To love another person is to see the face of God

"To love another person is to see the face of God."  — Victor Hugo

At-one-ment

Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We

Awash in a Sunburst 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

The goal of the universe

Goethe:  "If the health of a human being is complete, if he feels himself to be a great and comely, a dignified and estimable totality, if his harmonious well-being renders him purely and freely delighted, then the universe, if it were able to have a sense of its own self, would rejoice at having attained its goal and would marvel at the accomplishment of its labors. For what would be served by all that effort of suns and planets and moons, of stars and milky ways, of comets and nebulae, of worlds created and still coming into being, if in the end a joyous human being were not to delight in his own existence?"

"Mignon" by Goethe

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt,
Weiß, was ich leide!
Allein und abgetrennt
Von aller Freude,
Seh ich an Firmament
Nach jener Seite.
Ach! der mich liebt and kennt,
Ist in der Weite.
Es schwindelt mir, es brennt
Mein Eingeweide.
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt,
Weiß, was ich leide!








Only one familiar with yearning
knows what I suffer!
Alone and sundered
from all joy,
I look up at the sky
seeking the world beyond.
Ah, the man who loves me and knows me
is far away.
I'm dizzy, my heart
is burning.
Only one familiar with yearning
knows what I suffer!

"The Holy Longing" by Goethe

The words inscribed on the Holy Grail:  Die and Become

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven’t experienced this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth.

The Father; The "I AM"; the Golden Legend; Christ the Lord of Karma; the Marriage of Humanity

The Gospel of John. Lecture 8 of 8.

Rudolf Steiner, Basel, Switzerland, November 25, 1907:

At the end of St. John's Gospel, the writer says that Christ did many other things that are not contained in this book. We must also say that even a much longer series of lectures would not suffice to explain all that is written in the Gospel. In this lecture we will examine the ideas of “the Father” and “I”. These two ideas will give us an explanation of the evolution of humanity, of which we have spoken in previous lectures. Humanity started out from an ego-consciousness that was quite different from the one we know today. By “Adam” we have to understand not a single human being, but an ego-consciousness that embraced several generations. The one who begins such a generation is the “Father.” The Hebrews of the Old Testament actually felt Abraham to be their father, and the single personalities in the Hebrew people said to themselves: "I am not an independent ego; there is one that flows down from Abraham and branches out into all who belong to my people, and also into me.” Just as in a large tree the saps flow from the root into all the branches, in the same way the sap of Abraham, the common ego of the Hebrew people, flows through the whole tribe. When a Hebrew in Old Testament times uttered the name “father” he referred to the whole line of his ancestry, and this ego consciousness which embraced all the generations he called the divine consciousness. When he called upon the ego as God, he called it Jahve or Jehovah. When the name “Jahveh” rang out, the people were reminded that a common ego which began with the ancestor of their race flowed down through the whole people. Through the intermingling of blood this condition became different in the course of time; the consciousness of the “I am” became individualized, and Christ is the power which was to bring the consciousness of this change to humanity. When the man of ancient times said “I am,” he meant something that flowed down through generations; the man of more recent times meant by it something that flows through his own inner being. The first meant the God who flows through the whole community as the divine ego-consciousness; the other feels in himself a spark or a drop of the divine substance.

Now let us imagine that there is transposed to the Earth a Power which makes men clearly conscious that this “I am” can live in each individual human being, a Power which enables one to realize that God has sunk a drop of His own substance into each human being. This Power would say: — “This ‘I am’ is something that is in each one of you, it is a part of the one divine force. What you perceive as your individual ‘I am’ is one with the ‘I am’ of the Father. Whoever of you has developed within him the consciousness of this fact can say ‘I and the Father are one.’ If you look back as far as to Adam, you see the ego-consciousness flow through generations for hundreds and thousands of years. But there is a still higher human consciousness, which was given to man in his primal quality as Man. This is the consciousness of humanity, the consciousness which embraces not only a few generations, but the whole of humanity.” Then came the consciousness which belongs to generations, lasts for generations, and was finally individualized by man to his “I am”. Man, therefore, already possessed the foundations for the “I am” earlier, and for this reason Christ could say “Before Abraham, was the ‘I am.’ ” That is the correct teaching of the occult school; it ought to read: “Before Abraham, was the ‘I am.’ ”

In order to explain the teaching of the “I am” a little more, we will make use of the “Golden Legend”, which is known in all Christian schools. It relates that when Seth, whom Jehovah had given as a substitute for Abel, came one day to the Gate of Paradise, the Cherub with the fiery sword allowed him to enter the garden out of which man had been driven. There he saw two trees that were intertwined with each other: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge; and the Cherub told Seth to take three seeds from these trees that were intertwined. When Adam, his father, died, Seth laid these three seeds in his mouth, and from the grave grew a threefold tree, which revealed itself to many in radiant fire, and its glow then formed itself into the words “I am he who was, who is, and who is to come.” The wood of this tree which had grown out of Adam's grave was used for many things. Out of it was fashioned the staff with which Moses accomplished his miracles. The wood was also used for the pillars standing at the door of Solomon's temple. With it was built the bridge over which Jesus passed when He was led to death. Finally, from this wood was made the Cross to which Jesus was nailed on Golgotha. In the occult schools the following explanation of this legend was given. Within man we see two trees: the tree of red blood and the tree of blue-red blood. The tree of red blood is the expression of “knowledge,” the tree of blue-red blood is the expression of “life.” The two trees were separated from each other. That was taught in the ancient occult schools. There was a time when man did not yet possess red blood; it was not until the ego sank into the body of Man that red blood arose. The life which is expressed in the blue-red blood had long been there; it originated through a higher development from the life-saps and, according to Christian teaching, the time when it was given to man was in the time of Paradise, when the first dawn of the ego appeared in the human soul, when the Deity descended and man was gifted first of all with the group-soul; but in the group-soul he possessed the first germ out of which the individual ego could arise. The legend of Paradise says that when man had received red blood he became a being who possessed knowledge — he learned to look up, his eyes were opened; he learned to distinguish between man and woman.

But this knowledge had to be bought at a price. The ego-consciousness can only originate through the blood dying. In the human body there is a continual consumption of life and renewal of life. The blue blood has fulfilled its task when it is used up, and out of the destruction of the blue blood arises the ego-consciousness. In the soul of man will be developed the forces through which he will learn to control and unite the two trees. Man only feels the ego by bearing about within him a process of murder and death. Man on the Earth is dependent upon the Plant, for it alone gives him the possibility of life. Think how man continually breathes in air which contains oxygen, and he breathes out air that is used up, air that contains carbon dioxide: he consumes oxygen and changes it into carbonic acid. The oxygen, which is necessary to his life, he obtains only through the plant, which changes back again into oxygen the carbonic acid produced by man, and this makes the air such that it can be used again by man. The plant retains the carbon which it separates from the carbonic acid, and it is given back again to man thousands of years afterwards in the form of coal.

The Earth is a complete organism, and if but a small part of it were to be missing, life as it now exists would be impossible. From a certain point of view we may look upon plant, animal, and man as one being, for if we were to take away the plants, the others would be unable to live. In the far-distant future this relationship will be altered. The men of the present day do not know this, but the seer can look into the time when the current of carbonic acid will be changed into oxygen not with the aid of the plant, but by man himself.

This is the great future ideal of the occult schools, that man shall accomplish consciously within himself that which is now done for him by the plant, that man will learn to take up the activity of the plant into his own activity. Within him will be developed the organs which will enable him to transform the carbonic acid for himself. The initiate can already see in advance that the two trees, the tree of carbonic acid and the tree of oxygen, will one day blend their crowns together. Then will the “I AM, He Who is, and Who was, and Who is to come” live as something eternal in each human being. The ego lived even in Adam, but it had first to be fertilized. In the beginning the Tree of Life had to be made into the Tree of Death. It could not be given at the same time as the Tree of Knowledge, therefore the two trees had to be parted; the plant was placed in between. The consciousness of eternity had first to be gained. Christ Jesus bore it within Him, and He transplanted it into the Earth. The three seeds are the three divine parts; Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man. That which is eternal in all, was laid in the grave together with Adam. The consciousness of eternity was announced from the grave: out of the grave grew the tree which bore a flaming device: “I AM, he Who was, Who is, and Who is to come.”

