"The actual creators of materialism in the area of science have been the theologians."--Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner, June 16, 1921:

"You will find everywhere in the Jesuit-inspired literature the position that science should occupy itself only with what is sense-perceptible. Science should remain with what is spatial and temporal, and it cannot rise to what goes beyond what is spatial and temporal. By this means they seek to force humanity to stop at a science that speaks only of the spatial-temporal aspect of the world. The rest is referred to the realm of faith, which encompasses only what is decreed by the infallible pope, or his advisory council. Thus, Jesuitism practices in the most extreme manner a strict separation between what should be the domain of science and what should be believed. The Jesuits shine in the realm of materialistic science. Indeed, no one has gone so far in taking up materialism as the Jesuit scientists have. Jesuits educate their students to become especially smart researchers in the materialistic scientific field and shine there. The Jesuits do this in order to make all the greater impression when they say, Science should never hold forth on what Christ gave the pope as his right as the representative of spiritual doctrine. Expressed dogmatically: Christians must see the head of the Catholic Church as the owner of divine teaching. By this dogma, science was evermore firmly attached to the outer realm of matter, preventing the spiritualization of science."




Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, pp. 170-171

The Sixth Seal

Rudolf Steiner, September 16,1907:

"[The sixth seal] presents to us the way in which the human being who has risen to a high level of spiritualization is like the form of Michael. He holds the evil in the world fettered, in the symbol of the dragon."


Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts:

"The Age of Michael has dawned. Hearts are beginning to have thoughts; spiritual fervor is now proceeding not merely from mystical obscurity but from souls clarified by thought. To understand this means to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which at the present time strive to grasp the Spiritual must originate in hearts which beat for Michael as the fiery Prince of Thought in the Universe."

The Fifth Seal: The Sun Woman, Anthropos-Sophia, The Spirit Self, Manas

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

"Then the times approach in which great changes will occur in the cosmos. When the human being will have drawn the Sun power near, the Sun will again be united with the Earth. The human being will become a Sun-being and, through the power of the Sun, will give birth to a Sun; hence we see the woman who bears the Sun. At that point, humanity will be so moral, so ethical, that all the ruinous powers that lie in the lower human nature will be overome. This is portrayed by the beast with seven heads and ten horns. At the feet of the Sun-woman is the Moon, which contains all the bad substances that the Earth could not use and which it has cast out. All the magic powers that the Moon still exerts upon the Earth today will be overcome. When human beings are united with the Sun, they will have overcome the Moon."

Rudolf Steiner, September 13, 1907:

"Today, man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego. When the ego works upon the astral body, ennobling it intellectually, morally, and spiritually, then the astral body becomes the spirit self or manas. That has as of now hardly begun, but when in the future it will have been completed, when man will have transformed his whole astral body, then will his astral body become physically luminous. Just as the seed holds the whole plant within it, so does your astral body hold within it the seed of light. This will stream out into the world of space, its development and continuing formation effected by man as he ever more purifies and ennobles his astral body. Our earth will transform itself into other planets. Today it is dark. Were one to observe it from space, then one would see that it appears bright only through the reflected light of the sun. Someday, however, it will be luminous, luminous through the fact that human beings will then have transformed their whole astral bodies. The totality of astral bodies will stream out as light into world space, as it was also at the time of the old Sun. It had higher beings at their human stage, and these beings had luminous astral bodies. The Bible, quite correctly, calls these beings, Spirits of Light or Elohim.

What does a man work into his astral body? What we call goodness and common sense. If you observe a savage who is still on the level of a cannibal, blindly following his passions, you must say of him that he stands lower than the animals because the animal still has no understanding, no consciousness of his deeds. Man, however, even the lowest, already has an ego. The more highly educated person can be distinguished from the savage through the fact that he has already worked on his astral body. Certain passions he has so understood that he says to himself, “This one I may follow, this other I may not follow.” Certain urges and passions he fashions to more refined configurations, which he calls his ideal. He forms moral concepts. All these are transformations of his astral body. The savage cannot do arithmetic or make judgments. This property man has acquired through work on his astral body from incarnation to incarnation. What develops as man gradually ennobles his present imperfect form to become that being of light of whom we spoke is called the assimilation of wisdom. The more wisdom the astral body contains, the more luminous it will be. The Elohim, those beings who dwelt on the Sun, were wholly permeated with wisdom. Just as our souls relate to our bodies, so wisdom relates itself to light that streams out into cosmic space. You see, the relation between light and wisdom is not an image that has been contrived. It is based on fact. It is a truth. Thus is it to be explained that religious documents speak of light as a symbol of wisdom."





