I started this blog in 2014 and have been writing an average of around one post a month on anthroposophical and other related themes ever since. My original purpose in writing was partly to help my own understanding of anthroposophy, through having to research and study particular topics, and partly to share my discoveries with people around the world, because I’m convinced that anthroposophy as a path for spiritual awakening and development is vital for all our futures.
Just lately, however, I have started to feel that in some respects I have failed as an anthroposophist and in this post I will set down why I think this is so. Of course, it has been good to share through this blog some of Steiner’s ideas that I’ve found really helpful; and in my personal and working lives it has also been good to be involved with biodynamic farms, anthroposophical trusts and educational bodies; but I’ve come to realise that the essential core of anthroposophy is really about studying and working with exercises to gain access to higher forms of knowledge and insight, so as to deepen ourselves as human beings. My approach up until now has been both an intellectual and an emotional path but this has not enabled me to develop the capacities for ‘living thinking’, nor to open up any latent abilities for spiritual insights (though I do have moments of intuition).
I have always had a blockage when it comes to meditation and feel that I lack the basic ability to do this, despite having tried hard on various occasions with various teachers and writers about meditation over the years. This inability to meditate is a serious stumbling block on the path to spiritual development, which means that I fall at the first hurdle and have no access to working with the mantras of the First Class or the exercises in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. This also means that the experiences and images Steiner describes when preparing to ‘cross the threshold’ between the physical/sense world and the non-visible worlds beyond are for me a closed book. Nor do I find The Philosophy of Freedom an easy work to engage with, though this is the book that Steiner said could be used like his Occult Science or Theosophy to produce an understanding of anthroposophy.
After years of reading Steiner’s lectures and books and writing about them on this blog, I feel that I can hold my own in conversations about most topics of anthroposophy, but I cannot claim to have developed any spiritual abilities whatsoever – no clairvoyance, no guidance from spiritual sources, no encounters with elementals or awareness of angels (apart from one encounter many years ago when I was in deep despair). So I remain stuck in what is primarily an intellectual worldview of anthroposophy but am making no progress in what should be the core, which is the development of new spiritual capacities.
If I were seeking excuses for my inadequacy, I might point out that many anthroposophists are in a similar position and that generally we are paying far too little attention to what Rudolf Steiner had to say about the importance of this schooling for ‘initiation’ and the meditation it demands. Study groups, in my limited experience at least, tend to concentrate on reading and discussing lecture cycles or books, which can be enjoyable and useful things to do – but shouldn’t we also be holding meditation groups or groups to discuss and share spiritual experiences? In such groups we could learn to work together, to be socially active and to get feedback from one another in our task of capacity building.
Steiner’s view was that: “Humanity must become a partaker of the spirit in order to carry its revelations into the physical world. Human beings must transform the earth by implanting in it what they have ascertained in the spiritual world. That is their task. It is only because the physical world is dependent upon the spiritual, and because human beings can work upon the earth, in a true sense, only if they are participators in those worlds in which the creative forces lie concealed – only for those reasons should they have the desire to ascend to the higher worlds. No one approaching esoteric training with these sentiments and resolved not to deviate for a moment from these prescribed directions (ie in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, from which this quotation is taken), will have the slightest danger to fear. No one should allow the prospect of these dangers to keep them from esoteric training; it should rather act as a strong challenge to one and all, to acquire those faculties which every true esoteric student must have.”
If that is our task, I now need to begin anew. I probably need to find a good teacher, or teachers, and groups to belong to where I can find help to discipline myself to do the exercises – again and again and again. As I now consider myself unqualified to write about some of these core aspects of anthroposophy, I will not be writing any more posts on this blog unless they are clearly from the perspective of a learner. I will keep the blog available on the web for the time being as it has many worthwhile topics on it and I know many people in many countries around the world have found it useful. Thanks to those of you who have shared this journey with me so far – I hope one day to be able to write again, from a place of authentic experience.
anthropopper 
The three cited sentences from CW 26 would represent thinking (knowledge), feeling (need of the heart, need of the life of feeling, inner need), but foremost willing (justification, satisfaction).
“… the nearer we come to modern times the more we see how, in the so-called Rosicrucian training — conditioned by the demands and requirements of humanity — a particular kind of will culture, the exercise of the will is introduced. Although the meditations are at first similar to those of pre-Christian schools, there nevertheless prevails everywhere at the basis of the Rosicrucian exercises a particular training of the element of Will.” (GA0104/19080619)
See https://en.anthro.wiki/Initiation
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Everything helps Jeremy — to think anthro thoughts in study becomes food for the hierarchies I hear — a + contribution to the greater good — it surely also has to prep one for the interim life in spirit then the next physical one 🙂 yeah?
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This a great audio book version of how to know higher worlds ; The way of initiation – A modern edition . https://www.scribd.com/listen/427489270 .
I’ve always found breathing techniques to be the best method for meditation . And if time’s an issue I’ve had great results meditating in the middle of the night .
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Compare: “The ideal of the development is that no exercises be made at all by means of the physical body itself, also no breathing exercises, but that everything that occurs in the physical body in this way should only come about as a consequence of pure intuition exercises.” GA013_c05-07
Bringing rhythm into life, is also described as “preparing the philosopher’s stone”. GA055/19070314
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I should have been more specific regarding meditation for the purists .. If you’re struggling with getting started ; the breathing exercise is a great method to get you going .. When you become more proficient – advanced you don’t need said exercise. .
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It is interesting that the jab is purported to take you away from spirituality… do you feel this has occurred for you? I’m genuinely interested as I am facing mandates of a loss of my job.
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No, I don’t, at least not so far.
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Hi Beena, I agree with Jeremy. I see no effect on my spiritual activity from the Phizer vaccine. Nor do I see any effect from the social force of mandating it for my healthcare job. Healthcare jobs have for decades required a whole set of vaccines as a legislated condition of employment. But then as I explained in the post earlier today, my spiritual activity is purely spiritual and isn’t based on any substance or activity of the body nor of the social situation of my earthly body. So why would it be effected? The father remains just as good a father and the bureaucrate maintains his daily affairs. The path of knowledge that sets time aside from the daily affairs to develop new forces in evolution is universal and doesn’t care what karmic situation your body is entrapped by. Rather it sees life forces being released in the body and starting the enlivening of the mineral kingdom that prepares for the future Jupiter conditions when the ego creates separation from the astral body. Every karmic situation has non-essential activities in it that can be set aside for time in spiritual activity. The book says everyone can find at least 5 min in every day. Cheers, Manny
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Just discover today this gem of a blog. I am looking forward to reading all your previous posts, Jeremy.
I just scroll after some of your posts, Emanuel, and I am very grateful that you share all of your wisdom regarding meditations. I am on my way to start to meditate. I have one question for you.
I live in Austria, which is the first country to announce the mandatory vacc. in February.
I have read some parts from Steiner’s lectures about vacc (GA178) and his stating, from this lectures (I suppose is cited everywhere now): ”This trend — and it is already perceptible in some individuals today — will intensify. People will actually long for the time when the Spiritual is universally deemed to be insanity, craziness! Attempts will be made to achieve this end by inoculations; just as viruses have been discovered as means of protection against illnesses, so certain inoculations will be used to influence the human body in such a way that it provides no place for the spiritual proclivities of the soul. Human beings will be immunised against any predisposition for spiritual ideas … such, at least, will be the endeavour. They will try by inoculation to bring it about that even in childhood, human beings lose the urge towards the spiritual life. This is only one of the aspects of that more intimate knowledge, relating to the connection of Nature-processes and Nature-specifics with the human organism, which must arise during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch.”
I am confused at this moment about what to do, like Beena. I have a job here, working as a Waldorf teacher, but I am thinking to leave all behind and go to some other country where I will not be forced to take in from outside… In short I am concerned about (my and others) spiritual life and affect on it.
What do you think about Steiner’s statement and how do you see this government oppression, which is spreading with no open discourse, or at least in Referendum?
I would be very thrilled to read your thoughts about that, as I need to make a lot of research till February.
Thank you.
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Dear Ho’oponopono,
Steiner defines what he means by spiritual activity most clearly in his book ‘Theosophy’ in the first chapter. There he gives 10 descriptions based on observations of what occurs in ordinary consciousness. Here are numbers 6-8.:
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Why does the world appear to man in this threefold way? A simple consideration will explain it. I cross a meadow covered with flowers. The flowers make their colors known to me through my eyes. That is the fact I accept as given. Having accepted the fact, I rejoice in the splendor of the colors. Through this I turn the fact into an affair of my own. Through my feelings I connect the flowers with my own existence. Then, a year later I go again over the same meadow. Other flowers are there. Through them new joy arises in me. My joy of the former year will appear as a memory. This is in me. The object that aroused it in me is gone, but the flowers I now see are of the same kind as those I saw the year before. They have grown in accordance with the same laws as have the others. If I have informed myself regarding this species and these laws, I then find them again in the flowers of this year, just as I found them in those of last year. So I shall perhaps muse, “The flowers of last year are gone and my joy in them remains only in my memory. It is bound up with my existence alone. What I recognized in the flowers of last year and recognize again this year, however, will remain as long as such flowers grow. That is something that revealed itself to me, but it is not dependent on my existence in the same way as my joy is. My feelings of joy remain in me. The laws, the being of the flowers, remain outside of me in the world.”
By these means man continually links himself in this threefold way with the things of the world. One should not, for the present, read anything into this fact, but merely take it as it stands. From this it can be seen that man has three sides to his nature. This and nothing else will, for the present, be indicated here by the three words, body, soul and spirit. Whoever connects any preconceived opinions or even hypotheses with these three words will necessarily misunderstand the following explanations. By body is here meant that through which the things in the environment of a man reveal themselves to him, as in the above example, the flowers in the meadow. By the word soul is signified that by which he links the things to his own being, through which he experiences pleasure and displeasure, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow in connection with them. By spirit is meant what becomes manifest in him when, as Goethe expressed it, he looks at things as a “so to speak divine being.” In this sense man consists of body, soul and spirit.
Through his body man is able to place himself for the time being in connection with things; through his soul he retains in himself the impressions they make on him; through his spirit there reveals itself to him what the things retain for themselves. Only when we observe man in these three aspects can we hope to throw light on his whole being, because they show him to be related in a threefold way to the rest of the world.
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When I meet, observe, and speak to people I find that almost everyone is already inoculated with preconceived ideas and opinions or even hypothesis about spiritual activity ‘that necessarily misuderstand the following explanations.’ The condition of living in a body that has no predisposition to spiritual life and lack the urge to find and understand it even though it exists as a slumber faculty that can be developed in everyone that has learned to write and read, already exists.
Notice how in the Steiner quote about vaccines he says the inoculation he is speaking about will stop a predisposition to spiritual life and the urge to seek spiritual life. It doesn’t say it will stop spiritual life or lock the door to those that do seek it. These conditions of the not having a predisposition and not having the urge to seek already exist and have been present for decades. Maybe it was the chlorine or the fluorine in the water systems that did it. Doesn’t matter now what did it. The condition of human bodies has for decades been in the state that Steiner is describing. The more modern concept is that human bodies now exist in the anthropocene, the human created environment. The earth is no longer a natural being. All of the air and all of the water that effects all living beings on the earth now has man made contaminants in it. The melting glaciers are the only place natural water still exists from the time before men started modifying our environment.
Steiner’s proposal is this. Your body is not your essential being. It is only a transitory incarnation of your essential being. Your personal intelligence and your personal observation can now be trained and developed to know the essential part of yourself that exists outside your body during the time between sleeping and waking and the time between dying and birthing. To do this we have to take all the skills and faculties that we have created as renaissance men modifying our outer environment and now modify our inner life. The inner life that we experience in our bodies is created by what we have inherited from our previous lives in bodies, the cultural education that we are inoculated with at this point in time, and the natural conditions that our bodies are constructed from. At this point in time our bodies are constructed from man-made conditions not natural conditions. The spiritual task that we all have right now is to reconstruct this inner life into something ideally human and healthy, because nothing that comes to us from these 3 sources, karma, culture, and man-made nature is ideally human or healthy anymore. It is all a big pile of shit.
