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."

A poem for all-hallowed Eve

          At-one-ment

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

Christ: The eternally uniting life-spirit

Rudolf Steiner: "There was an initiation in wisdom, in the feeling life, and in the will. Christianity is the combination of all these stages of initiation. In ancient times, initiation was a prophetic proclamation, a preparation. Slowly and gradually, the human being was emancipated from his or her guru or initiate. Initiation first took place in full trance consciousness...in complete secrecy, in total seclusion...Then initiation stepped forward out of the darkness...in a great powerful personality, the bearer of the highest unifying principle, of the Word that expresses the hidden Father, that is, his manifestation, which by taking human form could therefore become the Son of Man and the representative for all humankind. It did so in the unifying bond of all the 'I's': in Christ, in the life-spirit, in the eternally uniting, occurred historically--and at the same time symbolically--the initiation of all humanity at the soul level, at the feeling level."



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

A Very Subtle Egotism

Rudolf Steiner, June 12, 1921:

"We should accustom ourselves to allowing our personal tasks to be determined by destiny and objectivity.... we should not, as is the case [in the world] today, brood over our own personage--which basically is there only to fill the place which the divine cosmic powers have given to us--but we should attempt to observe signs out of which we recognize where we should be placed. We can do this. Again and again people come with the following soul question: What corresponds to my specific abilities? or How can I bring my abilities to bear in the world? This question is much, much less important than looking around objectively to see what needs to be done. When we get involved with what we notice there, we will see that we have many more abilities than we think. These abilities are not so very specific. As human beings we can do an extraordinary amount; we have quite universal soul qualities, but not so many specific ones. This brooding over our own selves and believing too strongly that we each have our specific abilities or talents that should be cultivated is basically a very subtle egotism. Those who wish to attain the qualities that we are talking about here must overcome this subtle egotism."



Source: First Steps in Christian Religious Renewal, pp. 30-31