Source: Occult Signs and Symbols

The Fourth Seal

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

"Human beings come from even higher worlds, and they will again ascend to these higher worlds. The form that human beings have today will by then have disappeared from the world. We will take up again that which is in the outer world, the individual letters from which we are assembled; our form will have identified itself with the world form. In a certain trivial presentation of Theosophy it is taught and talked about that we should seek the god within ourselves. However, anyone wanting to find the god within must seek in the works that are spread out in the universe. Nothing in the world is mere matter; it just seems that way. In reality, all matter is the expression of spirituality, tidings of the effectiveness of the god. Human beings will, as it were, expand their being in the course of the coming ages. More and more, human beings will identify themselves with the world, so that we will be able to portray them with the form of the cosmos, instead of the human form. This you see in the fourth seal, with the rock, the sea, and the pillars.

That which moves through the world today as cloud will give up its substance in order to form the body of the human being. The forces that are with the spirits of the Sun today will deliver to human beings in the future the power that builds their spiritual forces in an infinitely elevated manner. It is to this Sun power that the human being strives. In contrast to the plant, which sinks its head--the root--toward the center of the Earth, human beings turn their head to the Sun; one day we will unite our head with the Sun and receive higher forces. This we see portrayed in the Sun-face that rests on the cloud-body on the rock and the pillars. Human beings will have become self-creative then; as the symbol of this completed creation, a colorful rainbow surrounds the human being in the fourth seal. You can find a similar seal in the Acopalypse of John. In the middle of the clouds, there is a book. The Apocalypse says that the initiate must eat this book. Here is indicated the time when human beings not only will receive wisdom from without, but will also permeate themselves with it as they do with food today--when they will themelves be an embodiment of wisdom."




Source: Rocicrucianism Renewed, pp. 90-91

The Third Seal

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

"If we follow human evolution far, far back many millions of years, we are confronted by something quite different. The human being is a physical being on the Earth, but there was a time when the being that wandered on the Earth could not yet have taken up a human soul. This soul was on the astral plane. Still further back, we come to a time when it was on the spiritual plane, the devachan plane. In the future it will again climb up to this high level, when it has purified itself on the Earth. From the spirit through the astral to the physical and upward again to the spirit: this is the long evolution of the human being. And yet it seems like a short period when we compare it with the time involved in the evolution of the human being on Saturn and on the other planets. There the human being went through not only a physical transformation but spiritual and astral transformations also.

If one wishes to follow these transformations, one must go up into the spiritual worlds. There one perceives the music of the spheres, tones that flow through space in this spiritual world. When human beings live into this spiritual world again, the harmony of the spheres will sound toward them. In esotericism it is called the trumpet tones of the angels; hence, the trumpets in the third seal. Revelations coming out of the spiritual world are revealed only when the human being progresses ever further. At that point the book with seven seals will be revealed to us. These seals are precisely those we are examining here. They will give up their secrets. For this reason, the book is placed in the middle of the seal, and below it are the four phases of humanity. The four horses are nothing other than the evolutionary stages of humanity through the ages."



Source: Rocicrucianism Renewed, p. 90

The Second Seal

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

When you compare a man of today with the animals, the difference between them forces one to say that the man, as an individual, has within him what cannot be found in the single animal. The man has an individual soul, the animal a group soul. The individual human being is, in himself, a whole animal species. All lions together, for example, have only one soul. Such group-egos are like human egos except that they have not descended into the physical world, but are to be found only in the astral world. Here on earth one sees physical men, each of whom bears his ego. In the astral world one finds beings like one's self, but in astral sheaths rather than physical. One can speak with them as to one's peers. These are the animal group souls.