If you haven’t freed yourself from the bondage of your karmic debts, the bondage of your cultural education and the bondage of your man-made environment you don’t have anything that can be called freedom in a true sense. It is a false political promise that any form of government can give freedom. True freedom isn’t a political right that can be enforced by legally sanctioned police force. True freedom and all life, liberty, and happiness or (justice, brotherhood, and equality) that go with it only exists when one’s inner life is reconstructed to be free from the bondage of what exists in karma, culture and nature at this point in time.
The good news is that there is nothing in the life of the body with its karmic, cultural, and natural faults that can block or prohibit one from doing the deeds that need to be done to reconstruct the inner life. Only the inner fear, scorn, and doubt of the individual can prohibit the individual from doing what needs to be done in the inner life of the human being at this point in time.
People say I don’t have the time, my life is too complicated already, the path is too complicated, excuse, excuse …….Your spiritual life does not depend on any of these hinderances unless you personally decide of your own free will to make such a hindrance your own being.
Here is a beautiful paragraph from ‘Knowledge of the| Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ chapter one:
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Now, the scope and significance of these facts must be realized. We must bear in mind that the higher man within us is in constant development. But only the state of calm and serenity here described renders an orderly development possible. The waves of outward life constrain the inner man from all sides if, instead of mastering this outward life, it masters him. Such a man is like a plant which tries to expand in a cleft in the rock and is stunted in its growth until new space is given it. No outward forces can supply space to the inner man. It can only be supplied by the inner calm which man himself gives to his soul. Outward circumstances can only alter the course of his outward life; they can never awaken the inner spiritual man. The student must himself give birth to a new and higher man within himself.
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Wearing the right clothes, eating the right food, having the right social life, having the right architecture and artistic decoration of life, going to the right schools are important for the outer life but will never solve the problems of the inner life where all the greed and warring that stand behind climate change and war have their source in the fear, scorn, and doubt, karma, culture, and the anthropocene have created in our inner life. Economic, power, political power, and artistic power can’t touch what happens in the inner life of the individual. Only we ourselves get to decide what we ourselves are doing in our inner life. That is our true freedom. We can give ourselves freedom there or bondage. We can reach to human ideals there or fall to animal desires. Christ has entered the earth and given us that choice. Now archangel Michael has also left his spiritual abode on the sun and entered into earthly life and can guide us to uniting our personal intelligence with his universal cosmic intelligence. Our free choice. Take it or lose it. Real-i-ze it. Your inner life is already yours, free from outer control unless you make outer life more important than your inner life. This is the newest event in evolution. inner freedom is now available. Are you going to real-i-ze it or lose it.?
If you want to real-i-ze it Steiner and Michael give minutely prescribed steps of spiritual activity to practice and construct in your thoughts and feelings with your own free will that lead to the light of Christ at the end of time and master all the darkness of the anti-Christ at the beginning of time. The darkness at the beginning of time is the source of all the crap that now exists in what comes to you from karma, culture and the anthropocene in your inner life now.
Cheers,
Manny
Emanuel Blosser
Edmonton Alberta
EMANUEL984@aol.com
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‘Steiner’s proposal is this. Your body is not your essential being.’
Actually, Steiner proposed a human trichotomy, as quoted above: “… man has three sides to his nature. This and nothing else will, for the present, be indicated here by the three words, body, soul and spirit.”
This human trichotomy is expressed as heredity, karma and reincarnation:
“The course of man’s life between birth and death is determined in a threefold way. In consequence, he is dependent in a threefold way on factors that lie on the other side of birth and death. The body is subject to the law of heredity; the soul is subject to its self-created destiny. We call this destiny, created by man himself, his karma. The spirit is under the law of re-embodiment, repeated earth lives.” (GA009_c02)
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Dear Manny,
Thank you so much for your answer. I really appreciate your time.
You have mentioned:
‘If you want to real-i-ze it Steiner and Michael give minutely prescribed steps of spiritual activity to practice and construct in your thoughts and feelings with your own free will that lead to the light of Christ at the end of time and master all the darkness of the anti-Christ at the beginning of time.’
Can you please describe what are those prescribed steps? Where should I start? Should it be the meditation from the Higher worlds or something else? How is your day in meditation look like? What steps, books, or chapters would you recommend to someone who is just starting out?
At the moment I am having in my daily life I try to move around with awareness of The six basic exercises and in the evening I am reversing my day before sleep.
God bless you and thank you in advance!
Cheers
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‘…nothing that comes to us from these 3 sources, karma, culture, and man-made nature is ideally human or healthy anymore. It is all a big pile of shit…’
Do you think Christ, the Lord of Karma, feels this way about what He encounters as He walks through the world, Manny?
Or does He meet it all with an understanding heart?
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Dear Tom,
Reading ‘The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’ carefully and completely gives the logical and observational content to arrive at the conclusion that moral deeds can only be created out of intuition consciousness at this point in evolution. When Jesus walks on the earth today he is crucified again and again by all those that are not recognizing this spiritual fact because everyone that does not recognize this fact is not doing moral deeds. Everyone who does recognize this spiritual fact can pass the judgements of the guardians of the threshold into intuition consciousness with Christ’s blessing.
Sincerely,
Manny
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The Christ is not bound by human thought, Mannie, He can see beyond the limitations of human thinking, including Steiner’s.
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Dear Tom,
I’m guessing that by ‘human thinking’ you mean all thought created by the lower self. This exactly the point I am making. The lower self has nothing to contribute to the Christ anymore. Only the higher self in intuition consciousness can do moral deeds at this point in time. The lower self is built out of 3 sources karma, culture, and nature.
In ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ at the conclusion of chapter 1 after describing how the higher self is born in a life of meditation that has nothing in it from the outer life which is formed out of karma, culture, and nature, Steiner writes these thoughts:
‘When, by means of meditation, a man rises to union with the spirit, he brings to life the eternal in him, which is limited by neither birth nor death. The existence of this eternal being can only be doubted by those who have not themselves experienced it. Thus meditation is the way which also leads man to the knowledge, to the contemplation of his eternal, indestructible, essential being; and it is only through meditation that man can attain to such knowledge.’
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The only place that man has an eternal indestructible essential being is in Christ. Steiner is claiming that his thoughts are from this realm and lead to this realm if you read them carefully and completely. Are you saying Steiner’s thoughts don’t come from an eternal indestructible essential being as he claims?
Sincerely,
Manny
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Dear Manny and Tom,
This is still an open blog so let me join briefly in your conversation. I do not agree with this absolute duality between lower and higher self, whether that duality was created or postulated by the Christ and/or by Steiner. That the lower self has become isolated by culture, karma and nature is illogic at least if seen from the angel of nature. Since Christ (which I understand as a universal entity) reincarnated by merging with the Etheric, which Rudolf Steiner learned us to see, humanity and Nature are re-united (in Love). Duality has been solved, for those who can realise it.
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Hi Hans,
This sentence contradicts itself: ‘Duality has been solved, for those who can realise it.’
It says duality has been solved but then states a new duality exists between those that know the solution and those that don’t. So there is a higher evolved position of those that know and a lower of those that don’t. This sentence gives evidence that while you can see the logical thought of there being a universal love that unites the creator spirit with the earthly creation, there is not yet a personal creation of this condition in your body out of that universal spirit so there is still a duality present between what you believe can be true and what has actual happened in the course of evolution in the body you occupy now. For spiritual truth to be real it has to happen in the body that we occupy now.
Christ has shown the way, now we have to do it too. Until everyone has done it there is a duality present between old and new in evolution. In evolution the new is always more complete and whole than the old. The new is a higher state of being. That one being has entered the earthly body, died there into the corpse consciousness of that body, and continued to live in its spiritual reality so the corpse isn’t dead anymore is a new step of evolution. But there’s still all these egos that don’t know that step in evolution yet and are still creating the instincts, desires, and passions that crucify the spiritual fact that the corpse is no longer dead. It has Christ growing in it. So we each have to meet the question, ‘Is my corpse dead or alive?’ Is what I leave behind on the earth going to give life or death to the earth? Is it going to contribute to the life of Christ on the earth or continue crucifying that life? With my thoughts, feelings, and actions that I fill my bodily activity with am I giving life or death to the corpse beings of the earth that I have borrowed to create my sense body?
Cheers,
Manny
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Steiner often said…”here we say what the Christ wants to communicate to Mankind,,,”…So we can see here the Divine Word “clothed” in human form of communication, and we have to grasp this when we consider Steienr’s work as a real bridge between Divine and human….
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Also the breathing is only to help you get into the meditative state . Once in the state you should have subjects to meditate on . Which is what Steiner is referring to .
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Dear All,
Steiner writes in ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and It Attainment’ in chapter 1 six carefully defined sets of thoughts and feelings to create a new self experience and proceed with that new self to do deeds on the earth that have cosmic evolutionary significance. The chapter ends with concentrating these thoughts and feelings down into a process that has 3 stages. The higher self can work upon the earth by preparing, enllightening, and initiating what it can see in the spiritual world. The text describes the birth of this second or higher self that can step forward and do such deeds as the fifth step after four prerequisites are established. The first of the four prerequisites for birth of the higher self is devotion to truth and knowledge where the ego steps out of the egoism of body bound sense life. The second is to enter the realm of living thoughts that release life forces by leaving the realm of dead thoughts that slay soul forces. The third is to establish the boundary of free will between what one individually knows and what one doesn’t know yet. The fourth is to divide the essential from the non-essential to create inner tranquility in bodily consciousness.
When the ego has created these conditions for itself by willing the thoughts and feelings that are prescribed in the text, then it can separate from the body and become the higher self that is otherwise only awake during sleep and death. Death occurs when the ether body separates from the mineral body. Sleep occurs when the astral body separates from the ether body. The higher self that is awake during sleep and death can at this point in evolution wake up also when the ego separates from the astral body. This waking up by separating the ego from the astral body begins in very small moments set aside from the daily affairs of life. The higher self wakes in these moments and then sleeps again. As the ability to divide the essential from the non-essential to establish the boundary between what is known and what is still unknown by observing which thoughts release life forces and which slay soul forces to strengthen the devotion to truth and knowledge the higher self can stay awake for longer and longer moments. These moments of the higher self being awake when the body is also awake Steiner says is the life in mediation. He also says that nothing in the body’s activity or the outer world can support, assist, or effect this development of the life of the higher self in meditation.
As these moments gain strength and duration the higher self can enter the trials that are described in the next section of the book. Before it can enter the trials there are four new developments for it to learn. First it has to concentrate the six steps of the first chapter into a working process within itself. Then it can learn the thoughts and feelings required to observe the forms of growth and decay and hear the spiritual words. Third it can learn to look at the three lower kingdoms of nature and see the three auric colors there. Forth it learns the thoughts and feelings required to see the flame of life and the flame of consciousness in the human bodies. Then it can enter the fire trial where it learns to see the future karmic debt that needs to be satisfied by reading the occult script that shows in the words that are heard in the forms of growth and decay, the colors that are seen in the lower kingdoms of nature, and the flames of life and consciousness. Then it is prepared for the water trial where it learns to do the deeds that these forms, colors, and tones say need to be done. Once it learns the certainty required to read and do these deeds then it can graduate to the air trial where it has to do the deeds out of its own certainty without the guidance of the forms, colors, and tones of the occult script. Then it graduates to the temple of wisdom.
More work is required for it strengthen the duration of its separation from the astral body in the temple of wisdom. The chapters continue through the Practical Aspects, Conditions, and Results. Then further recapitulates are described in the chapters on Transformation of the Dream Life, Continuity of Consciousness, and Splitting of the Personality where these realities grow and deepen. Then the final judgements are made by the two Guardians as to whether the higher self is mature enough to take over their work in the evolution of the cosmos and the enoblement of the human being. Then the separation between the ego and the astral body can be maintained continually so the the higher self can work as an eternal universal Christ being directly into the individuality of the other three bodies with spiritual purpose transforming the kingdoms of nature giving life to the dead minerals, consciousness to the sleeping plants, and self-conscious ego to the animals raising them up a step on the evolutionary sequence so that on the future Jupiter evolution of the earth there is no dead mineral kingdom.
