Proud mother and 10-minute old lamb at Tablehurst Community Farm
After a hectic but very enjoyable Lambing Day on March 19th, with hundreds of visitors at Tablehurst Farm, we went in the evening to Lewes, the county town of East Sussex, for an inspiring performance of Bach’s St John Passion. To go from little lambs to the Lamb of God is a wonderful way to get into the Easter mood; and it also got me reflecting on Easter as the festival of death and resurrection, the death of Jesus Christ and his subsequent rebirth into a new life.
When I was a child and indeed for many years afterwards, I could never understand what was meant when teachers and priests said things like “Christ died to save our sins” and “Christ died that we may live”. And actually, I’m not sure that those teachers and priests knew what they meant, either. How could someone dying a horrible death 2000 years ago have had any practical effect on our lives today? And how did that death redeem my small sins or help me to live? There is a mystery here and I didn’t receive any explanation that made sense to me while I was growing up.
As I got older and particularly as I began to enquire more widely into esoteric matters, I started to get a glimmer of understanding into these questions. Rudolf Steiner’s works have been particularly helpful in this respect.
From his youth, Steiner possessed complete clairvoyance so that the spiritual worlds were as open to him as the material world is to us. Having developed this power of exploring higher worlds he set about his investigations and was able to research back to the dim past of human and planetary evolution. To his astonishment, he discovered that the descent of the Christ into physical existence was the absolutely central event of evolution, what he sometimes called “the turning point of time”. Of this period in his life Steiner writes in his autobiography: “I stood before the Mystery of Golgotha in a most profound inward festival of knowledge” and it is a fact that from about 1910 onwards Steiner’s entire teaching is Christo-centric.
Naturally this teaching does not always conform to church dogma, for Steiner’s spiritual research enabled him to arrive at esoteric truths and then express them without the need to pay lip service to what was taught by the churches. Some of you may remember David Jenkins, who was Bishop of Durham from 1984 to 1994. He enraged newspapers like the Daily Mail and the more thick-headed rent-a-quote type of MP by saying that the resurrection was not of a physical body, an idea which he described as “conjuring tricks with bones.” The poor bishop was trying to give out information from esoteric Christianity rather than the fairy story that the Church hitherto had thought was all we could understand – but clearly there were still some people who didn’t want to take off their baby shoes.
It’s also disappointing to have to spell out the following but if I don’t do so, there are people who will try to drive sectarian wedges between Steiner and others. So let it be understood that behind everything Steiner says is the concept that life is a divine oneness and that humankind is one great family. The Christ impulse illumines every race, creed and nation, and there is nothing sectarian about it – Truth and Love are there for every human being, of whatever race and whether atheist or believer.
Esoteric Christianity sees the man Jesus as the human vehicle for the cosmic being of the Christ. What do we mean by the Christ and why did this cosmic being need a human vehicle? The name “Christ” comes from the Greek “Christos” and it refers to an exalted being of the spiritual Sun. We need to re-think materialistic science’s view that the celestial bodies are just balls of gas or types of nuclear reactor in the skies – the solar system as seen with Steiner’s spiritual knowledge is a huge living organism filled with living thought. Here we have to try to encompass the concept of a solar system filled with spirit and being. This is not the time to go into Steiner’s picture of the evolution of the solar system and the way in which the celestial bodies became related to each other but those who are interested can read more in Steiner’s book, An Outline of Esoteric Science. If we can nevertheless hold on to this picture of the celestial bodies as spheres of activity for spiritual beings, then we might also see that evolution has both a spiritual and a physical aspect.
Steiner says that the overlighting of Jesus of Nazareth by the Cosmic Christ took place at the time when the 30-year old Jesus was baptised in the River Jordan by John the Baptist. This was when the Christ incarnated into the body of Jesus. In the Gospel of St Matthew we read: “and lo, the heavens were opened unto him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon him.” For three years after the Baptism, the Christ lived in this body of Jesus until his death on the cross.
