Godly Light!
Christ Sun!
Warm our hearts!
enlighten our heads!
that good may come
from what we cradle in our hearts,
what we direct from our heads
with holy fervor!
Rudolf Steiner: "The kundalini fire will acquire great influence on what lives in the human heart. The human heart will really have this fire. At first this seems to be mere symbolism, but man will then really be permeated by a force which will live in his heart, so that during the sixth root-race he will no longer make a distinction between his own well-being and the well-being of the whole. So deeply will man be permeated by the kundalini fire! He will follow the principle of love as his own innermost nature. In the seventh sub-race of the fifth root-race the whole of mankind will be in a real chaos, for the root-race will then be near to its collapse. But a small number of the seventh sub-race of the fifth root-race will become the true sons of the kundalini fire. They will be permeated with its full power. They will provide the material, they will pass it on to the leaders of those who will develop man further. Thus is the fifth root-race directed to the heights which kindle the divine fire; thus is kindled out of inmost depths with holy fervor the divine principle which no longer separates man from man, but evokes brotherliness as far as the human understanding reaches. And thus far shall brotherliness be quickened in our own root-race and in the next. This fire will live in single individuals; and in those who are initiated in the course of the fifth root-race there already lives a spark of this divine fire which is the capacity for brotherliness and will put an end to separation."
"Let your work be the shadow that your I casts when it is shone upon by the flame of your higher self." — Rudolf Steiner
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| September 21, 1924 blackboard drawing |
Rudolf Steiner, January 4, 1924:
When I wrote my Outline of Occult Science I was obliged to make the account of the evolution of the Earth accord at any rate a little with the prevailing ideas of the present day. In the thirteenth and twelfth centuries one would have been able to give the account quite differently. The following might then have been found in a certain chapter, e.g., of Outline of Occult Science. An idea would have been called up, to begin with, of the beings who may be designated as the beings of the First Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. The Seraphim would have been characterized as beings with whom there is no subject and object, with whom subject and object are one and the same, beings who would not say: "Outside me are things" — but: "The world is, and I am the world, and the world is I." Such beings know only of themselves, and this knowledge of themselves is for them an inner experience of which man has a weak reflection when he has the experience of being filled, shall we say, with a burning enthusiasm. It is, you know, quite difficult to make the man of today understand what is meant by “burning enthusiasm.” Even in the beginning of the nineteenth century men knew better what it is than they do today. In those days it could still happen that some poem or other was being read aloud and the people were so filled with enthusiasm — forgive me, but it really was so — that present-day man would say they had all gone out of their minds. They were so moved, so warmed! Today people freeze up just when you expect them to be enthused. Now, it was lifting this element of enthusiasm, this rapture of the soul that came naturally especially to the men of Middle and Eastern Europe — it was by lifting it into consciousness, by making it alone the complete content of consciousness, that men came to form an idea of the inner life of the Seraphim.
Again, as a bright, clear element in consciousness, full of light, so that thought turns directly into light, illuminating everything — such an idea did men form of the element of consciousness of the Cherubim.
And the element of consciousness of the Thrones was conceived as sustaining, bearing, the worlds in Grace.
There you have one such sketch. I could go on speaking of it for a long time. For the moment I only wanted to show you that in those days one would have tried to describe the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in the true qualities of their being.
And then one would have gone on to say: the Choir of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones works together in such wise that the Thrones found and establish a kernel; the Cherubim let their own light-filled being stream forth from this center or kernel; and the Seraphim enwrap the whole in a mantle of warmth and enthusiasm that rays far out into cosmic space.
All the drawing I have made is beings: in the midst the Thrones; in the circumference around them the Cherubim; and, outermost of all, the Seraphim. All is essential being, beings who move and weave into one another, do, think, will, feel in one another. All is of the very essence of being. And now, if a being having the right sensitiveness were to take its path through the space where the Thrones have in this manner established a kernel and center, where the Cherubim have made a kind of circling around it, and the Seraphim have, as it were, enclosed the whole — if a being with the required sensitiveness were to come into this realm of the activity of the First Hierarchy, it would feel warmth in varying differentiations — here greater warmth, there less; but it would all be an experience of soul, and yet at the same time physical experience in the senses; that is to say, when the being felt itself warm in soul, the feeling would be actually the feeling you have when you are in a well-warmed room.
