Excerpts & Notes

Book: The Death of Merlin

by Walter Johannes Stein

Note: This book contains many marked-out sections, two of which are readings for Christmas and Easter...

From the Memoirs of Walter Johannes Stein, page 36

...a lecture was announced to be given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Vienna, and I resolved to attend it. Dr. Steiner gave a magnificent lecture on the trichotomy, or threefold being, of man. He explained how thinking, feeling, and will can be developed by an inner training of the soul into spiritual powers of cognition. Thinking is then transformed from shadow-like and abstract into a living picture-thought, Imagination, spiritual vision. Out of our feeling, when feeling is made selfless, grows the faculty of receiving Divine Inspiration. Willing at last, when we direct it to the transformation of our own character and being, gives birth to what may truly be described as Intuition; that is, the form of knowledge wherein we become at one with the universe and out of this at-one-ment form and guide our own I or Ego, until the harmony of inner life and outer universe produces insight which is no longer subject to error.

Page 46

...My copy of Rudolf Steiner's Theosophy twice went up and down the front. Everyone who had read it inscribed his name. Twice it came back into my hands. Hundreds had read it: the chapters on life after death and the eternal being of the human soul. On the third occasion the book did not return into my hands; it was buried with one of our comrades who was killed soon after he had read it. Somewhere on the eastern front it may be unearthed one day — the book which worked so powerfully in the souls of all who read it. Rudolf Steiner had said to me: "Whoever writes an occult book takes on himself the obligation to help everyone who reads even a single line of it, throughout his future lives." If this was so, he would have much to do! The last words of one of my comrades who had read it were about this book; a few hours later we buried him beneath the snow. What a power war is! Meanwhile I read and read; riding across country, in the midst of battle, in the long days of waiting. I read and wrote — mountains full of paper.

Page 93

What Basil Valentine calls the Philosopher's Stone is none other than the human being looked at from the threefold aspect of body, soul, and spirit. Therefore the Philosopher's Stone is represented as consisting of three substances, though one in essence. In the mystery schools of antiquity it was always known that the human being must experience a transmutation in body, soul, and spirit if the ordinary consciousness is to be changed into a higher, clairvoyant consciousness. To describe this transmutation in the language of carbon chemistry was the essential content of Basil Valentine's alchemy.

(said on page 115: by the alchemicalistic process, black and dirty coal becomes the shining diamond which only consists of carbon, but radiates many colors. The body of the human being is also created from carbonic matter...)

(and later said on page 131: those who despise the black, dirty coal are not worthy of the diamond)

Page 107

In relation to Troy

Wherever the seeker after higher knowledge decides in a on-sided manner and fails to find the balance which should prevail between wisdom, beauty, and power, the fourth entity, love, which is the power of the individual consciousness in its unselfish form, must lead to a tragic end.

...

Goethe coined this expression in his fable of wisdom in which he depicts the three world-ruling forces of wisdom, beauty, and power in their efforts to divide the dominion of the world among themselves. Finally, he shows that all three powers must work together in harmony under the leadership of the fourth power — love; for love, he says, does not "rule but raises."

Page 178

What does man find by following this path? He finds Him "Who alone has immortality, dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see" (1 Tim.6:16). It is thus required of man to take the path leading to something no man can see. No less is required than to take the path that leads to the supersensible. Therefore it is said (3:16): "Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world." Faith is there for those who cannot see. It is thus by the angels alone that a full knowledge of the Name of the Lord can be attained; to men it can only be preached. But Christ, as is said in the passages quoted above, stands higher than the angels, and this is expressed in the words: "He is the Lord."

Extrapolated from content on page 116

Three primary stages of the development of consciousness:

Raven (black)
Magpie (black and white)
Dove (white)

and on page 186 from Wolfram's Parzival:

If vacillation dwell with the heart the soul will rue it. Shame an honor clash where the courage of a steadfast man is motley like the magpie. But such a man may yet make merry, for Heaven and Hell have equal parts in him. Infidelity's friend is black all over and takes a murky hue, while the man of loyal temper holds to the white. This winged comparison is too swift for unripe wits. They lack the power to grasp it.

Further, on page 187

The powers which serve the metabolic processes of nourishment and procreation are high spiritual powers but human beings can misuse them by giving them to Lucifer through passion, through lust; these powers can also be taken away but the seeker of the Grail must transform them. The Grail knights wish to spiritualize love. ... The nature of pure love can be learnt from teh sun which freely gives its vitalizing strength and demands nothing in return. Grail love endeavors to be similarly altruistic, only wanting to give.

And more on page 192

Those who strive for the Grail have to develop their cognitive powers in a way which adds the power of the Word — Inspiration — to the visions of the Grail — Imagination. Otherwise they cannot partake of the highest: Intuition.

Final note/reminder: Matter will one day again become Spirit.

Reading to the Dead

Source: The Presence of the Dead, Lecture 3. Awakening Spiritual Thoughts, 1914

If the dead draw nourishment from the content of our souls in sleep, then every thought that enters the spiritual world and is concerned with it and its beings can be perceived by the dead. On the other hand, if we do not cultivate such thoughts, the dead are deprived of them. Ideas related only to the material world, to things in nature, live in our souls in such a way that the dead cannot perceive them. These ideas, however scholarly or wise, are meaningless for the dead.As soon as we have thoughts about the spiritual world, not only the living but also the dead have immediate access to them.

That is why we have often recommended that our friends read silently to an individual with whom they were closely connected and who has passed on to the spiritual world. One forms an image of the person and then, while thinking about him or her, one reads on a subject related to the spiritual world. The dead can then participate in the process, which is important.Although the dead are in the world we know through spiritual science, thoughts about the spiritual world must be produced on earth. The dead must perceive more than the spiritual world around them; they need the thoughts of those who live on earth, thoughts that for them are like perceptions.

The most important and the most beautiful thing we can give the dead is to read to them in the way I have just described. We can give something to the dead by reading on a spiritual subject. And if you doubt that this is useful, since the deceased is in the spiritual world anyway, just think that we can be surrounded by things and beings in the physical world, yet may not understand them. The understanding has to be acquired. Thus, although the deceased is in the spiritual world, thoughts from earth have to flow to him. Illuminating thoughts must flow up to those regions where the dead dwell, just as rain streams down from the clouds as a blessing to the physical world.

Initiation

Source: The Origin of Evil

Spiritual science teaches of the existence of certain highly evolved men, the initiates, and it has been taught in the Mystery Schools of all times how man can bring himself to such a stage of evolution. Definite exercises were prescribed there which develop man in quite a natural way. They are exercises of meditation and concentration which are to give man another kind of sight which cannot be attained with the intellect and the five senses. Meditation in the first place leads away from the grasp of the senses. Through inner soul-work man becomes free of the senses. Something then takes place similar to the operation on a man born blind. There is a kind of operation which opens man's spiritual eyes and ears. It will be attained in the development of the whole human race in the course of a long period of time. But one must not disclaim the world when one wishes to rise higher; an ascetic fleeing from the world does not serve clairvoyance. Clairvoyance is the fruit of what the soul collects in the sense-world. Greek philosophy beautifully compared the human soul with a bee. The world of colour and light offers the soul honey which it brings with it into the higher world. The soul must spiritualise sense experience and carry it up into higher worlds.

Fairy Tales

Source: The Gospel of St. Luke Lectures

In the body of Gautama Buddha lie the causes enabling men in all ages to develop in their own being the powers of the Eightfold Path. Buddha's existence ensured for men the possibility of right thinking! And whatever comes to pass in the future in this respect, until the principles of the Eightfold Path become reality in the whole of mankind, will all be thanks to that existence. What Buddha bore within himself he surrendered to men for their spiritual nourishment.