Turning now to Steiner’s comments on Easter, he says here something about the true significance of the Festival for us:
“When a mighty individuality like that of the Christ Jesus comes to the aid of entire humanity, it is his sacrifice in death which permeates the karma of mankind. He helped to carry the karma of the whole of humanity, and we may be quite sure that redemption through Christ Jesus was absorbed and assimilated by the totality of human karma.”
An amazing thought, and one which to me helps to make sense of the saying that Christ died to save us from our sins. What Steiner is conveying here is that when Christ died on the cross he took on a huge part of the karma of humanity, which had it not been redeemed in this way, would have led us into more and more darkness and materiality. Instead, Christ’s deed began the slow but sure upward ascent away from materialism in which we are now engaged. Now, this materialism still has a long way to run, apparently for another 2,500 years or so, and indeed it has not yet reached the peak of its intensity – but we are all now on an upward path.
Unusual and startling as some may find Steiner’s insights, personally I find them very helpful in understanding the true meaning of Easter. Steiner goes on to talk about the enormous significance of Easter for human evolution:
“Christ Jesus experiences death, as commemorated by Good Friday. He remains in the grave for the period of three days, this representing His coalescence with earthly existence. This period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is celebrated in Christendom as a festival of mourning. Finally, Easter Sunday is the day on which the central being of Christianity arises from the grave. It is the memorial day of this event. That is the essential substance of Easter: the death, the interval in the grave, and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus.”
“The essential point is that in the thirtieth year of His life… the primal Being of the Sun, the Christ Himself…took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what underlies the Mystery of Golgotha as the primal fruit of the whole life of the Earth.”
“It is, however, characteristic of the modern evolution of Christianity that the thought of Good Friday (i.e. the Crucifixion)…has come ever more to the fore, and the thought of the Resurrection — the true Easter thought — has gradually retired. Thoughts on Easter must point especially to a time in which man must experience the resurrection of his being through the Spirit. We have need of Easter thoughts, and of a full understanding of such thoughts…It is the Christ we have need of, however, the Christ Whom we can seek in our own inner beings, and Who at once appears when we do seek Him…We have need of the vivid consciousness of the eternity of the Spirit.”
Notice there that Steiner has said that the true thought of Easter is Resurrection and not the concentration on the Crucifixion. In other words, the more important aspect of Easter is not death and mourning but the possibility of new life and the return of awareness of the spirit to human consciousness. He says:
“We will never be able to grasp the true thought of Easter unless we realise that in speaking of the Christ we must look upwards from what is merely earthly to what is cosmic….Christ came down among men in order to unite the souls of men with the Cosmic Spirit. Only a true expounder of the Gospel of Christ points out that what we see in the physical sun is the outward expression of the Spirit of our universe — the resurrecting Spirit of our universe.”
And in fact Steiner gives us the most tremendous thought, one which I find changes my conception of what it is to walk this Earth. He says that since Christ’s descent into hell and resurrection, Christ has lived in the etheric body of the Earth and can be experienced by those who have developed the necessary supersensible perception. Steiner says that there will be no Second Coming of Christ in a physical body. There is no need for the Christ to incarnate again and live through a physical body and so pass through death. That was done once and for all and will not be repeated.
So if the Christ really is in the etheric body of the Earth, what does that mean for us? Well, it certainly can make a difference to how you walk on the earth itself. If the Christ is there, then you are literally treading on holy ground every time you take a step, wherever you may be. And if He is indeed present invisibly throughout the whole etheric field of the Earth, then He is truly within the etheric body of every form, every tree and plant, every animal. Christ came for the benefit of all creation, not just human beings. But with our normal intellectual processes we cannot consciously experience this. If we can raise our thinking and awareness, however, there we shall find Him.
Now, here’s another thought – what would it mean for the world if instead of dashing about heedlessly, we walked with the awareness that we are treading on the etheric body of Christ, and that by doing this with loving consciousness, we are helping to release the spiritual substance locked up in matter and thereby transforming it – what might that do to the world? What might that do to our selves?
Happy Easter!
anthropopper 
This moved me to tears – in a very beautiful way, thank you.
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Thank you so much, Sarah!