That was all written out in the necessary and sufficient detail beginning in 1904 and last edited in 1918. Then in 1924, Michael appears in the School of Spiritual Science. In Michael’s words the six steps of chapter 1 and all the steps up to the temple of wisdom, and then up through the chapter on splitting of the personality are concentrated down into two mantric stanzas that take us up to meeting the judgement of the lower guardian that shows us our true being and the greater guardian that show us our ideal image. The first lesson gives the mantra that says look at the four kingdoms of nature, the living colors, the lifeless forms, the sentient joys, and the human bodies. Feel the wisdom, beauty and majesty there. Know that within all that wisdom, beauty, and majesty there is nothing that can answer the questions of who I am and was and will become anymore. These questions have become completely dark and cold and separated from all that wisdom, beauty, and majesty. Karma, culture, and nature have turned our three soul forces into beasts that have nothing to do with the wisdom, beauty, and majesty that nature presents to our senses. They fear creative spirit being, scorn spirit revelation, and doubt the power of spirit light. This is our true being at this point in evolution.
Merde. Pardon my French.
But there is now the light shining from the future in the words that Steiner spoke from Michael giving us the words of the greater guardian describing our ideal image there in the future at the end of time. Contrary to modern materialistic science based on isolated dead phenomena measured and modeled with mathematical calculations, time has an end and a beginning. But right now we’re in the middle, turning away from all that began in darkness and turning to what needs to be created to get to the end in the light of Christ.
Michael says that the guardian says that the guardian is the only messenger that can lead to the light at end of time from this dark dangerous dumb dead dungeon we are stuck in. If the lower self takes hold of such an ‘only’ statement then it becomes just another egotistical rant. But if we enter fully into this feeling of isolation and separation from the wisdom, beauty, and majesty that is all around us but not in our inner being, then the ego separates from the astral body and is no longer bound to being egotistical. If it does that without the guiding words of the guardian then it will lose itself in nothingness. Instead it can follow the words of Steiner in ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ or ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’. Both also guide the ego out of the body into stable reality outside the body, but modern life doesn’t give a time and place for all those details to be constructed. Michael revealing the words of the guardian directly, shorten the path. It can start now. It is still a long path that leads step by step through three future evolutions of the earth to the end of time. But to get there we need to start now creating separation between the ego and the astral body so that the higher self with its universal and eternal life can begin the long path of becoming active in the transitory world of space and time. Michael’s words give us the idea that space is at this point in evolution devoid of soul and that thought loses its living force in the destruction stream of time.
The famous words ‘one small step for man, one giant step for mankind’ also apply to the ego separating from the astral body. It begins with one small step. The Michael words say, ‘with anxious seeking soul we turn to the light which from darkness takes its strength.’
Sincerely,
Manny
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These 3 stages preparing, enlightening, and initiating in KOHW correspond to the Rosicrucian Estimation, Imagination and Inspiration, leaving Steiner’s 4th principle of Intuition (Preparing the Philosopher’s Stone) out. GA266/19080412 and GA015_c02:
“A person who is able to look into the spiritual world is called esoterically a “clairvoyant,” but merely to be clairvoyant is not enough, for such a man might be able to see well enough although unable to discriminate. He who has acquired the faculty of distinguishing the various beings and events of higher worlds, is called an “Initiate,” Initiation brings with it the possibility of distinguishing between different kinds of beings.”
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Dear Manny, I believe you are very sincere in your beliefs so I will try to be as congruent as I can. Referring mainly to our earlier dialogue I experience what you write as being very Pharisaic. The Pharisees interpreted all the sacred writings of the Jewish people to show that Jesus of Nazareth COULD NOT BE the Messiah,The Christ. It seems to me you are doing a similar sort of thing with Steiner’s writings. LAYING DOWN RULES for how a person can find their way to Christ.
I think you are making a mistake.
Christ did not identify with the priestly and pharisaic caste, He broke their rules and spent time with sinners.
You ask me, ‘Are you saying Steiner’s thoughts don’t come from an eternal indestructible essential being as he claims?’ I have no idea how one would answer such a question. I think Steiner had some profound truths to communicate to us. The Christ is not bound by human thought Mannie, He can see beyond the limitations of human thinking, including Steiner’s and all the rest of us.
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Hi Tom,
Certainly you have the freewill to imagine that Christ thought is beyond your capability, Steiner’s, and mine. You have the freewill to imagine that he can’t incarnate into human bodies anymore and appear there in thought forms that can be read and heard in ordinary consciousness and that open the door out of ordinary consciousness without the body that provides that ordinary consciousness falling asleep or dying. But I’m going to continue investing my freewill doing what Steiner says is possible in chapter 1 of his book Theosophy,, which is that we all can read the thoughts of spiritual science, transform our astral body with them purifying our instincts, desires, and passions, and thus become spirit-self. Out of Spirit-self we can then transform our etheric bodies, purifying our life forces of illness, and then become life-spirit. Out of life spirit, we can take hold of our mineral body and start the process of purifying the cosmos of all counterforces for all time as spirit-man. This process of overcoming the death that the mineral world has sunk into over 4 planetary incarnations, 4 of 7 cycles in that planet, 4 of 7 cycles within that middle cycle, the 5th of 7 as the post-atlantean cycle there, the 5th cultural epoch of the post-atlantean, and the 2nd archangel cycle of 7 in that time needs to start now in order to complete its task by the 7,7,7,7,7,7 cycle on future Vulcan. I’m going to continue investing my freewill into the principle that I read in Steiner that this further evolution has to happen by human initiative and the human initiative that can do such deeds doesn’t have its origin in the ordinary consciousness of the intellectual soul but in the spirit-man that is built by transforming the astral, etheric, and mineral bodies in the manner Steiner describes.
Certainly, that isn’t possible if all I’ve got to work with are the human thoughts that arise in the intellectual soul and the self-consciousness that is born out of those thoughts. The thoughts that appear in the intellectual soul are born out of 3 sources, karma, cultural education of the time, and the conditions of natural existence. At this point in time, nothing that appears as thought in the intellectual soul from the sources of karma, culture, and nature offers any possibility of opening the door to the higher stages of human development through the spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man stages. I’m going to continue investing my freewill in Steiner’s proposal that his thoughts don’t have their source in karma, culture, or natural necessities but come out of the future as spiritual living forces that open the door first to spirit-self existence, then to the realm of living truth of life-spirit, and then to the Christ being of spirit-man that can resurrect the mineral corpse.
Certainly, my intellectual soul, Steiner’s intellectual soul, and yours or anyone else’s intellectual soul can’t even create an imagination of such possibilities. But Steiner writes about such possibilities and claims he has actually done such steps and that these descriptions aren’t just from his personal imagination that the intellectual soul is capable of producing.. Now you seem to be saying that Steiner’s thoughts, while profound, are on the same level as yours and mine and that none of us can rise to the level of Christ thoughts. You seem to be saying that Christ thoughts can’t incarnate and become real in human bodies. You have the freewill to say that but you will never convince me to say that. For Christ thoughts to enter human bodies and become real human egos have to read the thoughts of spiritual science and do the deeds that construct the astral formations of thinking, feeling, and willing that support the ego outside the body as spirit-self free from the limitations of subjectivity that the body created out of karma culture, and nature is confined to. From there the next step of becoming life-spirit is possible and then on to the maturity of working on the earth with Christ’s resurrecting thoughts. Steiner says everyone at this point in evolution has slumbering within them the facts and perceptual capacity to arrive at such conclusions themselves and then do such transformations of their being by transforming the 3 principles that make up a human body, if they follow the minutely prescribed instructions written in the spiritual world. Steiner says that we will meet these minutely prescribed facts when our body dies and that we also meet them when our body falls asleep and has to be renewed. The newest step in evolution is that we can also now meet them with the body still alive and awake.
I’m going to continue investing my freewill into this initiative. If you want to learn more about this you can ask questions. If you want to convince me this isn’t real you will be wasting your time. You must have something better to do. If human activity is limited to what the intellectual soul can think and percieve then I agree with you entirely that Christ thoughts are something higher. I won’t stop saying that the door is now open for the human ego to step beyond the limitations of the intellectual soul that is filled with content given to us by karma, culture, and nature and become a higher self and there is no reason other than unfounded prejudice and obstinate self-will of the intellectual soul to not do so. Of course, you have the freewill to not follow the facts objectively and live within the subjective limits of the intellectual soul. But then please allow me the freewill to state the facts as I know them.
Cheers,
Mannhy
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I would like to draw attention to three things at this point: Firstly, that this stream of contributions began with Jeremy’s declaration that he felt himself a failure in certain respects. I think we can all agree that this is an important part of ‘knowing thy self’ – in fact the beginning. Secondly that, since now that wisdom from the First Class Lessons is being offered as well as from Knowledge of Higher Worlds, one great difference between these two presentations of the path – besides the fact that one was given at the very beginning of Steiner’s public esoteric work and the other at the very end – is that allusion to the Guardian comes at the very end of KHW but at the very beginning of the Class. (Thus, either Steiner was saving this for the end or he learned something new along his journey.) Thirdly, that our lower Guardian IS our lower self (“your likeness manifesting you”); your present, earthly, normal, actual ‘lower’ self, who is your guide and your protector on the journey of discovering first the beings of your ‘elemental’ self then the beings of your ‘higher’ self. In relation to this third point I would like to offer a quote that can help clarify this:
“In every esoteric development it is specially important that everything should be so adjusted that two things that man has in ordinary life should not be lost — which he might however very easily lose in esoteric development if not rightly guided. If rightly guided he will not lose them. First, he should not lose the recollection of any of the events of his present incarnation, as ordinarily retained in his memory. The connection with memory must not be destroyed. This connection with memory means very much more in the sphere of occultism than it does in the sphere of ordinary life. In ordinary life we only understand by memory, the power of looking back and not losing consciousness of the important events of one’s life. In occultism a right memory means that a man only values with his perceptions and feelings what he has already accomplished in the past, so that he applies no other value to himself or to his deeds than the past deeds themselves entitle. Let us understand this quite correctly, for this is extremely important. If a man in the course of his occult development were suddenly driven to say to himself “I am the reincarnation of this or the other spirit,” — without there being any justification for it through any action of his — then his memory in an occult sense would be interrupted. An important principle in occult development is that of attributing no other merit to oneself, than what comes from one’s actions in the physical world in the present incarnation. That is extremely important. Any other merit must only come on the basis of a higher development, which can only be attained if one first of all stands firmly on the ground that one esteems oneself for nothing but what one has accomplished in this incarnation. This is quite natural if we look at the matter objectively; for what we have accomplished in the present incarnation is also the result of earlier incarnations; it is that which Karma has, so far, made out of us. What Karma is still making of us we must first bring about; we must not add that to our value. In short, if we would set a right value on ourselves, we can only do so, at the beginning of esoteric development, if we ascribe merit only to what is inscribed in our memory as our past. That is the one element which we must preserve, if our ego is not to sleep while our astral body is awake. The second thing which we as men of the present day must not lose is the degree of conscience we possess in the external world. Here again is something which it is extremely important to observe. You must have often experienced that someone you know has gone through an occult development, and if it is not guided and conducted in the right way, you find that, in relation to conscience, your friend takes things much more lightly than he did before his occult training. His education, his social connection guided him before, so that he did this thing or that, or dared not do it. After beginning an occult development, many people begin to tell lies who never did so before, and as regards questions of conscience, they take things more lightly. We ought not to lose an iota of the conscience we possess. As regards memory, we must only value ourselves according to what we have already become; not according to any reliance on the future, or on what we are still going to do. As regards conscience, we must retain the same degree as we acquired in the ordinary physical world. If we retain these two elements in our consciousness: a healthy memory which does not deceive us into believing ourselves to be other than our actions prove us to be, and a conscience which does not allow us morally to take things more lightly than before, — indeed if possible we should take them more seriously — if we retain these two qualities, our ego will never be asleep when our astral body is awake.” R.S. GA136
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Jeremy, I admire and applaud your self-realization of becoming an abject failure at anthroposophy. But I also cringe at the self-flagellation caused by your self-abnegation. I can do so because I’ve “been-there/done-that” myself, having spent 3 decades of my own life (1976-2006) similarly beating myself up over my own failures as an anthroposophist.
How did I turn it all around? With the hindsight of 15 years, I can distill my experience into one sentence. I simply reversed cause and effect. And it worked!
So therefore please allow my own empathetic “mirror neurons” (OK, etheric body) to reflect my own experience back to you. And just as a mirror reflects left & right, may this question I leave you with inspire you also to reverse cause and effect.
Jeremy Smith! What if anthroposophy has failed you?