In earlier times, men also had group souls. Only gradually have they developed themselves to their present independence. These group souls were originally in the astral world and then descended to live in the physical body. When one investigates the original human group souls in the astral world, one finds four species from which humans have sprung. Were one to compare these four kinds of beings with the group souls that belong to the present-day animal species, one would find that one of the four is comparable to the lion, another to the eagle, a third to the cow, and a fourth to the man of ancient times before his ego had descended. Thus, in the second picture, in the apocalyptic animals, lion, eagle, cow and man, we are shown an evolutionary stage of mankind. There is, and always will be as long as the earth shall exist, a group soul for the higher manifestation of men, which is represented by the lamb in the center of the seal, the mystical lamb, the sign of the Redeemer. This grouping of the five group souls--the four of man around the great group soul, which still belongs to all men in common--is represented by the second seal.



Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/OccSigns/19070916p01.html

The First Seal: "And flesh will become the Word"

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

The first seal presents a person clad in white, his feet of molten metal, and a fiery sword projecting from the mouth. His right hand is surrounded by the signs of our planets — Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. Those familiar with the Apocalypse of St. John will remember that there is to be found in it a description that closely corresponds to this picture, for St. John was an initiate. It can be said that this seal represents the idea of total humanity. This will be understood when we recall some ideas already known to the older members here. When we go back in human evolution, we come to a time when men were at an imperfect stage. Thus, for example, they did not have heads like the ones you carry on your shoulders today. It would sound grotesque, indeed, were you to hear a description of the men of that time. Only gradually was the head developed, and it will continue developing. Men also have organs today that have come to the end of their development and in the future they will no longer form part of the human body. There are others that will transform themselves. An example is the larynx, which, to be sure, has a great future connection with the heart. At present the larynx is at the beginning of its development, but in times to come it will be transformed into a spiritualized organ of reproduction. You will get an idea of this mystery if you make clear to yourselves just what it is that a man achieves with his larynx today.

While I speak to you, you hear my words. Through the fact that this sound fills the air and that certain vibrations are produced in it, my words are transported to your ears and to your souls. When I say a word, for example, “world,” the air vibrates in an embodiment of that word. What we produce in this way today is called “creation in the mineral kingdom.” The movements of the air are mineral movements, so to speak, and thus through the larynx we have a mineral effect on our environment. But men will progress and will also become effective in the plant kingdom. Then they will call forth not only mineral, but also plant-like vibrations. They will speak “plants.” The next step will be that men will be able to speak “feeling beings.” On the highest stage of their development, they will generate their like through the larynx. A man now can only express the contents of his soul through his larynx, but then he will express himself. As men in the future will be able to call people into being through their speaking, so it was that the forerunners of mankind, the gods, were gifted with an organ with which they expressed all things that are around us today. It is they who have made all men, animals and everything else that is manifest. In the literal sense of the word, all of you are words uttered by divine beings.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a God was the Word!” This does not mean a philosophical word in the speculative sense; St. John set down a primal fact that is to be taken quite literally.

At the end there will be the Word. Creation is a realization of the Word, and men in the future will bring forth a realizations of what today is the Word. Then men will no longer have the physical forms they have today; they will have progressed to the form that existed on Saturn, to fire matter.

That being who spoke forth all that is in the world today is the great prototype of men. He spoke forth Saturn into the universe, the Sun, Moon, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter and Venus. The seven planets in the seal point to this. They are the sign that indicates the height to which a man will be able to develop himself. His planet then will consist of fiery matter, and he will be able to speak creatively into this fiery matter. The fiery sword that projects from the mouth of the figure in the seal represents this. All will be fiery, hence the feet of flowing metal.



Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/OccSigns/19070916p01.html

The Seventh Seal: The Holy Grail

Thank you, Kim Graae Munch

Rudolf Steiner, September 16, 1907:

In a symbolism of great profundity, the world's whole being is now revealed to us in the symbol of the Holy Grail.