Very best wishes,
Jeremy
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Jeremy wrote:
“And in fact Steiner gives us the most tremendous thought, one which I find changes my conception of what it is to walk this Earth. He says that since Christ’s descent into hell and resurrection, Christ has lived in the etheric body of the Earth and can be experienced by those who have developed the necessary supersensible perception.”
Matthew, Chapter 27
45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.
46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, “This man is calling for Elijah.”
48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink.
49 But the rest of them said, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.”
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;
53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
54 Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
Steve wrote:
“The only time that Christ “dwelt in the material world of the sub-ethers to Christianize those things that we must Christianize ourselves”, is over the period of the forty days of the Resurrection. This is when He descended into the underworld, and saved all the souls that had gone down due to the conditions at the midpoint of earth evolution. Humanity was a lost cause in the making until Christ incarnated, and that is why we say: “In Christ, death becomes life”, i.e., [in christos morimur]. Christ solved the problem of death that had incarcerated so many unrepentant souls to a life of purgatory in the hell of the underworld. Our future ascent was now assured.”
Gemma wrote:
“Where on earth did you dream this up? It’s as if you want to add 2+3 and reckon the answer to be 23. The fallacies you are peddling – which some others have already been ensnared by – are the result of a mind that has yet to wake up.”
Hardly 😉
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Thankyou for sharing your thoughts, Jeremy.
You covered a great deal in your essay, and it’s not easy to know quite where to begin – but then, that is the difficulty of the remote communciation systems we have. I’d find it a lot easier to begin if I was able to make a few mistakes first, and so establish what we both know through your expressions and your responses.
Thankyou for this clear statement; it is not one that many anthros can make. In the last thread there was a great deal of confusion on this one simple issue. I am sure that you are aware that if Christ had transgressed on one single occasion – that is to say, he committed a sin – this would have required that he re-incarnate to atone for that sin.
Anybody suggesting that Christ is involved in the material world in any way has strayed from this one essential understanding.
However it is essential that we humans do not force some image or illusion bearing the stamp of Christ to do things for us. In speaking with christians, I ask them “would you let Him wash your feet?”
My point in asking this – which is described in full on my private blog and available as a pdf by email on request – is to determine if someone has truly accepted the love Christ has for each and every one of us. It is one thing to say that you accept it, it is quite another to deal with the reality!!
Illusions are there to be dispelled, not indulged in, and too many Christians are more than willing to accept Christ’s death on the cross because he died for everybody… so it can have that element of ‘distance’ and, put frankly, safety. Ask most church-goers the above question and they will say something like “I would do as he tells me”.
What kind of heaven do they want to live in? One that in reality is hell itself???
The reality of Christ’s death on the cross was to allow us to make mistakes – and learn from them without having to cross one’s knees and feet in anguish at all the guilt one might otherwise feel. The Dutch, by the way, are very good at guilt and need to pay it all off. In a rather macabre story, I suggest that the Dutch wanted Christ to sign a contract stating the price they must pay for each sin committed, because only then would they feel guilt-free. Poor Christ couldn’t sign it because his hand was nailed to a piece of wood.
But then, nor could he write.
Money at its most evil is associated with guilt. That includes enforced transactions such as the funds that were employed in building the headquarters of the Anthroposophical society in Dornach.
The real point for me is that Christ wants us to be able to find our own way, make our own mistakes and so, with his help, arrive at a point where we can make a decision based on what we know to be good. A decision we know that each of us as a unique individual can make, and only each unique individual can act upon. If all of humanity does this, then the tenth hierarchy will reflect heaven in their deeds.
That requires no word from Christ by way of an order or even a gesture; but then, that is how humanity works in heaven. We each of us are unique, and have a unique place to act. Our job is to unveil that.
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Gemma wrote, citing Jeremy first:
“There is no need for the Christ to incarnate again and live through a physical body and so pass through death. That was done once and for all and will not be repeated.”
Gemma: Thank you for this clear statement; it is not one that many anthros can make. In the last thread there was a great deal of confusion on this one simple issue. I am sure that you are aware that if Christ had transgressed on one single occasion – that is to say, he committed a sin – this would have required that he re-incarnate to atone for that sin.
