Monthly Archives: August 2015

August 23, 2015 · 9:00 pm

A personal credo

What is it that you yourself believe, I was asked. A challenging question, and one which has taken me some while to think about. The A J Balfour poem I quoted in my post of 6th April 2015 contains the following lines:

“Our highest truths are but half-truths;

Think not to settle down for ever in any truth.

Make use of it as a tent in which to pass a summer’s night,

But build no house of it, or it will be your tomb.”

Those are wise words and I quote them again here to indicate that what follows is a summary of what today I believe to be true but which I may modify at some future time, as my own insights and understanding unfold. I also think that, at our present stage of human development, any truth ought to be regarded not as a literal, objective truth but as a metaphor for a truth way beyond what we are currently capable of comprehending. But you have to start from where you are and this is where I am right now.

I believe in a Prime Cause or God, the creator of all universes, the origin of life itself, a being that is at present beyond human comprehension but who has created everything that exists, and indeed is everything that exists, including countless other realms of life and existence stretching forth into infinite eternity.

I believe that I am part of God and so are you and so is everybody and everything else; and that God lives through us and understands its own nature through the experience of the totality of creation.

I believe that at the deepest levels of our being there is in each of us a yearning to return to union with God.

I believe that we get hints or glimpses of the nature of God the unmanifest, in many different ways, but especially through our experience of loving and of being loved.

I believe that the sun is a physical symbol of the Cosmic Christ, the great spirit who came from the spiritual sun and who overlighted Jesus of Nazareth for the last three years of his life; and who is as close to my idea of God as I can currently encompass.

I believe that, just as the sun shines on all, so the Cosmic Christ overlights all human beings, irrespective of race, nation, belief or non-belief.

I believe that the Cosmic Christ is also present within the etheric body of the earth, thus every aspect of the earth is holy and should be treated with reverence.

I believe that the Cosmic Christ is that aspect of God which gives light and warmth to all life and also permeates all life, so that all of creation, including each human being, has a spark of the divine sun within itself.

I believe that we are spiritual beings currently having human experiences in physical bodies; and that we are subject to a constant cycle of birth, death and re-birth over many lifetimes.

I believe that the divine spark within each of us grows during our successive incarnations on earth; and that after many lifetimes this spark grows into a fire strong enough to transmute the physical particles of our body into light itself.

I believe that, when this stage is reached, the soul is freed from the necessity to reincarnate; but that some great souls voluntarily reincarnate so as to help the rest of struggling humanity to make progress.

I believe that the overall pattern of our present life has been set by how we lived our previous lives; and that the pattern of our next lifetime is being determined by how we live each day of this life.

I believe that the purpose of human life on earth is:

  • to unfold the divine plan for each one of us, to work out our karma and develop our consciousness in ways that can only occur in physical incarnation
  • to prepare for our return to God and our ultimate destiny of becoming co-creators with God, by learning how to use our creativity and free will with wisdom
  • to release the spirit that is encased in all matter and so transform the world through love that the earth eventually becomes the planet of love, thus fulfilling the evolutionary task of humankind.

I believe that free will is a privilege that has been given only to human beings.

I believe that life on earth is governed not only by physical laws such as gravity and action/reaction but also by a number of cosmic laws, including:

  • Reincarnation, the Law of Rebirth
  • Karma, the Law of Cause and Effect
  • The Law of Opportunity
  • The Law of Balance and Equilibrium
  • The Law of Correspondences*

I believe that the most powerful and all-pervading force in the world is Love.

I believe that Evil is also a reality in human evolution, the task of which is to divert human beings from their true goals and evolutionary opportunities.

I believe that there is no such thing as time but only one continuous moment and that consciousness is the only thing that exists.

I believe that there is nothing and no-one, however small or overlooked, that is insignificant or meaningless.

I believe that human beings are part of a world in which everything is intimately connected with everything else and “That Art Thou” is a statement of profound truth.

I believe in the existence of angels and archangels of many kinds; and that each one of us has a guardian angel.

I believe in elemental beings and the need to acknowledge their existence and work with them for the benefit of all life.

