgotha approached humanity. But remnants of both still existed, and we are clearly shown in the Gospels, if we rightly understand them, that this was the case. Such remnants were still present among single favoured individuals. We may recognise as such the poor shepherds out in the fields, who in the piety of their hearts possessed a certain clairvoyant capacity of a dreamlike nature. And we also recognise as such the Three Magi from the East, who are pictured as standing on the topmost rung of human society, and had retained from ancient times a capacity gained from a certain stream of wisdom, giving them insight into the course of world-events. Thus, on the one hand, the poor shepherds could be approached in a kind of dream-experience, in inward perception, by the event of Christ Jesus' birth, while, on the other, the Three Magi from the East developed a science which enabled them, by the study of world-phenomena, the appearances in the heavens, to be aware of significant events taking place open Earth quite beyond ordinary human ken. Thus there are pointed out to us two quite definite, but widely differing, modes of knowledge. Let us turn our attention for the moment to what was present as the last remnant of an ancient stream of wisdom in the Three Wise Men from the Orient. We are shown clearly that these Wise Men were able to read the riddles in the movements of the stars. In the existing descriptions we are made aware of an ancient knowledge of the stars whereby access was gained to the mysteries of the starry worlds and wherein the secrets of human events were also revealed. This ancient knowledge of the stars was something quite different from that of today. Our astronomy is in a certain sense also prophetic; it can prophesy eclipses of the sun and moon and so on, but it is merely mathematical and mechanical. It only speaks of space and time-relationships in so far as these may be represented mathematically, whereas the ancient wisdom of the stars perceived in these movements something of higher significance, remote from space and time, taking place in the inner life of man. If we examine the science of humanity in olden times, we find its content essentially one of this wisdom of the stars. Men sought in the stars for a deeper understanding of earthly happenings. For to them the starry world was not the abstract mechanical thing it has become for modern humanity. For them the starry world was something full of life. They felt the presence of an essential Being in the universe, in the case of every planet. By means of an inner soul-language, in a certain sense, they even spoke with the individual planets, as we today speak merely from man to man in external words. People were conscious of inward soul-experience which was a reflection of what was going on out in universal space in the movement of the stars. This was a living, spiritualized way of looking at the universe. And man felt himself connected as a soul and spirit with this universe. This wisdom of the world was fostered in schools, in what may be described as Mystery schools, where the pupils were prepared in a careful, intimate and inner way to gain an understanding of the movements of the stars such as might illuminate human life on Earth. Of what nature were these preparations? These preparations for a knowledge of the starry heavens and their influences were of such a character that, even then, in the age of instinctive clairvoyance, the pupil was led to develop a more wide-awake life than normally. The large mass of mankind had a kind of instinctive clairvoyance, corresponding to a state of soul which was less wide awake than the one normal for us today. In ancient periods of human evolution people were not able to think as clearly as we can now. Geometry and mathematics as we know them could not then exist. The whole of life between birth and death had more of a dreaming character; but just because it was dreamlike it had a far more lively way of perceiving the surrounding universe than does our waking life today. And the strange thing was that the pupils of those ancient Mysteries existing 2000 years, or even 1000 years, before the Mystery of Golgotha (such men as the Magi may be counted among the last remaining disciples of this training), were trained in a knowledge which was very similar to our geometry and mathematics. Euclid was the first to give geometry to humanity; but he merely communicated it to humanity in general. What Euclid gave in the way of geometry had already lived in the Mysteries for thousands of years as something communicated only to the most carefully selected Mystery-pupils. It had a different effect then than in later times. It may seem strange and paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true, that what our children learn as arithmetic and geometry was taught in the Mystery-schools to selected individuals who were considered specially endowed and so accepted in the Mysteries. Today we often hear reference made to the mysterious matters supposedly taught in the Mysteries. Actually, in their purely abstract content, these mysterious matters are none other than those taught to children today. They are nothing else; and their Mystery-character lies not in the fact of their being unknown to us, but in the different way in which at that time they were taught. It is quite a different matter