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Dear Jeff,
You write, ” (Thus, either Steiner was saving this for the end or he learned something new along his journey.)”
My point was that the class lessons don’t begin with meeting the two guardians. The first lesson condenses and concentrates all that is covered in the chapters of ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ before the last two, into 4 thoughts and feelings about the 4 kingdoms of the sense world and 4 thoughts and feelings about our soul life in relationship to the sense world. Both the set of instructions in all the chapters on the path of knowledge and the set of 8 thoughts and feelings lead to exactly the same place. The later is a condensed and concentrated version of the earlier.
How did this concentration occur? There was the Great War that was the war to end all wars and was called a world war because it threatened to end civilization as we know it. Human consciousness expanded. There was a step forward in evolution. After the war, it was both possible and necessary to condense and concentrate the instructions. If culture had accepted and recognized the instructions as they were published in 1894 in the ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’, then again in 1902 in ‘Theosophy’, then again in 1904 in republishing the essays of ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ as a single text, and then again in 1909 in ‘Occult Science: An Outline’, culture could have evolved without the destruction of a world war.
But the forces of destruction still ruled in culture and the Geotheanum was burned and Steiner was no longer supported in his bodily incarnation. The forces of destruction continued to work and gave us world war 2, then the cold war, and now the war on war also called the war on terror. It should be called the war on truth because war can’t stop war. Terrorists become terrorists for the same reason that the Minute Men went to war in 1776. Their ideals and livelihood of bodily existence were threatened with extinction
The big question remains unanswered. Can culture evolve without killing millions of human bodies in a war? The sense world demonstrates that evolution has occurred. Advanced life forms have evolved from older less developed forms. Modern culture is dominated by the idea that this occurred through the random accumulation of molecular structures that happened to find the right conditions to become emerging complex systems that then become survivalists. The biggest bully wins.
I’m sorry but I don’t see any rock or corpse demonstrating any activity that can be called evolutionary. Evolution is a property of objects in the sense world that are living. Living is something entirely unique from dead corpse material. I can not buy into the idea that life has its source in the same place as rocks and dirt. I see life taking up rock and dirt and making it do things it would never do on its own and then when the life is over and the forces of rockness are left on their on there is destruction of what was created. The current dominate paradigm that matter is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons and then is further reduced to charge, mass, and energy can’t possibly allow life to have another source than matter.
If life is real and something different than matter then matter can’t be what the model of the periodic table says it is. That model gives human beings huge power to make matter do things it won’t do on its own. But it doesn’t give us the power to create life which is also a power that makes matter do things it wouldn’t do on its own.
The tools of measurement, mathematical thought, and isolated experimentation can’t create life, can’t make matter to the things that life makes matter do. One philosophical response to these facts is to conclude that human knowledge is limited. We can’t know such things about life and simply have to trust a creator of some sort. Steiner says another possibility is to separate the ego from the rest of the bodily organization as the ego does when the body sleeps and when the body enters its corpse consciousness. To do this there is a precise set of thoughts and feelings that when willed by the ego into bodily consciousness keep the body alive and awake while the ego is in the 2 realms of reality outside the earthly realm of dead matter. In one of those realms, the soul world, our individuality has its source. In the other of those realms, the spirit world, the universal and eternal truths of life have their source. Further, the set of thoughts and feelings that need to be willed into the body for these realms to become as real as the sense/corpse realm while the body is not a corpse or asleep can be learned by everyone who has evolved to the advancement of having learned to read, write, and do arithmetic.
The new step in evolution is that the archangel Michael has appeared and entered directly into culture, speaking in the language of the earth. Michael appears and says, “I want to do this training of thought and feeling directly in an earthly school. I want to teach directly my cosmic, universal, and eternal intelligence to human beings while they are in their earthly bodies. Here is the ideal that you can become. Here is the true image of the crap that you are now. And here are the steps that you need to do to get from the crap stage to the ideal stage.” So all that Steiner wrote out in the details of preparation, enlightenment, and initiation to meet the two guardians is now condensed and concentrated into 8 thoughts and feelings. Michael did that, not Steiner. Evolution has happened. The later higher form of life has grown out of the earlier lower form of life. Now the spirits in east, west, north, and south have heard it. When are human beings going to hear it?
The Michael School is based on the Foundation Stone. Spiritual activity has now united itself with exoteric reality. The guardians can be met and known. Their judgements of what we have to make of ourselves in order to pass the threshold from the sense world to the soul world and then from the soul world into the spirit world can be known, understood, and become actions of our personal intelligence, personal experience, and personal deeds. I can know and unite my individuality with Michael’s universal and eternal cosmic intelligence and work upon the earth as the higher self that I am when my body is asleep and when my body is a corpse.
Then you write about the lower guardian. The correct description of the lower guardian is it is the being that is the collected result of all our previous deeds on the earth, good and bad. When we incarnate into the earthly body it binds our soul forces of thinking, feeling, and willing together into the forms required by all that history. The body then gives us self-consciousness of what all the history contains. We’ve all done more destruction than construction. This self-consciousness is our lower self. The lower guardian is not our lower self. It is the being that keeps our nose on the grindstone guiding us to keep looking at all the debt of destruction we have accumulated.
In the cycles of sleeping and waking, dying and birthing, we have been going from lower self to higher self back and forth. Lower self awake and alive in the earthly body. Higher self in the living spiritual world. In between there is the threshold from the earthly world to the soul world and then from the soul world to the living spirit world. The lower guardian judges what we have in our self that is devoted to the sense world and can only live there and so can’t enter into the conditions of the soul world. The greater guardian judges what we have accumulated that can contribute to the living spirit world and can live there solving the cosmic problems that exist there. Thus far as Ton contributes in another post the laws of heredity on the earth, of karma in the soul, and or reincarnation in the spirit have created our being as we find ourselves at this point in evolution. We have our body on the earth, our 3 soul forces that have their source in each of the 3 worlds (thinking in the living spirit, feeling in the soul judgements, and willing in the earthly deeds of evolution(, and we have our lower and higher selves. All this have been created and is now mature to meet and turn at the singularity where it becomes a self creative being.
The artificial intelligence nerds think that they can create out of material substance of charge, mass, and energy a computer that will become self-creative and have named this turning point the singularity. Steiner and Michael say that human beings are the beings that are destined to become self-creative through the higher self creating soul forces that can incarnate directly into the earthly heredity without that heredity going through the corpse stage of evolution. No more killing wars in other words. No more acting out on the earth.
Sound interesting? Want to know more? Steiner and Michael say this is possible and describe the exact thoughts and feelings that have to be created to make this real.
Sincerely,
Manny
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Dear Jeremy,
Maybe all the responses to your humble admittance are fine in their own way,
however, I cannot read them. When I look at your blog now I feel uncomfortable and sad. It is like reading on-line posts or comments from Christians or who-evers where they begin quoting from the Bible to show you and everyone else The Way. And then off they go quoting and instructing to the responses of the responses. Conversation possibly, but not my cup of tea.
Previously I have always been able to read your posts and gain something fine and good from them. We have a myriad of different ways to live Anthroposophy.Some live their Anthroposophy more in head knowledge and esoteric meditation. It seems you have chosen to live yours fully in the world of caring for your aged community, and also by sharing thoughtful insights with us all on your blog. I sense yours has been a living hands- on spirit in action life, deeply worthy as a path.
I live on the other side of the world and have been involved in Anthroposophy for over 40 years. I discovered your blog in covid lock-down last year and it has been such a breath of fresh air on the internet. Please I beseech you continue doing your good work, and with small steps focus your daily will into a “simple” activity of observation and reflection, and lo, “all manner of things shall be well.”
A recommendation : On Project Gutenberg there is a copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story “The Land of the Blue Flower”. Definitely worth a read in this context. All the best with everything,
and good will to you, and all who care.
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Thank you so much, Lin, for your encouraging words. I do sometimes feel that I should continue to write the occasional post, for example to give an anthroposophical perspective on world events, rather than on the deeply esoteric side of anthroposophy to which, as you know from my past post, I have little personal access. Best wishes, Jeremy
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Steiner has often described the mystical stages of the ‘path of feeling’, the ‘Christian-gnostic path’, i.e. meditating on the Logos in the five opening verses of the Gospel of John:
“… after meditating again on the five opening verses, the pupil allows the first chapter to pass through his mind for seven days. During the following week, after again meditating on the five opening verses, he goes on to the second chapter, and so in the same way up to the twelfth. He will soon learn how powerful an experience this is; how he is led into the events in Palestine when Christ Jesus lived there, as they are inscribed in the Akashic Record, and how he can actually experience it all.” (cf. von Halle)
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0095/19060903p01.html
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The Newest Comet Leonard is proof that the Hierarchies wish us to have love and go forward. The Seraphim are sweeping up the universe thus a comet appears. My hope is for more and more humans to understand this pure love.
Merry Christmas
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maybe this. covid is the hand of Ahriman.
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The Norse goddess of death was called Hel or Hela, the third child of Loki. Steiner (1910) referred to Hel as the third evil force (Asuras, Old Saturn spirits, CW 194) working in the human physical body, in contrast to the second adversary Fenrir (Ahriman, Old Sun):
“Now we proceed to the influence of Loki on the physical body, in which he brings about sickness and death. His third off-spring is, therefore, that which produces sickness and death. That is Hela.” (CW 121)
https://wn.rsarchive.org/GA/GA0121/19100615p01.html
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If I read Judith Halle correctly (I’ve just read 5 of her books autobiography included), I’d say this is antichrist plain and simple, our whole society is being remodelled and no one knows where we Will end up….
What I do see is that Judith von Halle is reformulating and clarifying RS for a consciousness that has evolved dramatically since early 1900, and her autobiography corraborates most other spiritual breakthroughs in our time…
And so the splitting off from some oldfashionned Steiner group seems logical.
Remember RS also said we are all carving out ourown paths…..
Ps by the Way yogananda once uttered that money would go in the future (and he didn’t mean we’d get cards instead). We can see how dancing around the calf corrupts our innermost cores…..
Sincerely and happy new year
Pierrette
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So I remain stuck in what is primarily an intellectual worldview of anthroposophy but am making no progress in what should be the core, which is the development of new spiritual capacities.
At some point over the years with Steiner, I found myself in danger of going down that same (intellectual) road. My reverence for the Teacher will never change, but once one has been primed with the essential knowledge – one can take it too far.
These days, I find long postings and GA ref numbers almost too much to bear – an energy sapping feeling. However, reading his books and lectures which I still do from time to time, is still a joy.
The “Entombment” of Steiner has been well underway for many decades. His legacy was primarily knowledge based. That was his mission and he succeeded. It will be left to others teachers to bring us closer to God.
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Dear Moonsphere,
I see your pseudo name matches your worldview.
There is no teacher that can now help you to get closer to God. The conditions of meeting the spiritual world have changed. There will be no teachers that can lead you to the spiritual world. Only your direct and personal experience with the guardian of the threshold and following his instructions can get you closer to god. Everyone meets the guardian when the body enters corpse consciousness. The guardian rejects all thoughts and feelings that have their source in the sense world. If in this bodily life you don’t develop some thoughts and feelings in your personal intelligence and in your personal perceptive observation then when you meet the guardian your eternal ego, your higher self, will have nothing with it to carry across the soul world up to the spiritual world. It will find itself in a state of oblivion unaware of anything and everything around itself as the bodily corpse also loses all perception forces and life forces. I’m slamming this thought now into your perception so that when you do meet the guardian you will be able to have something that passes his judgement. You have the freewill to ignore this now. 1000’s have been ignoring it since Steiner first wrote about it in 1894 in ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’. So far the logic and observations recorded in that book that can lead everyone to the conclusion that all thinking has its source in a purely spiritual realm that has no material or sensory substance. When such activity appears in the bodily brain we have now reached the evolutionary maturity to recognize it as not possibly having its source in anything in the bodily organization or the wisdom, beauty, and majesty that exists in the sense world can create. In human thought, god incarnates into the sense world is the conclusion that Steiner’s ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’ sets onto the earth. God incarnates into your own head and makes impressions there when you think thoughts, no matter whether those thoughts come to from your karmic inheritance or from new creative work that moves evolution forward with purpose, value, individuality, and consequences. Philosophy is spiritual activity. The time has come to slam this thought into everyone’s perception. It has been ignored long enough. If you want to be closer to god think this thought, philosophy is spiritual activity. It is a spiritual fact and I’m putting force behind it bec ause it is the seed of other spiritual activity that needs to incarnate to solve war, climate change, and flu. The logic and observations that are necessary and sufficient to arrive at this conclusion as an objective result that every researcher can arrive at with their personal intelligence and personal observation have been present on the earth since 1894. I can put force into these statements because the elements in east, west, north, and south hear it, and now before all human bodies and the earth that creates them is turned into a corpse it is necessary for human beings to hear it. I’m investing my freewill into these thoughts. You have the freewill to invest in some other future if you want. the guardian will strip away everything that doesn’t have its source in the seed that philosophy is spiritual activity, god incarnate.