Generally speaking, no science to-day perceives these significant facts in the evolution of humanity, but they are often presented in simple fairy-tales and legends. I have emphasized more than once that fairy-tales and legends are often wiser and more truly 'scientific' than our objective science itself. In its depths the human soul has always sensed a certain truth connected with the nature of a Being such as a Bodhisattva: that, to begin with, something streams down from above, then becomes by degrees a possession of the soul and thereafter rays back again into the cosmos from the soul itself. Men who were able to feel the significance of this either dimly or clearly said to themselves: like the rays of the sun from the heavens, so did the Bodhisattva once ray down upon the Earth the forces of the doctrine of compassion and love, the forces developed through the principles of the Eightfold Path. But then the Bodhisattva descended into a human body and surrendered to men the power that was once his own possession. This power now lives in humanity and streams back into the cosmos as the rays of the sun are reflected back in the moon's light. This was felt to be of special significance in regions where it was customary to express such a truth in the form of a fairy-tale or legend. Thus the following remarkable legend was narrated in the regions where the Bodhisattva appeared.

Once upon a time the Buddha lived as a hare. It was an age when other creatures of many different species were looking for food, but it had all been consumed. The plant food which the hare itself could eat was not suitable for carnivorous creatures. The hare, who was in reality the Buddha, saw a Brahman passing by and resolved to sacrifice himself in order to provide food. At that moment the God appeared and saw the noble deed. A chasm opened and swallowed the hare. Then the God took a tincture and drew the picture of the hare on the moon. And since that time the picture of Buddha as the hare is to be seen on the face of the moon. In the West we do not speak of the 'hare in the moon' but of the 'man in the moon'.

A Kalmuck fairy-tale expresses this still more cogently. In the moon lives a hare; it came there because once upon a time the Buddha sacrificed himself and the Earth-Spirit drew the picture of the hare on the moon. This expresses the great truth of the Bodhisattva becoming Buddha and sacrificing the substance of his very being to mankind for nourishment, so that his forces now ray out into the world from the hearts of men.

The Soul's Origin

Source: Theosophy and Spiritism, 1 February 1904, Berlin

You know that no clock comes into being by means of mere natural forces, but that human astuteness is necessary to produce the necessary combinations. Those are right who say: if we investigate the organism of the living body, we find no God, no divine creativity, but only natural forces. They do not find the spiritual, creative forces. Already if you think about that a little bit, you can get it clear to your mind. Even if you study a clock, you can explain it quite mechanically, and, in the end, you are forced to raise the question about the wisdom, about the human reason and about the watchmaker who made it, and you cannot find him in the clock, too. One sees from it: the question is put wrongly. The comparison of the human organism with a clock absolutely holds good, but it must be properly applied. It is correct if one says: as little as a clock and its clockwork can originate without the mental influence of a watchmaker as little as the human soul came into being without the spiritual influence of its creator — this human soul with the present consciousness, as we know it, which teaches us of the environment, which calculates, deduces, and informs us about our moral life. Imagine what was necessary — I have to talk figuratively — to create the basis for this peak of the organic life, for the human mind within this human organic development.

It is easy to imagine that these legitimate creators of the organism could have built only up to one of the lower steps that they would never have been able to create this intricate human organism which was to be used for the human soul as a useful tool. They had to reach a peak of their capacity. We go back to those times which preceded the development of the human soul in which the development did not yet get to a human peak. Then we find that these beings are built up wisdom-filled, and it becomes clear to us at the same time that the forces which created these beings can be seen by us human beings just as little as the watchmaker of the clock can be seen. The human being knows about the spiritual powers, forces and beings which carefully prepared this in which his soul lives as little as the mechanical clockwork in the clock knows about the mental activity of the watchmaker.

Spiritual forces worked on the construction of our organism and are still working in us. Those forces which formed our organism so that it is able to breathe, to send blood through the veins, to digest that it concentrates substances and forces in the brain and makes the brain the suitable tool of the soul, until the human soul could come into being — still today these soul forces are at work. But as little as gravitation, as magnetism can be seen, as little we see the forces which manifest themselves as our desires, passions, wishes and impulses, just as little we can recognise the creative forces which were effective with the construction of the organism. Imagine the human being would not yet be at the height where he has a clear consciousness. Imagine him being transported in that time when these forces of consciousness had not yet taken possession of his organism.

Before our highly developed brain could be built in the course of world evolution, other forms of the brain developed which are even today always in us, covered and controlled by the highly developed perfect brain of the human being of our time. In an certain way — unaware to the human being — the spiritual creators of the world built up the nature of desires and impulses of the human being; that nature which the human being has with the animals in common to produce the tool of the soul as their peak. Still today these spiritual beings which built up us are active; they are beside us, in us, and are as real as this lamp is real here in the physical world. We move in our physical world and know about the things of the world because we have attained a clear consciousness. Round us many beings live which fell behind on former levels of existence. Exactly the same way as the human beings advanced, certain beings fell behind and constitute a spiritual world for themselves. But also for them the development will not come to a standstill. Just as our consciousness developed to our height and clearness, their development also advances. One cannot deny further advancement to higher and higher levels to our consciousness. However, if the human being has developed not only up to this clear consciousness, but to an even higher view, then we recognise the spiritual worlds again which always surround us.

Stages of Kamaloka: Purification of the Soul

Source: (not recorded)

The soul's task is to give the spirit direction toward the physical. It is the intermediary between the physical body and the spirit.

Once the soul breaks free of the physical body after death, it moves into the soul world. The spirit must now become free of what the soul holds from its experiences with the physical world and the body with its attachments to the life just passed.

Below are listed the seven regions (or stages) of the soul world. In each one a (somewhat) different "attachment" is purged.

Burning Desires

These are the coarsest, lowest, most selfish desires of the physical life; physical enjoyments that cannot be satisfied in the soul world — cravings that are intensified by the impossibility of satisfaction. These are lusts purged through the pain not of punishment but by the demand of the soul for purification.
Sympathies & Antipathies

The joys sought in the glitter of impressions made by the physical objects of life die out.
Wishes

The wishes and desire for something different in life, for experiences other than those that one actually did experience. Example: a different career, a missed romantic relationship, etc. These might also be characterized as regrets. These must also die off.
Feelings for Comfort

The soul's attachment to comfort/discomfort related to the body/physical life must be broken so that the soul becomes ready to pour itself into the common soul world with sympathy.
Improper Joy of Nature

The pleasures of nature that are based solely on the senses (and not seeking the spirit that reveals itself in the events and things of nature) must be overcome.
Thirst for Action

The thirst for the sensory satisfaction that results from action which is based on egoism (and not selflessness) must be overcome. Example: feeling good about oneself for the performance of a 'good deed.'
Materialistic Views

All indications to the sensory physical world i.e. that the soul's activity is based on a devotion to the physical world — the view that all is good that pertains to physical life. These must be overcome.

Once the above has been achieved, the soul is then absorbed into its own world (by overcoming the last trace of its connection to the earth and the just-passed life) and the spirit is set free to rise to its own heights.

Understanding The Spiritual Beings

Source: The Influence of Spiritual Beings on Man

The beings who stand next above man are called in esoteric Christian terminology "Angels," Angeloi. The Angels are therefore beings who in the Moon-evolution, the planetary forerunner of our Earth, had already attained human consciousness and who stand today one stage higher than humanity. In the Jupiter-evolution man will himself have the consciousness which is possessed today by the beings whom we call Angels, Angeloi. This then is the first stage of beings standing above man, and from certain other connections we know of the subsequent stages.

Passing upwards beyond the Angels we have the Archangels, Archangeloi; then the rank of the "Original Forces" whom we also call Archai; and then the "Revelations" or Powers, Exusiai; the so-called Mights or Dynameis; the Dominions or Kyriotetes; the Thrones; the Cherubim, and the Seraphim. Then only, beyond the Seraphim, should we speak of what in the Christian sense, one calls the actual "Godhead." Genuine occultism, true spiritual science, cannot share the usual trivial notion that man can look up direct to the highest Divinity; we have the whole ladder of Beings whom we call Angels, Archangels, and so on, standing between. In a certain respect it is a sign of indolence to say — as we can often hear today — "Well, why do we need the whole succession of beings? Man can quite well come to a direct relationship to the Godhead." The student of spiritual science cannot share this indolence, for the beings are absolutely real. And today we will say something of their qualities and their tasks.