Let me set this seal before your eyes in a few words. The occultist who has acquainted himself with our world knows that space in the physical world is not simple emptiness, but something quite different. Space is the source from which all beings have, so to speak, physically crystallized. Imagine a cube-shaped, transparent glass vessel filled with water. Now imagine that certain cooling streams are led through this water so that it congeals in the most manifold forms into ice. This will give you an idea of the world's creation, of space, and of the divine creative word spoken into it. The occultist presents this space into which the divine creative Word has been spoken as the water-clear cube.

Within this space various beings develop. The ones standing nearest to us can be characterized as follows. The cube has three perpendicular directions, three axes: length, height, and breadth. It thus represents the three dimensions in space. Now imagine the counter-dimensions to these three outside dimensions of the physical world. You may visualize this by imagining someone moving in one direction and colliding with someone else coming from another direction. Similarly, there is a counter-dimension to every dimension of space, so that in all we have six counter-rays. These counter-rays represent the primal beginnings of the highest human members. The physical body, crystallized from out of space, is the lowest. The spiritual, the highest, is the opposite counter-dimension.

In their development, these counter-dimensions first form themselves in a being that is best described when we let them flow together into the world of passions, sensual appetites, and instincts. This it is at first. Later, it becomes something else. It becomes ever more purified — we have seen to what height — but it issued from the lower impulses, which are here symbolized by the snake. The process of purification is symbolized by the counter-dimensions converging in two snakes standing opposite each other. As mankind purifies itself, it rises through what is called the world spiral. The purified body of the snake, this world spiral, has deep significance. The following example will give you an idea of it.

Modern astronomy is supported by two postulates of Copernicus, but a third has not been taken into account. Copernicus said that the sun also moves. It advances in a spiral so that the earth, following the sun, moves in a complicated curve. The same is true for the moon that revolves around the earth. These movements are far more complicated than is assumed in elementary astronomy. You see here how the spiral has significance for celestial bodies, and these describe a form with which men will one day identify themselves. At that time, a man's generative power will be cleansed and purified, and his larynx will become his generative organ. What the human being will have developed as purified snake body will no longer work upwards, but from above downwards. The transformed larynx will become the chalice known as the Holy Grail. Even as one is purified, so also the other, which unites with this generative organ. It will be an essence of world force and of great cosmic essence. This world spirit in its essence is represented by the dove facing the Holy Grail. Here it symbolizes the spiritualized fructification that will be active out of the cosmos when men will have identified themselves with the cosmos. The complete creativity of this process is represented by the rainbow. This is the all-embracing seal of the Holy Grail. The whole gives the sense of the connection between world and men in a wonderful way, as a summation of the meaning of the other seals.

The world secret is found here as a circular inscription on the seal's outer edge, which shows how men in the beginning are born out of the primal forces of the world. Everyone, when he looks back, sees that he has gone through the process in the beginning of time that he goes through spiritually today when he is born anew out of the forces of consciousness. This is expressed in the Rose Cross by E. D. N., Ex Deo Nascimur, out of God I am born.

We have seen that within the manifest world a second is added to life, that is, death. That he find life again in this death, a man must find the death of the senses in the primal source of all that lives. This is the center of all cosmic development because we have had to experience death in order to gain consciousness. We will be able to overcome death when we find its meaning in the mystery of the Redeemer. Just as we are born out of God, so, in the sense of esoteric wisdom, we die in Christ — I. C. M., In Christo Morimur.

Because a duality is disclosed wherever something reveals itself, with which a third member must unite, the man who has overcome death will identify himself with the spirit that permeates the world, symbolized by the dove. He will rise from death and again live in the spirit — P. S. S. R., Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Here stands the theosophical Rose Cross. It rays forth to those times in which religion and science will be reconciled.



 Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/OccSigns/19070916p01.html

The Spirit of the Earth, the Bride of Christ, Anthropos-Sophia

Light Divine!
Christ Sun!
Warm our hearts!
enlighten our heads!
that good may come
from what we cradle in our hearts,
what we send forth from our heads
with consecrated willing!

