Steiner Quote

Etheric Vision and the Eye

June 4, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Shared from Adriana Koulias on Facebook:

Etheric vision does have a connection to the eye. This I have been studying for a long time and have now found a great lecture I haven’t seen before which helps to support my experiences. It is truly a wonderful lecture! I thought I would share it with you! And my joy! He speaks here both of the etheric counterpart of the things we take into us and our own etheric body.

In fact, if you study the organisation of the eye in any human being you will have the material for a sound judgment of the person’s etheric body; the etheric body which is so like what I have just termed a framework. You cannot better train yourself to divine something of the nature of an individual etheric body, than by attentive study of the organisation of the organ of vision. Having once grasped this, you will find that the rest will be easy. Acquire the habit of observing whether individuals focus their gaze at a distance or near by, and let this impression work on you; and you will cultivate a sensibility to the perception of the etheric body. Call meditation to your aid, and it will no longer be so difficult to ascend from a devoted attention to the effects of the eye-organisation to the contemplation of the etheric body itself.

Rudolf Steiner

Read the full lecture here.

More on Whitsun

May 29, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Individualizing the Easter message in the soul through the revelation of Whitsuntide

Thanks to Nesta Carsten for drawing our attention to the following excerpt from a lecture on Whitsun: Anthroposophical Life Gifts Lecture VII: Whitsuntide Lecture

From the former lectures on Whitsuntide we know that the most important feature in the Whitsuntide event is, that the communal life of those who had taken part in the great Easter Event of mankind became individualized. The “fiery tongues” descended on the heads of each of them, and each one learnt in that language, which is like none other and for that reason comprehensible to all, to grasp what has streamed through the evolution of mankind as they Mystery of Golgotha. The fiery tongues descended on the head of each one. Formerly the souls of the individual disciples felt themselves — one might say — in the collective aura of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then through the event of Whitsuntide, that which they only comprehended through the life they lead in common, so passed over into their separate souls that each one gained illumination within himself. That is the most important thing, though naturally expressed in abstract form. We must realize this individualizing of the Easter message in the soul through the revelation of Whitsuntide, if we wish to understand it in the right sense. There is then the possibility to conceive, in the sense of this Whitsuntide proclamation, what Spiritual Science intends to do. For, in this Spiritual Science it is desired first and foremost that every human soul should find the spiritual germ of his own being within himself, which is able to illuminate it as regards the cosmic aims for which we must strive. The future life of mankind should so develop that men shall be, less inclined to turn their minds always towards the social structure which all have in common. We hope that every man will become ripe and capable of leading such a life of his own initiative, that his neighbor may be able to lead a similar life. Then an inner tolerance will prevail in the souls, and in the social structure “liberty” must be realized. In no other way can liberty be realized in the world; in no other way than by the message of Whitsuntide passing into the individual human souls.

We must work and cooperate in our souls, and must grasp what is offered by Spiritual Science in accordance with the model given in this Whitsuntide message. For that reason it may be said that in a certain sense Spiritual Science is a perennial, continuous and lasting Whitsuntide proclamation.

Rudolf Steiner

Read the full lecture here.

Space, Time, Christ & Whitsun

May 11, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Fascinating thoughts regarding Space, Time, Christ, and Whitsun, from a Whitsun lecture given by Steiner at the same time he was giving the Karma lectures:

Indeed, when we follow this Ego in its successive evolutions through lives between birth and death and between death and a new birth, we cannot remain within the world of Space at all. For two successive earthly lives cannot be within the same space. They cannot be within that Universe which is dependent on spatial co-existence. Here therefore we go right out of Space and enter into Time. This is actually so. We go out of Space and come into the pure flow of Time when we contemplate the Ego in its successive lives on Earth. Now consider this, my dear friends. In Space, Time is still present, of course, but within this world of Space we have no means of experiencing Time in itself. We always have to experience Time through Space and spatial processes. For example, if you wish to experience Time, you look at the clock, or, if you will, at the course of the sun. What do you see? You see the various positions of the hands of the clock or of the sun. You see something that is spatial. Through the fact that the positions of the hand or of the sun are changed, through the fact that spatial things are present to you as changing, you gain some idea of Time. But of Time itself there is really nothing in this spatial perception. There are only varied spatial configurations, varied positions of the hands of the clock, varied positions of the sun. You only experience Time itself when you come into the sphere of the soul’s experience. There you do really experience Time, but there you also go out of Space. There, Time is a reality, but within the earthly world of Space, Time is no reality. What, then, must happen to us, if we would go out of the Space in which we live between birth and death and enter into the spacelessness in which we live between death and a new birth? What must we do? The answer is this: We must die! We must take these words in their exact and deep meaning. On Earth we experience Time only through Space — through points in Space, through the positions of spatial things. On Earth we do not experience Time in its reality at all. Once you grasp this, you will say: “Really to enter into Time we must go out of Space, we must put away all things spatial.” You can also express it in other words, for it is really nothing else than — to die. It means, in very deed and truth: to die. When we look up from the Earth to the Sun, we are at the same time looking into the flow of Time. …