Christ teaches man to enkindle this “I am an individual man” in human nature when He says “Try to support yourselves more and more on the being of the ‘I am,’ then you will possess that which constitutes your communion with Me. Only through this ‘I am’ can you reach the Divine Father, for the father and ‘I’ are one.” A seer alone could grasp this, and the writer of St. John's Gospel was a seer. It was not his intention to record something of historical significance only, but he desired to record that which can be known when one looks into the spiritual world.

When a seer of the time of Christ wished to see what was going on in the spiritual world, he had to enter into the state of sleep. This we find indicated in the third chapter. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Christ by night. He came to Christ because he wished to become a seer, because he had reached the state in which he could become a seer; and he came by night because his day-consciousness was then obliterated. In the fifth verse of this chapter we also find the important teaching that man can be born of the Spirit.

In John 14:6 Christ says “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Where is this way that leads to the highest Deity through Christ? The “I am” works on the astral body and forms out of it the Spirit Self; it works on the etheric body and forms out of it the Life Spirit; it works on the physical body and forms out of it the Spirit Man. When, therefore, the ego of man works on the astral body, the Spirit Self is formed, and in it then arises the Life Spirit. In this way man comes to the true life. In the “I am” lies the way to the truth and to the truth life, because the “I Am” works upon the lower bodies and enables the true life to arise in them. We may represent this in the following way: 

I am	the way	the Truth	and the Life
Direction	Spirit Self	Life Spirit	Spirit Man

The “I am” shows the direction man must take in order to unfold Spirit Self, Life Spirit, and Spirit Man.

In the Gospel of St. John we can also find direct Anthroposophical truths. The writer of this Gospel relates (in Chapter 9:3) the fact that in each human being there is an individual ego, that in this ego there is a spark of divine substance, and that this spark must develop to the “God within us.” In most of the translations of the Bible, Christ's answer to the question “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” we read: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” But is this a view worthy of a Christian, that God makes a man be born blind, in order that God may make His Glory manifest in him? What an incredible conception of God, that can arrive at such a conclusion! This passage is much more simple and clear when we view it with the knowledge of Spiritual Science. Christ replied: “Neither has this man sinned, nor his parents; he is fulfilling his karma, in order that the divine spark in him shall become visible, in order that the works of “The God in him” shall be made manifest." That is the way in which Christ's answer should be translated: “He was born blind in order that the works of the God in him may be made manifest.” Each human being through repeated incarnations on Earth. It is not necessary that he should have sinned in this life; it is possible that he has brought from a former life the guilt which has led to this fate in this life. Here we have the teaching of karma, quite in the anthroposophical sense, karma which works over from one incarnation to another. The fact that Christ's teaching was opposed to the general views of the Jews is apparent, and this also explains the discord into which He comes with them (John 9:22).

There is another passage in the Gospel which reminds us of the teaching of karma. In the eighth chapter we read that when the Pharisees asked His opinion of the adulteress, Jesus bent down without speaking a word, and wrote with His finger on the ground. But the Earth, as we have seen, is His own body. He does not condemn the adulteress, but He writes her deed into his own organism. By this He indicates that, just as seed planted in the ground grows up and bears fruit after its kind, so does each seed of man spring up in a later life and will bear the fruit corresponding to it and that there is no power on Earth that can take away the consequences of a deed. Theologians believe in the propitiatory death: they believe that Christ has died for us and that therefore they cannot accept the teaching of karma, as this contradicts the view that Christ, through His death has taken upon Himself the sins of the world. But when this matter is rightly grasped, the disharmony between the anthroposophical and the theological view dissolves into harmony.

The teaching of karma signifies for life in the world that which the ledger signifies for the merchant. According to the law of karma we must assume that the effect of what I have done in a former life approaches me in the present life, and that what I now do will come forth again in a later life. Thus we have a complete life-balance: on the one side the good deeds are entered, on the other side the bad ones. Now if someone believes that under the dominion of the law of karma he cannot perform any voluntary acts, as his mode of acting is always the result of his former deeds, he is like a merchant who would say “I have just balanced my books, I cannot do any more business, for this would make my balance wrong.” For a merchant this would be a wrong way of thinking, and the opinion we have described above in respect of the result of karma is equally wrong.

When rightly understood, the teaching of karma is not fatalistic; freedom of will and karma can be united with one another in the most beautiful manner. When rightly understood, karma is never something that is unchangeable. And if a man refused to help another in misfortune, saying that he must not interfere with his karma, he would be acting just as wrongly as a merchant who refuses a loan, or a gift of a sum of money, when this can save him from bankruptcy. Just as a merchant enters a loan like this as a debt which he has to pay later, while the lender writes it down in his books as a loan, so will the one who does a good deed write it as an entry to his credit, while he to whom it is done will write it down as a debt. Thus the rendering of help is not excluded by the law of karma, and it seems quite in order to lighten the karma of one's neighbor by deeds of mutual help. A man can by his good deeds show kindness to one of his fellow-men; but there are also deeds which can benefit a large number of people, that is to say, it can lighten their karma and can thus be inscribed in the life-account of many. And when a deed is so mighty as the deed of Christ, it is inscribed in the karma of all men, because this deed lightens the karma of all those who allow it to work in them.

We see, therefore, that the law of karma is also mentioned in St. John's Gospel, and that its existence does not interfere with freedom of action in any way. Through His act of self-sacrifice Christ Jesus connected Himself with the whole of humanity. In accordance with the law of karma, each act is inscribed in the ledger of life: It is brought into connection with the body of Christ, with the Earth, and for this reason He does not at once condemn the adulteress, but inscribes the act in His own body. He receives into His own body all that man does; for karma must always express itself again in the earthly world. This story points, in a very significant manner, to the fact that Christ, through His deed, has connected Himself with the karmic development of the whole of humanity. He guides the future evolution of humanity.

When we examine the five ages of civilization again — the Indian, Persian, Egyptian, Greco-Latin, and European — we find that in the third age the foundations were laid for the Christ Power which will become fruitful for the whole of humanity. What was then placed in human evolution will only come forth to life in the Sixth Age. In that Age the Spirit Self, which will have developed out of the Spiritual Soul, will unite with the Life Spirit. The Christ-power shone forth prophetically from the Third to the Fourth Age. In the Sixth Age will take place the great Marriage of Humanity, when the Spirit Self unites with the Life Spirit. Humanity will then be united into a great bond of brotherhood, and ego will stand beside ego and brother beside brother; that bond of brotherhood we find foretold in the description of the Marriage at Cana of Galilee, which is not only a historical fact but symbolically represents how the sons of men will unite in the Sixth Age into a great bond of brotherhood that embraces the whole of humanity. From the Third Age there are still three Ages to go through before this event will come: the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. In esoterisism an Age is called a day; therefore we read at the beginning of the second chapter: “And on the third day was a marriage at Cana,” which indicates that in the description about to be given, something that will take place in the future is referred to. The Mother of Jesus (the Spiritual Soul) is present at the marriage, and Christ says to her: “What have I to do now, and what have you to do? My hour is not yet come.” Here it is clearly said that in this marriage of Cana something is indicated which will only take place in the future. And as this hour is not yet come, what does Jesus do?

He changes the water into wine. Again and again we find the explanation given that this action indicates new fire, new life-force was to be given to the Jewish people which was falling into decline; for the “insipid” water is changed into “fiery” wine. One might presume that the wine drinkers have thought out this explanation to justify their action. But if we are able to grasp the significance of this deed, we can look very deeply into the evolution of the world and humanity.

Men have not always used alcohol. All that develops in the spiritual has its corresponding expression in the material, and conversely, everything material has also its counterpart in the spiritual. Wine, alcohol, only appeared at a certain time in the history of humanity and the world; and it will disappear from it again. Here we see a profound truth of occult investigation. Alcohol was the bridge which led from the group-ego to the independent, individual ego; without the material effect of alcohol man would never have made the transition from the group-ego to the individual ego; it produced the individual, personal consciousness in man. When humanity has reached this goal, it will no longer require alcohol, and this will then disappear again from the physical world.