Gemma, there was no confusion whatsoever in the last thread about the Christ reappearing in the human etheric body. This fact represents the crux of Christo-centric anthroposophy. Thus, where you say that “many anthros can make” is only your own error. They recognize a Christ without a church, and yet you seem to imply that they are looking for a physical reincarnation again. They don’t.
So, what is your true position? Antho’s do NOT live in the confines of the orthodox church. They would worship the birth of a lamb long before subscribing to a doctrine which waits for the messiah. Why? Because He is here already in our time. And that is what makes the battle with Michael all the more exciting.
Steve
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But you did confuse other things, viz:
However, I doubt for one moment that you see it as a confusion. That is how the subconscious works; after all, none of us can see it within ourselves – a point you conceded to me.
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Thank you Jeremy – this is beautiful.
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Thank you, Liliana!
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“When the Christ died and was resurrected, He went ultimately into the etheric envelope of the earth and therein worked to build up the moral etheric element, which came down in order to enrich the very core of the earth’s fundamental outer strata, i.e., the silica compound. And that is how it came about that around 1965 it was discovered that a silica-chip could make contact with the etheric world, which is a world of information in the same way that the plant impresses its veins into the leaf. The microchip processor is the gateway to the communications network we have today, and its has nothing to do with Ahriman, but rather, the Christ who died on the Cross and then ascended into the earth’s etheric atmosphere.”
HTML (hyper-text markup language) is the computer code that replaces the COBOL programming of the old mainframes, which are as obsolete as the old dinosaur, Univac 1050-II. NT servers were the means to make the etheric world itself into a huge database. And HTML is the code used to impress right into it. Thus, the fine science of technology is owed to the evolutionary Christ Who dwelt in the Etheric that surrounds the Earth, and sent morality down to us as a formative force.
Conscious awareness sees the Ethernet as a product of the Christ, while Ahriman rules the internet with lesser aims that holds consciousness to lower levels.
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In our day, it can be shown that the Christ has ennobled the silica core of the earth in ways that have only helped improve the communications of a world-wide society. As well, technological advances in the same measure have also served to bring us forward in ways that are designed to increase the power to solve problems in a real-world setting. Nothing is really ‘left to chance’ when it is all rather “self contained”, and all we have to do is believe in each other, and love the world we live in.
It can be shown that this inevitability of the Christ was foresworn in an earlier epoch when the Mystery of Ephesus, c. 500 BC, was being enacted as a very special rite of Wisdom and Word. Therein, it was revealed how a sensitive membrane had formed around the earth in order to contain organic life on earth, as well as a means to communicate with the various planetary hierarchies.
“Today we look upon the Earth as a great piece of rock or stone, covered with water over a large part of its surface and surrounded by a sphere of air containing oxygen and nitrogen and other substances, — containing, in fact, what the human being requires for breathing. And so on and so on. And when men begin to explain and speculate on what passes to-day for scientific knowledge, then we get a fine result indeed! For only by means of spiritual vision can one penetrate to the conditions that prevailed in the earliest primeval times. Such a spiritual vision, however, concerning primeval conditions of the Earth and of mankind was attained by the pupils of Ephesus, when they identified themselves with the divine image; they beheld and understood how formerly what surrounds the Earth today as atmosphere was not as it now is; surrounding the Earth, in the place where the atmosphere is today, was an extraordinarily fine albumen, a volatile, fluid albumenous substance. And they saw how everything that lived on the Earth required for its own genesis the forces of this volatile, fluid albumenous substance, that was spread over the Earth, and how everything also lived in it. They saw too how that which was in a certain sense already within this substance — finely distributed but everywhere with a tendency to crystallisation — how that which was present in a finely distributed condition as silicic acid was in reality a kind of sense-organ for the Earth and could take up into itself from all sides the Imaginations and influences from the surrounding Cosmos. And thus in the silicic acid contained in the earthly albumenous atmosphere were everywhere Imaginations, concretely, externally present.
Besides the silicic acid, there was imbedded also in this albumen-atmosphere another substance, lime, in a finely-divided condition. Again, out of the lime substance, under the influence of the congelation of the albumen there arose the animal kingdom. And the human being felt himself within all this. He felt one with the whole Earth. He lived in that which formed itself as plant in the Earth through Imagination, he lived too in that which was developing on Earth as animal, in the way I have described. Each single human being felt himself spread out over the whole Earth, felt himself one with the Earth. So that the human beings were all each within the other.”