Just sayin’ .
Facts are facts. You can see for yourself now by following the instrutions or you can see for yourself later when you do meet the guradian. There is no going over, around, or away from these facts. You will have to enter this tomb and push away this boulder to get out. If you know how to think Christ’s resurrection of the corpse it’s no problem. Steiner has already given the instructions, no other teaching or teacher can reach higher than giving the instructions to resurrect the corpse. First thing is to resurrect yourself from the tomb of dead thoughts that you have created about Steiner, teachers, and god. The time has come.
Sincerely,
Manny
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Dear Manny,
There is a choleric nature that comes through on your postings! Being of a more phlegmatic temperament – some of that force will be wasted on me, I’m afraid. 😉
This is not about some “either/or” approach to Steiner. It is about recognising that he brought a legacy of teachings which whilst complete in itself – is the knowledge layer. The ability to bring that knowledge to spiritual fruition is a different matter. My point was that the law of diminishing returns can exert itself for those who “take it too far” in the knowledge-only direction.
Some very few will attain the fruits of “knowledge of higher worlds” in this lifetime. Many more might reach a point where progress seems too slow or unacheivable. I don’t count myself in either group.
Am I correct to read between the lines and understand that you are one of the few? You have confronted the Guardian and have been granted vision of the spiritual worlds?
Part of my posting related to my preference for direct reading of Steiner. I was blessed in that I encountered him first by “accident”, on my own, with no recommendation by another. Something of this autodidactic beginning has stayed with me – even the idea of being “taught” Steiner remains something of an abomination to me.
So, whilst I will never attain to a Masters degree in Anthroposophy, my spiritual journey will always have Steiner to thank as its initial motivator and ongoing source of knowledge. These days I allow myself inspiration by wider reading, whether it be Valentin Tomberg, the visions of the Blessed Catherine Emmerich or the modern day revelations of Estelle Isaacson. These all add to the picture, which for me will always be centred on Christ.
Best wishes
Moonsphere
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Hmm…I also love reading Tomberg, Emmerich, Isaacson, etc. They comfort my soul. Steiner, on the other hand, evolves my soul thinking. He has a special place in my heart, as his writings have brought wonderful new understandings of the New Testament Gospels. Maurice Nicoll has also helped with this. But Steiner, I adore.
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This calls for some divine laughter Moonsphere….
But first:
Rudolf Steiner and his work is far from obsolete it’s just a different perspective and he seems to have been dead on – like any other true Master -……
Speaking of diehards: “You have tried the Masters and found them wanting” – a saying goes – but priming is essential…..as is discernment…..so Masters appeal to different types at different periods in their lives… in my experience….
I never wanted a Master/Guru, but at some point so much was happening inside, that questions arose and needed answers, but also I moved on guided (as well as possible) by my inner “Star” as I Call it.
Papaja in the following video is a “student” of Ramana Maharshi who – I guess You know – did not speak much in his teachings of: “ I am That”. Mooji is the “student” of papaji….let’s for the sake of simplicity call them “enlightened”.
I have met Mooji once in a 1 week satsang and had traumareleases bigtime……he never wanted to become a teacher/Master, but people were just attracted to him by his poise and things went on from there….
We were 800 people and “ where two or more are gathered in my name….” things tend to happen (not for everyone though).
The following video called divine laughter are excepts from longer sessions to be found on Youtube. Divine laughter is one way possible spiritual breakthtroughs manifest….and you can find more of them under: “ laughing buddha #1 etc….
Divine laughter: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uG-LuJ-a-Ok
Have fun….
Cheers Pierrette
Ps Mooji is a very eloquent and enjoyable Master to whom people of every walk and temperament comes, anything goes and in my opinion he is extremely sympathetic to anyone….
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Thanks Pierrette
Doubtless Mooji is a wonderful person, but the divine laughter method doesn’t really appeal.
Rudolf Steiner will continue to be my Teacher – his legacy of knowledge will never be “obselete” and I have never found him “wanting”.
His work continues to be brought to life by those who have come after him – and to those individuals, with some of whom I am personally aquainted – I offer my thanks.
Best wishes
Moonsphere
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Dear Moonsphere
Incredible how people can misunderstand each other…
Mooji is far from being a laughter “method”…he really has no method…
The clips are only fun situations in a very serious endeavour
I sent this video as a “spiritual” easygoing intermezzo….a la
PG Wodehouse, a different kind of Master whose books I have enjoyed
Immensely…
Sincerely
Pierrette
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Manny wrote: “This sentence contradicts itself: ‘Duality has been solved, for those who can realise it.’
It says duality has been solved but then states a new duality exists between those that know the solution and those that don’t.”
You got me, Manny! Trapped in your intellectual reasoning.
What I contradicted was your postulation of an absolute duality between lower self, governed by Karma, culture and nature and a higher self beyond that. When I say “duality has been solved” that does not mean “oneness” is free from the need to be realised. Or that I would deny the reality of contradictions (like our different views) in daily life. I (try to) live out of oneness that does not claim to be absolute (or attainable only by a specific path) but a “dynamic oneness” of karma, culture, nature and various dimensions of self. This “realisation” can be compared by the process of metmorphosus of the butterfly. The being “butterfly” is one, but has to be realised through the states of manifestation as a caterpillar, as seeds and as a butterfly (karma, culture and nature). And this is not only a linear process in time, but simultanously a realisation of “self” awareness as “a being”, living through metamorphosus. With dimensions of self-awareness that are cought in the illusion to be caterpillar or egg, separated. As such, it is one with the incredible diversity (full of contradictions) of the living universe and non-universe alike.
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“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, October 11, 1926 -January 22, 2022.
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Synchronicity is an amazing thing, just as I posted my last post I stumbled over this video: the enlightenment as told by papaji in the presence of Ramana Maharshi….Https.//m.youtube.com/watch?v=97ECsb4sOtl
…one of the good pointers that you are on the right track is – according to Edgar Cayce – exactly that; synchronicity…..and this, in the wake of …. Thich Nhat Hanh…
…same message…
Sincerely
Pierrette
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One more quote to carry on the insights of a contemporary teacher who just pased away but is present in his guidance:
“The insight of inter-being will help remove discrimination, fear, and the dualistic way of thinking. We inter-are — even suffering and happiness inter-are — and that is why the insight of inter-being is the foundation of any kind of action that can bring peace and brotherhood, and help remove violence and despair. That insight is present in every great spiritual tradition. We need only to go home to our own tradition, and try to reveal that, to revive that.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh
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The First Class Michael Lessons are the culminative work of Steiner’s work and life in my opinion. Also the Karma lectures which have helped me see a tiny portion of myself. Sometimes the ‘mirror of my life/lesser guardian’ is unpleasant to look at. The importance of the lectures overrode his tired body. Still forward is the place to strive for. Know the seed of Christ is being implanted in me and others who decide to look for it is a hope for all in the future. What a day it will be when the Christ being is known by many and all of the questions about whether this piece of the Father being actually incarnated or not will be dispelled. This is what I try to keep alive in my life the future and persevere to be a better person in this life. It will only get harder for Spiritual Science followers.
Oh Man Know Thyself
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Dear Jeremy, you write “My failures as an anthroposophist“.Failures do not exist, you are and you will alwaus be One with Godhead, clairvoinat or not. Just be Yourself. As every sistem, Anthroposophy is a construct, do not put pressure on yourself, You do not have to “cross the threshold’ between the physical/sense world and the non-visible worlds“, to arrive to Wisdom. Let me tall you, there are many systems for direct axperiance oф Truth outh there, and Steiners methods and exercises are not particulary efficient. Maybe they are not working for you.. For me Steiner is good in theoretical explanation of spiritual worlds, but whan it comes to direct experiance it is not a best possible training. One proof of that is small number of Anthroposophist who claim and report genuine clairvoint abilities and experiances. One ocultist rule says „А tone of theory is less veluable than five minutes of personal experiance“. Consider and explore every spiritual practices that you can find out there, decide which one works best for you, never leaving Anthroposophy entirely, use it as an theoretical frame in which you can interprete your future spiritual experiances. And at that aspect Steiner is superior. Keep looking, relax, and enjoy withiut much expectations.
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Hi Zarko,
Certainly, no one has developed a spiritual activity yet that is anything like Steiner’s. That fact can lead to the conclusion that you have, that his exercises are impotent. You observe though that Steiner’s spiritual activity has a unique place among that vast array of spiritual movements that present themselves to human souls incarnated into the sense world. Steiner’s spiritual activity has a theoretical basis. None of the other spiritual movements offer such a foundation. Now since no one since Steiner has built a personal spiritual activity like Steiner’s on this foundation you say it is not particularly efficient but helpful to understand the results of other paths. To me this says that spirit for you is not a theoretical activity and that for you theoretical activity is not spiritual activity.
Steiner says in the first paragraph of his book, ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’, that the spiritual activity that he is presenting can be learned in the same way that writing is learned and in the 3rd paragraph that the steps he followed are written in the spiritual world and are minutely prescribed by the spiritual world. The steps required to shoot a corpse rocket to the moon, collect some corpse material there, and bring it back to the corpse material earth are minutely prescribed by the corpse world.
Steiner claims that the life world, the consciousness world, and the ego world are spiritual activities that also have prescriptions for initiating personal activity in their spheres. In lecture one of volume one of the ‘Karmic Relationship’ lectures, Steiner describes how each of these 4 worlds has a unique relationship to cause and effect, which necessitates that they be designated as different worlds.
The logic that I am writing with now is based on the sequential linear cause and effect sequences that occur in the corpse world. This kind of logic of then doesn’t work in any world that doesn’t follow sequential in linear time cause and effect. However, Steiner has shown how spiritual activity can incarnate and take on a body of corpse logic and describe itself in the language of the sense world.
You are attempting to describe simultaneous events that occur in the life world where cause and effect are separated by space not time. When you say that ‘you will always be one with the Godhead’ you are not describing the our corpse world existence but our life world being. There causes at the periphery of the cosmos are simultaneous with their effects in the corpse world. Logic based on the corpse world can’t comprehend what ‘periphery of the cosmos’ is. In the life world what appears in the corpse world as the fixed stars is a sphere with a periphery and not the infinite space that is logical in the measurements extrapolated from the corpse substance. To describe our life world being you have to have crossed out of our corpse world being as far as what Steiner calls imagination consciousness. There is a threshold there. And as you say when you see it you are there and there is no separation in time between when you are there and when you see it. Also, you experience then that god (the periphery of the cosmos) is happening in you simultaneously creating life, and that you are in and of that all living being. It is also true that there are many paths that have found their way over this threshold out of our corpse/sense based intellect into our living life world.
But while the corpse/sense consciousness is only one fourth of our human beingness, the life world is also only one fourth and we also live in two other realities. There are thresholds and differentiations between these four realities. Any spiritual path that only looks to one or two or three of these worlds as the whole human being has failed to unite themselves with the whole human being. We are beings of four worlds. So far Steiner is the only one I have found that has made sense out of all four worlds and made them accessible to me. Can you show me someone else?
Cheers,
Manny
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Dear mr blosser, the whole point of a system like the pythagorean is to arrive at the point where the intellect collapses as is very well shown in the content of the symbol of pi. Every single spiritual movement has this knowledge at its core, steiner knows this too. I have just finished Reading his comments on the gospel of Matthew, different perspective same conclusion as Edgar cayce, Gopi Krishna, Judith von halle, Ramana Maharshi, Hildegard of bingen and the list goes on also point to…
Regards
Pierrette
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Dear Pierette,
These words you write will be stripped away and denied entry to the gate of knowledge when you meet the guardian of the threshold. They don’t quality as solving the problems that the cosmos has to solve. The cosmos has problems that only human beings can solve. Jeremy will do better with his words of understanding that he hasn’t followed the wisdom of man yet to find the solutions that the cosmos needs and is taking care of the tree problems in his yard instead.