From the above it may be seen that all that happens has its significance in the wise guidance of the evolution of humanity. For this reason, a man who drinks alcohol should not be scolded; but on the other hand, those who have hurried on before the rest of humanity and have developed so far that they no longer require alcohol, should avoid it. Christ appeared on Earth to give humanity the forces which will enable men to achieve the highest ego-consciousness in the Sixth Age; He desires to prepare men for the “time which is not yet come.” Had He let things remain at the stage of the “water sacrifice” only, mankind would never have obtained the individual ego. The changing of the water into wine signifies the raising of man to individuality. Humanity has reached a point in its evolution where it required wine, therefore Christ changed the water into wine. When the period comes when man no longer requires wine, Christ will then change the wine back again into water. How was it possible for the power to appear in Christ which enabled Him to change water into wine? As the Earth itself is the Body of Christ, He could make the forces of the Earth active within Himself. On the Earth the water that flows through the wine is changed into wine; Christ could accomplish as a personality all that takes place in the Earth, because all the forces of the Earth must also be in Him, as soon as the Earth is His Body and is ensouled by His astral body.

What does the Earth accomplish with its forces? If we plant a seed in the Earth, it germinates and grows and bears fruit. It is multiplied; from one come many. Through reproduction the animals also bring forth many. The same power of increase, the power to multiply, also works in Christ, and this is indicated in the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Christ possesses the power which is natural to the Earth, to multiply the seed. If we bear in mind the thought that the Earth with the forces is the Body of Christ, and apply it to what we find recorded in St. John's Gospel, many details will become comprehensible to us. What are the Gospels on the whole? In St. John's Gospel we have a presentation of the principles of initiation, such as were to be found in various places in ancient times. What the pupil for initiation did outwardly was not the essential thing for the school to which he belonged; the essential thing was what he experienced from stage to stage, from degree to degree of initiation.

Modern scholars are very astonished to discover in the story of Buddha's life occurrences that are similar to those recorded in the story of the life of Christ Jesus. This is explained by the fact that the writers of these accounts did not record the outer circumstances in the life, but the inner spiritual facts. These are the same in all true initiates; for all have traversed the same path and on the way have had the same experiences. What the initiate had to experience on the path of initiation was laid down in the writings on initiation, and all initiates of the same degree had to go through the same experiences. The biographers, therefore, only wrote a biography of the various stages of initiation. The Gospels are nothing more than old records of initiation of various depth; but what in former times was accomplished in a lower state of consciousness took place publicly in the Mystery of Golgotha. The death which hitherto had been overcome in initiation in the etheric body was now overcome in the physical body. The Event on Golgotha is the initiation of a highest initiate, who was not initiated by anyone else.

Therefore the writer of St. John's Gospel could only describe the life of Christ in the way it is described in the codex of initiation. This Gospel is a book of life, and whoever lives it through will awaken within himself the power to see spiritually. It is a seer's book, and was written for the training of spiritual vision. Whoever lives it through, sentence by sentence, will experience the great and mighty result, that he meets Christ spiritually face to face. It is not so easy to convince people; they must themselves work up to the stage at which the knowledge dawns upon them that the Christ is a reality.

St. John's Gospel is the way that leads to Christ, and the writer desired to give everyone the opportunity to understand it. Whoever develops the Spirit Self will experience within himself the dawning of that wisdom through which he can understand what Christ is. Christ Himself indicates this: He hangs on the Cross; at His feet stand His mother and His initiated pupil, whom He loves. This pupil is to bring to men the knowledge of the significance of Christ; therefore Christ Jesus points to the mother Sophia with the words “This is thy mother, whom thou art to love!” The spiritualized Mother of Jesus is the Gospel itself; it is the wisdom that leads men up to the highest knowledge. This disciple has given us the mother Sophia; that is to say, he wrote for us the Gospel which enables those who search into it to know Christianity, and to comprehend the origin and goal of this great movement.

The Gospel of John contains the wisdom of “the God in man,” Theosophia, and the more that men devote themselves to the study of this document, the more will they receive wisdom and enlightenment from it.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0100/19071125p01.html

Katrina's Message

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.


—Revelation 3:14-22

Were it not for the honor of the thing ...

Abraham Lincoln:  “I am like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. When they asked him how he felt about it, he said that if it were not for the honor of the thing, he would rather have walked.”

Related post: http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2015/07/rejoice-34-years-at-himalayan-institute.html

"Quo vadis?" : Metanoia : Repentance

from "The Acts of Peter":

XXXIV. And a certain woman which was exceeding beautiful, the wife of Albinus, Caesar's friend, by name Xanthippe, came, she also, unto Peter, with the rest of the matrons, and withdrew herself, she also, from Albinus. He therefore being mad, and loving Xanthippe, and marvelling that she would not sleep even upon the same bed with him, raged like a wild beast and would have dispatched Peter; for he knew that he was the cause of her separating from his bed. Many other women also, loving the word of chastity, separated themselves from their husbands, because they desired them to worship God in sobriety and cleanness. And whereas there was great trouble in Rome, Albinus made known his state unto Agrippa, saying to him: Either do thou avenge me of Peter that hath withdrawn my wife, or I will avenge myself. And Agrippa said: I have suffered the same at his hand, for he hath withdrawn my concubines. And Albinus said unto him: Why then tarriest thou, Agrippa let us find him and put him to death for a dealer in curious arts, that we may have our wives again, and avenge them also which are not able to put him to death, whose wives also he hath parted from them.

XXXV. And as they considered these things, Xanthippe took knowledge of the counsel of her husband with Agrippa, and sent and showed Peter, that he might depart from Rome. And the rest of the brethren, together with Marcellus, besought him to depart. But Peter said unto them: Shall we be runaways, brethren and they said to him: Nay, but that thou mayest yet be able to serve the Lord. And he obeyed the brethren's voice and went forth alone, saying: Let none of you come forth with me, but I will go forth alone, having changed the fashion of mine apparel. And as he went forth of the city, he saw the Lord entering into Rome. And when he saw him, he said: Lord, where are you going? ["Domine, quo vadis?"] And the Lord said unto him: I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him: Lord, art thou (being) crucified again? He said unto him: Yea, Peter, I am (being) crucified again. And Peter came to himself: and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said: I am being crucified: the which was about to befall Peter.

XXXVI. He went up therefore again unto the brethren, and told them that which had been seen by him: and they lamented in soul, weeping and saying: We beseech thee, Peter, take thought for us that are young. And Peter said unto them: If it be the Lord's will, it cometh to pass, even if we will it not; but for you, the Lord is able to stablish you in his faith, and will found you therein and make you spread abroad, whom he himself hath planted, that ye also may plant others through him. But I, so long as the Lord will that I be in the flesh, resist not; and again if he take me to him I rejoice and am glad.

And while Peter thus spake, and all the brethren wept, behold four soldiers took him and led him unto Agrippa. And he in his madness commanded him to be crucified on an accusation of godlessness.
The whole multitude of the brethren therefore ran together, both of rich and poor, orphans and widows, weak and strong, desiring to see and to rescue Peter, while the people shouted with one voice, and would not be silenced: What wrong hath Peter done, O Agrippa Wherein hath he hurt thee tell the Romans! And others said: We fear lest if this man die, his Lord destroy us all.