Sergei Prokofieff:

"What has been said here is also associated with the gradual transformation of the Earth spirit, a task with which human beings must likewise collaborate out of the Christ impulse. To this end the fourth part of the Foundation Stone Meditation was given to us, highlighting the transforming of human hearts and then of human heads out of the power of the 'Christ Sun.' This twofold transformation of man's being leads to changes in the brain and heart systems of the Earth spirit, who will be increasingly connected with Christ, the new Spirit of the Earth, as His sheath. Rudolf Steiner says in this regard: 'The planetary spirit is also subject to changes that are intimately related to the evolution of human beings.'"


Source: The Mystery of the Resurrection in the Light of Anthroposophy, p. 125

The Spirit of the Earth, the Bride of Christ, Anthropos-Sophia

Rudolf Steiner, April 21, 1906:

"The ninth and last layer [of the interior of the Earth] is, so to speak, the abode of the planetary spirit. This being manifests two distinctive characteristics. One could compare it with a human being, for it possesses an organ resembling a brain; another organ is similar to a heart."

Christ the Spirit of the Earth, Christ the Spirit of the Sun

Rudolf Steiner, June 30, 1908:

"Christ becomes more and more the Earth Spirit, and the true Christian understands the words 'He who eats my bread treads me underfoot' [John 13:18], for he considers the body of the Earth to be the body of Christ; of course at present this is only at its beginning. Christ has still to become the Earth Spirit; He will unite Himself fully with the Earth. And when the Earth later unites with the Sun, the great Earth Spirit, Christ, will be the Sun Spirit."

The Christ in us

Rudolf Steiner, October 11, 1911:
'Imagine that, through what one may call a mystical Christological process, man acquires a body quite other than the one he has gradually acquired in the descending line of evolution. Then think of each of these bodies that human beings have acquired as having a connection with what rose from the grave [of Jesus], somewhat as the human cells of the physical body are connected with the original cell. That is, we must think of that which rose from the grave as multiplying itself as does the cell which gives rise to the physical body.'

The redemption of the animal kingdom

Rudolf Steiner, June 15, 1921:

"We come to the tragic thought that animals are there because of human beings; they must suffer with us, even though they cannot commit error. Enter into this concept with your feeling. Feel this reality, that the animal world suffers evil, even though it cannot do evil....We can do nothing in this present existence to redeem the animals that suffer because of us. We can redeem them only when we look forward to the end-condition of the Earth--a condition in which natural laws do not hinder us from intervening in the redemption of the animal world and from removing the suffering from it. Thus, we must move forward to grasp an end-condition of the Earth about which physics has no right to speak."

Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, p. 127

"The hero is he who is immovably centered."--Emerson

Our cat Tigerlily has died. Eventually every wave of sorrow washes up on the shores of gratitude. I'm like one of those inflatable clown punching bags; gratitude is my solid base that rights me. Q: "So you're God's punching bag? Then why not simply throw in the towel?" A: "What, and give up the fight game?"


"If there is something more powerful than destiny, this must be the human being who bears destiny unshaken." - Rudolf Steiner

"In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer : I have overcome the world." - John 16:33

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory [The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit]

Rudolf Steiner, June 16, 1921:

The closing of the Lord's Prayer was linked in the Mysteries from which it was taken with a specific symbol--with guiding over one's whole consciousness into symbolic contemplation. It was said: When one selects a symbol for the 'kingdom,' it is this: The boundary is the symbol for the kingdom. The kingdom encompasses a certain area. However, it only makes sense to speak of the 'kingdom' when we picture this area within its boundary, when we picture the extent to which the kingdom, the area, reaches.

Such a kingdom, however, has a meaning not just when it is a limited area, but when a force streams through it, when it is permeated with a force. The force must sit in the center-point and radiate through the kingdom. Thus you have something that spreads out through the area of the kingdom. The force that rays out from the center-point is the 'power.' The radiating force that rules the kingdom is the 'power.'

All of this would, however, take place in the interior, within the 'kingdom.' If only this were present, this kingdom with the power would stand there closed up within itself. It would exist only for itself. It is there for others in the world, for other beings, only when what rays out reaches the edge or surface, and rays out from there into the surroundings: so that what rays out into the world is a radiance found on the surface: a 'glory.' The raying out from within is the power. The power that sits fast on the surface and shines outward from there is the glory....Then you seek to find in the outer reality what you have in soul-spiritual contemplation....you seek it in the external world; and you find it in the Sun, because that is the image of it. And instead of ending the Lord's Prayer with the words used in Protestantism ("for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory"), you can also close it with the words: "for thine is the Sun."