[Man] can perceive mineral beings, plant beings, animal beings and the human kingdom itself. We can therefore describe the human consciousness as one having for its contents these four kingdoms perceptible to the outer senses.

...the Angel's consciousness does not reach down to where the stones, rocks, minerals are. On the other hand it includes plant, animal and human beings together with its own kingdom of Angels which there plays the same role as the human kingdom does for us. We can say then that the Angels are also aware consciously of four kingdoms, the kingdoms of plant, animal, man and the kingdom of the Angels.

[The Angels] have no physical body and therefore no organs of the physical body such as eyes, ears, and so on. Hence they do not perceive the physical world. As their lowest being they have the etheric body and hence have a certain relationship with the plants. Their consciousness can descend as low as the plants and they can perceive them. On the other hand, where there is mineral they perceive a hollow space...

... men bear a certain relationship to each other; there are those who lead and those who are led. I wish to allude only to children and grown-up teachers: children must be guided until they are as mature as the teachers. Men are growing in their present development into the Jupiter consciousness, which will be similar to what the Angels possess today. The Angels today are therefore actually the leaders of men, their guides, preparing them, and there exists an intimate connection between what gradually develops in man and the task of these Angel beings.

We have said that man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego and that he is now occupied in transforming his astral body so that it gradually becomes spirit-self. He is working on his other members as well, but the essential task of earthly existence consists in the full development of the spirit-self. The Angels have developed it already, they had developed it when Earth-existence began, and thus the Angels in the hierarchies of evolution are the spirits which guide this task of man — the transforming of the astral body into the spirit-self.

This process of purification and 'ordering' of the astral body, which results in the transformation of the astral body is fundamental to esoteric development, and to the healthy development and growth of the total human being. This process of purification or Catharsis means that through the activity of the I, certain thoughts, feelings and impulses that arise within the human being and his astral body, are in a sense corrected by the corresponding moral impulse. Each time the I consciously resists these lower impulses and acts to correct them, through what may be termed 'Strength of Will and Moral Thinking', he (the Astral body) is strengthened.
During this process of purification of the astral body, the I must so act upon and face every single desire thought impulse that has been impressed and stored within the astral body [and is part of one's Individuality and karmic package]. Every desire or thought is faced again through this process of astral purging.

When we practice meditation and initiation excercises, this process of catharsis is stimulated within us whilst we are incarnate in a body upon Earth. The exercises and anthroposophical literature are written with an exactly planned order and structure so as to stimulate the processes of catharsis or astral purging.
Every time that, as I beings, we give our thoughts and forces to desires of a material nature, we are creating experiences that we must face during catharsis. And the greater force of the desire bestowed, the greater will be the intensity of the experience during the purging and cleansing of the astral body. The greater the force of the desire, the greater the 'will force and moral fortitude' that is required to redeem it.

Source: Gender and Sexuality Deep Dive

...we know too that man not only forms this body but that in Devachan he is by no means inactive. It would be a false idea to think that man had only to occupy himself. with himself. The world is not built up on such egotism. In every situation of life the world requires man to share in working on the earth and during his stay in Devachan he shares in work upon the earth's surface. We are aware of the fact that the ground on which we stand today looked quite different a few centuries ago; the earth is continually transformed. At the time when Christ Jesus walked upon earth there were mighty forests here, there were quite other plants and animals. Thus the face of the earth is continuously changed. Just as men labor with physical forces in building cities and so on, so from Devachan they work with those forces which transform the physiognomy of the Earth together with the plant and animal kingdoms. In a new incarnation therefore man meets a ground that presents quite a different picture; he always experiences something new. It is not for nothing that man is born into a new incarnation; he is to experience something new. Man contributes to the transformation of the Earth, but he cannot do it without guidance. He cannot determine the succeeding incarnations, for then he would not need to experience first what is to happen in the future. And the beings who guide man's work of transforming the earth with the forces of Devachan, who create the harmony between the different human individuals and the evolution of the earth as it corresponds to them, these spiritual Beings are the Angels.

In a part of Christian doctrine it speaks of man's Guardian Angel and that is a conception completely corresponding to reality. They are the beings who create the harmony between the human individual and the course of earthly evolution until man will have advanced so far at the end of Earth's evolution that he can release his Angel. He will then himself have the consciousness of an Angel.

Now you will readily understand that the Archangels have a consciousness that no longer reaches down to the plant kingdom but only to the animal kingdom. The plants, so to speak, do not exist for them, the plant kingdom is too subordinate, too insignificant. They still have points of contact with the animal kingdom and can perceive it. They have no etheric body, the astral body is the lowest member of their being. The animal has an astral body and hence the Archangels work in the astral bodies of the animals. In addition they perceive the human kingdom, the kingdom of the Angels and their own kingdom. The Archangel kingdom is that to which they say "I," as is for man the human "I." These beings too have an important mission, and since they have a consciousness two stages higher than man, you can understand that the mission must be a very lofty one. The consciousness of the Archangels is so high that they have fully perfected the life-spirit, Budhi, and they can therefore guide and lead in earthly evolution from an insight corresponding to the life-spirit. This is shown in the fact that the Archangels are leaders of whole peoples; what one calls the folk spirit, the common spirit of the people or folk, is in reality one of the Archangels. You will now find it comprehensible that those peoples who were still conscious of such a spiritual connection, did not look up direct to the highest Being, but that they turned their gaze to the Beings nearest to them, who directed and led them.

[As an example, Michael was by the ancient Hebrews] called literally the Countenance of God.

...there is a spiritual representative, an Archangel, who leads and directs the people as a whole. This Being reaches down into the animal world, and this was felt by the peoples, they felt it out of their instinct. The one folk dwelt here, the other there, and according to the different regions they occupied they had to make use of such and such animals. ... when we consider the animals, these are apportioned to us by the guiding spirit of the whole people. They therefore saw the power which supplied the animals to them as a sacred power and the way in which they treated the animals was an expression of this consciousness. ... It was as if the guiding Archangels shone in, and you can see portrayed in the different animal groups the esoteric expression of the ruling Archangels. Many of the Egyptian idols were based on the conception that the Archangel, the guiding spirit of the people, reached down as far as the animals. This is the special task of the Archangels; there is, however, still another task. [These are other, specific, tasks of each Archangel over (their particular) groups of people. Examples from the Book of Enoch are given in the lecture.]

Now we come to the rank of the "Original Forces." They are still more lofty beings whose consciousness no longer descends to the animals. When the initiate lifts himself to intercourse with the Original Forces, he does not impart to them out of his human consciousness information about the animal forms on the earth. For their consciousness reaches down only to man; then they know the kingdom of the Angels, the kingdom of the Archangels and their own kingdom. To themselves they say "I," and human beings are the lowest hierarchy which they perceive. For the Original Forces man is the lowest kingdom, just as the stone, the mineral, is the lowest for man. We see from this that they guide the progress of humanity from a very lofty height. People here and there have an inkling that something exists as a kind of "Spirit of the Age," that differs according to the different epochs. We have often spoken here of the Spirit of the Epochs. We have said, for example, that in the first culture-epoch of the Post-Atlantean Age, that of the ancient Indian people, the Spirit of the Epoch consisted in the fact that men looked back to Atlantean times when they dimly perceived higher kingdoms around them. So the Yoga system arose, by means of which they sought to rise into the higher worlds. The physical plane of external reality had little value for them; it was maya, illusion. It will seem strange to you, but it is actually true, that if the ancient Indian civilization, with its lack of interest in the physical plane, had continued, there would never have been railways, telephones, and such things as exist in the physical world today. For it would not have seemed at all important to occupy oneself seriously with physical laws in order to people the world with all that today represents the achievements of civilization.