And Peter when he came unto the place stilled the people and said: Ye men that are soldiers of Christ! ye men that hope in Christ! remember the signs and wonders which ye have seen wrought through me, remember the compassion of God, how many cures he hath wrought for you. Wait for him that cometh and shall reward every man according to his doings. And now be ye not bitter against Agrippa; for he is the minister of his father's working. And this cometh to pass at all events, for the Lord hath manifested unto me that which befalleth. But why delay I and draw not near unto the cross

XXXVII. And having approached and standing by the cross he began to say: O name of the cross, thou hidden mystery! O grace ineffable that is pronounced in the name of the cross! O nature of man, that cannot be separated from God! O love (friendship) unspeakable and inseparable, that cannot be shown forth by unclean lips! I seize thee now, I that am at the end of my delivery hence (or, of my coming hither). I will declare thee, what thou art: I will not keep silence of the mystery of the cross which of old was shut and hidden from my soul. Let not the cross be unto you which hope in Christ, this which appeareth: for it is another thing, different from that which appeareth, even this passion which is according to that of Christ. And now above all, because ye that can hear are able to hear it of me, that am at the last and final hour of my life, hearken: Separate your souls from every thing that is of the senses, from every thing that appeareth, and does not exist in truth. Blind these eyes of yours, close these ears of yours, put away your doings that are seen; and ye shall perceive that which concerneth Christ, and the whole mystery of your salvation: and let thus much be said unto you that hear, as if it had not been spoken. But now it is time for thee, Peter, to deliver up thy body unto them that take it. Receive it then, ye unto whom it belongeth. I beseech you the executioners, crucify me thus, with the head downward and not otherwise: and the reason wherefore, I will tell unto them that hear.

XXXVIII. And when they had hanged him up after the manner he desired, he began again to say: Ye men unto whom it belongeth to hear, hearken to that which I shall declare unto you at this especial time as I hang here. Learn ye the mystery of all nature, and the beginning of all things, what it was. For the first man, whose race I bear in mine appearance (or, of the race of whom I bear the likeness), fell (was borne) head downwards, and showed forth a manner of birth such as was not heretofore: for it was dead, having no motion. He, then, being pulled down -who also cast his first state down upon the earth- established this whole disposition of all things, being hanged up an image of the creation (Gk. vocation) wherein he made the things of the right hand into left hand and the left hand into right hand, and changed about all the marks of their nature, so that he thought those things that were not fair to be fair, and those that were in truth evil, to be good. Concerning which the Lord saith in a mystery: Unless ye make the things of the right hand as those of the left, and those of the left as those of the right, and those that are above as those below, and those that are behind as those that are before, ye shall not have knowedge of the kingdom.

This thought, therefore, have I declared unto you; and the figure wherein ye now see me hanging is the representation of that man that first came unto birth. Ye therefore, my beloved, and ye that hear me and that shall hear, ought to cease from your former error and return back again. For it is right to mount upon the cross of Christ, who is the word stretched out, the one and only, of whom the spirit saith: For what else is Christ, but the word, the sound of God So that the word is the upright beam whereon I am crucified. And the sound is that which crosseth it, the nature of man. And the nail which holdeth the cross-tree unto the upright in the midst thereof is the conversion and repentance of man.

XXXIX. Now whereas thou hast made known and revealed these things unto me, O word of life, called now by me wood (or, word called now by me the tree of life), I give thee thanks, not with these lips that are nailed unto the cross, nor with this tongue by which truth and falsehood issue forth, nor with this word which cometh forth by means of art whose nature is material, but with that voice do I give thee thanks, O King, which is perceived (understood) in silence, which is not heard openly, which proceedeth not forth by organs of the body, which goeth not into ears of flesh, which is not heard of corruptible substance, which existeth not in the world, neither is sent forth upon earth, nor written in books, which is owned by one and not by another: but with this, O Jesu Christ, do I give thee thanks, with the silence of a voice, wherewith the spirit that is in me loveth thee, speaketh unto thee, seeth thee, and beseecheth thee. Thou art perceived of the spirit only, thou art unto me father, thou my mother, thou my brother, thou my friend, thou my bondsman, thou my steward: thou art the All and the All is in thee: and thou Art, and there is nought else that is save thee only.

Unto him therefore do ye also, brethren, flee, and if ye learn that in him alone ye exist, ye shall obtain those things whereof he saith unto you: 'which neither eye hath seen nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man.' We ask, therefore, for that which thou hast promised to give unto us, O thou undefiled Jesu. We praise thee, we give thee thanks, and confess to thee, glorifying thee, even we men that are yet without strength, for thou art God alone, and none other: to whom be glory now and unto all ages. Amen.

XL. And when the multitude that stood by pronounced the Amen with a great sound, together with the Amen Peter gave up his spirit unto the Lord.

The World Soul is crucified on the World Cross; The Holy Grail; the Earth is the body of Christ

The Gospel of John. Lecture 7.

Rudolf Steiner, Basel, Switzerland, November 22, 1907:

In such a document as St. John's Gospel everything is significant and important, and it is very accurately expressed. For example, why does the Holy Spirit appear in the form of a dove? If we were to explain all that is connected with this we should need a number of lectures; but we can gain at least an idea of it if we study the evolution of humanity from still another point of view. In our earlier lectures we made a statement which for a natural scientist of the present day would seem to be outrageous: that man was already there at the beginning of the evolution of the Earth, and that he has participated in the whole of the development of the Earth. Of course it must not be forgotten that in former times man was quite differently organized and constituted from what he is today. Even the Atlantean had quite a different appearance from the men of the present day. The difference was still greater in the men of the Lemurian epoch; and still greater in the men of the period when the Sun and Moon were still united with our planet.

In order to enter into the ideas of Spiritual Science on the subject of evolution, we must start out from something that lies close at hand. The human beings now living on the Earth are not all at the same stage of evolution; besides the peoples which have reached a high level of culture there are children of nature who have remained behind in civilization. In present-day natural science the view has developed — and it is held with great tenacity, although new facts speak against it — that the more highly developed peoples have originated from those which have remained behind in evolution; but this view is not in accord with the results of spiritual research. Let us take, for example, the peoples with which we became acquainted when America was discovered. Let us briefly describe an episode which enables us to look into the mental and spiritual life of these peoples. As is well known, the whites had pushed the native Indians further and further into the interior of the country, and had not kept their promise to give them other hunting-grounds. One of the Indian chiefs once said to the leader of the European invaders: “You pale faces have taken from us our lands and have promised to give us others. But the white man has broken his word to the brown man, and we also know why. The pale man has small signs in which are magical beings, and in these he seeks to find the truth. But what he there finds is not the truth; for it is not good. The brown man does not try to find the truth in those little magical signs. He hears the “great Spirit” in the rustling of the trees in the forest and in the rippling of the brook. In lightning and thunder the Great Spirit announces to him what is right and what is not right.” The American Indians are a primitive people which has remained very far behind; their religious views are also very primitive, but they have preserved their belief in a monotheistic Spirit, which speaks to them from all the sounds of Nature. An Indian is in such close touch with nature that he still hears in all its manifestations the voice of the great creative Spirit; whereas the European is so deeply immersed in his materialistic culture that he can no longer hear the voice of Nature. Both peoples have the same origin, both spring from the population of Atlantis, which had a monotheistic faith that originated from a spiritual clairvoyance. But the Europeans have risen to their present stage of culture, while the Indians stood still and then degenerated. We have always to bear this process of evolution in mind. It may be represented in the following way. In the course of millennia our planet changes, and this change makes the evolution of humanity possible. The offshoots, which no longer fit into the conditions, become decadent. Thus we have a main stem of evolution and side branches which degenerate.

If we go back from the point in Atlantis when the Europeans and North American Indians were still united with one another, we arrive at a period when the human body was still comparatively soft, of jelly-like substance. There again we see beings branch off and stand still. These bodies develop further, but in a descending line; and out of them originate the apes. We cannot say that man originates from the ape, but both man and ape spring from a form which was common to both but was quite different in shape from either the present ape or the present man. The branching off took place at the point where it was possible for this original form to ascend on the one hand and to descend on the other and become a caricature of man. We will only follow the theory of the origin of species as far as is necessary to find the connection with what has been said in former lectures.

Among the old Atlanteans the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body. Today the astral body is still outside the physical body during sleep; it is only during sleep, therefore, that man is now able to conquer the tiredness of the physical body, because his astral body is then outside the physical body and is thus able to work upon it. Further influences on the physical body are now no longer possible, but remnants of these influences can still be seen in such phenomena as reddening with shame, growing pale with fear and terror, etc. But the further we go back in the Atlantean epoch and the more the etheric body was outside the physical body, the more was it in a position to transform and mould the physical body. The mastery of the etheric body over the physical was so complete in former times because the physical was much more mobile and plastic than it is now. At a period in human evolution when the physical body only had the first beginnings of the bony skeleton, the power of the etheric body over the physical body was so great that man was able to lengthen an arm or a hand at will, or to stretch forth fingers out of them at will, etc. This seems absurd to the man of the present day. It would be quite incorrect to think of the Lemurian man as being like the present man. The Lemurian did not walk about on his legs like a man of the present day; he was more or less a being of the air, and all the organs which are now possessed by the man of the present day were then only germinal or rudimentary. He was able to change his shape, to metamorphose himself. It is quite a mistake to imagine that the Lemurians were similar to the men of the present day, more uncouth, perhaps, but still similar.

