Rudolf Steiner:
If the man continues to sleep, the next stage is that the ordinary view of the Cosmos, as seen from the Earth, ceases. Whereas at night the Earth the glittering, shining stars are there for him, together with the Moon, and by day the Sun playing upon his senses, at a certain moment during sleep he sees how this whole starry world vanishes. The stars cease as physical entities, but in the places where they appeared physically to the senses there come forth from their rays — which have vanished — the genii, the spirits, the gods, of the stars. For conscious Inspiration the Cosmos changes into a speaking universe, declaring itself through the music of the spheres and the cosmic word. The Cosmos is then made up of living spiritual beings, in place of the Cosmos visible to the senses from the Earth.
This is experienced in such a way that, if a man became conscious of it, he would feel as if the whole spiritual Cosmos, from every side, was pronouncing judgment on what he has made of himself as a human being through all his deeds, both good and evil. He would feel that in his human worth he was bound up with the Cosmos.
What comes to him first of all, however — and if he could experience it consciously, as Inspiration does, he would notice this — is bewildering, and he has need of a guide. In the present period of human evolution this guide appears if, during life on Earth, a man has woven in his soul and heart a thread uniting him with the Mystery of Golgotha; if, that is, he has created a bond with the Christ, who, as Jesus, went through the Mystery of Golgotha. The feeling that immediately lays hold of a man at the present time — we will speak tomorrow of other epochs — is that, in the sphere he now enters, his bewildered soul would surely disintegrate if the Being who has come to be the very life of his conceptions and feelings, and of the impulses of his heart — if the Christ were not to be his Guide.
The approach of the Christ as Guide — who in this sphere must be conceived of as connected with the life of the Sun, just as the man is connected with earthly life — is felt again in the same way that it was when a medieval Mystery School brought it before the souls of the pupils with the words: In Christo morimur. For the feeling is that the soul must perish should it not die in Christ, thereby dying into cosmic life.
No comments:
Post a Comment