...you have for each epoch a definite spirit, and the evolution of the Earth comes about through one Spirit of the Epochs being relieved by another — that is the case in detail. People rise to the conception of Ages, but they do not know that behind this whole progress of the Ages, Spirits of the Epochs stand, nor do they know that to bring to expression the Spirit of their epoch they are only the instruments here on earth of Spirits standing behind them. Just think of Giordano Bruno. If Giordano Bruno had been born in the 8th century, he would not have become what he became in the period ruled by the Epochal Spirit whose expression he then became. He was the instrument of the Time-Spirit, and the same applies to other outstanding human beings. And conversely, the Epochal Spirit would not have been able to find such an expression as it found in Giordano Bruno, if Giordano Bruno had been born in the 8th century. By such things we see how men are the instruments of the Epochal Spirits who are the guiding beings of the great epochs and also of the Spirits of the "meanings and conceptions" of the smaller epochs. They are the Original Forces, they extend their consciousness down to man. They have no directing influence over what brings man together with other nature-kingdoms, for their consciousness does not reach the animal kingdom. How men conduct their lives according to the spirit of the time, how they found states, found sciences, cultivate their fields — everything of human origin, the progress of civilization from beginning to end stands under the guidance of the Original Forces. They lead man in so far as he has to do with others.

Satan

I have drawn your attention at various times to the fact that certain beings from each spiritual hierarchy stay be-hind, they have not risen as high as the others, but have stood still, so to speak, in world-evolution. You will be able to realize that there are beings who should have risen during the Moon-evolution to the rank of the Revelations or Powers, but who have only reached the Original Forces. They are different from those who have ascended to that stage in the normal course of evolution. Hence there are on earth Original Forces who are really immature Powers. We are now learning to know from another aspect many things of which we have heard already. Concealed behind the Original Forces, therefore, are some who could actually be Powers, and among the Original Forces who have really no right to be there is that being whom one is right in calling "Satan" — Satan, the "Unlawful Prince of this World." This is a truth, however, only to those who look at things from the aspect of spiritual science. The Lawful Prince is one of the "Powers," Yahve or Jehovah; the unlawful belongs to the ranks of the Original Forces. He expresses himself by continually bringing confusion into man's relation to the Time-Spirit, by bringing men to contradict the Epochal Spirit. That is the true nature of the Spirit who is also called the "Spirit of Darkness," or the Unlawful Prince of our Earth, he who claims to be the actual guide and leader of men. You will now grasp what a deep meaning lies in the fact that the Christ appeared in order through His mission to throw a light upon the whole succeeding evolution, and that He must wage war against this Unlawful Prince of this World. The very deepest wisdom lies behind what is expressed in this remarkable passage in the Gospel.

We have now raised ourselves to very lofty Spirits, and we come next to the hierarchy who are called "Revelations," Exusiai. To them, for instance, belongs the being whom we have come to know in other connections as Yahve or Jehovah, together with his companions, the Elohim. The Spirits of Light belong to the order of the Powers or Revelations. We know that Yahve had six companions who separated off the sun. Yahve himself went with the moon which reflected the sun's light to the earth, but he is a companion of the other Elohim. If you now try to determine the consciousness of the Revelations on the analogy of what has gone before, you will realize that they do not concern themselves about the individual. Individual human beings are guided by the Angels, Archangels, Original Forces, up to those we have called Epochal Spirits. The whole structure in which man is embedded, the guidance of the planet and what occurs on it is the affair of the Revelations or Powers. For the whole present evolution of humanity could not have gone on without, on the one hand, the accelerating sun forces, and, on the other, the hindering moon forces. The Revelations or Powers have nothing to do with separate men but with groups of men. They guide the external powers and beings who give the planet its configuration and whom man needs in order that he may go through his evolution.

And so finally we look up to a lofty Being Who surpasses all that we have just described, the Christ Being Himself. Christ brings something to earth which is not concerned with the individual man, but with the guidance of all mankind. And to the Christ man must find his way himself; for it is only the Original Forces who constrain man to find them; to the Christ he must come of his own free will.

Thus we have formed some conception of the lowest ranks of the hierarchies set above man, the Angels, Archangels, and a slight idea too of the Original Forces and Powers. Only with a faint divining could we look up to a still higher Being, the Christ. On another opportunity we can consider what is to be said about the Thrones and so on. Today I wished to relate something of the spiritual structure into which man is interwoven, in so far as Angels, Archangels, Original Forces, and Powers participate in it.

Objective Reality

Source: The Riddle of Humanity

We will never be able to discover the facts of the spiritual world unless we develop an attitude that acknowledges the facts of the physical world. The right way of experiencing the spiritual world must be developed here in the physical world. That is why we have been placed in the physical world: it is our task here to seek for ideas that are in harmony with objective reality, so that we acquire this ability and so that it becomes a habit we can carry with us into the spiritual world.

But today so many people base their assertions on nothing but emotion and are not in the least interested in whether they agree with objective reality. This is precisely the opposite of the direction in which humanity must move if it is to progress. And, especially in our materialistic age, the notion of thinking in accordance with reality has been so frightfully distorted by the influences we have been describing; thinking that is in accord with reality has become a rarity. And an honest attempt to think in accordance with reality today collides with all the contemporary thinking that is at variance with reality.

Understanding the Human Being

Source: The Invisible Man Within Us (1923)

I mistakenly thought this particular lecture was in regard to the doppleganger, which it is not. However, I have left it here as a part of this document and might perhaps include it elsewhere in material more directly related to understanding the human being in terms of health. -a

...the physical organization of the human being is spiritually prepared during the pre-earthly life. In a certain sense it is then sent down as spiritual organization before the human being enters with his ego into earthly existence. This spiritual organization continues to be active essentially during the entire physical life on earth, but it does not express itself during physical earthly life as something outwardly visible. The outwardly visible aspect of this spiritual organization is essentially cast off at birth, consisting of the embryonic membranes that envelop the human embryo during its development — the chorion, the allantois, the amnion, the yolk sac — everything, in other words, that is cast away as physical organization when the human being attains a free physical existence on leaving the womb.

Yet this pre-earthly organization continues to be active in the human being throughout his entire life. It is somewhat different in character, however, from the body soul-spirit efficacy of the human being during his physical earthly life. And this is what I would like to speak about today. .. In a certain sense, then, we have an invisible man within us.

In the human being after birth ... the physical organization of the invisible man is contained in the nourishing and restorative processes in the human being. Thus viewed from outside, this physical organization is not separated from the other physical organization of the human being but is united with it.

[ ... a lot of detail is excluded here due to its complexity ...]

...the breathing process is to a certain extent a destructive process. Our life would be much shorter if we absorbed more oxygen. The more the carbonic acid formation process of the blood counters the absorption of oxygen in the breathing process, the longer our life will be.

Thus everything interacts within the organism, and in order really to understand what is going on, one needs to understand the super-sensible human being, because its outwardly visible aspects were cast off with the embryonic membranes and are active in the human being after birth only through invisible forces. These forces can be clearly designated, however, if we proceed from the anthroposophical knowledge of the human being.

... The blood process always moves toward the periphery in the human being, moving centrifugally; the nerve process, which is in fact a breakdown process, is always directed centripetally, toward man's inside. All processes that occur in the human being are metamorphoses of these two processes.

If the interaction of pulse and breathing is properly coordinated, then the lower man is properly connected to the upper man. If this is the case and no external injuries intervene, an individual should be basically healthy. Only when breakdown predominates will destructive processes encroach on the activities in the organism. The human being becomes ill because something foreign accumulates in his organism that has not been worked through in the right way, something containing excessive breakdown forces, containing too much of what is related to the physical nature that surrounds the human being in his earthly environment.