In the Atlantean epoch also, the human body could still be moulded and its form changed from within by the will. This, as we have already said, was because the etheric body was still partly outside the physical body. The etheric body, therefore, worked upon the outer form, and the beings which did not work in the right way on their body have developed into the animals we now call apes. That was the way in which these caricatures of the present human beings originated; they originated from us, not we from them. We may now enquire: why did the apes split off; why did a part stop at a lower stage as soulless beings (we mean the higher soul, not the astral body)? Man adapted himself to the body, but the apes were unable to do this; their physical body hardened, whereas man was able to keep his physical body soft and plastic.

We have to imagine man at the beginning of earthly evolution in a delicate etheric body, which he continually remoulded and transformed. A clairvoyant would have perceived men at that time in the form of a globe. 

The accompanying sketch will help to explain the genealogical tree of evolution. It was fairly late in the Atlantean epoch when the species of animals branched off which later became the present apes. Earlier in the Atlantean epoch certain higher animals branched off; and in the earliest times of Atlantis certain lower mammals. At that time man was at that stage of evolution of a mammal, but mammals stopped at this stage, while man developed further. In still earlier times man was at the stage of a reptile. His body was quite different from the body of a present reptile; but the corporeal development of the reptile has degenerated. Man developed his inner members further; but the reptile stopped; it is a backward brother of man. The creatures which later became the birds branched off still earlier, and earlier than that, man was at the stage represented by the fish at the present time. At that time there was on the Earth nothing higher than complicated fish-forms. In primeval times man was at the stage of the invertebrates, and in the very oldest times there branched off, and have come down in this form to our times, the unicellular beings Haeckel calls Monera, which are brothers of man who branched off in the most ancient times. If we were to elaborate this genealogical tree of man, it would coincide with the one Haeckel describes in his works. We might take over Haeckel's genealogical tree without further ado; the only difference is that Haeckel starts with the development of the lowest animal forms and then carries the development up to man; whereas we see men already in the very first form and consider the animal kingdom only as a branching off at different stages — as degenerated human beings. Man is actually the firstborn of the Earth; he has developed himself further in a straight line and has left the other beings behind at the various stages.

If we observe the time when the birds and reptiles branched off, we see that at that time there were actually physical human forms which looked like the later birds and some which looked like the later reptiles. The seer can look back into that distant time when the spiritual being of man had not yet taken possession of his body; he sees the group-soul of man which floats round the bird-like body. At this point those spiritual beings stop who had no need to descend to the physical plane, and after they had come down to this stage of evolution in the physical world, they developed up again to the spiritual. These are the beings of the astral plane (the world of the Holy Spirit) which kept the air as their kingdom, just as man takes possession of the physical earth as his kingdom. We must conceive of these beings also in the form of the bird, if they are to make themselves physically visible. Hence the writer of St. John's Gospel had to represent the Holy Spirit who descended into the spiritual soul of Jesus and filled it as the Spirit Self, under the symbol of a dove. When we consider this symbol in connection with the evolution of humanity it proves to be very profound.

We will now bring what is written in St. John's Gospel into connection with the earthly evolution of humanity from another point of view. For this purpose we will recapitulate very briefly a conception which was put before the pupils in the Rosicrucian School. At a certain stage in his development the pupil was told the following: — Observe the plant and compare it with man. The plant turns its root downward, to the center of the Earth, the seat of its ego. Its organs of reproduction it turns chastely towards the Sun, toward the light. It opens its flowers in the light of the Sun and lets it ripen the fruit. In Spiritual Science this fertilizing action of the light is described as the touching with the Sun's sacred lance of love. It opens the flowers and brings about the fruitfulness of the Earth. The part which the plants sink into the Earth, the root — this corresponds to the head of man. 

Man turns his head to the Sun, to the light; and what the plant turns toward the light, its organs of reproduction — these man turns toward the earth. Man presents the reverse picture to the plant; and the animal stands halfway between the two. We represent the plant as being turned vertically toward the earth, man as turned vertically away from the earth, the animal horizontal — in this way we get the form of the cross. Plato expressed this when he said: “The World-Soul is crucified on the ancient World-Cross.” The Cross is a cosmic symbol that has been placed in the evolution of the world.

A feeling of reverent awe filled the pupil when he was able thus to look into the development of the world. In the plant, therefore, we see a brother from the far-distant past. Originally man, too, was an etheric being of plant-like nature; at that time the substance of man's body was plant-like. If man had not transformed the plant-like substance into flesh, he would have remained chaste and pure like the plant, he would not have become acquainted with passion and desire. But this condition could not be maintained; for had it remained thus, man would not have wakened to self-consciousness; he would have remained in the dreamy life in which the plant still lives today. Man had to be filled with passions and desires; he had to be brought to a life in flesh. His organs were not all changed into fleshly substances at the same time; the organs which express the lowest impulses were drawn last into fleshly evolution, and they are already in a state of decadence. The organs of reproduction preserved their plant-like character longest. Old legends and myths still tell us of hermaphrodites; those were beings who did not possess sexual organs of flesh and blood, but these organs consisted of plant-like substance. Many people think that the fig-leaf which the first human beings had in Paradise is an expression of shame. No! in this story is preserved the remembrance of the fact that instead of fleshly organs of reproduction men then had reproductive organs of a plant-like nature.

And now let us turn our gaze into the future. The organs in the human body which are still lower organs, the organs which were incorporated last in the flesh, will also be the first to fall away again, to disappear, to dry up in the human body. Man will not stop at his present stage of development; just as he descended from the chaste purity of the plant into the sensuality of the world of passionate desire, so will he rise again out of this sensuality with purified substance to a chaste condition.

Certain organs in the human body are degenerating and falling into ruin, others have reached the zenith of their capacity of development, others, again, are only beginning their evolution . The organs of reproduction belong to the first class, the brain to the second, the heart and larynx and everything connected with the forming of the word belong to those which are only in their germinal state. From these last organs will be developed that which will take on the functions of the organs of reproduction and will go far beyond them. They will become voluntary organs in the highest sense. We pointed out, even in the first lecture of this course, that through his speech man produces forms in the air, and that in the future the word will be creative. Man will by then have returned to the chasteness and purity which the plant has preserved; but it will be a conscious chasteness. The occult investigator can also observe that the heart is only at the beginning of its evolution, it is by no means the pump which it is represented to be by the materialistic thinker; it is a mistake to think that the heart is the cause of the circulation of the blood. Strange as it may sound, the movement of the heart is the consequence of the circulation of the blood. In the future, when man has reached a higher stage of evolution, the heart will also be subject to his conscious will. The foundations of this are already there, in the transverse fibers which the heart possesses in common with all voluntary muscles. Man will then create his like consciously by the word; the substance in the human being will then be chaste and purified, and what at a lower stage was stretched out as the chalice of the flower toward the Sun and received the sunbeam as the arrow of love, will at a higher stage of future humanity be again turned toward the cosmos, as chalice which will be fertilized from the Spiritual. This is represented in the Holy Grail, the shining chalice, the attainment of which floated as a shining goal before the knight of the Middle Ages.