One modern view of the sun affecting space-time

Now from this there follows something of great significance. Man only looks up to the Sun in the right way (even if it be but in his mind) when, as he gazes upwards, he forgets Space and considers Time alone. For in truth, the Sun does not only radiate light, it radiates Space itself, and when we are looking into the Sun we are looking out of Space into the world of Time. The Sun is the unique star that it is because when we gaze into the Sun we are looking out of Space. And from that world, outside of Space, Christ came to men. At the time when Christianity was founded by Christ on Earth, man had been all too long restricted to the mere Ex Deo Nascimur, he had become altogether bound up in it, he had become a Space-being pure and simple. … Christ came to bring the element of Time again to men, and when the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, unite themselves with Christ, then man receives once more the stream of Time that flows from Eternity to Eternity. What else can we human beings do when we die, i.e. when we go out of the world of Space, than hold fast to Him who gives Time back to us again? At the Mystery of Golgotha man had become to so great an extent a being of Space that Time was lost to him. Christ brought Time back again to men.

If, then, in going forth from the world of Space, men would not die in their souls as well as in their bodies, they must die in Christ, We can still be human beings of Space, and say: Ex Deo Nascimur, and we can look to the Child who comes forth from Time into Space, that he may unite Christ with humanity. But since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot conceive of death, the bound of our earthly life, without this thought: “We must die in Christ.” Otherwise we shall pay for our loss of Time with the loss of Christ Himself, and, banished from Him, remain held spell-bound. We must fill ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha. In addition to the Ex Deo Nascimur, we must find the In Christo Morimur. We must bring forth the Easter thought in addition to the Christmas thought. Thus the Ex Deo Nascimur lets the Christmas thought appear before our souls, and in the In Christo Morimur the Easter thought. … Let us now imagine first of all the inner mood of a man’s soul to be such that he shuts himself up entirely within this Earth-existence. He can still feel the Divine, for out of the Divine he is born: Ex Deo Nascimur. Then let us imagine him no longer shutting himself up within the mere world of Space, but receiving the Christ who came from the world of Time into the world of Space, who brought Time itself into the earthly Space. If a man does this, then in Death he will overcome Death. Ex Deo Nascimur. In Christo Morimur. But Christ Himself brings the message that when Space is overcome and one has learned to recognise the Sun as the creator of Space, when one feels oneself transplanted through Christ into the Sun, into the living Sun, then the earthly Physical vanishes and only the Etheric and the Astral are there. Now the Etheric comes to life, not as the blue of the sky, but as the lilac-red gleaming radiance of the Cosmos, and forth from the reddish light the stars no longer twinkle down upon us but gently touch us with their loving effluence. …

If a man really enters into all this, he can have the experience of himself, standing here upon the Earth, the Physical put aside, but the Etheric still with him, streaming through and out of him in the lilac-reddish light. No longer now are the stars glimmering points of light; they are radiations of love like the caressing hand of a human being. As we feel all this — the divine within ourselves, the divine cosmic fire flaming forth from within us as the very being of man; ourselves within the Etheric world and experiencing the living expression of the Spirit in the Astral cosmic radiance, there bursts forth within us the inner awakening of the creative radiance of Spirit, which is man’s high calling in the Universe. …

When those to whom Christ revealed these things had let the revelation sink deep into their being, then the moment came when they experienced the working of this mighty concept, in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. At first they felt the falling away, the discarding of the earthly-Physical as death. But then the feeling came; This is not death, but in place of the physical of the Earth, there now dawns upon us the Spirit-Selfhood of the Universe. “Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.”

Thus may we regard the threefold nature of the one half of the year. We have the Christmas thought — Ex Deo Nascimur; the Easter thought — In Christo Morimur; and the Whitsun thought — Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

Rudolf Steiner

Read the full lecture here.

Easter and Anthroposophy

April 18, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Spirit Triumphant

… And when man will have learned again to read in the cosmos, when he will experience the resurrection of what has lain buried as though in a grave during this interlude in human evolution between the two spiritual ages, then it will come about at some future time that the world wisdom, the light of the world, will be found again. It is our task, my dear friends, to bring to light again what is hidden. We must make of Easter an experience for all humanity. And just as it could be said on other occasions that anthroposophy is a Christmas experience, so it is in its whole manifestation an Easter experience, a resurrection experience coupled with an experience of the grave. And it is especially important during this Easter gathering that we should feel, if I may so express it, the solemnity of anthroposophic striving by realizing that today we can turn to a spiritual Being Who may be close to us, directly beyond the threshold, and appeal to Him thus: Oh, how blessed was mankind at one time with divine-spiritual revelation that still shone so very bright in Ephesus! But now all that is buried. How can I uncover what is so deeply buried? — for one would like to believe that what once existed might in some historical way be found again in the grave where it lies.

Then the Being will reply to us, as did once before a like being in a similar case: What you seek is no longer here. It is in your heart, if only you will unlock your heart in the right way.

Anthroposophy is indeed latent in the hearts of men, but it is for these human hearts to open in the right way. That is what we must deeply feel. Then we will be led back — not instinctively, as of old, but in full awareness — to the wisdom that lived and shone in the Mysteries.

