In the Christian Community's Communion service the following intriguing words are found:
"Thus thinks in us Christ's passion and death, his resurrection, his revelation through all cycles of the earth to come..."
What could it mean, that Christ's passion and death, resurrection and revelation think in us?
What comes to mind for me is how Rudolf Steiner refers to Christ's passion and death, resurrection and revelation as the Mystery of Golgotha (Golgotha comes from an Aramaic word meaning "place of the skull" and is the name given to the place of Christ's crucifixion outside Jerusalem).
Steiner often described how intellectual, abstract thinking literally involves a kind of death. We cannot avoid developing this kind of thinking, but he describes how it literally kills our physical body over time.
Richard Tarnas, in his book "The Passion of the Western Mind", traces the history of thinking as it manifests itself in Western cultures. We will all be familiar with examples from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of thinkers who reached a point of despair through pursuing intellectual thinking.
One well-known example of this kind of despair is found in the works and life of Friedrich Nietzsche. Many know, for example, of his famous declaration that "God is dead" which expressed a common cultural mood at the end of the nineteenth century.
However, Tarnas does not end his book on a note of despair. He points out that there are a number of hopeful signs that thinking has passed through its own Golgotha and new movements are arising that no longer stop at the thought that "God is dead". Anthroposophy and the works of Rudolf Steiner are given by him as just one example amongst many of this resurrection of thinking.
Rudolf Steiner again coined a useful phrase for this experience - living thinking. This being of living thinking can come to life, to resurrection in each of us if we only persevere in thinking and "follow our bliss", as the Jungian scholar Joseph Campbell often advised his pupils and others. Following this bliss will involve a passion and a death for us but also a resurrection - Christ in us, the new reality of living thinking.
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Living Thinking
Thank you for this, Tim. I've been thinking along these lines lately, especially since PoF Chapter Six clearly points in this direction.
Just as an aside, here's a quotation from the introduction to Theodor Schwenk's Sensitive Chaos which I've just started to read ("following my bliss" as you say above):
"Through watching water and air with unprejudiced eyes, our way of thinking becomes changed and more suited to the understanding of what is alive. This transformation of our way of thinking is, in the opinion of this author, a decisive step that must be taken in the present day."
Sensitive Chaos is a book about water as an element. Water is the everpresent archetype of this living thinking that we need to develop. Which makes sense with what you say here as it is also, planetarily speaking, the blood of the Christ.
What is thinking in us?
Another question to ask is: what is thinking in us?
Mostly other people's thoughts because we innately want our thoughts to be in agreement with others. We put a lot of energy into finding the point of agreement (as this board reveals).
Then, other forces can think in us. If we do not fully occupy our thinking capacity we make that capacity available to the Ahrimanic beings. When we observe our thinking closely it is astounding what thoughts creep in. An important exercise is to use our will to stop these thoughts.
Given that thinking is our most conscious capacity, and through it we experience freedom, then Christ must be able to think in us. But only if we make room for him. Are we able to wear the crown of thorns? This can mean many things and it is a good use of our thinking capacity to strive to work out what this may mean for us. One thing that comes to my mind is: Can we bear it when our conscience is pricked?
Thanks for these thought provoking posts Tim.
Kristina