Let us now consider the plant and its relation to the Earth. The plant possesses physical body and etheric body only, and for this reason it is only possible for the plant to have the degree of consciousness which man possesses during the night in sleep. The consciousness of the plant is concentrated in the center of the Earth. The plants are so closely bound up with the Earth that they must be regarded as belonging to it, just as the human hair belongs to the human body. The separate plants do not possess an astral body of their own; they are embedded in the astral body of the Earth, which is correlated to that of the Sun. In the higher organism of the Earth we find a process which is similar to the alternation of consciousness in man between sleeping and waking. In consequence of this the plants grow in spring and summer; they germinate, grow, and extend their flowers toward the Sun. In autumn and winter the astral body of the Sun withdraws from the Earth; the astral body of the Earth is then left to itself; it creeps away to the center of the Earth, and the vegetation rests. The seer can observe this relation between the two astral bodies quite well, and as this withdrawal of the astral body results in a stoppage in the vegetation and in outer activity, man had to receive an astral body of his own in the course of his evolution, for only in this way could he achieve a continuous consciousness.

In former lectures we have considered the significance of Christ for the evolution of humanity; we will now pass on to the study of the significance of this Spirit for the cosmic evolution. The beings who at the very beginning of the evolution of the Earth had already the state of perfection which humanity will only achieve at the end of earthly evolution have their seat in the Sun. Christ belongs to these beings as a cosmic force. His astral body, therefore, was united with the astral body of the Sun at the beginning of our present earthly evolution. He had His seat in the Sun. When the personality of Christ came to the Earth, the astral body of this cosmic force of the Christ Spirit sank down to the Earth at the same time, and ever since the incarnation of Christ on the Earth His astral body has been continually united with the astral body of the Earth. Through the appearance of Christ on Earth the astral body of the Earth has received from the Sun an entirely new substance. If at the time of Christ a being had looked toward the Earth from another planet, he would have seen the addition of this new substance to the astral body of the Earth in the change of the color radiating from the astral body. Through the union of His astral body with that of the Earth, the Sun Spirit Christ became the Spirit of the Earth as well. The Christ is therefore Sun Spirit and at the same time Earth Spirit. From the time when Christ walked the Earth He has remained continuously united with the Earth; He has become the planetary Spirit of the Earth. The Earth is His body, and He guides the evolution of the Earth. He accomplished this union upon Golgotha, and the Mystery of Golgotha is the symbol of what took place at that time for the evolution of the Earth.

Four chief races peopled the surface of the Earth; they divided it among them: the white, yellow, red, and black races. But the atmosphere which surrounds the earth is one and undivided. This is referred to in John 19:23: “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat. Now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout”. The garments of Christ are the symbol for the surface of the Earth; the coat, on the other hand, woven in one piece, symbolizes the air which, undivided and indivisible, surrounds the Earth on all sides. Here, again, it must be emphasized that this symbol is also at the same time a historical fact.

We are now in a position to understand the following statement of the Master. He said “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” (John 13:18) [Luther's version reads: “He that eateth my bread treads upon me with his feet”] If Christ is the planetary Spirit of the Earth, if the Earth is His body, is it, then, not justified to say that men eat His flesh and drink His blood and tread upon Him with their feet? When this Spirit points to the fruits which come from the Earth, can He not then say: “This is my body,” and when He points to the pure saps flowing though the plants, can He not say: “This is my blood”? And when men walk about on the body of the planetary Spirit, do they not tread upon Him with their feet? He did not say this in a bad sense, but to indicate the fact that the Earth is the true body of Christ. This passage in the Gospel is also to be taken literally, and the remembrance of this great truth is to be preserved to succeeding times through the Mystery of the Holy Supper. The profound meaning of the Holy Supper can only be appreciated by one who is able to perceive the value of this mighty event to the whole of cosmic evolution. He sees the force of Christ spring up in the plants which the Earth puts forth in spring and holds up toward the Sun: he knows that the event of Christ becoming man is not only a human event, but that it is a cosmic event.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0100/19071122p01.html

The Working Together of the Four Archangels in the Course of the Year. Focus lecture for tomorrow's meeting of The Olive Branch, a Rudolf Steiner Study Circle

The Four Seasons and the Archangels. Lecture 5 of 5.
Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, October 13, 1923:

During the last few days I have brought before you the four cosmic Imaginations which can be called up through an intimate human experience of the seasons of the year. If we are to arrive at an understanding of the whole place and situation of man in the world, we must seek it through the working together of the beings who appear in conjunction with these imaginative pictures. And here I would like first to say something by way of introduction.

If we open our souls to the impressions which may come to us from the content of these pictures, then at the same time there will come to us much that has been experienced in the course of human evolution as an echo of old, instinctive clairvoyance; today this is sometimes treated historically, but fundamentally it is not understood. Real poets and spiritually inspired persons lay hold of these often wonderful voices which sound from the traditions of the past, and make use of them just when they wish to express their highest and greatest conceptions. But even then they are very little understood. So in the first part of Faust there rings out a wonderful saying which is scarcely at all understood, though it is quoted often enough. It occurs when Faust, having opened the book of Nostradamus, comes upon the sign of the Macrocosm:

Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!
Wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen,
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen

How each the Whole its substance gives,
each in the other works and lives!
See heavenly forces rising and descending,
their golden urns reciprocally lending:
on wings that winnow sweet blessing
from heaven through the Earth they're pressing,
to fill the All with harmonies caressing.

[From the translation of Faust: Part One, by Bayard Taylor, revised and edited by Stuart Atkins]

A magnificent picture — but if one knows Goethe one must say that it is real to him only through his feelings. For what Goethe has evidently drawn from his reading of old traditions and his feeling for them — all this stands in its full significance before our souls only if we have in mind the four great cosmic Imaginations, as I described them to you — the Autumn Imagination of Michael, the Christmas Imagination of Gabriel, the Easter Imagination of Raphael, and the Midsummer, St. John's Day, Imagination of Uriel. You must really picture to yourselves how from all these beings — Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Michael — forces stream out through the cosmos and as formative forces stream again into man. In order to understand this, we must see how man stands within the cosmos in — I might almost call it — a purely material way.

In this connection there is very little understanding, unfortunately, for how things really are. For example, medical textbooks always describe how man breathes in oxygen from the air and how the carbon within him takes up the oxygen; this process is then compared with external combustion, in which all sorts of external substances combine with oxygen. The whole process in the human organism, whereby oxygen is taken up by carbon, is then called combustion.

All this is said because one essential fact is not known: the fact that all external substances and processes become different directly they enter into the human organism. Anyone who speaks of this peculiar combination of oxygen with carbon in man and thinks of it as combustion is talking in just the same way as if someone said: “There is no need for a man to have two living lungs; he could equally well have a pair of stones suspended inside him.” That is more or less how these people talk in speaking of the combustion of oxygen and carbon within the human organism.

Everything that takes place externally in nature is different as soon as it enters a human being. No process within the human organism takes place in the same way as in outer nature. A flame that burns externally is dead fire; that which corresponds to it within the human being is flame living and ensouled: Just as a stove stands toward a lung, so does the external flame stand toward the living activity that goes on in the human organism when carbon unites with oxygen there — a process which, viewed externally, is indeed combustion in chemical terms. All spiritual progress at the present day depends on our being able to grasp these things in the right way. Suppose you take salt with your food, or eat some albumen or anything else: people assume that it remains just the same substance within you as it was outside. That is not true. Whatever enters the human being becomes different immediately. And the forces which make it different proceed in a quite definite way from those beings whom I have pictured in the four Imaginations.

Plate V

Let us recall the last picture: how at St. John's-tide, Uriel hovers in the heights, weaving his body out of golden light in the golden radiance of the Sun (see Plate V, red.) As I told you, we must picture him with grave, judicial eyes, for his gaze is directed down toward the crystal realm of the Earth, and he sees how little are human errors compatible with the abstract but nonetheless shining beauty of the crystallization process that goes on below the surface of the Earth. That is the reason for his gravely judging gaze, as he looks down and compares human errors with the living activity in the crystals of the Earth.

I spoke also of Uriel's gesture as a warning gesture, indicating to humans what they ought to do. It calls upon them, if they understand it rightly, to transform their faults into virtues. For up above in the clouds appear the shining pictures of beauty, woven out of the Sun-gold, and they are pictures of all that by dint of virtue humanity has achieved.