to call upon the reasoning of children through the content of geometry in an age in which, from the moment of awaking until falling asleep again man lives in a wide-awake consciousness, than it was to present these matters to specially selected human beings, whose consciousness was more mature, during the age of ancient instinctive clairvoyance and dreaming consciousness. Our modern conceptions of these things are by no means always accurate. For example, there is a poem to Varuna in Oriental literature describing Varuna as appearing in the air, as wafting like the wind through the woods; Varuna appears in the lightning flashing out of the dripping clouds; in the human heart when the will is roused to action; in the heavens when the sun moves across them. Varuna is to be found on the mountains in the juice of the Soma. What the juice of the Soma is, modern books profess not to know. Today in our great learning we agree that we do not know what the juice of the Soma is, although there are people who drink it by the quart, and certainly know it very well from a certain standpoint. But it is a different matter to know these things from the standpoint of the Mysteries than from the standpoint of waking consciousness in profane feeling. You can read today of the Philosopher's Stone, which was accounted precious in an age when the nature of substance was somewhat differently regarded than it is today. Again the historians of alchemy will tell you that the Philosopher's Stone is quite unknown. Here and there in my lectures I have indicated that the Philosopher's Stone is quite familiar to most human beings; they simply do not know its qualities, or why it is so named. But since it is used by the ton, it is very familiar to most human beings. The facts are simply upon occasion quite different from the concepts we hold of them with our present-day abstract, theoretical grasp of things, so remote from life and reality. There is not even a true grasp of what it might mean to take in the sciences of arithmetic and geometry with quite another soul-constitution than we have today, with a mature soul-condition. I have referred to this particular type of Mystery-schooling in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”; but just such important things as these are usually not properly understood, they are not ordinarily understood in their real significance. The fact that the way in which people were approached with things constituted the very kernel of the Mysteries in ancient times is something which should be grasped. And it was thus also in the case of such purely mathematical considerations, the content of feeling and the human fullness of which Novalis still sensed when he felt mathematics to be like great poetry — something which most people nowadays will not agree with. And it is to such grasping of the world, permeated as it was with feeling, but poured into mathematical mould, that the pupil of the ancient Mysteries was led. And when the pupil of the ancient Mysteries was thus brought to a mathematical understanding of the universe, he developed just such a world-outlook as that possessed by the Wise Men from the East, as they are described to us. The mathematics of the universe, which have become so thoroughly abstract to us, revealed at that time something really living, because the revelation found completion in what was brought to understand it. Thus what sprang as science from an ancient culture, and was still preserved in its last fragments to the Magi, made possible the one annunciation, through the channel of the teachers of wisdom, through external science, the annunciation experienced by the Magi. On the other hand, it was possible for the inner experience of the secrets of humanity to develop in human beings who, like the shepherds in the fields, had a special predisposition in this direction. In such cases the inner forces of man had to reach certain heights; then what took place in the world of men became direct imaginative perception, an instinctive, imaginative picture-perception. Thus, through inner vision, the poor shepherds in the fields partook in the annunciation: “God makes revelation of His Being in the heavenly heights, and His peace shall be with all men of good will.” Thus did the secrets of the universe speak to the innermost being of the poor shepherds in the fields, as well as to the utmost heights attainable to human wisdom at that time, to the Wise Men of the East. Thus the great mystery of earthly life was imparted from two different sides. What did these Wise Men of the East experience? What was the special development brought about in the souls of these pupils through the introduction of mathematics into their soul-condition, when this was found especially mature and ready? Kant speaks of mathematics as being “a priori” truth. With “a priori” he means a truth which is present within us before our external, empirical knowledge, before our experience of it existed. This is mere word-wisdom; nothing at all is said with this “a priori”! A meaning attaches to it only when it can be shown by spiritual science that mathematics is something that rises up within us, that rises to consciousness out of man's inner being. Whence does it come? It proceeds from the experiences we went through in the spiritual world before birth, or conception. There we lived in the great wide