"The eternal feminine draws us ever onward and upward"--Goethe

"Plus elle disparait, plus elle apparait."




(Thanks to troutpie--again)

Nowadays

From a lecture by Rudolf Steiner given July 18, 1923:

"It takes inner work to really penetrate into the spiritual world, and for this kind of work the contemporary, educated world is too lazy.... People believe that these things have to be given to them outwardly, not that they have to work and conquer them inwardly. This indeed is in keeping with what people nowadays want--they want everything to be ready-made for them. As I have mentioned to you already, human beings these days want to put everything on film. They want to make a film of everything so that they can look at everything from the outside. If we want to make progress--real progress, spiritually--we must make sure that no matter what we take up from the world, we will work it through. Therefore, in the future, people will penetrate most deeply into the spiritual world who will as much as possible avoid having everything on film for their comfort. Rather they should choose to think everything through for themselves, to think along, so that when people tell them things about the world they will be participants in the thinking."


Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm Fire


Isaiah 6

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,

And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

13 ways of looking at my guru: #7. Rama

The 10 Avatars of Lord Vishnu: #7. Rama

"Rama is the great dharma king, the foremost prince of the solar dynasty, and the representative of the cosmic order of dharma on Earth and in society. His rule, Rama Rajya, is the rule of truth and the divine light. His association with the Sun is, therefore, quite apt. Rama can even be a name for the Sun.

Worshipping Rama helps us increase the solar light in our lives as a power of truth, righteousness, and compassion, and helps us to transform and uplift our solar energies."

--David Frawley, Ayurvedic Astrology, p. 146

13 ways of looking at my guru: #9...#9...#9...

Jai Gurudeva!


Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind,
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai Gurudeva Om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes,
They call me on and on across the universe,
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way
Across the universe
Jai Gurudeva Om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing
Through my opened ears inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying Love which shines around me like a
million suns, and calls me on and on
Across the universe
Jai Gurudeva Om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Jai Gurudeva
Jai Gurudeva
Jai Gurudeva
Jai Gurudeva




Graphic Synthesiser Demo from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.

Christian the Lion

(Thanks to troutpie)

Optical Allusions

Many others:

http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/hidden-logos-in-graphic-designing/

Optical Illusions

20 Amazing Optical Illusions


Another 10 Amazing Optical Illusions

Coincidence is God's way of saying "Yo!"

Top 15 Amazing Coincidences

Another 10 Amazing Coincidences


When I was 14 I had a Vespa motor scooter. One day I drove into a Fina gas station for a fill-up. The local Fina stations were having a promotion going on with KELI, a pop radio station: they were handing out a small plastic trash bag to each customer. Each bag had a unique seven-digit number. If KELI called out your number and you were the lucky listener, you won a hundred dollars. As a joke, the gas station attendant gave me a trash bag for my motor scooter. The number on the trash bag was 1690245--which exactly--exactly--matched the license plate on my motor scooter. Blew my mind big time. Still does.


One day in May when I was in college I was hanging out in the backyard with four of my housemates when suddenly apropos of nothing I said "You know, I've never had a bird shit on me in my life." Less than two minutes later a bird flew by and--splat!--all over my right shoulder! We were all suitably impressed: "Dude!"

If by some chance you have a coincidental anecdote, please send it in. You might win a prize--stranger things have been known to happen.

"Twining Eternally"

New York Times, 7 March 2002:

Seventy-year-old twin brothers riding bicycles were hit by trucks and killed in separate accidents two hours apart on the same highway. The first accident occurred at 9:29 a.m. on Tuesday when one of the twins was riding on an icy road in Raahe, 370 miles north of Helsinki, Constable Pauli Ketonen said. He said that a little more than two hours later the man's twin brother was killed by another truck about a mile from the first accident. It was unlikely that the second victim knew of his brother's accident, he said, because the police had not yet informed the family.

"Twining Eternally"

BBC News, 8 February 2007:

Archaeologists in Italy have unearthed two skeletons thought to be 5,000 to 6,000 years old, locked in an embrace. The pair from the Neolithic period were discovered outside Mantua, about 40km (25 miles) south of Verona. The pair, almost certainly a man and a woman, are thought to have died young as their teeth were mostly intact, said chief archaeologist Elena Menotti.