"No one comes unto the Father except through me."

Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, pp. 166-167

More powerful than destiny

"If there is something more powerful than destiny, this must be the human being who bears destiny unshaken." - Rudolf Steiner

Today is the anniversary of Swamiji's mahasamadhi

The root of meditation is the guru's form

The root of worship is the guru's feet

The root of mantra is the guru's word

The root of liberation is the guru's grace

                                   --Guru Gita 76





Dhyana mulam guror murtih

Puja mulam guroh padam

Mantra mulam guror vakyam

Moksha mulam guroh krpa

The Redemption of the Animal Kingdom

Rudolf Steiner: "The laws of nature are not eternal. The Earth will come to an end, and what will then exist can do so because a creative working will carry it on when the Earth passes away. Stones and plants will pass away, but what is in us may not pass away; it must be carried beyond the end of the Earth. This can happen only if Christ is in us. Only the animals will come with us--whom we must then redeem. The animals are on Earth because, at the moment when the possibility of sinfulness pierced the world, the animals were at a stage of development when it was inevitable they would be seized by what was good only for humanity. There could be no suffering in the world before the possibility of sin entered the world. Minerals and plants as such do not need to suffer, but they pass away, they cease to exist. The animals were in a stage of development in which they were swept along, through  human beings, into suffering. They must be released and redeemed from this when this stage of evolution is over--when the Earth is no longer. Just as today our laws of nature hold sway, so then laws will hold sway that we experience today only within ourselves. But we cannot understand this if we do not know that the human being was there before the Earth was."








Source : First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, p. 135

Emily Dickinson, washed in the blood of the Lamb

Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door -
Red - is the Fire's common tint -
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame's conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.
Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil's even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs - within -
Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze
Until the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge -

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

"I must think especially of a visit to my class by Rudolf Steiner; it is written deeply in my heart. It was an English class, and I had--as I then later always repeated--taken the children through the Lord's Prayer and had begun to have them learn it. Dr. Steiner entered just as we had spoken the closing words, 'For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.' As we finished Dr. Steiner stood up, went to the blackboard, picked up the chalk, and said to the children: 'You have just spoken the beautiful closing words of the Lord's Prayer in English, and you, of course, also know it in German. Now, every royal kingdom encompasses a certain area, has a certain size.' Along with these words, he drew a circle on the board. 'And where is the power of this kingdom?' The children answered that it is in the middle. 'Yes, it is in the middle of the circle; and the glory, the radiance, which rays out from this kingdom, shines outward far and wide!' Thereby he drew something like rays of radiance and light all around the circle. And then he continued: 'Yes, now what does this all look like?' After a brief hesitation the children called out: 'Like the Sun!' Rudolf Steiner, visibly pleased, said, 'Yes, it is the Sun.' He then left. We kept his drawing on the blackboard for a long time as a kind of living greeting from him to the class."

Source: Rudolf Treichler, Wege und Umwege zu Rudolf Steiner [Paths and Roundabout Ways to Rudolf Steiner], cited on p. 240 of First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal

Anthroposophy: Piercing the Veil of Maya

Rudolf Steiner, June 14, 1921:

Religious life will disappear competely if it cannot represent a reality; it will fade away if it is to be something about which it can be said that everything can be expressed through intellectual thoughts. If this is the case, religious life absolutely cannot be preserved. Through religious experience something must happen; processes and events must exist, which, as such, as processes, have eternal significance not only for human beings but also for the cosmos.

Therefore, we must say to ourselves, everything that we take into our souls intellectually--all that modern science and scientific achievement acknowledges--dies when we die. The living concepts that we form in our soul in childhood, and which transform themselves during our life, do not die, but the intellectual content--even though it extends our understanding of natural laws and has great ramifications--dies when we die.