Steiner’s words appear in the intellect of the sense consciousness as real spiritual activity that can lead the human identity out of sense consciousness without sense consciousness being lost in sleep or death. There is nothing theoretical about that spiritual fact at this point in evolution. Esoteric and exoteric can be united. Spiritual activity can now incarnate into sense consciousness. The philosophical observations and logic for this spiritual fact have been present on the earth since 1894 when ‘Philosophy of Spiritiual Activity’ was published. If one understands and percieves how percept and concept are united with self-activity to accumulate as mental pictures in the intellectual soul one can turn that same activity toward the spiritual world and acquire knowledge that has equal standing of objective fact as when that activity is applied to the sense world.
Cheers,
Manny
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……this fact.
…… “Unless you change and become as little children you Will never enter the kingdom of heaven” said He. (Matthew 18:3)……
Dear mr Blosser,
The intellect can analyze, assess, criticise, judge and discern.
Justitia holds the scales blindfolded in her right hand at the courts of Justice. It is duality still.
What we see happening in the World right now has been foretold by the prophets of yore for generations before 1894. Of course this does not mean that you cannot use RS’s path, but ultimately it will necessarily be you yourself who carves the trail, a trail filled with cul de sac’s.
Judith von Halle woke up at age 2 to the “reality World” as she calls it in contradistinction to our everyday common dualistic World which she calls the “theater World”. From that point her studies of the Real World only started, as did also her study of the theater World.
Entering the “reality World” is the first step. The threshold is crossed and thus the teaching of patience begins…
Crossing this threshold has been a gift to the few, but more and more are crossing it and this crossing is filled with pitfalls and delusion……not easy…
I give you a link bellow to a videotaped satsang with a dutch woman crossing the threshold, it is a rare occurrence to witness such a happening, and in this video it is very eloquent.
Go 25mn 37sec into the video to watch this very, very unique guidance that this woman receives and be aware of the subtility of the river to cross and watch the change happening for yourself, but mind you – for her the journey into the real World has only begun…
Another woman precedes her, there is no need to watch that sequence, but if one is interested, it is quite enlightening to see the stark contrast between the two.
We don’t need any path to follow ……youtube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IXOFRwChGDw
May the fragrant roses pervade your soul and make your spirit Bloom.
Sincerely
Pierrette
Ps. I know full well that my Socratic Spirit knows nothing at all and that I speak to myself, but…. we are …… “One”….
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Hi Pierrette,
You write ‘The intellect can analyze, assess, criticise, judge and discern.’
By this you mean that our intellect that is based on the sense world and is formed and inherited from karma, culture, and our present natural conditions can only do these things, which is of course true. But that intellect also doesn’t know its source and can’t answer the questions of who I am and was and will become because none of its content however great the wisdom, beauty, and majesty of the sense world, can address those questions. So yes, this is the duality that we start with. In ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ chapter one, Steiner claims that he knows ideals that release life forces where as the critical thinking that has built all of our sense world culture at this point in time will always slay soul forces. You seem to be saying his claim that there do exist ideals that release life forces is false because all ideas are based on dualism. And if his fundamental ideal in chapter one of his fundamental book is false why do you study his work?
But let me clarify a little further. The ideas that you write do describe a way to get out of the sense world into a union with something spiritual. But in relation to the ideas that you use to describe that union there is still a duality.
Thinking is the fundamental characteristic of the human kingdom. Everything less is part of the beastly animal kingdom. Steiner proposes that there is a way to cross out of the sense world as a first threshold, work our way across the soul world to establish a real objective knowledge experience there without reference to the sense world, and then with that knowledge of the soul forces, cross a second threshold with a second greater guardian into the field of knowledge where universal eternal truth has its source and that this is the true oneness that the dearest longing of everyone’s soul is consecrated too.
That’s different from all the spiritual activity that you are describing. Steiner is unique in this of seeing thinking as a spiritual activity that can’t possibly have its source in the brain or body and so is the soul activity that goes the farthest when it is released from the sense world by this knowledge of its true source and gets all the way across the soul world to the field of knowledge and can satisfy the judgements of the two guardians at each of the thresholds.
Cheers,
Manny
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Dear mr Blosser,
looking through the last 3 threads in which I have participated, I discover that we are two of a kind. You are a linear zealot I am an atomised zealot. We write far too much and would have far less followers (if any) than Jeremy if we started our own blog.
I Call us “failures as chatroom mates”.
Being a failure is really a succes’s as it gives room for growth, and I mean to take up the challenge…..
Incidentally: 1894?
Rumi: There is another language beyond language
Another place beyond heaven and hell.
Precious gems come from another mine,
The heart draws light from another source.
Meiste Eckhart uses the analogy of the three birds:
A bird is busy building a nest on a branch, the second bird quietly watches that bird with interest (out of body), then there is a third bird that watches the two other birds in the tree and is one with everything. (The all that is unfathomable and unspeakable).
Julian of Norwich also expresses this knowledge.
There is nothing new under the sun….
The first post in this thread by Laura said it all, was enough and to the point. Let us learn from that..
Cheers
Pierrette
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Hi Pierette,
1894 is when ‘Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was first published. Chapter 1 begins with the question do I have free will or are my action determined by the iron necessity of natural law? After looking at philosophers that focus on thinking, feeling, and willing as each being determined by something other than myself or as being the soul force which I can turn from one choice to another, the chapter ends with the conclusion that if free will exists it will depend on whether i can be consciously present at the source of my thinking and determine that it can be an activity that arises solely out of my own forces and not determined by any force or being other than myself.
Chapter 2 then looks at all the ways that we experience duality in ordinary consciousness. This chapter concludes through several steps of observation and logic that any careful thinker and observer can construct for themselves that the experience of duality arises from the fundamental constitution that we have 2 kinds of activity in our consciousness, thinking and observation.
Chapter 3 looks at how my self activity unites thoughts from an inner source with the perceptions that arise in consciousness from the bodily sense.
Chapter 4 works out how I accumulate the united concept-percept in my inner life.
Then chapter 5 surveys these 4 results and goes on to arrive at the conclusion that my thinking can’t possibly have the same source as my perceptions because when I unite them in my inner life and accumulate this united result I have something that I experience as real but which only one part comes to me from the bodily senses. The thought, the self-activity of uniting it with an observation, and the accumulating of this united result can all be brought up from the unconscious realms ordinary consciousness first presents them into a fully awake conscious self activity. Why follow such observations and logic? Because then you can find yourself in a purely spiritual realm doing a purely spiritual activity.
From there Steiner goes on in the rest of the chapters describing how you can look down at the soul life of feeling and the bodliy life of willing and fill both of these activities with truly moral content.
From there in 1902 Steiner publishes ‘Theosophy’ which describes the activity of this new self that has been constructed philosophically as a purely spiritual being in a purely spiritual realm bringing truly moral initiatives down from there into the earth, as the being that incarnates into the body, then excarnates, journeys across the 7 levels of judgement in the soul world stripping away what has no value to the spiritual world, then journeys across the 7 levels of the spiritual world living with all the archetypes of the earthly world, and then initiates out of the that archetypal life a new individual moral development existence on the earth, and then through 7 levels of condensation to bring that down to the earth in an incarnated body. Then in the last chapter of the book he describes what he calls in the next book, “the complete path of knowledge”.
1904 ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ is published. There he writes that while the complete path of knowledge was described in ‘Theosophy’, now he can write out the practical details. These details consist of a 6 step path of preparation, then an 8 step path of enlightenment, and a 10 step path of initiation where one meets the judgements of the soul world through the lessor and the greater guardians to enter the spiritland of knowledge where the archetypes of earth existence are.
Then 1909 ‘Occult Science: An Outline’ is published and the thoughts and feelings are described that are necessary to have personal spritual perceptual experience of everything on earth from the beginning to the end of time and how then you know Christ.
Now when I compare this picture of the human being and who I can be in this lifetime, to what Laura writes as her highest ideal that you support, I feel that you and Laura are on a boat going somewhere else and that i want to follow this path. Also, it looks to me like in his failure essay Jeremy has gotten an inkling that something much greater than what he has done so far is possible.
Cheers,
Manny
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I do not “study” RS, but have read him before and was guided to this site after having heard about Judith von halle, found out that you need to know quite a lot about RS to follow and possibly participate on this blog.
It has been very rewarding and”evolving” to join in. and read everybody’s comments. Am very greateful to have had this opportunity….
Thank You..!
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Really think about keep the blog going !!! the Initiation path is different for everyone. It may take 7 seconds, minutes, months, years, decades, incarnations and so on…
You are on the path. The only thing between is yourself. Some may take one or more Incarnations in a more intellectual way. Others are on the feeling life others on the will, and even some a bit of all of the three (in the sense of have to balance then, is different for every one – sorry if i am not so clear about this). Patience please. I might be a clairvoyant, and I have barely no reproaches to all you’ve written. They are so little, so small that are not even worth mention it. The lovely higher beings are very aware of our limitations. You already help then a lot, probably more than you know.
To be eager about initiation knowledge is in of the worst obstacles one imposes oneself. Do what you can, let it flow, don’ t worry, when you be ready they will come to you. And the price to pay can be high, Many had to to forsaken some of the things and beings that are the most dear to then, just for Instance. To be a Initiate like Doctor Steiner that can and must deal with selflessly with lots of people is a long and hard path…
Crises are part of the path, essential ones. Take your time don’t give up, maybe you are on the part that silence about spiritual things is needed I might have lived that, years without talking or writing about…
But also we need people just like you buzzing aloud: -There is initiation knowledge it is more or less like this, and you can understand it only with your Soul and Spirit faculties!
Sooner than you may expect it will come for you and most of mankind. Be a Lion for Truth, for Christ. We are nearly to complete 2000 years of the Golgotha. And what people talk most about?
See which one is yours, to be silenced or to buzz aloud?
Don’t worry about Initiation, mostly speak or write very little. Doctor Steiner was someone else…
Don’t be fooled by the outer circumstances. Don’t be fooled by your own limitations as well. You are better placed than most. You made more people to think about the Higher Realms an Beings than most people today. That is of Immense Importance, they long to be in our thoughts feelings and will consciously. You are certainly helping then. Be thankful. I am thankful to you, for every single word you written, to all of your Spiritual activity dedicated to spread Spiritual knowledge. Good Spiritual Knowledge, we all have our crises, that’s understandable, rise up, shake up the bad mood , no matter how hard, keep working. Don’t wait for rewards or recognition. Michael after a task is done just says to the Michaelic (when “He” says something) : Well done! Do more!
That is because Michael knows how hard it is and mostly because he Trust us! Everyone can speak or write about the Higher Good Beings, about Christ, you don’t have to be an authority to do so… You had and has experience of then you just don’t remember. That’s the difference about a Initiate and a non Initiated. That simple!
Brother in Christ you live where Ahriman strikes the hardest (English speaking folks). That’s where people like you are the most needed, you are not there by chance. Remember that.
I Hope these words can be of any help to you.
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Thank you for your very kind words! Today the winds have brought down our beloved Western Red Cedar tree onto our neighbour’s property so I have my hands full…
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Hi Everyone,
Where does Anthroposophy begin?
‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ gives in the 5th paragraph the admonition, (George Metaxa translation) ‘He must begin with a certain fundamental attitude of soul. In spiritual science this fundamental attitude is called the path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge. Without this attitude no one can become a student.’
With these words Steiner claims that there does exist a certain fundamental attitude of soul without which no one can become a student of spiritual science and this attitude is a path of veneration, of devotion to truth and knowledge. If this was a religion the fundamental attitude of soul would be based on faith and belief. It this was philosophy it would be based on a fundamental self-evident observation. If it was science it would be based on the powers of mathematical logic and material measurement that create objectivity between independent observers. If it was a religion it would not include a devotion to knowledge. If it was a philosophy or a science as defined by these descriptions, it would not include a fundamental attitude of soul.
