Dear Friends – Amidst the daily duties in the striving to serve Anthroposophia, while still holding the energies of Epiphany, looking forward to what Holy Week wants this year, preparing for the new semester of Applied Anthroposophy (which starts tonight!) & the Sophia Rising Convergence (the official announcement & registration will come from the ASA on 5 Feb.) during my sunrise oblations this morning I found myself casting about for a clue as to what to bring for today’s offering.
I am feeling called to leave a lasting impression, a hardy morsel that needs chewing, since I am off to a retreat with the General Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America in Austin, & I will be completely off line until 1 February 2022 – the New Moon, Imbolc, & The Lunar New Year of the Water Tiger.
And what came is this lecture from Dr. Steiner, which I may have shared before, & which has a rinse & repeat quality. Chew well my friends, & may this inconvenient truth become a nourishing impulse for Wisdom & Love…
~hag
The Fundamental Social Demand of Our Times, LECTURE 4, Dornach, December 20, 1918, The New Revelation of the Spirit
“Who are the Beings of the Spiritual World who stand behind the revelations that are breaking newly into human history through the veil of outward phenomena?
Evolution does indeed take place among the Hierarchies. The Spirits of Personality are rising to a creative activity.
What then is it that is revealing itself through the veil of phenomena? It is the expression of a new creative principle, brought into the world by the Spirits of Personality. In this connection we must recognize it as the essential characteristic of our age (which began in the fifteenth century A.D.) to develop impulses of personality. The personality, if I may use this trite expression, wants to stand on its own feet, does so more and more as we go forward into the third millennium, when other impulses for the fulfillment of personality will enter in.
Consider carefully, my dear friends, what I have just told you. There, coming towards humanity, is the new revelation from the Spirits of Light, the Spirits of Personality. But over against this, especially since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age, there stand certain Spirits of Darkness. For as soon as we look behind the veil of the phenomena we see at once how certain ranks of spiritual Beings are confronted by other ones, opposing ones. On the one hand we turn our gaze to the Spirits of Personality revealing themselves as I described them just now; on the other hand we see over against them certain Spirits of Darkness, making themselves manifest, Spirits whose interest it is not to allow that which is to come — the new revelation of the Spirit of Personality — to become effective in mankind. These new Spirits of Darkness find an opportunity to realize their intentions in a certain phenomenon of modern life which is unfortunately far too little heeded by present-day mankind.
You see therefore that human labor on Earth has found, so to speak, a substitute. Something is here that works like human beings and yet does not consist of human beings in flesh and blood. This fact is extremely important for the evolution of mankind, and it is connected with other facts in the evolution of the present time. The five hundred million men who are really not there as men of flesh and blood — all the work that is done by the machines just as though men were doing it — all this machine work gives opportunity for the Spirits of Darkness to realize themselves within our human evolution. And these very Spirits of Darkness are the opponents of the Spirits of Personality who bring with them the new revelations of the heavens breaking in upon us with a new clairvoyance, while on the other hand, arising out of the sub-earthly realms, we have the embodiment provided for the adversaries. For these very adversaries are demonic Spirits, Spirits of Darkness, who can now actualize themselves — albeit not through human beings of flesh and blood; they live and move among us none the less, inasmuch as human forces are being replaced by mechanisms, by machines.
This too lies at the basis of all disharmony in the social life of our time. It lies also at the basis of certain errors, certain aberrations of human thinking in our time, which in their turn provide once more the starting-point for social aberrations. For in the course of the last few centuries, human thinking has in a certain respect adapted itself to the mechanistic order. It is permeated, impregnated by conceptions adapted purely to a mechanistic order. In many spheres of natural science — but not only there, in many spheres of actual life, of the social and socialistic life of today…
And yet, my dear friends, in the world of manifestation everything has a twofold aspect, and you must not therefore conclude that the mechanistic ideas have slunk into human evolution as an evil thing that ought to be avoided. No, that would be altogether wrong. Dangerous as these ideas are because they give certain Spirits of Darkness the opportunity to arise against the Spirits of Personality who are revealing themselves today; dangerous, above all, as is the mechanistic order from which these ideas are derived, yet on the other hand the very thinking which takes its start from mechanistic ideas is beneficial. For this, my dear friends, is the task of modern time: — Our powers of soul must be equipped with the ideas that live in modern scientific thought and altogether in modern thought. This is the necessary task of modern time. We must permeate ourselves with these ideas and then place them in the service of the new revelation of the heavens…
Thus humankind has passed through a certain education in sharply outlined thinking. But from this point onward it is necessary to turn to the new revelation of the Spirit, and to conceive the spiritual worlds with the same clarity with which we have grown accustomed to conceive the world of Natural Science. This is what the modern intellectual conscience requires, nor will mankind be able to dispense with this. Without this, mankind will never be able to solve the all-important questions that will arise in the present and in the near future. Clear and sharp thinking trained in the modern, scientific ideas and then applied to the spiritual world as it reveals itself anew; such is the configuration, fundamentally speaking, of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Such is the character which anthroposophical Spiritual Science wants to have, therefore it reckons with the most necessary requirements of our time. Moreover, for this very reason, it is able to descend from spiritual heights, to grasp what is necessary to the everyday life of man. My dear friends, we must again and again repeat that Spiritual Science wishes to bring new help to human work and human tasks of outer life.