I believe that there are very many forms of non-physical life and intelligence not only on the earth but throughout the countless universes that God has created.

I believe that ‘death’ (meaning permanent extinction or non-consciousness) does not exist in any of the universes and is an illusion within the human mind.

* I have written in more detail about these cosmic laws in my posting of September 16th 2014: “Karma and the Steiner Waldorf teacher.”

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August 14, 2015 · 1:15 pm

A little oil for our lamps

Once again I must express my gratitude to Alicia Hamberg, whose thoughts from a perspective that is often critical of anthroposophy, have from time to time provoked me into writing posts on this blog.

The proximate cause of what follows is something that Alicia wrote as a reply to my post of April 6th 2015, “The terror of the infinite desert: atheists in the face of death”. Here is part of what she said:

“You may very well be right that your approach — or illusion — is ‘rational’ in some ways, regardless of whether it conforms to truth. But it only works as long as you’re able to tell yourself that it is at least likely to be true! The second you start to doubt it — at least if this doubt is more than just a fleeting thought — its ability to comfort diminishes, because if there’s serious doubt, you can’t lay the worries entirely to rest! (As a side-note, what happens after death according to anthroposophy is not necessarily a comforting thought — it is quite daunting.)”

I mentioned in that posting that I’m someone who is certain that life continues after death and therefore I have no fear of dying (although I am of course afraid of a painful death or a long drawn-out disabling illness). But there is another aspect of death that I do find daunting and that is the possibility that one could be caught in a kind of limbo, unable to return to earth but either terrified or completely unaware of the possibility of moving on into the spiritual world.

As it happens, I’ve known some people with clairvoyant and healing abilities who are able to do what is called rescue work with souls who “get stuck” in the astral plane after death. This very unfortunate state can happen to people who during their earth lives have no belief in reincarnation or life after death, or who for whatever reason are very earth-bound – and it can last for hundreds or even thousands of years. It is these stuck souls who are sometimes perceived as ‘ghosts’. What seems to occur is that their very strong non-belief that life continues in a different form after death (or their shock, in the case of those who have died a violent death) prevents them from becoming aware of the higher frequency spiritual beings who have come to help them make the transition. This is where clairvoyants with a particular gift for this kind of rescue work can help, because their own “vibrations” are low enough (because they are still attached to their physical bodies) so that souls trapped in the astral plane can actually perceive these earthly helpers, and may begin to listen to their advice about how to move on.

According to a lecture given by Steiner in May 1913, “the earth is neither a mere transitional stage, nor a vale of despair, but it exists so that on it a spiritual knowledge can be developed which can then be carried upwards into the spiritual worlds.” More than this, he says that it is only on the earth that such knowledge can be acquired – it’s usually too late once you’ve died: “This is due to the fact that the content of earthly theosophy can only be acquired on earth within a physical body. It can then be made use of in the spiritual world but it must be attained within a physical body….” Steiner gave quite a few lectures in 1912 and 1913 on what life is like between death and re-birth. You can read them, if you’re interested, in the invaluable online RS Archive.

Steiner’s message in the quotation above (you can tell by the reference to theosophy that it was given at a time when he was still the general secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society) is the same as the message of Jesus Christ’s parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. The parable does not criticise the foolish virgins for sleeping, because the wise ones also fall asleep – but instead it takes them to task for being unprepared, for not having the oil for their lamps. The oil we all need, so that our lamps can light us into the spiritual world when the time comes, is the knowledge of what to do when we die. It’s pretty astonishing that there is so little preparation for death – after all, we have the National Childbirth Trust and pregnancy classes for the beginning of physical incarnation but when it comes to excarnation, we have few equivalents for the final stages of life – although the soul midwifery movement is doing excellent work in this field.

Rescue workers say that the basics are not that complicated – all we need to do is recognise our deceased family members and friends and go with them, or sometimes just look for a beckoning light and then follow it. I do think that atheists in particular should be prepared to be open to such possibilities when they die, even if they despise themselves for entertaining such ideas – the alternative of getting stuck for centuries is too terrible to contemplate.

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