Now, from the being who has to be described in this way — and can be described in no other way — there proceed forces which work directly in humans, but have also a characteristic further effect. All that I am depicting goes on in high summer. The Uriel being, however, is not at rest, but in majestic movement. This must be so, for when it is summer with us, it is winter in the opposite hemisphere, and Uriel is there in the heights. We must picture this clearly, so that if we have the Earth here (see sketch), Uriel appears to us in summer, and then follows a course which brings him after six months to the other side. Then it is winter with us. While Uriel descends (yellow arrow) and while his forces are thus coming to us from a descending line, summer with us passes over into winter, and then Uriel is over the other hemisphere. But the Earth does not hinder his forces from coming to us; they penetrate through the forces which come to us directly from above (red arrows), seeking to permeate us with the Sun-gold of summer, penetrate right through the Earth in winter and permeate us as an ascending stream (red) from the other side.

If we bring before our souls the midsummer working of Uriel through nature into humans— for his activity works into the forces of nature — we must picture the forces of Uriel streaming out in the cosmos, raying into the clouds, the rain, the thunder and lightning, and raying also into the growth of plants. In winter, after Uriel has made his way around the Earth, his forces stream up through the Earth and come to rest in our heads. And then these forces, which at other times are outside in nature, have the effect of making us citizens of the cosmos. For they actually cause an image of the cosmos to arise in our heads, illuminating us so that we become possessors of human wisdom.

We speak rightly if we say: Uriel makes his descent as summer passes through autumn into winter. Then in winter he begins to re-ascend, and from this descending and ascending power of Uriel we get the inner forces of our heads. Thus Uriel works in nature at midsummer, and during the winter season he works in the human head, so that in this connection man is truly a microcosm over against the macrocosm.

We understand the human being only if we place him in the world not merely as a being of nature, but as a spiritual being. And just as we can follow the forces of Uriel and see how they stream into man through the course of the year, so must we do with Raphael, who pours his forces into the forces of nature in spring, as I have described. I had to show you how the Easter Imagination is completed through the teaching that Raphael, the great cosmic physician, can give to humankind. For precisely when we allow all that Raphael brings about, working in the springtime forces of nature as Uriel does in summer — when we allow all this to work on us at Easter through the spiritual hearing of Inspiration, then we have the crowning of all the truths of healing for mankind.

But the springtime activity of Raphael travels around the Earth, as Uriel does. In terms of the cosmos Uriel is the spirit of summer; he moves around the Earth and in winter creates the inner forces of the human head. Raphael is the spirit of spring, and in autumn, as he travels around the Earth, he engenders the forces of human breathing. Hence we can say: While during autumn Michael is the cosmic spirit up above, the cosmic Archangel, at Michaelmas Raphael works in human beings — Raphael who is active in the whole human breathing-system, regulating it and giving it his blessing. And we shall form a true picture of autumn only if on the one hand, up above, we have the powerful Michael-Imagination, with the sword forged from meteoric iron, his garment woven out of Sun-gold and shot through with the Earth's silver-sparkling radiance, while Raphael below is working in us, aware of every breath that is drawn, of everything that flows from the lungs into the heart and from the heart through the whole circulation of the blood. Thus we learn to recognize in ourself the healing forces which play through the cosmos in the Raphael-time of spring, if in autumn, when the rays of Raphael pass through the Earth, we come to know how Raphael is active in human breathing.

For this is a great secret: all the healing forces reside originally in the human breathing system. And anyone who understands truly the circuit of the breath knows the healing forces from the human side. They do not reside in the other systems of the human organism; these other systems have themselves to be healed.

Look back and see what I have said about education: the breathing system comes specially into activity between the ages of seven and fourteen. There are great possibilities of illness during the first seven years of life, and again after fourteen; they are relatively least during the period when the breath pulses through the body with the help of the etheric body. A secret activity of healing resides in the breathing system, and all the secrets of healing are at the same time secrets of breathing. And this is connected with the fact that the workings of Raphael, which are cosmic in spring, permeate the whole mystery of human breathing in autumn.

We have learnt to know Gabriel as the Christmas Archangel. He is then the cosmic Spirit; we have to look up above to find him. During the summer Gabriel carries into humans all that is effected by the plastic, formative forces of nourishment. At midsummer they are carried into man by the Gabriel forces, after Gabriel has descended from his cosmic activity during the winter to his human activity in summer, when his forces stream through the Earth and it is winter on the other side.

And when at last we come to Michael, we have him as the cosmic Spirit in autumn. He is then at his highest; he has reached his cosmic culmination. Then he begins his descent; in spring his forces penetrate up through the Earth and live in all that comes to expression in man as movement and the power of will, enabling him to walk and work and take hold of things.

Now bring before you the complete picture. First, the summer picture at the time of St. John: up above, the grave countenance of Uriel, with his judicial look, his warning mien and gesture — and, drawing near to humans and permeating them, the mild and loving gaze of Gabriel, Gabriel with his gesture of blessing. So during summer we have the working together of Uriel in the cosmos, Gabriel on the human side.

If we pass on to autumn, we have the — I will not say commanding, but rather the guiding — look of Michael. For if we see it in the right light, Michael's gaze is like a pointing finger, as though wishing not to look into itself, but to look outward into the world. Michael's gaze is positive, active. And his sword forged out of cosmic iron is held so that at the same time his hand points out to us our way. That is the picture up above.

Below, in autumn, is Raphael, with deeply thoughtful gaze, who brings to mankind the healing forces which he has first — one might say — kindled in the cosmos. Raphael, with deep wisdom in his gaze, leaning on the staff of Mercury, supported by the inner forces of the Earth. Thus we have the working together of Michael in the cosmos, Raphael on Earth.

Now we go on to winter. Gabriel is then the cosmic Angel; Gabriel up above, with his mild and loving look and his gesture of benediction, weaving his garment of snow in the clouds of winter. And below, Uriel, with his grave judgment and warning, at the side of humans: the positions are reversed.

And as we come around again to spring, up above we find Raphael, with his deeply thoughtful gaze; with the staff of Mercury which now in the airy heights has become something like a fiery serpent, a serpent of shining fire, no longer resting on the Earth, but as though held forth, using the forces of the air, mingling and combining fire, water, and earth, so as to transmute them into healing forces, working and weaving in the cosmos.

And below, quite specially visible, is Michael, coming to meet mankind, with his positive gaze; a gaze that shows the way, as it were, into the world and would gladly draw the eyes of human beings in the same direction, as he stands close to mankind, the complement of Raphael, in spring.

So there, you see, are the pictures:

Winter: Gabriel above, Uriel below
Spring: Raphael above, Michael below
Summer: Uriel above, Gabriel below
Autumn: Michael above, Raphael below

Now let us take the words which have come down through the ages like an old magical saying and were used again by Goethe:

Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andren wirkt und lebt!

Yes, indeed, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael work together, one working in the other, living in the other, and when the human being is placed in the universe as a being of spirit, soul, and body, these forces work magically in us. And how far-reaching is the truth in these words, how far they go! Think what they mean:

Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!
Wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen

— rising and descending! And then the lines that follow:

Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen,
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchlingen!

Remember how in yesterday's lecture I spoke of it all passing over from plastic form into musical sound, universally resounding harmony.

I cannot tell you what I felt when this stood before my soul and I read again these lines by Goethe: vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen! This durch — it can shake one profoundly, for that is just how it is — it is true! It is staggering to realize that these words ring through the world like a peal of bells and are regarded as poetic licence or something of the sort — or as words that anyone might write in letters or articles. It is not so. These are words which correspond to a cosmic fact. It is really shattering to read these words in the context of Goethe's Faust and to know how true they are.

Now we will go further. We have seen how the heavenly Powers with golden pinions — the Archangels — permeate the universe in harmony, working and living in one another. But that is not all.

Let us look at Gabriel, who draws nutritive forces out of the cosmos and carries them into human beings at midsummer. These forces are active in the human metabolic system.

Raphael rules in the breathing system. And now Gabriel and Raphael, as they ascend and descend, work together in such a way that Gabriel passes up into the breathing system those forces of his which are otherwise active in human nutrition, and there they become healing forces. Gabriel hands on the nourishment to Raphael, and it then becomes a means of healing. When that which is otherwise only a nutritive process in the human organism is interwoven with the secret of breathing, it becomes a healing force.