A host of other important impulses of our time must be seen in this connection. We are standing in the very midst — not at the end, but I say with full consciousness, in the very midst — of a time of conflict, a time when chaotic events are taking place in human evolution, events from which as I have often said, men ought to learn. Alas! There are so many who have learnt nothing yet from the events of the last four and a half years, whose thinking is still the very same in form as it was four and a half years ago. Events are taking place, my dear friends, which reveal outward humanity — or the life of outward humanity — in conflict and in warfare.
Man must pass through inner conflicts of the soul, conflicts that will strengthen him. We have not to look towards a future more comfortable than the past or the present. Specious ideals — which in reality are nothing but modern narcotics — are not the truth.
For the future, my dear friends, things will by no means be more comfortable in the outer life. For the remainder of earthly evolution mankind will yet have to shoulder far greater discomforts than they dream of yet. Nevertheless, they will shoulder them, for they will be strengthened by inner conflicts of soul — every individual man in his own soul.
When we pierce the veil of phenomena we behold a life of Divine Spiritual, Hierarchical labor; the thing that strikes us first is the great battle which is taking place behind the scene of the physical world of sense — the battle between Wisdom and Love. And man is placed in the midst of this battle. For a long time he has been unconscious of it, in future he must take part more and more consciously in this conflict which is taking place in the world between Wisdom and Love. For Man himself shall be the outcome when Wisdom and Love beat like an eternal pendulum, now towards the side of Wisdom and now towards the side of Love. Only through the rhythmic swinging of the pendulum, not through a sleepy peace, will the future shape itself aright.
All that is written in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is meant to lead men to fight this inner battle out victoriously. But people find it inconvenient; they shrink in fear; they have not the courage to go through the inner fight. And this, my dear friends, is a characteristic phenomenon of our time. Men will not go through this inner fight; they flee from it; they do not want it yet. And because they will not have it inwardly, it is projected outward…” ~Rudolf Steiner
26 January 2022 – “Speaking with the Stars”: Through the end of January, Mars is skimming through a particularly rich Milky Way region of Sagittarius. By this morning, the Red Planet is less than a Moon’s width from the northeastern edge of the breathtaking Lagoon Nebula.
Sunrise: 7:14 A.M.
Sunset: 5:12 P.M.
Moonrise: 1:27 A.M.
Moonset: 11:52 A.M.
Moon Phase: Waning crescent (37%) ~Astronomy.com
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
155 – Polycarp of Smyrna, pupil of John the Evangelist, burnt at the stake
1915 – Rudolf Steiner gives Helmuth von Moltke a meditation: Genius des Deutschen Vilkes
“Out of the substance of soul and spirit, human beings have to fashion the tools with which to plough a way, the soul-way leading to the castle of the Grail, to the mystery of the Grail, to the mystery of bread and blood, to the fulfilment of the words ‘This do in remembrance of me’. This is, truly, in remembrance of the mighty event of Golgotha, if the symbol of the bread — of what, in other words, develops from the earth through the synthesis of cosmic forces — is understood. It is done in full remembrance if we understand once again how to grasp the world through a spiritualized cosmology and astronomy, and if we learn to comprehend the human being in terms of his essence: the element where the spiritual directly enters him — the mystery of the blood. The path that leads to the Holy Grail must be found through inner work in human souls. This is the task of cognition and the social task.”~Rudolf Steiner, The Mysteries of the Holy Grail, Chapter 8, “The Lapse into Matter”, and Chapter 9, “Piercing the Thicket”, excerpts from Steiner’s lectures given at Dornach on 16 & 17 April 1921 … focus of the February 2 meeting. Chapters 7, 8 & 9 in the book can be found online at the CRC’s website by clicking this link A transcript of the 16 April, 1921 lecture can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link A transcript of the 17 April, 1921 lecture can be found on the RS Archive by clicking this link The Central Regional Council of the Anthroposophical Society in America invites you to join our ongoing study conversation. The study has been divided among two volunteers who will summarize their section to rebuild it as a foundation for our conversation. Please familiarize yourself with the lecture if possible so you will feel comfortable sharing your reflections and thoughts with the group.This collection of lectures has been republished by Rudolf Steiner Press under the title: “The Mysteries of the Holy Grail — from Arthur and Parzival to Modern Initiation.” The book was compiled and edited by Matthew Barton, published by Rudolf Steiner Press in 2010. This will be a “Zoom” conference call allowing us an opportunity to see one another while conversing (or audio only if you prefer). To connect to the audio/video-conference: Video Conference Details: Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88210505106 Meeting ID: 882 1050 5106 One tap mobile +13017158592,,81116556762# US (Germantown) +13126266799,,81116556762# US (Chicago) Dial by your location +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) Meeting ID: 882 1050 5106 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcHr5EVwrv If you have questions, please contact Alberto Loya aloyavaca@utexas.edu |
Agenda for this meeting (CST) 7:15 Welcome and Introductions 7:18 Verse 7:25 Study led by volunteers Note: CRC team will ID volunteers Michael – Chapter 8 Camille – Chapter 9 7:50 Conversation 8:25 ID volunteers for next meeting 8:28 Close with verse There is a knighthood of the 21st century whose riders do not ride through the darkness of physical forests as of old, but through the forest of darkened minds. They are armed with a spiritual armor and an inner sun makes them radiant. Out of them shines healing, healing that flows from the knowledge of the human being as a spiritual being. They must create inner order, inner justice, peace and conviction in the darkness of our time. ~Karl Konig |