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA233/English/RSP1977/19231226d01.html
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Thoughts on Technology:
Steiner’s warnings are obviously meant for those humans who are uninitiated, which means most of the human race, and how machines, and eventually our present technology, has the power to drive down “from nature to sub-nature”. These final leading thoughts make it very clear what and where the threat is.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA026/English/RSP1973/GA026_c29.html
As well, the smartphone today has its unique advantages, yet in my experience it only serves to keep people rather isolated in their own little world. On a daily basis I see people interacting with their “palm reader” rather than looking around and taking the world in, and communicating with others in the flesh. This is a problem, and one that Steiner addressed in a lecture as part of the Fundamental Social Issues of Our Time. As individualists today, we are anti-social by nature, and yet, we must become more social in order to get out of this self involvement and embrace the world and its real problems. Today’s young people are hardly equipped to even begin to understand what is going on.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/SocFor_index.html
My experience in the developing field of computer programming and business systems analysis occurred when the advent of the NT server was at hand. Thus, I was able to consciously measure its progression because I was trained as an ‘agent of beneficial change’. This is what our instructor in the systems analysis class said was our mission. He said that the first requirement of success was to demonstrate both credibility and reliability in our tasks to make improvements and better systems. People fear change, and yet want a better way to do business. Thus, much of my experience was in gaining information from users about how they did their jobs, and what they liked and disliked, and how to make it all work better. Then, after implementation of the new system, it was the training of the user in what is new, and which he/she fears, that becomes the next challenge. I did this for ten years with Boeing. Prior to that I was a user myself working in the manufacturing and engineering environments themselves. The best analyst is a good user.
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A Thought For Good Friday.
This is the day we remember when Jesus was nailed to a cross by those who thought they were doing the right thing. Acting out of materialist legislation which is itself the result of a lack of imagination. The bloke with the hammer and a bag filled of nails was only doing his job… was he paid by results? Paid by the nail, or by the body?
It’s like the modern farmer who has already sold his Easter lambs on the futures market as though they were sealed punnets of meat, sold by the kilo. Where is the love, the care, the tenderness… where are the customers? He knows them not, it’s just a supermarket, the closest a business can get to the impersonal nature of a computer.
No wonder they’re in financial trouble. The farmers who care for their customers – and this isn’t the Anthroposophical Hondspol farm in Driebergen who have financial difficulties – this is a farm 500m up the road towards Doorn. Here you will find farmer who with his wife love their farm, and it shows. Not only that, they respect their customers and as a result have a stable and sustainable business. It’s a rarity in our age of the consciousness soul, isn’t it? Someone caring and conscious of their customers! Isn’t it easier just to buy a bigger machine, a faster computer in the hope that it’s the solution to their problems, only to see their profits eroded because the businessman doesn’t want to deal with his customers. Entering the commodity war instead, where conscience is the last thing anybody thinks about…
But then, just as in Hell itself, the various departments of a modern business will be fighting turf wars. It was when I learned that a business could improve its profits substantially just by negotiating a peace treaty between these – put crudely – criminal gangs… that was when I packed my bags as a business advisor. The sales and marketing departments should be working hand in glove, not dagger in hand!
It was this world that Jesus descended into, and for three days cast His benevolent eye over the quaking devils and demons. Like any miscreant who knows they’re about to have their sinful life exposed, they’ll do anything to look clean! They’ll clean the place up, make it look as if it’s calm and efficient. The civil war born out of mutual hatred will cease as a greater fear overwhelms them, that of all their wrongdoings to be exposed by the light of truth.
I can bet that once word got around that the rumours were true, Hell got one helluva tidying up. The prisoners all had their chains polished, the bars a fresh lick of white paint and the hinges a drop of oil to stop that infernal noise.