We must indeed observe carefully the transformation which external substances undergo in the nutritive system itself; then we come to recognize the significance of the Gabriel forces, the nutritive forces, in the human being. But these forces are led over into the breathing system. And in working on further there, they become not only a means of quenching hunger and thirst, and not only restorative forces: they turn into forces for the inward correction of illness. The transmuted nutritive forces become healing forces. Anyone who understands nutrition correctly, understands the first stage of healing. If he knows what salt should do in a healthy person, then, if he allows the metamorphosis from the Gabriel-way to the Raphael-way to work on him, he will know how salt can act as a means of healing, in this or that case. The healing forces within us are metamorphoses of the nutritive forces. Raphael receives the golden vessel of nutrition from Gabriel; it is passed on to him.

And now we come to a secret, familiar in early times but entirely lost today. Anyone who can read Hippocrates, or, if he cannot read Galen, can still gather something from him, will notice that, in Hippocrates, and even in Galen, those old physicians, there survived something of what is really a great human secret. The forces that prevail in our breathing system are healing forces; they are healing us continually. But when these breathing forces rise into the head, the healing forces become spiritual forces, active in sense-perception and in thinking. Here is the secret that was known at one time; the secret that is almost explicit in Hippocrates and can at least be drawn out of Galen. Thought, perception, the inner spiritual life of man, are a higher metamorphosis of therapy, the healing process; and when the healing element in the breathing system, which lies between the head and the digestive system, is driven further up, as it were, it becomes the material foundation for the spiritual life of man.

So we can say: The thought which flashes through the human head is really a transmutation of the healing impulses that reside in the various substances. Hence if a man sees truly into the heart of this, and has some healing salt-substance, let us say, in his hand, or some remedial plant-substance, he can look at it and say: Here is a beneficent healing force which I can give to someone in accordance with their need. But if this substance penetrates into the person and passes beyond the realm of breathing, so that it works in their head, it becomes the material bearer of the power of thought: Raphael then hands on his vessel to Uriel.

Why does a remedy heal? Because it is on the way to the spirit. And if one knows how far on the way to the spirit a remedy is, one knows its healing power. The spirit cannot of itself lay hold directly on the earthly in the human being; but the lower stage of the spirit is a therapeutic force.

And just as Gabriel passes on to Raphael the nutritive forces, to be transmuted into forces of healing — in other words, he passes on his golden vessel — and just as Raphael passes on his golden vessel to Uriel, whereby the healing forces are made into the forces of thought, so it is Michael who receives from Uriel the thought-forces, and through the power of cosmic iron, out of which his sword is forged, transforms these thought-forces into forces of will, so that in the human being they become the forces of movement.

Hence we have this second picture: Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, ascending and descending; Uriel and Gabriel, let us say, working in one another, but also working with one another, one giving his possession to the other, so that it can work on further in him. We see how the heavenly Powers rise and descend, passing to one another golden vessels — the golden vessels of nourishment, of healing, of the forces of thought and of movement. So these golden vessels move on from one Archangel to another, while at the same time each Archangel works with the other in cosmic harmony.

And again in Faust we find:

Wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!

True indeed, down to the very word “golden,” for these things are woven out of the Sun-gold radiating from Uriel, as I described yesterday.

Goethe had of course read the old saying to which he then gave poetic expression, and it made a tremendous impression on him. But the meaning I have been able to picture for you here — that he did not know. It is just this which staggers one — to find that when out of a certain poetic feeling a spirit such as Goethe's takes hold of something handed down from old traditions, it so incredibly reflects the truth! This is the splendid thing that unites us, if we are cultivating spiritual science today and these things are revealed to us: when we truly see how Uriel and Raphael and Michael and Gabriel are working together, and how they really do pass on to one another their own particular forces. If we first see this for ourselves and then, having perhaps come across indirectly an ancient saying, through Goethe in this case, we let it work upon us, we see how an old instinctive truth — no matter whether mythical or legendary — was at one time widely current in the world. And then times change, and in our own time we see how the ancient truth has to be raised to a higher level.

O Hippocrates — it is all the same whether we now give the name of Raphael, or Mercury, or Hermes to the one who stood at his side — this Hippocrates lived at a time when twilight was falling over the knowledge of this working together of Gabriel, Raphae,l and Uriel, and of how the healing forces in the human organism lie between the thoughts and the nutritive forces. This was the source from which an ancient instinctive wisdom drew those wonderful old remedies which in fact are always being renewed. Today they are found among so-called primitive folk, and people cannot imagine how they have been come by. All this is connected with the fact that a primeval wisdom was once possessed by humankind.

But now there must really be a problem left in your minds. It is this: If you take everything I have put before you — how for example the Raphael forces are active in spring, and in autumn are carried over by Raphael into the inwardness of the breathing system — you must have been led to suppose that man is entirely bound up with the working of the forces of the cosmos through the course of the year. Originally, indeed, that is how it was. But because man is a being who remembers, so that an outer experience is preserved in memory and after days or years can be relived as an inner experience, so these truths remain entirely valid for the cosmos — but a man does not inwardly experience the Raphael force in his breathing system only in the autumn, but on through the winter, summer and spring. A kind of memory of it, more substantial than ordinary memory, remains.

So while things are arranged in the way I have described, their effects are active in human beings throughout the year. As an experience remains fixed in the memory, so these effects continue all through the year; otherwise man could not be a uniformly developing being all the year 'round. In physical life, one person forgets more readily, or less readily, than another. But the influence Raphael has implanted in our breathing system during the autumn would disappear by the following autumn when Raphael came again. Until then this nature-memory in the breathing organ remains active, but then it has to be renewed.

So is man placed in the course of nature; he is not excluded from the way the world goes, but planted in the midst of it. But he is placed there in yet another way. It is true that man, standing here on Earth, enclosed within his skin, with his organs embedded in his body, feels himself somewhat isolated in the cosmos, for the connections I have described are indeed full of mystery. But this is not so when man is a being only of spirit and soul — in his pre-earthly existence, for example. Between death and a new birth he lives in a realm of spirit; his soul gazes down not at an individual human body — it chooses this in the course of time — but at the whole Earth, and indeed at the Earth in connection with the whole planetary system, and with all the interwoven activities of Raphael, Uriel, Gabriel, Michael. In that realm, one is looking at oneself from outside.

It is there that the door opens for the entry of souls who are returning from pre-earthly to earthly life. It opens only during the period from the end of December to the beginning of spring, when Gabriel hovers above as cosmic Archangel, while below at man's side is Uriel, carrying cosmic forces into the human head. In the course of these three months the souls who are to be embodied during the whole year come down from the cosmos toward the Earth. They remain waiting there until an opportunity occurs in the Earth's planetary sphere: even the souls who will be born in October, let us say, are already within the Earth sphere, awaiting their birth. Much, very much, depends on whether a soul, after it has entered the Earth sphere and is already in touch with it, has to wait for its earthly embodiment. One soul has a longer wait; another, a shorter one.

The particular secret here is that — just as, for example, the fructifying seed enters the ovum at only one spot — the heavenly seeds enters into the whole yearly being of the Earth only when Gabriel rules above as the cosmic Angel, with his mild, loving look and gesture of benediction, while below is Uriel, with judicial gaze and warning gesture. That is the time when the Earth is impregnated with souls. It is the time when the Earth has its mantle of snow and surrenders to its crystallizing forces; then man can be united with the Earth as the thinking earth-body in the cosmos. Then the souls pass out of the cosmos and assemble, as it were, in the Earth sphere. That is the annual impregnation of the Earth's seasonal being.

To all these things we come, if we have insight not only into the physical aspect of the cosmos, but into the activities of those cosmic beings I have described for you in the four pictures. And if we have arrived at that, we can find in many a poem some indications of the cosmic creative activity, for it is there in the world:

Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt
Eins in dem andem wirkt und lebt!
Wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen,
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Von Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen!

In these very words we can discern something of that wonderful working together of the four Archangel beings who, in conjunction with the forces of nature, permeate and animate the bodily nature, the soul and the spirit in human beings — working in one another, working with one another.

Source: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19231013p01.html