Do not take this statement lightly. Intellectual knowledge is subject to death just as the human body is, because it is obtained and conveyed entirely through the body. All soul life that is conveyed intellectuallly arises after birth and perishes with death. What is eternal in the soul is found first behind what is intellectual. No abstract concept, but only what we have experienced in life that is beyond the abstract concepts passes through the portal of death with us. Many present-day people will have to lead a long sleep-life after death, because they were fixed only in intellectuality between birth and death. Intellectuality grows dark after death. It will be only after a long time that intellectual people will be able to acquire a content beyond the intellectual, which they can then, in turn, work on for their next earthly life. It is a fact that human beings in their entire development lose much of their present lifetime because of their intellectual lives.

Our contemporaries see this as folly--our theologians, in any case, do--but it is certain, a result of solid spiritual scientific research. To the degree that our entire education today is based only on intellectualism, and because we are so proud of this intellectualism, we deprive human beings of any spiritual, eternal content. From various sides, then, we are inoculating humanity with this intellectualism that is subject to death.

Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, pp. 75-76

The Mind BLOGGLES

To think that this demonically possessed drug-addled buffoon was president for eight years and is now freely slithering among us---it bloggles the mind.




 

Alice dancing under the gallows

Destroying the seed

Thank you, Bradford Riley

Rudolf Steiner, October 27, 1917:

"I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life — ‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of materialists."

Planting the seed

Thank you, Adriana Koulias

Rudolf Steiner, August 25, 1912:

‎'My dear friends, anthroposophy does not consist merely in theories and prophecies. It consists in the will to sacrifice oneself for the demands of the present age. A feeling for this ought to be awakened so that by real human work the seed may be planted for the spiritual life that is so necessary for the future of mankind. If such is our feeling, we shall understand better and better how those who would call themselves anthroposophists must grow together in the concrete and immediate working together toward worthy and serious aims.'

Piercing the Veil of Maya: The Redemption of Thinking

Rudolf Steiner, June 14, 1921:

The intellectual comprehension of the world gives people the illusion that they can, with the content that they have put into their souls, become clear about the whole world: they they can reduce everything to intellectual concepts. For this reason, intellectuals, when they have their intellectual concepts, feel that they possess the whole world. Because such people have given themselves up to the illusion that they have grasped the whole world, they feel themselves intellectually satisfied precisely because of this universal intellectual element. They believe they need nothing more to understand and sense the world. You can understand that preceisely today intellectualism can take the upper hand because people now believe that they can fit the world into intellectual concepts. At the same time, because people are satisfied because they seem to have gotten the whole world into their 'I,' they lose their social connection with the rest of the world. The social element is atomized, split up into each individual. This situation exists throughout the Youth Movement, because, through their intellectualism, young people simply separate themselves into individual 'atoms,' each wanting his or her own religious creed. People are so absorbed with this that they are certain that the religious element cannot reach beyond their own skin. This shows that it is precisely this universal intellectual life that splits and atomizes the religious life and must therefore end in undermining religious life through the particular form modern science has taken. Here the most powerful force for the downfall of religious life exists among university theologians and other teachers of theology who have taken contemporary scientific thinking as adequate to understand the facts of religion as such. Not even laypeople today do as much to undermine the religious life as modern theology does.

Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, pp. 72-73

Piercing the Veil of Maya: Bursting the Bubble of Thought

Rudolf Steiner, June 14, 1921:

"We need hardly wonder that religious life is suppressed when we have a science that simply can no longer speak of the eternal at all. And the rest of the culture that has arisen shows to an even greater extent that science has become only a sparkling bauble, a glittering froth of thinking that has appeared everywhere in human culture."



Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, p. 77

"We must bring the spirit down onto Earth."

Rudolf Steiner, June 12, 1921:

"Spiritual life, as we have it generally in common today...is not a real spiritual life, but merely an intellectual life. People speak about the spirit; they have concepts, but concepts are not the living spirit. We must not have the spirit somehow merely in the form of concepts that sit in our heads; rather we must bring the spirit down onto Earth. The spirit must be brought into our institutions; the spirit must hold sway in what weaves and works between human beings. We can achieve this only if we have an independent spiritual life in which we do not work merely out of concepts of the spirit, but where we work out of the spirit itself."