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Greetings friends – I am continuing to polish the gems gleaned from Anthroposophy, A Summary of Twenty-one Years, Lecture 6 Respiration, warmth, & the ego, 3 Feb. 1924
We think we ‘know’ the ‘basics’ of the 4 fold-human being, but do we really practice true ‘imagination’, ‘inspiration’, & ‘intuition’ ..? Picture building has always been natural for me, but it’s in the letting go of these imaginations that allows ‘inspiration’ to waft in – to become the content that fills our emptied consciousness. At this stage we can induce a conscious condition in which the spiritual world flows into us. We can feel, an element of spiritual music, the progressive beings of the cosmos speaking ‘into’ us.
Steiner describes what we are doing when we sleep – that our soul & spirit, outside our body, actually takes in the carbonic acid of our exhalations – receiving the impressions made by our exhaled air! This keeps our astral connected to our body thru the air we have exhaled which offers up the secrets of our inner life. Steiner describes this exhaled air as ‘sparkling forth’ from us. ‘Sparkling out into the universe, with a sun-like appearance‘, which our soul beholds & this can become conscious when we reach the stage of ‘inspiration’. With Inspired knowledge we can perceive how the astral body is in the physical during waking life, AND how it is outside during sleep – receiving impressions.
This idea of ‘recieving impressions’ made me think of what Steiner says about the Hibernian mysteries: “When the pupils had been prepared up to the grade required they were led before two colossal statues. One statue was a male form, the other female.
Through these statues the pupils experienced the approach of the Cosmic Word. These statues were to them, the external letters by means of which they must begin to decipher the Cosmic Secret placed before men.
One of the statues, the male statue, was of wholly elastic material, compressible in every part. The pupils were made to press the statue in every part. Through this action, it revealed itself to them as hollow. It was in fact only the skin of a statue made of elastic material, so that after being pressed it regained the same shape.
Over the head of this statue which was peculiarly characteristic, over the head there was something which represented the Sun.
The whole head was such that one saw it must really be as a Soul-Eye. The head as Soul-Eye represented microcosmically the content of the whole macrocosm. This manifestation of the whole macrocosm came to expression through the Sun in this colossal head.
This statue made the impression directly upon the pupil: Here the macrocosm works through the Sun and forms the human head, which knows the impulses of the macrocosm and forms itself inwardly and outwardly according to these impulses of the macrocosm.
The other statue was such that first of all the eyes of the pupil fell on something like bodies of light raying inwards with light. And in the midst the pupil then saw a female form, standing wholly under the influence of these rays. And the feeling came to him that the head was created out of these rays. There was something indefinite about the head.
This statue was of another substance, a plastic substance, not elastic but plastic and extraordinarily soft. The pupil was made to press it also. Every pressure he made remained. Only always between one time when the pupil was tested before this statue and the next time the indentations he had made were corrected. So that whenever the pupils were led to the same ceremony before this statue the statue was always intact again. In the case of the other statue, the elastic one, the whole form recovered itself of its own accord.
The impression received in the case of the second statue was that it stood wholly under the influence of the moon-forces which permeated the organism and caused the head to grow out of the organism. An extraordinarily powerful impression was made on the pupils by what they thus experienced. They were often brought before this statue; each time they were to make indentations in the statue, which were then corrected.
They were led up to the statue by those already initiated and were then left, the door of the temple behind being shut. They were left in their solitude.
Each pupil was taken by himself and made to test the statues, to experience for himself the Elasticity of the first, and in the second case the plasticity in which the indentations he had made remained. Then he was left alone by himself with the impression, which as I have already indicated was working powerfully, most powerfully upon him. There arose in the pupil the most vivid longing when he was brought before these two statues, that what appeared to him as a great riddle should in some way or other become solved in his soul, that he should get to understand the nature of this riddle — on the one hand that he should understand the nature of this riddle, and on the other hand the problem as to what lay in the forms and in the whole manner in which he was to relate himself to them. All this worked in a deep, strangely deep way upon the pupils. And they stood before the statues in their whole soul and in their whole spirit as, I might say, a colossal question-mark. Everything in them was a question, Reason asked, the heart asked, the will asked, everything, everything asked.