The burial site was discovered on Monday during construction work for a factory building. "It's an extraordinary case," said Ms. Menotti. "There has not been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, much less two people hugging - and they really are hugging," she told Reuters news agency. "I must say that when we discovered it, we all became very excited," she said. "I've been doing this job for 25 years. I've done digs at Pompeii, all the famous sites, but I've never been so moved because this is the discovery of something special," she said.

[Verona is the setting for Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"]

13 ways of looking at my guru: #3. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

The Esoteric Lord's Prayer, by Rudolf Steiner

Father,
You who were, are, and will be in our inmost being,
May your name be glorified and praised in us.
May your kingdom grow in our deeds and inmost lives.
May we perform your will as you, Father, lay it down in our inmost being.
You give us spiritual nourishment, the bread of life, superabundantly in all the changing conditions of our lives.
Let our mercy toward others make up for the sins done to our being.
You do not allow the tempter to work in us beyond the capacity of our strength —
for no temptation can live in your being, Father, and the tempter is only appearance and delusion,
from which you lead us, Father, through the light of knowledge.
May your power and glory work in us through all periods and ages of time.

Amen

A Valentine from Rudolf Steiner

"Anthroposophy is not mere learning like any other. The ideas that Anthroposophy presents and the words it uses are not meant as abstract theory. Anthroposophical ideas are not shaped in the way other kinds of learning have been shaping ideas for the past several centuries; words are not used the same as they are elsewhere. Anthroposophical ideas are vessels fashioned by love, and we are summoned by the spiritual world to partake of their content. Anthroposophy must bring the light of true humanness to shine out in thoughts that bear love's imprint: knowledge is only the form in which we reflect our heart's receiving the light of the world spirit that has come to dwell in our heart and from our heart illumine human thought. Since Anthroposophy cannot really be grasped except by the power of love, it is love-engendering when human beings take it in a way true to its own nature. Words expressing Anthroposophical truths are not like words spoken elsewhere today; rightly conceived, they are all really reverential pleas that the spirit make itself known to us."

Love and Light

"When we enter into that divine condition which is in a state of balance, a state of ever-repeated balance between the luciferic and the ahrimanic, and when we grasp this in its deepest essence, we then realize--if we look correctly--that wherever the influence of Lucifer is not and wherever the influence of Ahriman is not, that is where there exists what comes from the progressive divine spirituality which is linked to the evolution of humanity. If, in the realms into which the luciferic constantly streams and into which the ahrimanic constantly streams, we look towards the divine that holds the balance, we find there pure love as the fundamental force of everything that streams continuously, forming the human being outwardly, and giving him soul and spirit inwardly. This fundamental force is pure love. In its substance and in its being, and insofar as it is the cosmos of the human being, the universe consists of pure love, it is nothing other than pure love. In the part of the divine that is associated with the human being we find nothing except pure love. This love is something inward; souls can experience it inwardly. It would never achieve an outward appearance if it did not first build itself a body out of the etheric element of light. When we observe the world in a genuinely occult manner we cannot help but say to ourselves: The ground of the world is the being of inward love appearing outwardly as light."

Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 19 September 1924, in The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest, p. 210. Blackboard drawing by Rudolf Steiner.

Adam and Eve

"Adam and Eve," part 3 of "The Creation," in Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, volume 1:


I saw Adam created, not in Paradise, but in the region in which Jerusalem was subsequently situated. I saw him come forth glittering and white from a mound of yellow earth, as if out of a mold. The sun was shining and I thought (I was only a child when I saw it) that the sunbeams drew Adam out of the hillock. He was, as it were, born of the virgin earth. God blessed the earth, and it became his mother. He did not instantly step forth from the earth. Some time elapsed before his appearance. He lay on the hillock on his left side, his arm thrown over his head, a light vapor covering him as with a veil. I saw a figure in his right side, and I became conscious that it was Eve, and that she would be drawn from him in Paradise by God. God called him. The hillock opened, and Adam stepped gently forth. There were no trees around, only little flowers. I had seen the animals also, coming forth from the earth in pure singleness, the females separate from the males.

And now I saw Adam borne up on high to a garden, to Paradise.