The spiritual element's direct penetration of the organism by way of the ego brings about those processes that produce pathological occurrences, foreign formations. These foreign formations may not manifest immediately in physical symptoms, but they may manifest in the fluid and even in the airy aspect of the human being. They can develop, and if they are not countered by a healing process that flows from below along the pathways of the blood, they cannot dissolve. These formations have the tendency to form tumor-like accumulations in the body and then to fragment within. If the blood-formation process confronts them in the right way, they can dissolve and again become part of the general life of the body. But when a damming up is brought about by an excessive breakdown process from above downward, it takes hold of one of the organs. Foreign bodies are then formed, which are first exudative, tumor-like, but then have the tendency to run their course like the external processes of earthly nature and fall to pieces. In this case we need to understand that not enough of the super-sensible human being is taken up along the path I have drawn here next to the physical human being.

You see, one cannot speak about healing directly through human activity, because the moment that too much activity is developed from the nerve-sense organization, in a centripetal direction — when too many of the environmental processes are “stuffed” into man so that these tumor-like formations develop somewhere, which then decompose — in that moment the other system, which runs along the blood vessels, becomes rebellious. It wants to bring about healing, wants to penetrate the organism with the proper astral and etheric forces that can come from below. It wants to prevent the ego, or the ego working with the astral body, from acting alone. The healer has to take into account this revolutionary principle in the human organism, and healing consists of supporting, by external means, what is already present in the organism as an original healing force.

[ ... I stopped copy/pasting here as this material is "beyond" my ken. However I have included the two last paragraphs as they are a general statement on the purpose and goal(s) of Anthroposophy. ... ]

You see, anthroposophy is really not concerned with furnishing sectarian aunt-and-uncle gatherings with schemes they can argue about, schemes describing how the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. Rather it is very seriously concerned with comprehending the human being and his relationship to the world, with bringing the spiritual into everything material. And if anthroposophy really wants to secure its place in the world, it must be understood that it is able to pursue the spiritual into the material. As long as we merely occupy ourselves with aunt-and-uncle gatherings in sectarian circles, with squabbling over the division of the human being, we will be engaged in conflict about all sorts of other sectarian things. The moment we can really show how anthroposophy touches on all other knowledge, casts light on all other earthly knowledge — just as astrology illuminated earthly processes in earlier times — then anthroposophy will be something that can take hold of modern civilization. Then truly constructive progress may begin in human civilization, even in the face of the destructive processes originating in older times.

Such seriousness must be combined with what could be called one's commitment to anthroposophy. Certainly not everyone can always participate so actively that he himself discovers, for example, how belladonna on one side and chlorine on the other work in the human organism. For each individual to discover this is not the point; instead what is important is for an understanding to arise in wider circles, a common feeling for how what is therapeutic for the human being can be gained from an anthroposophical knowledge of the earth and the human being. In Waldorf education, we would not expect that every person could be a teacher, or at least teachers of children from elementary school on. We do expect, however, that there be general understanding of how educational principles are established out of knowledge of the human being and the world. Anthroposophy needs to be met with understanding. It would be wrong to believe that everyone should know everything, but the activity of an anthroposophical community should consist of building a general understanding, based on healthy common sense, for what anthroposophy is striving to realize for the health and future of humanity.

100 Years after The Christmas Foundation Meeting

Source: New View Magazine, by Michael Burton, Autumn 2023

Like many events of significance, the Christmas Foundation Meeting was born out of tragedy and a sense of deep inadequacy. Before the First World War, Rudolf Steiner had begun to create a building that would be able to hold, amplify and radiate the new streams of light that were pouring into the world since the ending, in 1899, of the 5,000 years of darkness, known to occultists as Kali Yuga.

Kali Yuga had been spoken of for thousands of years, and for many centuries people had longed for it to end, that a new age of creativity and light could begin within this earth. The darkness of the old period had reached a kind of climax in the Western world during the Nineteenth Century — a deep point of materialism where the light of the spirit was almost completely shut out and people focused almost exclusively on physical reality. Steiner knew that he had a task to help humanity move into what was going to be a time of new opportunities but also new dangers. At the age of eighteen, in the year 1879, he had been shown how he must develop his awareness of the spiritual dimensions of what was happening on the earth and that his task would be to prepare human beings to take hold of entirely new inspirations of the spirit that were to become available then. Those who guided humanity's spiritual evolution knew that the 20^th Century was to be a major turning-point, and Steiner's task was that this new influx of radiance from the spiritual world could be understood as well as felt, so that new creativity could begin to transform the world in ways that were never possible in earlier times.

As a visible sign of the fruitfulness of this new inflow of light, work began in 1913 on the building that Steiner had planned to be the focal point of his activities. Just 40 people were present on 20^th September of that year in the Swiss village of Dornach, near Basel, when Steiner carried out a short order ceremony to mark the significance of the hour and laid a copper container, crafted into the shape of a twelve-sided dodecahedron, ino the pit that had been dug as part of the foundations of the building to come. During the ceremony, the elements responded with dramatically intense rain, wind, lightening and thunder as if the powers of darkness, determined to not have their 5,000-year reign disturbed, were enraged at this man's audacity and were signalling their intent to destroy everything that he was setting out to achieve.

Steiner had publicly taken hold of his mission in 1900, in his 40^th year, when he began to speak openly of what his spiritual initiation and subsequent journeyman years had shown him. From that year onwards, he spoke of the new insights he perceived regarding Earth's connection to the cosmos and how spiritual beings were longing to assist human beings in all aspects of their lives. He gave personal lessons to individuals from many European countries who wished to become bearers fo the spiritual light that he served. However, the world as a whole resisted all attempts to change in any fundamental way, and the old tendencies of human egos contesting for power against other egos built up to a climax. The outer sign of this was the First World War.

While Steiner was staying in Berlin during the war, he was asked how Germany could respond to what seemed to be a hopeless situation. He replied by drafting a blueprint for how society could function, based on the sacred threefold organization of the human being. He and some colleagues did all they could to take these ideas out into the world, but once again he was thwarted by the sheer weight and inertia of what was living in the souls of the people of that time. When the war ended, Steiner knew that the Treaty of Versailles would doom humanity to a second great war and decades of conflict, for the real causes of the First World War were entirely unaddressed by the peace treaty that the politicians of the day had created. These politicians — so like those who hold forth in so many countries in our time — divided the nations up in the image of the old world whose destruction they had participated in, and Steiner saw the inevitable devastation that was ahead because of this.

Disappointed but in now way slowing down in his activities, Steiner continued to seek for ways to bring renewal and plant seeds that would bear harvest in future times. One of these seeds was the building that had been begun before the war broke out, for it encapsulated in solid materials the same sacred forms that he had tried unsuccessfully to bring in ideas as a blueprint of how society could function successfully without war with respect for the freedom and dignity of all human beings.

Work on this building, which Steiner called the Goetheanum after the great German writer, Goethe, continued throughout the war years and on into the Twenties. Then tragedy struck again. In what was probably and act of arson, carried out by those who did not want humanity to progress out of the darkness of old beliefs and superstitions, Steiner's building was burnt to the ground on New Year's Eve, 1922-23.

It has been reported that Steiner once said that he would live to be 100, but the destruction of this building had consequences for his physical health. As a part of this, he went through a kind of spiritual crisis during the year of 1923. For 22 years he had worked tirelessly in all parts of Europe, but he saw in the destruction of the Goetheanum a sign that the world was not ready for what he was bringing. He told colleagues that it was also a sign of the inabilities of those who worked with him to be able to make the vital consciousness shift that the times were demanding of them. He travelled a great deal in this key year of 1923, always carrying within him the dilemma of how he should proceed in these difficult circumstances. One solution was to withdraw and work with a small number of those who were ready for what he had to give. The way ahead was not clear to him, and he described later that it was as if he needed to take a leap of faith in making his next step.