The man of today can still learn from these things, which were brought perceptibly before the mind in former ages; the modern student must go through the same scale of sensations, must struggle in himself through these sensations in inner meditative experience…”
With ‘inspired’ consciousness we perceive the circulatory process, just as we perceive Nature during waking life. And then we can contemplate the warmth-process that takes place with the I forces, & how that affects the airy element of the etheric body in motion. And we start to see the big picture of the grand spiritual processes at work – which conceals many secrets – but also reveals that the real driving power at work within the human being is not our present ego at all – It is the ego of our past lives on earth which are active in us! The warmth-processes help us perceive our real ego, working from times long past.
Between death and a new birth this ego has undergone an evolution in time; it now works in an entirely spiritual way – We perceive all our metabolic processes, as the expression of powerful spiritual beings working in our true Ego.
So with ‘inspiration’ we come to know the astral body thru our ego’s gift of ‘intuition’, And this ‘intuition’ takes us back to our previous life on earth.
Sleep is really a return in time. Every sleep is a return to the regions traversed before birth, or to former incarnations. And so I was also wondering: Can we also get glimpses into our future lives?
And when we die (unless we are an initiate) the cosmos takes all our memories & experiences – the impressions rolled up in our etheric body -the cosmos takes them back, (enriched hopefully) thru our human soul forces – I always like to say: ‘May I be a fit food for the gods’. This gives us the perspective that we are not just here on earth for our own spiritual development, we are here for the advancement of the universe. The universe needs us, because thru us, it ‘fullfills’ itself — fills itself again & again with its own content that has been filtered thru our thinking, feeling & willing – an interchange, between the universe & the human being. Anthroposophia helps us to become true human beings if we make this experience conscious & practical.
~hag
RUDOLF STEINER’S CALENDAR OF THE SOUL
translated (with added titles) by Roy Sadler
TRINITY III
Midsummer Wisdom
v11
It rests this sun’s high hour with you
to recognise the call of wisdom:
‘In you, absorbed in worlds where beauty lies,
through all your feeling realise:
the human I can lose itself
and find itself within the Cosmic I’.
Greetings friends –
The summertime union between the Sun & Earth is a re-union between the spiritual beings of the Sun & their human offspring. Through ‘the great window of heaven’ we experience this interaction which helps us develop an awareness of our ego. We can contemplate this dynamic & bring it to life in our soul most strongly at this time of year. Here are some ways to celebrate & connect:
Sunday 20 June 2021 – Summer Solstice / Father’s Day
Bon-Fire & Prep-Stir Social Gathering
6 pm CT Pot-Luck Dinner at the Home of Hazel Archer & Chuck Ginsberg
Please Bring Food & Drink, a song, poem or Question to Share in Community
This is an offical ‘Merry Prepstir‘ synchronized application,
linking us to Biodynamic workers around the world,
so that ‘The Earth May Be Healed’.
We will be working with BD 500 Horn Manure.
RSVP by 19 June 2021 for address & directions
‘Preparing the Way’ an experiential St. John’s-Tide Festival
23 June 2021, Doors open at 5:30 pm with a Potluck –
Program from 7 – 8:30 pm
In-person at the Rudolf Steiner Branch 4248 N. Lincoln Ave. Chicago, 60618
Singing – Elizabeth Kelly
Group discussion – Hazel Archer
Spatial Dynamics – Deborah Rogers
Art – Mary Spalding
For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer
St. John the Baptist and Uriel the Archangel of Summer –
An Experiential online Festival with Geoff Norris, Elizabeth Carlson, Lisa Dalton, Lucien Dante Lazar, Hazel Archer
Sunday 27 June 2021 on Zoom:
Noon – 1:30 pm PT / 1 – 2:30 pm MT / 2 pm – 3:30 pm CT / 3 – 4:30 pm ET /
8 – 9:30 pm London Time / 9 – 10:30 pm CET
Metanoia – Can you hear the voice of conscience? – Make straight the path, for at the fullness of Summer, the light is so bright that it leaves no room for the shadow, a time to remember what St. John said “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Musicial Performance by Lucien Dante Lazar
Speech – Geoffrey Norris
Eurythmy- Elizabeth Carlson
Living into St. John’s-Tide – Lisa Dalton
Leading Thoughts – Hazel Archer
Hazel Archer is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: St. John’s
Time: Jun 27, 2021 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/7052931041?pwd=TkMwcGVVdk5GTVJmVzVJS2s5YVFtQT09
Meeting ID: 705 293 1041
Passcode: Uriel
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/a961qZZhF
For more info. contact Cultural Events & Festivals Coordinator Hazel Archer Hazel@reverseritual.com
Angela Foster
Angela Foster