Such a united building-up by beings of the First Hierarchy did verily once take place in the Universe; it formed what we call the Saturn existence. The warmth is merely the expression of the fact that the beings are there. The warmth is nothing more than the expression of the fact that the beings are there.
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| The Altar of Humanity The Solar Plexus The Manipura Chakra The Stronghold of Manu |
Rudolf Steiner:
"This ability to rise to the point at which thoughts about spirit can grip us as powerfully as can anything in the physical world, this is Michael power. It is confidence in the ideas of spirit — given the capacity for receiving them at all — leading to the conviction: I have received a spiritual impulse, I give myself up to it, I become the instrument for its execution. First failure — never mind! Second failure — never mind! A hundred failures are of no consequence, for no failure is ever a decisive factor in judging the truth of a spiritual impulse whose effect has been inwardly understood and grasped. We have full confidence in a spiritual impulse, grasped at a certain point of time, only when we can say to ourself: My hundred failures can at most prove that the conditions for realizing the impulse are not given me in this incarnation; but that this impulse is right I can know from its own nature. And if I must wait a hundred incarnations for the power to realize this impulse, nothing but its own nature can convince me of the efficacy or impotence of any spiritual impulse.
If you will imagine this thought developed in the human heart and soul as great confidence in spirit, if you will consider that man can cling firm as a rock to something he has seen to be spiritually victorious, something he refuses to relinquish in spite of all outer opposition, then you will have a conception of what the Michael power, the Michael being, really demands of us; for only then will you comprehend the nature of the great confidence in spirit. We may leave in abeyance some spiritual impulse or other, even for a whole incarnation; but once we have grasped it we must never waver in cherishing it within us, for only thus can we save it up for subsequent incarnations. And when confidence in spirit will in this way have established a frame of mind to which this spiritual substance appears as real as the ground under our feet — the ground without which we could not stand — then we shall have in our heart and soul a feeling of what Michael really expects of us."
"I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." — Galatians 2:19-21
O Spirit of God: fill me,
Fill me within my soul,
On my soul bestow a strengthening force,
Strengthening force too for my heart,
For my heart that seeks union with you,
Seeks union with deepest longing,
Deepest longing for good health,
For good health and strong courage,
Strong courage that streams through my body,
Streams as precious divine gift,
Divine gift from you, O Spirit of God,
O Spirit of God: fill me.
—Rudolf Steiner
O Gottesgeist, erfülle mich,
Erfülle mich in meiner Seele,
Meiner Seele schenke Stärkekraft,
Stärkekraft auch meinem Herzen,
Meinem Herzen das dich sucht,
Sucht durch tiefe Sehnsucht,
Tiefe Sehnsucht nach Gesundheit,
Nach Gesundheit und Starkmut,
Starkmut der durch meine Glieder strömt,
Strömt wie edles Gottgeschenk,
Gottheschenk von dir, O Gottesgeist,
O Gottesgeist, erfülle mich.
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| "The Christian Knight" by Albrecht Dürer |
Rudolf Steiner: "The famous image of The Christian Knight, or as it is often called, Knight, Death, and the Devil. Please note how this copperplate engraving grew entirely out of its era. Because if you put this image up next to the lines that I cited earlier from Goethe's Faust:
I've more sense, to be sure, than the learned fools,
The masters and pastors, the scribes from the schools;
No scruples to plague me, no irksome doubt,
No hell-fire or devil to worry about...
then you find yourself with this whole character who need fear neither death nor the devil, but instead strikes out into the world. And this is how he is to be depicted, the Christian knight who rebels utterly against the doctors, masters, scribes, and clerics brought into his sphere, that knight who must make his way in the world fearing neither death nor the devil that stand in his way and that he must simply push aside in order to continue his journey. The title of the engraving really should be The Christian Knight because death and the devil are simply standing on the path; but he steps over them, passing them by without paying them any mind."
Rudolf Steiner: "Spirit Triumphant! Flame through the impotence of faltering, fainthearted souls! Burn up egoism, kindle compassion, so that selflessness, the lifestream of humanity, may flow as the wellspring of spiritual rebirth!"
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