He made his decision concerning what he would do some time in the final months of 1923. He would not withdraw from the world but would create within it a new organization whose form would work out ever more strongly into the world. He imagined a society of human beings of all races and creeds, brought together in reverence for the new wisdom that since the end of Kali Yuga had streamed into the earth and reflecting in its structure the new understanding of what works between human beings who remember their spiritual origins and are capable of being representatives of a transforming humanity. The society's primary task would be to act as a conduit for the inspirations to come from the spiritual world and to encourage and enable people everywhere to be able to be able to achieve this for themselves. Steiner made an appeal to those around him to accompany him with all the forces of their souls. For a time, it seemed that this was successful. The Christmas Foundation Meeting took place over the course of nine days between 24^th December 1923 and 1^st January, 1924.

We can ask today if Steiner was naive to hope that human beings would be able to transcend the limitations imposed on them through being, as Nietzsche had put it, "human-all-too-human". The law I spoke of in the second paragraph of this article — that institutions have an inbuilt tendency to ossify and turn against heir own creators — has played itself out for centuries in many different situations. It was most visible when Jesus of Nazareth stood before the Temple in Jerusalem, built to house the prophesied Messiah, only to be rejected and put to death by the authorities of the time. Steiner had appealed for a certain kind of selflessness, and his inner power and charisma rallied people at first, so that he was able to speak of his leap of faith as having been the right decision. But the Christmas mood could not be sustained — human beings in the 1920's were simply too weak to bear what was being asked of them.

Steiner appealed a number of times for those around him to dedicate themselves anew to what had been founded, but it became clear that this was not possible, and Steiner's own death was a sign that something on the earth had failed. The power of his inspiration would continue working spiritually — over that, the powers of darkness had no control — but it could no longer be carried by him physically. After an extraordinary period of super-human creativity, when Steiner planted many more seeds in many different areas, giving sometimes five lectures a day in all kinds of professional fields, his physical strength gave out. On Michaelmas Eve, September 28^th, 1924, Steiner took to his sickbed where he died six months later on 30^th March, 1925.

For an initiate, death has not the same significance as it has for others. While his alive, the initiate has been able to enter into the spiritual worlds in a way that others will be granted only after death. It is possible to imagine that, after his death, very little changed for Steiner other than the loss of his instrument of his earthly body and that his work for the good of the world continued with the same intensity as he had shown in those nine intensely creative months between the Christmas Foundation Meeting and the beginning of his sickness. What changed was the ability for his work to be received on the earth. Steiner had predicted that if the creative impulse of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was not able to be held with sufficient strength on the earth, it would move from there to a realm beyond physical existence. Some deny admitting the possibility of such a thing, but it seems obvious to others, through considering the subsequent course of the 20^th Century, that this is indeed what may have happened. A seed has been planted here of great significance, but it has remained a seed, unable, through the remainder of the 20^th Century, to develop sufficiently further in the ways that its founder had imagined. Through the rest of the century, those who had been inspirited by Steiner's work were able to achieve many things that proved to be of great benefit for earthly life, bu the essence of what Steiner had hoped would come out of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was absent.

The key question now to those who recognize the significance fo that moment in 1923-24 is whether we can reconnect with what was planted into the earth in that time and bring it anew into physical reality. This is a very great question that weighs heavily on all who have some awareness fo the spiritual evolution of the world.

It is now 100 years since the difficult transition year of 1923. For most of that year, it was not at all clear to Steiner what he should do, and he was living, with great intensity, a quest to find the answer to his dilemma. Certainty came to him some time before the end of the year. After this year of 2023 we approach not just the centenary of the Christmas Foundation Meeting itself but also that of the incredible year 1924 that followed it when he was able to give to much that was of deep significance to humanity, guidance in all areas of practical life as well as the first part of a new path of schooling in inner development that he intended to become the growing-tip of contemporary spirituality. He also brought profound insights into the meaning and reality of reincarnation and karma. From those early beginnings in the Twenties of the last century — from seeds planted ata at time of great personal grief but with incredible spiritual strength — the new light has gone out to all parts of the world.

And yet, in that 100 years, the powers of darkness that wish to keep humanity ignorant and in slavery to old gods have been unrelentingly active. The remainder of the 20^th Century — with its genocide and nuclear weapons, its rise of state power everywhere and its continuation of materialism and exploitation of the strong over the weak — was a reflection of what Steiner had predicted when the First World War ended with the lessons that should have come out of it unlearned: "This war has not really ended," he said at the time. "It goes on, and what we have now is not peace — it is merely a cessation of hostilities." That war, waged by the enemies of the new Christ Consciousness against humanity, has continued throughout the 20^th Century and on into the 21^st.

But human beings, in this time of destruction and darkness, have had opportunity to undergo some degree of transformation. Those who long for what is new and feel in their hearts the possibilities that are unfolding there, have been deeply tested through their sufferings. Could it be that now there is a critical mass that was not present 100 years ago? Could it be possible today that okd and dead ways of thinking that divide human beings from each other and from the cosmos that surrounds them can be overcome and that new social forms can arise through enlivened and more truthful thinking that is in touch with the nature of reality?

Despite the fact that the trend over the last 100 years in mainstream western culture has been overwhelmingly in the opposite direction and that we are dominated today as never before by abstract and dogmatic ideologies, completely disconnected from reality, this is no mere empty hope. It will always be but a small minority who will lead the world into new directions — what is important is how strongly this minority can take hold of their tasks and be able to ground new streams of inspiration from the spiritual world in ways that will make them available to all. Steiner once said that 48 (12 x 4) individuals would be sufficient for that purpose. Till now, even that seemingly modest goal has not been attained, but we are now sailing upon quite different seas than those that carried us in the 20^th Century.

Spiritually, Steiner never left the field of his activity. He is present with many others who carry with him various aspects of the total struggle for a new age in the sphere that he called the "etheric" — that realm of life forces referred to in the Bible as being "in the clouds", into which Christ vanished physically at the event of His Ascension. The sphere of the etheric is the place from which life-forces arise, surrounding the earth and giving it at every moment the renewing energies and formative forces that it needs. I would say that today, in 2023, the etheric sphere is very close to us, and what goes on there affects us far more than we know. From it, help can come for all who are engaged in this continuing struggle against stagnation, destruction and darkness.

What Steiner engraved into the earth in one location of Europe 100 years ago has expanded greatly during the intervening years. It may seem to be but a drop in the ocean compared to the evil that has worked its way into all areas of the world, but its potential is vast, and it is accessible to all, whether or not they know anything of the individuality who once bore the name "Rudolf Steiner" but who is not now limited to the identity he carried while he was alive on Earth.

One way to connect with what Steiner planted in his time as a foreshadowing of what was to come, is to pay some attention to what actually happened in that Christmas Foundation Meeting. When a friend of his who had not been able to be present was told about it afterwards, his instinctive reaction was expressed in the words, "Humanity has been baptized again!"

With the Christmas Foundation Meeting, 110 years short of 2,000 years since the greatest spiritual and earthly event ever, new powers of healing and light were enabled to stream into the earth. The year 2033 is now very close. At that time it will be more clear whether humanity is able to live out of the new Christ Consciousness or must continue on old cyclical roads, fettered to the earth and repeating endlessly the errors of the past. We are being tested, and evil is active as never before, developing strategies that will make it impossible for us to have genuine spiritual contact.

The Christmas Foundation Meeting gives us something that we can support us in our 21^st Century endeavour to become realigned with the place of our divine origin. Powers of darkness work as never before to deflect us from this path and drive us in quite different directions. Against them, the Christmas Foundation Meeting, if it can be resurrected anew in a sufficient number of hearts, can become a source of strength for the entire world.

The key to understanding this event lies in taking hold of the words of the meditation which Steiner built up over a seven-day period during the Foundation Meeting, laying into the hearts of the 800 individuals present. This meditation is known as the Foundation Stone Meditation and it stands today as a sign that the powers of darkness can be broken and that humanity can throw off old chains and step out into a new era of spiritual creativity and freedom. The Foundation Stone Meditation concludes with these disarmingly simple words:

At the turning point of time,
The Spirit Light of the World
entered the stream of earth-evolution

Darkness of night
had held its sway.
Day-radiant light
poured into the souls of human beings.