All this I would like to implant in your hearts, my dear friends, at this Easter time; for to permeate yourself with something that can enkindle a feeling of solemnity in every heart dedicated to anthroposophy, that is something which carries up into the spiritual world and which must be correlated with the Christmas impulse given at Dornach. For this impulse must not remain a thought-out, intellectualistic one, but must spring from the heart; it must not be formal or matter-of-fact, nor must it be sentimental: it must issue from the cause itself and bear the mark of solemnity. When the conflagration at Ephesus blazed up, first in the outer ether and then in the heart of Aristotle, it revealed anew to Aristotle the secrets that could then be epitomized in the simplest terms; and we may say in all modesty that, just as he was able to use the fire of Ephesus to this end, so it is our task — and we shall fulfill it — to use what the flames of the Goetheanum carried into the ether: the aims and purpose of anthroposophy.

What do we gather from all this, my dear friends? That at the memorial service in the Christmas-New Year time, the time in which the disaster struck us a year before, it was vouchsafed us to send forth a new impulse from the Goetheanum. How could this be? Because we are right in feeling that what had previously been a cause pertaining to this Earth, worked for and established as such, was carried by the flames out into cosmic space. Because this misfortune has come to us we are, recognizing its consequences, justified in saying, Now we understand that we may no longer represent a mere Earth cause, but must know it as one of wide etheric space in which the spirit lives: the cause represented by the Goetheanum is a cause of the cosmic ether in which lives the spirit-filled wisdom of the world. It has been carried out into the ether; and it is granted us to permeate ourselves with the Goetheanum impulses flowing in from the cosmos.

Take this in any sense — as an image, if you like: even as an image it signifies a profound truth, a truth that can be simply expressed: the Christmas impulse calls for the permeation of anthroposophical activity with an esoteric element. This is present because what had been earthly now reacts on the impulses of the anthroposophical movement through the astral light in the physical fire that rayed forth into cosmic space; but we must be able to receive these impulses.

Then, if we are able to receive them, we feel a certain important link in the chain of all that lives in anthroposophy: it is the anthroposophical Easter spirit, which can never in the world believe that the spirit perishes, but rather that it arises ever and again after dying through the world; and anthroposophy must hold fast to the spirit resurrected again and again out of eternal depths.

That is what we will take into our hearts as the Easter thought, the Easter feeling; and from this gathering we shall carry away feelings, my dear friends, that will fill us with courage and strength for work when we return to our allotted spheres.

Rudolf Steiner

Read the full lecture here.

Cracking Out of the Cosmic Egg

April 15, 2014 By Amelia Leave a Comment

Cracking out of the Cosmic Egg

~An excerpt from Rudolf Steiner, via Kim Graae Munch.

The Cosmic Egg — Art by Carl Jung

Lucifer gives visions. One has to break through them, otherwise one doesn’t break through the shell that’s around every man and covers the real spiritual world. Visions and voices are around us like the shell around a chick. One might see an angel in a vision and when one presses through the vision the angel will change into a snake, Lucifer’s symbol, for at the Temptation he appeared as a snake. Or one might see the colour blue in one’s meditation — if one breaks through it the blue can become red, and then it turns out that we saw our own passions. As a result of his temptation by Lucifer man doesn’t have everything that the Gods have; he received knowledge, but not life. Thereby everything that we know and perceive is permeated by Lucifer and Ahriman. Actually this is also the case with the content of our exercises. If one looks at one’s exercises one will find that they’re constructed in such a way that they never appeal to human egoism — which many people feel is very unpleasant. We don’t meditate about love or truth, for that would only promote egotism. However concepts such as light and warmth that we find in our exercises are things of the physical world, which a man only knows through his physical senses to begin with. These too are Lucifer’s gifts. That’s why we should let the content drop after meditation and make the soul entirely empty of these impressions also. Thereby we renounce everything that comes from Lucifer and Ahriman and prepare ourselves for the pure spiritual world. Then the sense world disappears for us, and a spiritual world opens up before us that has nothing in common with the physical world. An ordinary man is like the chick that would consider its shell to be the real world. If the chick could see it would see the egg’s contents as if it were the whole world. Likewise we see our eggshell or aura spread out around us as the blue dome of the heavens. If we break through our shell the sun and moon become darkened, the stars fall down onto the earth and the spiritual world spreads out in its place.

A man lives in his eggshell — his aura. The Elohim gave us our aura, and through the fall into sin it has become like a shell around us, and we’re in it like a chick in an egg. The stars in the heavens are our boundary and we must break through it with our soul force, just as a chick must break out of its shell through its own power. Then we get into a new world, just as a chick has a new world before it when it has crept out of the egg. And since men all have the same eggshell around them an astronomy could arise that lets the heavenly bodies move along the celestial dome. The eggshell is the Ex Deo nascimur. To break through it and to bring something with us into the spiritual world we must bring what penetrates the shell from the outer spiritual world and that’s common to all; and that’s the Christ. That’s why we say: In Christo morimur and hope that when we’ve broken through the shell we will be awakened again: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Rudolf Steiner

Find the complete lecture here.

Planetary Cosmic Egg