universe. There we experienced what could be experienced before we had bodily eyes and ears. There we had “a priori” experience, when considered in relation to our life on Earth. These “a priori” experiences rise in an unconscious way out of our inner being into the sphere of consciousness. Unless modern man has a premonition of this, as had Novalis, he does not know that when he does mathematics, experiences of the time before conception and birth are rising up within him. But for a person with true insight into these matters the mathematical capacity is in itself a proof of man's life in the spiritual world before conception. As far as those are concerned for whom this is not a proof of pre-natal existence, the fact remains that they do not think thoroughly enough about life's phenomena and have no idea what the true origin of mathematics is. The pupils of the ancient Mysteries who possessed that wise outlook, still extant in its last fragments in the Wise Men of the East, had the clear impression: “When we study the stars and apply our mathematical forms and reckoning to them, we are spreading out again over the outer reaches of universal space what we actually lived in before our birth.” And it seemed to such a pupil of the ancient Mysteries as though he must say: “Now I am living on Earth; my eyes look out into universal space and see my spatial surroundings. In these same phenomena of the spatial universe I lived before my birth; there I myself counted from star to star what I now merely copy and symbolize in mathematics. With my innermost forces I moved from star to star, living in what I now merely draw.” Thus they experienced again all they had gone through before birth, or conception, and consequently it was holy to them. They realized that they had lived in a spiritual world before they walked on Earth. This knowledge of the world in which man lives before he descends to Earth was present in its last remnants in the Wise Men of the East, and by its means they knew of the advent of the Christ-Being. Whence came this Christ-Being? He came out of that time which we live through between death and rebirth, and He united Himself with the life we live through between birth and death. For this reason the science that concerns itself with the world we live in between death and rebirth can unveil such a mystery as the Mystery of Golgotha. And out of this science, announcement was made to the Magi of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christmas Mystery. As man lives here on Earth and concerns himself with gaining knowledge of his surroundings, with developing impulses for his actions, for his social life, he has still another unconscious experience. He knows nothing of it; but just as he experiences the after-effects of his pre-natal life, so does he also experience what passes through the gates of death and becomes the content of life after death, namely, the forces already present like a seed between birth and death, which only come to their full blossoming in the life after death. These forces worked with great intensity in the ancient instinctive clairvoyance. And they worked in their last remnants in the poor shepherds in the fields because of their special piety. Moreover, it is in these forces especially that we live between falling asleep and awaking, when our souls are outside of our bodies in outer space. The soul then lives as it will live consciously in future when it has laid aside the physical body after death. These forces, which under special conditions can penetrate from the world of sleep and dream into waking life, were once very active in the ancient instinctive clairvoyance. And these the poor shepherds experienced, receiving through them a revelation of the Mystery of Golgotha from a different quarter than that from which the annunciation came to the three Magi. What does one experience by means of the forces peculiar to man between death and rebirth when, as in the case of the Wise Men from the Orient, they are kindled in the life between birth and death? One experiences what takes place beyond what is earthly. One is borne away from Earth out into the world of the stars where we live between death and rebirth. This was the world into which the Wise Men of the East were led away from Earth out into cosmic space. And what does one experience by means of the forces which rise up from the inner being of man, especially in the world of dreams? One experiences what goes on within the Earth. Here the Tellurian forces, the forces of which we partake because we live in our bodies, are at work. These forces work particularly in what we live through between falling asleep and awaking. Here, too, we are in the outer world, but essentially in that outer world belonging to the Earth. You will say that this is a contradiction of the truth that we are outside of our bodies. But it is not a contradiction. We always perceive only what is external to ourselves; that wherein we live is never perceived. Only people who are especially ignorant about certain subjects, and who are bent on establishing a knowledge consisting solely of phrases, are capable of skipping lightly over such matters with their phrases and of saying, for example, that the point is not to found a science of the spirit upon knowledge gained outside man, but to add to natural science a science derived from