This place were where the student begins the path that Steiner is describing challenges us the think about what we feel and to take initiative in our feeling life to form it into a specific attitude guided by our thought life. In other words, I have to feel and will my thoughts. think and will my feelings, and think and feel my willing so my three soul forces conform to the requirements set forth by the teacher. But in this case, the teacher is not a human being. A previous sentence says that the direction the student is to take is minutely prescribed by the spiritual world. The spiritual world itself is now the teacher. This is a turning point in time, a new event in evolution.
In the sense world if I want to maintain my self-conscious existence there I have to will my feelings and thoughts conform to the facts of bodily existence to do the deeds required to obtain the nourishment and shelter my body requires that nature doesn’t provide without my self-willed activity. Steiner says I can have the same kind of self-consciousness and self-willed activity in the soul world and the spirit world if I will my thoughts and feelings to conform the facts of those worlds.
To begin with at this point in evolution all thoughts that conform to the facts of the spiritual world have been suppressed into unconsciousness by attitude of soul we have taken up in our culture toward the sense world and bodily existence. It is still possible in our feeling life at this point in evolution to hope that there is some other reality that we are part of and create an enthusiasm for in some future time attaining that reality. But events in the sense world also give birth to the feelings of despair that there exists something wrong and such a future hope and enthusiasm will be dashed.
Steiner claims that this question can be answered because he has worked his way into the realities of soul and spirit facts where there is an end of time and there is the light of Christ shining from there into the darkness at the beginning of time and that light incarnated into a sense bound body overcoming the forces of corpseness in that body and that there is a certain fundamental attitude of soul that every incarnated soul now can initiate to know such facts for themselves in the same way that anyone can learn to write if they follow the correct instructions. ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment’ gives us this sentence to consider, ‘ He must develop within himself certain faculties to a definite degree, and then the highest treasures of the spirit can become his own.’
So I conclude that anthroposphy begins by making my thought and feeling conform to these claims, that if I want to go in this direction I have to will my thoughts and feelings to accept that there is a minutely prescribed set of facts that I have to learn. When I do this there roars up from my depth of soul five other fundamental attitudes of soul that fight against this one. This fight consists of each of these other five attitudes declaring that my true being can’t be found with such a fundamental attitude and that they are my true being instead.
Steiner wrote out six protective exercises. Each of these exercises exposes one to each of the five fundamental attitudes of soul that exist and guides us to see how we can protect ourselves from such errors and arrive at the sixth exercise of practicing all five protections at once and so be on the path of knowledge in the soul and spiritual worlds that has three steps, preparation, enlightenment, and initiation.
Cheers,
Manny
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Still, a philosophical stance on the sensory world of observation and on the ordinary mental life can be helpful:
“One of the first experiences that follows the attainment of this new spiritual life is a true insight into the nature of the ordinary mental life. This is actually not produced by the body but proceeds outside the body. When I see a color, when I hear a sound, I experience the color and the sound not as a result of my body, but I am connected with the color, with the sound, as a self-conscious ego, outside my body. My body has the task to function in a way that can be compared with the action of a mirror.”
https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA018/English/AP1973/GA018_p02c08.html
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HI Ton,
The quote that you give from ‘Riddles of Philosophy’ is a spiritual view of the true nature of ordinary mental life that goes on outside the body. This view is built from the previous paragraphs that begin with concluding summary statements about the 2500 years of philosophical development and then proceed to describe the thoughts and feelings that arise from those conclusions that lead into the ‘new spiritual life’ this quote is speaking about. This quote is not a philosophical stance but a description of the spiritual facts that can be seen when one arrives at the spiritual life outside the body that can see the faculties that are unconscious in ordinary consciousness because they only exist outside the body even though their effects appear inside the body as a mirror of their true nature.
Cheers,
Manny
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More to the above:
Philosophical considerations now lead outside the body into spiritual life. This the new step in evolution that is a turning point of time. because now thought can free itself from the constrictions of linear time in the sense world and enter directly into the simultaneous events of the life forces and so become the being of living force that it was before incarnating into human brains. There is an open door now to knowledge of spiritual worlds.
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Hello Manny,
Steiner made a philosophical analysis of this external experience of qualities in his Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, Ch. 4, and 1911 in his Bologna lecture. In his autobiography he called it: ‘the revolution in my mental life” in my thirty-fifth year. Today, this view on sense-perceptions is known as Externalism (wiki).
“The placing of oneself objectively, quite free from everything subjective in the mind, over against the sense-world revealed something concerning which a spiritual perception had nothing to say.” (CW 28, Ch.XXII)
Bologna lecture: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19110408p01.html
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Dear Ton,
Something totally different from this conversation on out-of-body experience: you have often warned us for Putin and his itentions. What is your assessment of the present situation in Ukraine? And what is the future perspectivr we have to anticipate?
Hans
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My assessment is based upon an interpretation of Steiner’s apocalyptic warnings of the incarnating Ahriman/Sorat at the end of the millennium. Putin came to power in 1998/1999 (see his Millennium speech https://pages.uoregon.edu/kimball/Putin.htm). It took him 21 years to attack the liberal democratic world order. This invasion is not only about Ukraine or Europe, but about an attempted Eurasian domination of the world by a cruel autocratic ruler.
According to Steiner (1919) the incarnation of Ahriman would take place in the western world just before the year 2000 (‘before only a part of the third millennium of the post-Christian era has elapsed’). https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0191/19191101p01.html
Steiner (Priest’s Apocalypse, 1924): “And we have the age of the third 666: 1998. We are coming to the end of this [20th] century, when Sorat [the ahrimanic false prophet in the Revelation of St. John] will again lift his head from the waters of evolution very strongly … One will see that what is concentrated in a small region in present-day Russian communism will be inserted into the whole earth evolution of humanity.” https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0346/19240912v02.html
Steiner (1918): “This is what might still happen if, before the beginning of the third millennium, men were to refuse to turn to the spiritual life. The third millennium begins with the year 2000, so it is only a short time ahead of us.” GA0182/19181009
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Well, Ton, I didn’t agree with you when you first identified Putin as a candidate for the individuality overshadowed by Ahriman, but now I think I was wrong. Best wishes, Jeremy
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Putin is influenced by the ideas of the Eurasianists Gumilyov and Dugin, and he could even know these apocalyptic-anthroposophical millennium warnings:
“At 4 Angelika Street, in Dresden, stands a massive house in a residential area of half-timbered dwellings. A plaque outside the small building reads “Rudolf Steiner Center for Anthroposophy.” It is hard to imagine that this quiet place was, until 1989, the feared local headquarters of the all-powerful Soviet secret services, the KGB …“ Mandeville (2018)
https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/in-dresden-putin-is-more-than-a-fading-memory-1.2187888
https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/making-sense-of-vladimir-putins-long-game/
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Presumably that was where Putin was based when he was a KGB officer in Dresden? It’s surely very appropriate that the KGB has now been supplanted by Steiner and Michael – a good omen for what may happen in Ukraine!
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Just my two cents, but Putin doesn’t seem to fit the bill for the anti-Christ. Who knows the future, but has he yet wreaked the havoc of a Tony Blair or a George Bush (Junior or Senior) or a Clinton or Obama? Perhaps that will change, but decades of Western aggression still weigh heavily in the balance.
Also, isn’t the Anti-Christ to be a great deceiver, with the whole world to be under his spell, for a while at least. By contrast, Putin has been a hate-figure across the Western world for many years, even before the current crisis.
And speaking of the Western world, didn’t Steiner intimate that the anti-Christ would come to power in the West?
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In my opinion while the West (and also the “Far East” as it seems to me in te case of the “Sars2Covid 19Unholy alliance” between USA and China ‘s labs of biological warfare) is clearly the “land of Ahriman ” in the flesh or not he might be) Uncle Vlad Putin has a clear differentrule somehow opposite . He is more a kind of “kathecon” ,one who tries to slow down the downfall into the Abyss created by trhe western lodges and jesuitism allied together (See Steiner, Tradowsky,Boardman and others ) . He connetected since 1990s the Russian people to an “old” (lucipheric) driving force, aka the Orthoox Christian Traditional, one, mixed with the necessity of survival of the big country of East Europa-Asia against the everlasting attack of the “West” looking for its “Absoolute power>” under the mask of NWO and globalization. Thus is at the stake ith these days..
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Padre pio once said: ”Communism will never succeed in erradicating the Russian People’s deep thirst for the spirit”….
Maybe it is not Putin but the spiritual forces in his country that are acting.
“From Russia comes the hope of the World” Edgar Cayce once said….
The spiritual movement in Russia is very powerfull indeed…
BTW it seems Putin’s former connection to the WEF has been deleted….
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Sure..Neverthless in these difficult times we have to hope, I believe, in a swift “victory” of Putin in Ukraine….but it seems that the West has also also some other tricks to carry on….https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/ukraine-new-al-qaeda/
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You seem to be living in an entirely distorted and imaginary thought-bubble of your own, shared with a few fanatical right wingers. For a more reality-based analysis, try this: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/russia-s-war-on-ukraine-the-lessons-so-far
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I would absolutely urge you to check out ukcolumn.org for – as far as I try to believe – a seemingly levelheaded journalism, but in these times very difficult to know….I like them because they are not mainstream and are some of the experts used in the nürenberg 2 grand jury trial…..the problem with this trial instigated by Reiner fuellmich and viviane Fischer is that the discoveries divulged coincide and elucidate quite a number of prophecies ( some over 150yrs old extremely well…. but not sure if that’s really a problem…?) but you need a lot of patience, time and interest to watch these fellas….on the other hand it is better than any crime/trial movie….
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I am aware of it and they can bring a useful perspective on some topics – but in regard to Putin, they are simply wrong – and wrong in a way that undermines the world’s struggle to bring the criminal leader of a mafioso state to justice.
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The apocalyptic expression Kathechon (“withholder”, 2 Thessalonians 7) is used by Putin’s advisor Dugin for a historical Thousand-Year Kingdom.
https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/we-are-church-end-times
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Dear Ton, Jeremy and all anthropopper friends,
You may still know that I understand evil as a counterforce similar to the reincarnation of the Christ in the etheric world. Rather than an in-person reincarnation. But if Rudolf Steiner and you, Ton, are right to identify Putin as the reincarnated (in “flesh”) Ahriman I have two questions:
1. Was this also seen by Sergej Prokovief and if yes, what did he advise. If not, what does this say about Prokovief and the many followers of him in the Anthroposophical Society, if not the society itself.
2. If Putin is indeed the incarnated Ahriman/+ what can we do NOW to neutralise him (at all levels)?
I think we all equally feel the urgency of an answer to question 2!!!
Thank you in advance,
Hans
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It is interesting to see the varied opinions on Ahriman and his physical incarnation or as some think the lack of a physical incarnation and instead one in the cyber world. Since I am not a clairvoyant per say my only understanding at this point comes from what Steiner wrote and lectured so devoutly from the heart to give us. Putin is not Ahriman as he is not from the USA. Ahriman will incarnate in the USA somewhere along the West coast. The statement before a part of the 3rd millennium has elapsed is not even clear on which part. The beginning or the end has elapsed??? I have read that statement so many times trying to understand and finally it occurred to me that it was not clear which part of the millennium. Now perhaps there is another lecture where it is clearer, and I have come upon it yet.
My feeling is that Putin has something to do with the Slavs and the next incarnations in the area. The Slavs are to push Spiritual Science forward.
As horrible as humans are becoming, I feel we have more ugliness in us yet to surface before Ahriman’s emergence. A certain global situation to bring us to our knees where he will be issued in as the Christ by the Brothers of the Left.
What I do understand is the ancient Rishi’s KNEW Lucifer and held him at bay while gleaning his knowledge. Steiner says WE MUST KNOW and just by KNOWING we are safe and can glean what Ahriman’s gifts will be. Ahriman was surprised by the Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ is still in control with the power of Love. We have to look to the Christ and not fear the coming physical incarnation, but just KNOW. Love will redeem this powerful being in the distant future.
The compilation book, Secret Brotherhoods and the mystery of the human double is a necessary read during these times. KNOW, just know……
hugs RC
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and let us not forget the fallen beings from 1879 who can over shadow the dulled consciousness of humans rampant in politics today. They are above us and very clever and can appear as a powerful entity controlling a person even if it is just a fallen angel and not Ahriman.