God led all the animals before him in Paradise, and he named them. They followed him and gamboled around him, for all things served him before he sinned. All that he named, afterward followed him to earth. Eve had not yet been formed from him.

I saw Adam in Paradise among the plants and flowers, and not far from the fountain that played in its center. He was awaking, as if from sleep. Although his person was more like to flesh than to spirit, yet he was dazzlingly white. He wondered at nothing, nor was he astonished at his own existence. He went around among the trees and the animals, as if he were used to them all, like a man inspecting his fields.

Near the tree by the water arose a hill. On it I saw Adam reclining on his left side, his left hand under his cheek. God sent a deep sleep on him and he was rapt in vision. Then from his right side, from the same place in which the side of Jesus was opened by the lance, God drew Eve. I saw her small and delicate. But she quickly increased in size until full-grown. She was exquisitely beautiful. Were it not for the Fall, all would be born in the same way, in tranquil slumber.

The hill opened, and at Adam's side arose a crystalline rock, formed apparently of precious stones. At Eve's, lay a white valley covered with something like fine white pollen.

When Eve had been formed, I saw that God gave something, or allowed something to flow upon Adam. It was as if there streamed from the Godhead, apparently in human form, currents of light from forehead, mouth, breast, and hands. They united into a globe of light, which entered into Adam's right side whence Eve had been taken. Adam alone received it. It was the germ of God's Blessing, which was threefold. The Blessing that Abraham received from the angel was one. It was of similar form, but not so luminous. Eve arose before Adam, and he gave her his hand. They were like two unspeakably noble and beautiful children, perfectly luminous, and clothed with beams of light as with a veil. From Adam's mouth I saw issuing a broad stream of glittering light, and upon his forehead was an expression of great majesty. Around his mouth played a sunbeam, but there was none around Eve's. I saw Adam's heart very much the same as in men of the present day, but his breast was surrounded by rays of light. Their hair fell in five glittering tresses, two from the temples, two behind the ears, and one from the back of the head.

I have always thought that by the Wounds of Jesus there were opened anew in the human body portals closed by Adam's sin. I have been given to understand that Longinus opened in Jesus' side the gate of regeneration to eternal life, therefore no one entered Heaven while that gate was closed.

The glittering beams on Adam's head denoted his abundant fruitfulness, his glory, his connection with other radiations. And all this shining beauty is restored to glorified souls and bodies. Our hair is the ruined, the extinct glory; and as is this hair of ours to rays of light, so is our present flesh to that of Adam before the Fall. The sunbeams around Adam's mouth bore reference to a holy posterity from God, which, had it not been for the Fall, would have been effectuated by the spoken word.

Adam stretched forth his hand to Eve. They left the charming spot of Eve's creation and went through Paradise, looking at everything, rejoicing in everything. That place was the highest in Paradise. All was more radiant, more resplendent there than elsewhere.

"Marriage is a state of penance"

"Once when the reparation of the Fall was shown me in symbolical pictures, I saw Eve issuing from Adam's side, and even then stretching out her neck after the forbidden fruit. She ran quickly to the tree and clasped it in her arms. In an opposite picture, I saw Jesus born of the Immaculate Virgin. He ran straight to the Cross and embraced it. I saw posterity obscured and ruined by Eve, but again purified by the Passion of Jesus. By the pains of penance must the evil love of self be rooted out of the flesh. The word of the Epistle that the son of the handmaid shall not be joint heir, I always understood to mean the flesh and slavish subjection thereto, typified under the figure of the handmaid. Marriage is a state of penance. It calls for prayer, fasting, alms-deeds, renunciation, and the intention to increase the Kingdom of God."


From "The Fall," part 1 of "Sin and Its Consequences," in Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, volume 1

The One Voice

"I saw spreading out before me a boundless, resplendent space, above which floated a globe of light shining like a sun. I felt that It was the Unity of the Trinity. In my own mind, I named It the ONE VOICE, and I watched It producing Its effects. Below the globe of light arose concentric circles of radiant choirs of spirits, wondrously bright and strong and beautiful. This second world of light floated like a sun under that higher Sun. These choirs came forth from the higher Sun, as if born of love...."



From "Fall of the Angels," part 1 of "The Creation," in Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, volume 1

Friends