man's inner being. With such a torrent of phrases Darmstadt wisdom-schools may indeed be founded, but one may still remain a mere phrase-maker even when founding schools of wisdom. For rightly understood, the matter is as follows. We may indeed say that, to arrive at the supersensible, the world must be described from within; but we must first get into the inner being and then look at what is external from outside the body, by looking back upon the body. Keyserling's talks concerning observation from the standpoint of the soul do not attempt to enter man's inner being, they merely use phrases. The fact really is such that when we are in the condition experienced between falling asleep and awaking, we look back, we feel our way back, as it were, into our bodies. We feel what is of the Earth in our bodies; for they are of the Earth. The poor shepherds in the fields really felt the revelation of the Earth through their bodies when, in a dreamlike condition, they perceived what was happening in the form of the perception of an angel's voice. These are the two absolute contrasts: the Magi with their knowledge of the heavens, and the shepherds with their Earth-revelation. And it corresponds completely to the Mystery of Golgotha that the revelation came from two such different quarters. For a heavenly Being, as yet untouched by Earth, was descending to it, and this descent had to make itself known by means of the wisdom of the heavens, which knew that something heavenly was descending. In the shepherds' wisdom we learn to know the Earth by feeling our way into its weaving life as it perceived the descent of the heavenly Being. It is the same annunciation, only from another side. Wonderfully unified, we thus see what, although it was one and the same event, was announced in a twofold way to men. And when we see how humanity received the event of Golgotha, we must say that, in regard to this and other matters, there were only the merest remnants of the ancient wisdom left to man. I have already shown how the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped in the first centuries of Christianity with the help of the fragments of an ancient wisdom known as Gnosis. From then on it became more and more a matter of trying to penetrate into the nature of the event of Golgotha with analytical reasoning powers alone. And in the 19th century naturalism gradually made its appearance in the confessional sphere. The supersensible content of the event of Golgotha was no longer grasped at all: Christ became merely the “wise man of Nazareth”, naturalistically conceived. A new, spiritual grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha became necessary. The fact of the Mystery of Golgotha must not be confused with the way in which human understanding has dealt with this fact. Now, a soul-constitution such as the shepherds in the fields and the Wise Men of the East possessed still existed in its last fragmentary form at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred. But all this changed in the course of human evolution. Everything changes and undergoes metamorphosis. What then became of the wisdom of the Eastern Magi? It has become our mathematics, with its knowledge of the heavens! The Magi possessed a super-earthly science based on sublime recollections of pre-natal life. All this has been shrunken and cramped into our mathematical, mechanical grasp of the heavens, so that we apply nothing but the laws of mathematics and mechanics to their phenomena. What we have in the way of mathematical astronomy is all that still rises up out of our inner being as the modern metamorphosis of what the Magi once possessed. And looking at our external sense-knowledge, which is merely a perceiving with eyes and ears, we find it to be the externalized inner knowledge of the shepherds in the fields. What could once convey to the shepherds in the fields the inner secrets of earthly existence now permits only of that cold, natural-scientific observation of the outer world which is the offspring of the shepherds' wisdom. The child bears but slight resemblance to its mother. And our mathematics, our astronomy, are the offspring of the wisdom of the Magi. Humanity had to go through this development. Our scientific researchers, sitting in their laboratories and clinics, have very little in common with the shepherds, but theirs is a direct metamorphosis of the shepherds' wisdom. And our mathematicians likewise are in direct line of descent from the Eastern Wise Men. The outer has become the inner, and the inner, outer. And so we have indeed grown remote from the Mystery of Golgotha. We must become aware of this fact. We have become far removed indeed from such understanding. Perhaps many of those who call themselves preachers and ministers of Christianity in the official sense are the most remote from it of all. The forces of knowledge, faith, and feeling that live in man today can never penetrate through to the true being of the Mystery of Golgotha. It must be found entirely anew. The wisdom of the Magi too has become dry mathematics, perceiving the heavens only in designs. It has become an inner thing. But inwardness must take on life once more. What was once outer must be built up again from within. And now let us try to understand the content of a book such as my “Occult Science” from this standpoint. The Magi had