After all, it has to look the part! It’s not as if a devil can imagine anything different, like the software engineer who is so engrossed in his technology that he literally cannot imagine anything else. It means that freedom to a devil is to have the security provided by iron bars, in the way the server stack has a nice big lock on its heavy door. Only those who are safe, like minded, certified, are allowed in.
Yet to Jesus, Hell is no different just because
the servers in the back corner got a dusting downthe iron bars got a polish and the walls a wash? Hell is Hell, be it clean or not, the corruption is there for those who have eyes. It will look clean to those who lack the imagination to see the corruption around them.Read more here: https://gemmasponderings.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/a-very-modern-good-friday/
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Another Thought For Good Friday
When Judas, who had betrayed the Christ, saw that He was to be condemned and crucified, he sought to return the money received for his services, and thus attempt to absolve himself from his fateful action. The remorse of Judas is clearly shown to be the result of his karmic mission in preparing for the Mystery of Golgotha. Without the betrayal, the Act of Consecration could not have been set up.
The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 27
Now when morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people conferred together against Jesus to put Him to death;
2 and they bound Him, and led Him away and delivered Him to Pilate the governor.
3 Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,
4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!”
5 And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself.
6 The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood.”
7 And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers.
8 For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
9 Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one whose price had been set by the sons of Israel;
10 and they gave them for the Potter’s Field, as the Lord directed me.”
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The Mystery of Golgotha as an Act of Consecration
It would be good to review the event that occurred at the mid-point of earth evolution, which was also a turning point of time in that it both signaled and symbolized a major transition. With the mid-point, we are looking at the point where death had become the eventuality of life, and with the turning-point, we are looking at the transition from the third to the fourth stage of mineralization of the earth. Thus, the baptism in water brought about the descent of the Dove, and He walked out of the Jordon onto the dry land, which constitutes the fourth and final stage of mineral solidification.
Thus, for a period of three years the Christ Who had gathered pre-selected disciples as His followers, and based on their respective karma’s owing to their own prior lives as the former Maccabees, brought a teaching of moral behavior to the earth in which the time had come where we should begin to see ourselves as individual beings of responsibility, and those around us as part of a world communion of humanity. This fact still remains our goal of conscious achievement to this very day.
After the three years of walking the three little districts that represented His territory of concern, i.e., Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, the life of Christ was at an end in its one and only physical incarnation. During that time, He had progressively poured His forces into the etheric, astral, and physical bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, and this brought about the moment when He bore “The Cup” of Jesus into the Earth.
Let’s review the best account possible of what occurred on Good Friday, April 3, 33 AD. Today, some 1983 years later, on March 25, 2016, the account remains the same, and those who saw it were convinced, both Roman and Jew.
Matthew, Chapter 27
45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour.
46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, “This man is calling for Elijah.”
48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink.
49 But the rest of them said, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.”
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;
53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
54 Now the centurion, and those who were with him keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
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Christ and the World-Historical Process; the Monologue of Monologues
“Christianity does not proceed from a personal teacher but is founded on the Mystery of Golgotha, a world historical fact, on death and resurrection. But that which he can grasp and is so clear to him is that in Christ Jesus we have a figure of tremendous significance, one that is of importance to every human heart, a figure that must stand there as the ideal figure for the whole history of the world.”
“In former times it was the initiates who were the great leaders of humanity, those who were taken up to the final stage of initiation in the sacred mysteries. It was these men who approached the gate of death, who had been immersed in the elements, had remained for three days outside their bodies and during these three days were in the super-sensible worlds. Then they were brought back again into their bodies and became thereafter emissaries, ambassadors from the super-sensible worlds. It was always those initiates who had become initiates by means such as these who were the great leaders of mankind. Now Peter says, “You are the Christ,” that is, “You are a leader who has not gone through the mysteries in this way but has come down from the cosmos and become a leader of mankind.” Something which in all other cases had happened in a different way, through initiation, was now to take place on the earth plane once and for all as a historical fact. It was something colossal that Peter had just proclaimed. So what had he to be told? He had to be told that this was something that must not be brought before the people. It is something that according to the most sacred laws of the past must remain a mystery; it is not permissible to speak of the mysteries. That is what Peter had to be told at that moment.