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Hello Rose,
‘another lecture where it is clearer’: see above CW 182, ‘what might still happen … before the beginning of the third millennium’, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/WrkAng_index.html
‘Ahriman’s gifts’ from Asia: see CW 194 and CW 225 https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19191215p01.html
‘in the USA’: see Russia as a part of the West since the Treaty of Nystad, (1721) in: Communicating Anthroposophy, The Course for Speakers to Promote the Idea of Threefolding… (CW 338, google FXz6CgAAQBAJ, p.22)
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Thank you Ton. The lectures and books are vast so always appreciate help towards better understanding.
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According to Alice Bailey (Dwaj khul), a little after but contemporary of RS and stemming from the same tree (Theosophy, not Besant). remarks that Russia’s work is far more connected to the East and Asia than Europe. but as we all know:”civilization moves wesrward” and we are in a great transition…
As all true Masters have always pointed out: “The change you wish to see in the outer World needs to happen inside yourself first”..
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Alice Bailey …..oh no. She’s on the “other side”, horrible materialism, “dressed” of false Spiritualism stolen here and there…… see also https://www.amazon.it/East-Light-West-Sergey-Prokofiev/dp/1906999066?fbclid=IwAR2DhgdGX5aAyuwfCVLL9dmeEyf67Pw_Ygz0jATSJE_0JbaL6lTO3pSSKNc
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Steiner (1918) distinguished Russian Eurasianism (Mongols, Khans) from the future Slav culture (sixth cultural epoch, Philadelphia):
“None of the three elements which helped to fashion the configuration of Russia originated in the Russian soul. The first was the heritage of Byzantium, of Byzantine Catholicism; the second was that which had streamed in through the mingling of Nordic and Slav blood; the third was that which was transmitted by Asia [Mongols, Ottomans]. Etc.”
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA185/English/RSP1976/19181018p01.html
“The great khans of the former Mongols were without programs, but those possessing insight perceived in them the living incarnations of super-sensible beings. The great khans of the present [1920], Lenin and Trotsky, carry within their souls an abstract party program, not an awareness of being heralds of a higher being.”
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA199/English/AP1986/19200807p01.html
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Dear jeremy, I am not proposing to argue with You. I do not know what to make of the Russia-NATO situation – far too much misinformation going on. What I do know (or rather have read) is that an assault on western europe has been seen by several prophets. Russia would strike like lightning in three columns going West.
Some have seen them come nearly as far as Portugal, some to Paris others to the Rhine and beaten back there at the battle of the Birch-tree.
Others saw the Leader of Russia have a change of heart as he realized the hand of god behind the happenings……try to make sense of that…!
Mind you Putin is a better actor than both Kenneth brannagh and Robert de Niro put together, and he has just been removed from the WEF Young global leaders website. What move on the chessboard does it amount to? ……hmmmmm……The old order watts to remain in power, so they create an artificial inflation to bring down the western culture and thus – voila – save it from itself……..
I’m beginning to trust the prophets more than the news now, and – to me – the famous year 1999 might as well refer to Ralph Baric and his Gain of Function manipulations that resulted in the – oh so sought for – transfering of animal virus to humans…..that would seem to be quite the resurrection of a King of terror (the plague)…..all this is only mindstuff of course…..time Will tell…
Sincerely
Pierrette
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In a recently published article (2021), Boardman argues there are four instead of Steiner’s three counterforces, Sorat being the fourth evil. He also ignores Steiner’s prediction of the bodily incarnation of Sorat in ahrimanic black magicians (CW 104a). The year 1998 and Sorat’s Russian connection were added in CW 346.
“Steiner made clear that Sorath never incarnates into a human body but ‘he’ influences certain human beings and not only for one year, e.g. in 1998.”
http://threeman.org/?p=3040
“In full consciousness they have turned away, and provide a bodily incarnation for Sorat. That will be the incarnation in flesh of the demon of the sun.”
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/ReadApoc/19090520p01.html
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FYI and most anthroposophist have read about this which RS said would happen. From Yahoo news
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/brave-world-just-got-more-133007426.html
KNOW
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Rayne: “parthenogenesis can be achieved by targeted epigenetic rewriting of multiple critical imprinting control regions. … How a gene is expressed depends on imprinting, during which that gene is modified or altered, though the DNA sequence itself remains the same.”
Steiner (1900 and 1906) also adhered to a form of Lamarckism or epigenetics in evolution:
“The characteristics which a given form acquires through many generations by adaptation, it hands on by heredity to its descendants.” https://rsarchive.org/Articles/TwoEssays/TwoEss_e01.html
“… characteristics which an organism had acquired through adaptation to the environment could be transmitted by inheritance, and that in this way a transformation of organisms could occur” https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA011/English/HR1981/GA011_c01.html
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I was a member of AS for about five years, about twenty years ago. I became involved at the core of a relatively small national society, and even became involved in the First Class. I had been studying RS’s work for about fifteen years and joined the AS in order to meet others to discuss what I had learned. The first thing I learned was that practically no one read RS – most of the membership were little more than fellow-travellers who expected to be saved in some unexplained way by RS. Next thing to learn was that RS was run by the usual committee hacks to be found in any organisation. Then I discovered bit by bit that the First Class was simply a reworking of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Why was this necessary? The most noticable innovation in the First Class is the plethora of images, which I found at first distracting and then irritating. Took me some time to work out what was going on here. The most obvious social development between the publication of KHW and institution of the First Class was the introduction of the cinema. See? The First Class is intended to counterbalance the effect of moving images on AS members. That’s when I realised that AS had failed: cinema, then later TV and mobile phones, completely undermine RS’s project.
But it so happened that while I was studying RS in detail, I was also reading a remarkable exposition of the Hermetic practice, M.A. Atwood’s, A Suggestive Inquiry into Hermetic Mystery. This inspired me to undertake a set of specific exercises that led me out into a fruitful mode of spiritual perception that has sustained me for almost thirty years. Note this: Mrs Atwood refused to join the Theosophical Society because it did not offer practical spiritual exercises.
So, for what it is worth: consider this connection, spiritual organs and alchemy. In other words, do the spirit, don’t just think it. See it in terms of opening yourself, not of reaching out for something, but of allowing something to approach you. Very frightening at first: pray if you can.
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Living on my ‘island’ during this time of my life and reading postings here, it has become apparent that many do not read RS/Spiritual Science. So many opposing opinions which tells me the dissention is inserted from the negative beings blocking understanding. If I recall correctly Steiner was already battling these issues before he crossed the threshold. I too have failed many times as a student of Spiritual Science but my favorite word from KHW is Perseverance. Been reading/studying since 1979 and associated with some groups. I read most every day. I feel compelled for some reason even though RS mentions we should allow the words settle so to speak and not forge on the next book/lecture. Perhaps it is the times that makes me feel this urge to stuff myself. The Mystery of Golgotha helps me personally and if we reach out to Michael, he will reach out to us.
Have not read Atwoods book from 1850. Going to consider it. According to Wikipedia her final words were, “I cannot find my centre of gravity.” Perhaps she was still searching.
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Mary-Jane Atwood also wrote: “Early Magnetism in its Higher Relations to Humanity as veiled in the Poets and the Prophets”. She retrieved (with the help of her father) as many copies from the market (300 books were printed of “The Hermetic Mystery….”) as she could find because she thought the books too revealing…and burned them…l The books were reprinted by Julian Press in 1960… I stumbled upon this while doing research for the translation of “The Mysteries of the Chartres Cathedral” by Louis Charpentier, I think most RS people know of this book…..
PS. I used to trust wikipedia for my research, the last two years have made me somewhat more suspicious/carefulll….
…this – of course – doesn’t mean her above quote is not true….! (I did not find the books more revealing than other material you could find elsewhere in her time, but maybe you needed certain acquaintancess…?
..for what it’s worth….
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Thanks for this book recommendation Philip I’m in the middle of it . I’m also having some life shattering experiences ; Steiner mentioned this would happen on the path . The book’s quite intense how many times did you read it ?
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Five times, round and round. Now I read sections from time to time. The key word is ‘suggestive’. So let the work itself – not given words or ideas – guide you. Most of all, you can trust MAA.
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……some sense at last…..! .
…an old saying: “ the teaching dies with the teacher….” …..
we search only to realize – in the end we’re on our own…..
Having read Swan Wings for a second time, and read the comments to the Sergei prokofief thread (wherein I find very little original thought) I deem it valuable to give an outsiders comment:
To me the main value of von halle’s book is; creating her own language about the reality world and living it alongside the theater world with no one to guide her or understanding her, and in that process realizing she can work on becoming a better human being, for her further development, even in a coming incarnation….only to discover at age 23 that other human beings know of these facts and work in the same direction, stigmata or no stigmata…
Her journey, described in the autobiography, gives me a “sensing” into my own far gone childhood, a kind of remembrance (and path) that has Extreme benefits for a Seeker.
The question as to whether she is surrounded and secluded by “proselytes” in a “Dark room”, to me, is of absolutely no value in a context like the one argued for(Steve hale). One needs only study other stigmata to realize how sensitive these people are, to be aware of how hard it must be for them to be in the hustle and bustle of ”normality”.
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Ps. I’ve also read Atwood…..
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Hello Jeremy Smith,
I happened upon your blog today. My heart responded to your spiritual dilemma.
I read one full lecture to the dead everyday. It will be six years this July.
Perhaps you might find it helpful as a way to begin anew.
Love Patricia
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Thank you, Patricia.
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Hello again Jeremy. In reading this lecture this morning I thought of you. Best wishes. Patricia https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/TskAim_index.html
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Thank you for your kind thought, Patricia. The final paragraph of the lecture you link to provides hope for me and others like me who are not clairvoyant in this lifetime: “There are certainly many sitting here whose karma will not allow them to see the world clairvoyantly in this incarnation. But all those who acquire what is given in true Spiritual Science, clothed as it is in the forms of thought, will reap the fruits of it in the next incarnation; for in this one they will have laid the right foundation. A man may, so to speak, be a clairvoyant without knowing it; and one who studies Spiritual Science in the right way has the insight and can wait until his karma also allows him actually to behold the things for himself.”
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I’ve enjoyed your blog over the years. Your frank sharings on your time at Langley school especially resonate. I recently had a rough falling out with a Waldorf employer in the U.S. (for which I filed a federal case!). Reading some shared experience e.g. the systemic haughty unresponsiveness — that was comforting.
The fact that you are able and willing to admit mistakes (such as your well-meaning attempt to wrangle with anti-Waldorf folks, and you realized later that some of the criticism is justified in a way) — this humility is really really rare in the Anthro community. And also in the wider human community. This is a big deal. You do have a rare quality.
Also, I think you and others would be helped by a very frank re-appraisal of what RS’s gnosis really is. And how it came about. And how this beautiful gnosis could be fruitfully approached and applied in accordance with truth.
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Thank you, Travis, for your kind words. I remain convinced that what Rudolf Steiner brought to the world is immensely important for all our futures and I trust that humanity will still find ways to access these truths despite the multiple opposing forces.
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I encourage you to keep blogging. Thank you for the work you have already done, I appreciate the references you use in your posts to support your statements. I agree with the idea of meditation groups, in my waldorf teaching program we had a book study group right after a group mediation practice. Something else we would do is watercolor painting, which I would encourage you to take up. One spiritual side effect of shared meditation is that the group seems to be on the same wavelength in many of their thoughts, not only those focused on. I have some poetry on my blog earthsbreath.wordpress.com and have started a business blog at siriusstarseedcoffee.wordpress.com if you would like to visit. Thanks!
Mary in Hawaii
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You haven’t failed. You might not have learned the mystical aspect of spiritual practice but you can hear your higher self and let it guide you. You resisted the vaccine despite the pressure – no other proof is needed.
If you wish to see the inner worlds, as we call them, you will need to work beyond the scope of Steiner’s teachings. In short, you need to act rightly and always be present in the moment. Be conscious that you are conscious and do not attach to thoughts (which make you unconscious). Meditate when drowsy and without expectation. Focus your attention on breath and place your attention on the back of your eyes. Ask your higher self every day to be permitted to see the other side and be ever grateful for what you have. Recognise that the full moon offers greater energy to work with, especially when trying to “get out” for the first time. Understand, as I’m sure you do, that discipline is essential. Fear is the greatest obstacle and perseverance your best friend. I was taught in the Gnostic tradition and use Mantras and visualisation. Check out the Glorian website for the Astral travel techniques.
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Thank you, Richard.
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