Light that gives warmth
to simple shepherd's hearts.
Light that enlightens
the wise heads of kings.

Light Divine!
Christ Sun!
Warm our hearts,
bring light into our heads,
that good may come
from what we, in our hearts, would found,
from what we, in our heads, would direct
with single purpose.

Book: The Eye of the Needle

by Bernard Lievegoed

Pg 12

"The Javanese say the more you give away the richer you become."

Pg 37

"You have to imagine that around Rudolf Steiner a group of coworkers had come together with a variety of karmic backgrounds. In many cases, coworkers had fought each other in a previous life and now they had to work together. Have no illusions about the emotions this can call forth. Karma works!"

...

"The difficulty is, of course, that such suprapersonal differences often present themselves as personal ones. That is why it often seems as though a struggle is taking place that is bound to the person involved. And in a certain sense of course, that is true too. But the essential point in social intercourse is to develop the power of imagination through which you can really understand and accept the karmic backgrounds of others, although these can be very different from you own."

Pg 39

"In those times I learned much from Ita Wegman. I sat in the hall during the meetings in Dornach and while really awful things were being said, also about her as a person, she just stayed in her seat and kept silent. Afterwards, we asked her why she had not said anything. Then she answered: Dr. Steiner taught me you can't fight demons; you can only starve them to death by not feeding them."

Pg 40

What was it that life taught you?

"That is hard to put into words. Rudolf Steiner once said that wisdom is crystallized suffering. The fact that in your life you can give something to others, no matter how little it sometimes seems to be, is directly related to the sorrows and grief you carry around with you. Everything good comes from sacrifice."

Pg 41

"Rudolf Steiner often stated that Christ has a central role in the development of mankind. He described Christ as a divine being who joined himself for a period of three years with the human individuality we know as Jesus of Nazareth. The purpose of this was the sacrifice on the cross of Golgotha. The death of Christ was a sacrifice for humanity; because of this earthly death, and the resurrection that followed it, every man could, from that time on in his own inner being, have access to his own I. In a certain sense you can say Christ has granted all people their I and, in so doing, their freedom, their spiritual autonomy. That is the deeper significance of the mystery of Golgotha."

Pg 45

"If you can't solve your own problems you have no right to offer a solution to the world."

Pg 62–65

"... the question arose in me of how to recognize spiritual beings in everything you see in social life."

And how do you recognize these?

"To begin with, relative to social life you must no longer think exclusively in terms of jealousy, or fear, or whatever other psychological category. You have to learn to think in terms of beings and ask yourself questions such as: which luciferic being hides behind jealousy? Which one behind pride? Which one behind untruthfulness? What is the nature of ahrimanic beings, asuric beings? (In anthroposophy, the terms luciferic, ahrimanic and asuric beings are meant to indicate different groups of beings that want to retard the development of mankind – JvdM). Those beings have no physical form and live in the supersensible world. But slowly you get the ability to pull these supersensible beings in a way to the threshold of the physical world..."

What does that mean: pull them to the threshold of the physical world?

"I am saying this consciously with these words, pulling the beings to the border of the visible world, because I don't want to create the impression I am clairvoyant and can behold the beings in their supersensible appearance. I can't. But I have indeed brought them to the border of visibility. They have become realities. I mean I began to live with these beings in the same way you live with realities you can see with your eyes. Only rarely have I spoken about this in public because people are shocked by it or misunderstand it."

How do you do that, bringing these beings to the threshold of the physical world?

"For instance, you can ask the question which spiritual powers are active in world politics and with what intentions? You can go on thinking in political terms but then you never get to any real insight. Only when you begin to understand that very specific luciferic and ahrimanic beings work in the souls of people and influence the actions of those people, everywhere on earth, do you start seeing what is really happening.

"The core of esotericism is not to take for granted any longer the form in which things appear but to learn to know the beingness behind those forms. You bring these beings to teh border of the sense world by searching for the characteristics of their activities. For instance, luciferic beings call forth illusions, or emotions that are strongly oriented to the past. Wanting to keep things the way they have always been is a luciferic sentiment.

"Ahrimanic beings, for instance, bring about soulless abstractions in thinking. Wanting to organize social life in the way you build a machine, without taking into account the unique and unpredictable elements that hide in every human being, is an ahrimanic striving. IN this first step, the study of anthroposophy, you get to know the characteristics; in the second step, the really esoteric one, these become realities."

To what extent are your actions determined by the recognition of these beings?

"After the exoteric and esoteric phases, there is a third phase. Rudolf Steiner called it the 'moralische' phase, which means acting out of esoteric insight, out of intuition. The first phase leads to imagination, the second to inspiration, and the third to intuition.

"Intuition means acting on the basis of esoteric insight, or insight into the beingness of things. Of course, you can also act on the basis of external knowledge. For instance, you can study ... and then apply what you learned in practice. But then, if that is all you do you work following a method. The same is true for bio-dynamic agriculture and anthroposophical medicine. If you stop in that first phase it will never get beyond applying a method. Any method can be learned, you don't need esoteric insight for that.

"But acting on teh basis of esoteric insight is a completely different thing. Then what is involved is not the application of a method but working on the basis of insights you have obtained on your own, insights that don't live only in your thinking but have also become realities in your feeling and willing. You decide yourself how to act and you also know you are yourself responsible for your actions. You can no longer push the responsibility off on others, on a method, on Rudolf Steiner or anyone or anything else. You determine for yourself what is right and what is not. These choices have moral character; that is why Rudolf Steiner calls this the moralische phase. The essence of the content of the First Class is that you learn to see things in their beingness, esoterically.

"This is where esotericism, Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, distinguishes itself from conventional science. In conventional science it is not admissable to ask questions about the essence, the beingness of things. What is the essence of electricity? According to the conventional view that is not a valid question. You are not allowed to ask ontological questions; at most, you can ask how electricity works. Not what is warmth, but how does warmth work? In spiritual science it is exactly those questions that count."

Pg 65

"Today you can find people everywhere who are spiritually waking up. But you always have to wait until a question is asked... Rudolf Steiner said several times that even an initiate may not bring out anything if the world has not asked for it."

Pg 80

"In a lecture Rudolf Steiner says that around the year 2000, the work of Lucifer, Ahriman and Michael will be so intermingled that no one will be able easily to distinguish between them. I have always understood that Rudolf Steiner meant to say: prepare yourselves for a time in which it will not be easy to get a clear aim at things. The good will not simply be recognizable as good, nor will evil as evil. In that situation, humanity will have to be able to find the eye of the needle."

Pg 82

"In 1924, in a conversation with young people in Breslau, Rudolf Steiner said that quieter times will not come until after the year 2050."

Pg 83

"Lucifer works through pride, fundamentalism, illusion; Ahriman works through power and cold hate. The idea has risen in me that it is the task of the anthroposophical movement to build a Christian infrastructure in the world...

"With the word Christian I do not mean Christianity in the sense in which the word is used in churches, for there fundamentalism can also live. With the word Christian I mean a society that takes into account the spiritual origin and future of every individual, a society on the basis of individual responsibility and freedom."

Pg 84

"How can people become convinced that they are not powerless, that they do not say: what can I do all by myself? What is important is not the quantity but the quality, what happens that is really essential. Because of all those small anchor points the etheric world changes. World history is not determined by physical power relationships but by spiritual qualities.

"Earlier, we dealt with the three levels, the exoteric, the esoteric, and the "moral". When you start acting from the second level, i.e. based on insight into beings hidden behind external appearances, the quantitative effect of he action is no longer important but its qualitative effect is. In silence, you can help change things. A small Christian anchor point in a city changes something in the aura of that city.