a real penetration into the starry heavens; they saw what was spiritual there because they had insight into human pre-natal experience. This has become abstract in our mathematics. But the very same forces out of which we develop mathematics can be brought back to life, and intensified as imaginative vision. Then there is born from out our inner being a world which, although we create it within us, we see as the outer world, as though containing Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. We see the heavens in inner vision, just as the Eastern Wise Men externally perceived the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. The external has become an inner thing, has become mathematical abstraction; and in like manner the inner must be widened out until it becomes a universe around us, until inner vision leads us to a new astronomy experienced within. Only by thus reaching out for a new understanding of the Christ can we fill the festival of Christmas with a certain meaning. Has the Christmas festival any meaning for most human beings nowadays? It is a very beautiful custom, scarcely 150 years old, to have the Christmas Tree as a symbol of the Christmas festival. The custom of having a Christmas Tree came into being only in the 19th century. What is this Christmas Tree really? It is not so easy to find its meaning. In making the effort to find it, and by discovering how the Christmas Tree gradually came into use, how it grew from being the little branch carried on St. Nicholas' arm on the 6th of December into being our Christmas Tree, we come to realize that this Christmas Tree is also directly connected with the Tree of Paradise. Human consciousness thus looks back here to the Tree of Paradise, to Adam and Eve. What does this signify? This is one aspect of the way we make the Mystery of Golgotha known today. We turn back from the Mystery of Golgotha to the creation of the world, to the beginning of the world. We fail to grasp the meaning of the world's redemption, and instead turn back to the God who created the universe. This is expressed in the gradual disappearance of the real Christmas symbol, of the manger — so sublime a part of the Christmas plays of earlier centuries — and in the appearance of the Christmas Tree which is really the Tree of Paradise. Thus the old Jehovah-religion again took the place of the Christ-religion; the Christmas Tree is the symbol of the reappearance of the religion of Jehovah. This Jehovah-religion makes its appearance in many shapes and forms today. For Jahve was once rightly worshipped as the one and only God in an age when his people felt themselves to be a unified folk, content within their limits, and living in the expectation of some day filling the entire Earth. In our age people talk of Christ Jesus, but really worship only Jehovah. For, as we saw during the war, the people of the various nations talked of Christ, but were really concerned with the original God, Jehovah, who lives in the forces of nature and heredity. On the one hand, the Christmas Tree, on the other, the national gods so remote from Christianity — with these humanity has turned back from grasping the Mystery of Golgotha to lay hold again on something belonging to a much earlier period. There has been a retrogression into the ancient Jehovah religion in the adherence to the nationalistic principle, in the announcement that the various peoples would follow their national gods. You see, what must be taken into consideration is that in the annunciation to the shepherds, and in the annunciation that came to the Magi, there is a human element common to all men. For the Earth is the common property of all. The Earth-annunciation received by the shepherds was one which could make no national distinctions and differentiations. And the Magi, who received a sun-annunciation, an annunciation from the heavens, also received a purely human element. For after the sun shines upon the lands of one folk, it shines on the lands of others also. Heaven and Earth belong to all in common. With Christianity, a common human element is roused in all humanity. This fact is pointed to in the twofold annunciation of the Christmas story. Such matters, which were fully understood when man's soul-constitution was an entirely different one, will only be comprehensible today with the help of spiritual science. We should inscribe this into our hearts today when we think of the Christmas festival. Today, in thinking of the Christmas Mystery, we have need to look for a birth. We should not merely busy ourselves with idle talk about the Christmas festival and our own feelings, but should look for what must be born anew in this our age. For truly, real Christianity must be born anew. We need a cosmic Christmas festival for humanity. Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive
Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We Awash in a Sonburst Sea You—Love—and I—Love—and Love Divine: We are the Trinity
You—Love—and I—We are One-Two-Three Twining Eternally Two—Yes—and One—Yes—and also Three: One Dual Trinity Radiant Calvary Ultimate Mystery
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"Whosover drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." ~John 4:14
In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. ~John 7:37-38
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