Yet the whole meaning of the further evolution of humanity is that with the Mystery of Golgotha something that otherwise took place only in the depths of the mysteries had now been manifested on the plane of world history. Through what happened on Golgotha, the lying in the grave for three days, the resurrection, through this what otherwise had taken place only in the depths and darkness of the mysteries was placed historically on the earth plane. In other words, the moment in time had now come when what had hitherto been regarded as a sacred law: that silence must be preserved about the mysteries, must be broken. The law that one has to be silent about the mysteries had been established by men. But now, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the mysteries must become manifest! Within the soul of the Christ a decision was taken, the greatest world-historical decision, when He resolved that what until now had always, according to human law, been kept secret must now be made manifest before the sight of all, before world history.
Let us think of this moment in world history when the Christ meditated and reflected in this way, “I am looking at the whole development of mankind. The laws of mankind forbid me to speak about death and resurrection, about raising from the dead, and about the sacred mystery of initiation. Yet no! I have in truth been sent down to the earth by the Gods to make these things manifest. It is not for me to conform to what people say, but I must act in conformity with what the Gods tell me.” It is in this moment that the decision to make the mysteries manifest is prepared. And Christ must shake off the irresolution that might arise from a wish to maintain within human evolution what human commands have enjoined. “Get behind me, irresolution, and decision, grow in me, the decision to place before all mankind what hitherto has been kept in the depths of the mysteries.” Christ addresses His own resolution after He had rejected everything that could make Him irresolute when He says, “Get behind me,” and at this moment He resolves to fulfill what He had been sent down to earth by God to accomplish.
In this passage we have to do with the greatest monologue in world history, the greatest that has ever taken place in the whole of earth evolution, the monologue of a God about making manifest the mysteries. No wonder that the God’s monologue is from the beginning incomprehensible to the human intellect. If we wish to penetrate into its depths we must wish, at least in some measure, to make ourselves worthy of understanding the God’s monologue through which the deed of the God moves one step further towards realization.”
—–Steiner’s lectures on the Gospel of St. Mark, September 1912
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Thankyou
Zoe Scott http://www.PowerSalad.farm6 Chemin de la Boutonniere50300, AvranchesFRANCE
00 (33) 678 181 132zeestarbar@hotmail.com
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2016 20:28:04 +0000 To: zeestarbar@hotmail.com
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Christ Among His Disciples – The First Sunday
19 So when it was evening on the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
20 And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
21 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.”
22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
23 If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.”
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
25 So the other disciples were saying to him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”
26 After eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors having been shut, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.”
27 Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here with your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand and put it into My side; and do not be unbelieving, but believing.”
28 Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+20&version=NASB
The mystery of Thomas not being there when Christ first appeared has been an enigma to me for some 18 years now, since the summer of 1998, when I first proposed the question: Where Was Thomas On The First Day?
Also, why is Thomas called, “Didymus”, or ‘twin’, in the Gospel of John? Nowhere else is this designation given except in the John Gospel. Research over the last eighteen years has helped to solve the issue. Thomas, as a twin, has both an outer and an inner aspect, which was discerned by the writer of the Gospel of John. The outer aspect concerns the affiliation with Judas because they were brothers in their former lives as the sons of Matthias Maccabee, and the inner aspect concerns the necessity of Thomas receiving the Etheric Jesus in order to understand that the Resurrection was a fact.
They would combine to effect the apostolic ministry of the Apostle Thomas into India and Kashmir. The historical evidence of Jesus in India, and dying in Kashmir after giving the Gospel of Thomas, as a record of his own sayings as being the former receptacle of the Christ is rather well documented as proof of the inner twinship, which was first established on the eighth day after the resurrection, when Thomas needed the proof.
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Thank you. In relation to this cosmic Christ, may I have your thoughts on the idea that, since He permeates the etheric plane, humans from everywhere should feel His impulse ? In particular, I am interested in the indian school called non-dual tantra (in the medieval era) because they seem to get a very « christic » sense of I AM… but it is not connected to a particular Being — it’s all internal we could say. As a result, their doctrine is not related to an evolutionnary sense of Time. Would you call it christian ? Inner christianity, etc ? Thanks
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