"At the second level in a way, you stand between Lucifer and Ahriman. In this way, Rudolf Steiner portrayed in a great sculpture created for the interior of the first Goetheanum, and saved because at the time of the fire it had not yet been installed, the figure of Christ standing between Lucifer and Ahriman. Lucifer makes souls unfree by harassing them with feelings of pride and illusory thoughts, Ahriman does this by inspiring them with a cold, calculating spirit and hate. Christ makes inner freedom possible, a narrow line between Lucifer and Ahriman. In our time, no one thinks any more of living adversary powers, of demons, but it is so incredibly important to do just that. The same is true for thinking about Christ. Exoterically, Christ is no more than a tradition, a legend, a beautiful story that can warm hearts or leave them cold. Esoterically, however, he is a being, a reality, a cosmic identity you can meet inwardly and with whom you can work.

"Inner life, that is what counts in the end. Whatever you do in the world, if it snot based on real inner life, on a concrete experience of spiritual realities, then it doesn't amount to much. Even if, from the outside, it looks as if you have achieved a lot. And that inner life must not be based on feelings of duty, the idea that you call yourself an anthroposophist and therefore you have to meditate. It must really be based on an inner necessity. If you do it out of duty Lucifer has got you. He loves to see you inwardly squirm, that you struggle with all the things that don't succeed and that you are burdened by the secret questions whether you are really mature enough, spiritual enough."

Pg 86–87

[In a lecture Rudolf Steiner gave on December 31, 1922, the evening of the fire of the first Goetheanum, he formulated a new approach for the anthroposophical way.] "In brief, the content of that lecture is as follows: All the old mysteries were wisdom mysteries; those mysteries were about the knowledge given by the gods about the creation of the cosmos and man. In the sacred cult of the Christian churches, that path of revelation is followed further with the sacrifice of Christ on Golgotha at its center. Whoever inwardly experiences this cult receives the gifts the divine powers grant fo mankind. Besides this path, Rudolf Steiner describes a new path that can be walked in the present time under the guidance of the archangel Michael, the way of the reverse cult. Here it is not the divine hierarchies that address themselves to man but man who addresses the hierarchies. Man offers the fruit of his spiritual striving, acquired through resistance presented by the world, to the hierarchies. ... The essence is then no longer the acquisition of wisdom but doing the good.

"That good may become what we, human beings, can contribute to the evolution of the earth and the cosmos... In essence, this second way is connected with the lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in those years about karma and reincarnation. Karma also has a revealing, passive side that is directed to the future. Karma is not only passively letting the consequences of your actions in prior lives come over you but also taking deliberate actions towards the future. Where karmic consequences of the past are concerned the spiritual powers are active, but where the future is concerned man must become active himself."

Pg 89

"If I resolve, to put it popularly, between death and new birth to learn something very specific in the coming life, then that resolution determines my life. To a group of young people Rudolf Steiner said once You should ask yourself the question: to what [spiritual] stream do you belong? That is important. That way you know your internal sources and goals, and also where you are one-sided, where you have to complete yourself. Destiny only becomes fate when it has to manifest itself violently to you; as soon as you accept your destiny, however, it creates the possibility to add something to it in freedom. Then it becomes a gift you can use for something new.

"... how can I work out of the life of the will, the life of action, out of what I want to become? THat can only happen in a karmic relationship, it doesn't matter to what. This does not mean you should only work with people you belong to, whom you experience as your 'pals'. No, you also have karmic relationships to people you experience as your enemies. The question is: in that karma, how can you accomplish something? That is only possible by doing something, by performing a deed. You can act on the basis of intuition and then you look in all inner quiet at what the effect is of the action.

"This involves a conscious action. Unconscious actions never come from clear intuition, but from some stimulus out of the past. Suppose you have a difficult relationship with someone. If in all inner peace you decide to cooperate with that person, simply because you recognize that the person objectively has something to do with the project you want to undertake, no matter how different his ideas about it may be from yours, then tremendous power can emanate on that inner resolution, you perform a conscious deed in the direction of that person."

The Return of Christ in the Etheric World

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And what we must do to experience it

The time period of the reign of evil on Earth, from approximately 1933 to 1945, sought to overshadow what Rudolf Steiner publicly revealed as early as 1910, the "Second Coming" of Christ that would begin "between the years 1930 – 40 – 45"; not a physical return of Christ, but a spiritual return in the Etheric World, the world of formative forces that sustains all physical life. However, "...The Christ event is not confined to one point of time only. In the case of Paul it came very early in order that through him Christianity might pursue its course." The new perception of Christ in the spiritual world, similar to what Paul experienced on the road to Damascus, will occur among "the first forerunners of human beings possessed of these faculties..." The new faculties of fully conscious clairvoyant perception, both natural and cultivated, are referred to.

The path given for both natural and cultivated expressions of clairvoyance is that of the "Three I-s" – Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. A resolve to work in these areas with discipline, patience and endurance will bring a meeting with the Etheric Christ, but the decision as to when or how such a meeting will occur can only come from the spiritual world, from Christ.

"In our own fifth age which will last until the fourth millennium, souls will gradually become able, from the 20th century onwards, to experience the Christ Being in an etheric form on the astral plane, just as in the fourth age Christ was visible on the physical plane in a physical form." What is meant by "an etheric form on the astral plane"?

The astral body is the body of desires, wishes, passions, fantasies, originality, creativity, etc., and to the extent that the Ego and the intellectual soul effectively work on this surging, colorful, and dynamic body so as to bring it under control, its forces are transformed into Spirit Self (Hindu Manas), which means elevated, moral thinking; pure or untainted thoughts.

This kind of thinking will enable a "face to face" meeting with Christ and with other higher Beings, which can mean a vision full of truth, a vision that is almost physical, but that is not physical. Elements of unmistakable life and sweetness identify the vision as originating from the etheric world, but pure thoughts (correct thinking) within the intellectual soul must facilitate this meeting so long as humanity is dependent upon the physical body and physical life. This dependency will continue for a long time into the future, but must ultimately be overcome.

The True Nature of the Second Coming

We live at a turning point in time in the sense that a failure to develop the new faculties will bring a loss that will be very difficult to compensate for in the future. Such development brings with it increased responsibility for the needs of others, for social life and for an endangered natural environment, at first out of a sense of duty that requires discipline, but then out of a higher form of love, out of selflessness, and this in face of the intensification of the power of Individuality, of the Ego.

The development of the consciousness soul must stand on the firm foundation of reason, on the intellectual soul and on correct thinking, for this development involves increasing awareness and the deepening and expansion of consciousness, which means a more mature and hence more difficult confrontation with some age-old challenges of humanity and of individuals: uncontrolled passions and desires, evil, illness and death.

... the year 5000 AD, marks the advance of changes in the physical and etheric constitution of humanity, as well as environmental and climatic changes on earth that will very gradually lead to the ice age of the Sixth Great Epoch. The conceptual words of "water," "Aquarius" and "ice" point to the necessity for flexibility within the etheric body, a body of life-sustaining currents that somewhat resemble the moving and rippling flow-forms of water. The materialistic world-view causes increasing inflexibility and hardening of this etheric body, which means that human beings of the sixth age may suffer the fate of having their moral qualities expressed in their countenance, in their whole bodily appearance. – From The Tragic Wrestling with Knowledge. This is the mark of materialism or the "mark of the beast" that is referred to in the Atlantean Cataclysms article. "But this world-view must not, shall not, gain the day – this must be our unshakable conviction. We must know: if our etheric bodies are to be so strong that they are able to correct the mistakes of our physical body, this strength must come from the fact that men learn to take in an earnest and true way what will come to them from the etheric world. This will then work more and more as a factor of healing as we move towards the future. But above all we must receive spiritual science into our hearts in order to prepare ourselves to see the Christ in His etheric form, and to take this event with true earnestness."

Rudolf Steiner: Into the Future

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