The Etheric Christ, Freedom, and Peace in Our World
So many people talk about Christ and Peace, but they do not demonstrate peace, they demonstrate hate through their constant haranguing of others, especially those who may not agree with them or the way they view the world.
Steiner spoke about the fact that after 1933 more and more people would see the Christ in the Etheric. To see the Christ in the Etheric, one would already have demonstrated an experience of the spiritual world. Some people would see the Christ in the Ethteric through their own spiritual vision, through the fact that through their own work on themselves they have experienced the etheric world. For others, seeing the Christ in the Etheric may be an Act of Grace. There are many stories of people who were prisoners in the Nazi death camps during WW2, who had visions of the Etheric Christ. Two years ago during a visit to Europe, I was in Krakow, Poland, with its historical architectural splendor of old castles and beautiful churches, and decided to go and visit the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, only an hour away. There were many visitors from all around the world who felt the need to visit these places, and one couple we met with their teenage daughter were from Japan, and they had seen a film about what had happened in the Nazi death camps during WW2 and felt the need to be there. We were taken around by a tour guide who was knowledgeable in the history of the area. In Auschwitz, is one particular building where prisoners were held before they were executed. Alongside this building was an open area with a wall at the back where prisoners were taken and executed by shooting. In the prison, among others, was one particular concrete cell in which a most amazing picture was carved into the cement wall. It was a picture of the Christ. The guide did not tell us what the picture was of (we were left to figure that out for ourselves), but informed us the picture was carved with the fingernails of a Polish soldier who was prisoner there. I immediately thought of the Etheric Christ, as Steiner has spoken of him, and imagined that this had been an experience of this Polish soldier prisoner. Plus, there are stories from Jewish men and women of seeing this figure appear before them in the midst of their horrible prison in the Nazi death camps.
No doubt, there are many people today who have had this vision of the Etheric Christ. I was thinking what must be going on in the spiritual world, how must the Etheric Christ, see our world today? There is so much hatred in our world, even amongst (and perhaps especially) the various religions. So many people speak of their love for the Christ but hatred for the other lives in their heart, hatred for anyone who does not agree with what they see as “their” religion, or they may even be the same religion but have different viewpoints within that religion and hate or hold the other in contempt because of this. People seem so entrenched in their own point of view, they are unable to see the view point of the other, even especially if it may have positive value, as long as it is different from their own.
Will it ever be possible to disagree with the other without holding them in disregard or even hatred? It would seem even amongst those of us with a great appreciation for PoF, we may still have this ability to hold the other in contempt if they do not correspond or agree with our view point. If you watch today’s television, if only a little, a lot of it is one show after the other encompassing the very worse in human nature and this television is watched by millions of people the world over.
Perhaps one way to work for real Peace in our world, is to start with ourselves and developing peace in our own hearts. The Christ in the Etheric, may more and more people be able to have this experience.
For more information about the Etheric Christ in our times you may read the lecture by Rudolf Steiner, “The Reappearance of Christ in the Etheric” on the Steiner Archives website at: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19100125p01.html
Love,
Patri
crude awakening
The Philosophy of Freedom sees religious faith as a possible proparatory stage toward freedom. You could say it has a Christian element by connecting the resurrection of Christ with the resurrection of thought.
POF could be viewed as a "constant haranguing of others" views and institutions but I think the criticism of such is meant to awaken people from one-sidedness. The problem is getting stuck in a fixed position or institution. The only way out can sometimes be an "awakening" from someone else. This awakening can be crude or gentle depending on the people, situation and level of entrenchment.
A speculative metaphysics that assumes the return of Christ doesn't help but we can all experience the resurrection of thought in a good conversation.
Yes, and
Yes, the way Steiner has presented PoF with all the different philosophical analogies and twists leads to an awakening from dead thoughts. So, agreed PoF is an awakening from dead thoughts to real experience, but that awakens (or should) the moral impulse that we need to serve each situation that we are presented with out of our own intuition. In sharing about what Steiner wrote about the Etheric Christ, I am trying to present a picture of what Steiner hoped the understanding of PoF would lead us to, not in the religious sense but in the sense of experiencing in our own enlivened thinking the need to respect the other, even though the other may have a different view point than our own. As much as PoF is a scientific path to sense free thinking, Steiner also felt the importance to establish that the Cosmic Christ, the Mystery of Golgotha, are the heart of what he termed Anthroposophy. Could it be possible to become even a little dogmatic about ever so wonderful a book as PoF?
Cheers,
Patri
world peace
Steiner presents a way to world peace in Human and Cosmic Thought, lecture 3. It involves recognizing the truth-value of each view and also to realize truth is best approached from many sides so open-mindedness is required. This can be experienced in a contemplative conversation.
Conceptual intuition can resurrect dogma. Conceptual intuition is a different intuition than what is commonly understood by people. It is not the intuition that flees from thinking and is experienced as a vague gut feeling. The scientist is more likely to be a conceptual intuitive than those who say they are intuitive; and urge you to still your mind. The Philosophy of Freedom trains conceptual intuition. Conceptual intuition is the result of pure thinking, not nonthinking.
I would understand dogma to be quoting Steiner solely as a faith-based authority when you do not have your own experience. I am moving more in a scientific direction with POF to try and locate descriptions of experience that can be individually validated so you remove the guru authority altogether.
dogma: 1. doctrine or code of beliefs accepted as authoritative 2. a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof
Human and Cosmic Thought, lecture 3
You see, it is not true to talk in terms of one cosmic conception, but of
12 + 7 == 19 + 3 == 22 + 1 == 23
cosmic conceptions which all have their justification. We have twenty-three legitimate names for cosmic conceptions. But all the rest can arise from the fact that the corresponding planets pass through the twelve spiritual signs of the encircling Zodiac. And now try, from what has been explained, to enter into the task confronting Spiritual Science: the task of acting as peacemaker among the various world-outlooks. The way to peace is to realize that the world-outlooks conjointly, in their reciprocal action on one another, can be in a certain sense explained, but that they cannot lead into the inner nature of truth if they remain one-sided. One must experience in oneself the truth-value of the different world-outlooks, in order — if one may say so — to be in agreement with truth.
World peace through thinking of the heart
Yes, but world peace will come about through what Steiner terms "heart thinking," or "etheric thinking." Otherwise it is just another intellectual concept.
PoF is the opposite of dogma as it is a book that fully encompasses what real freedom is, but individuals may, without realizing it, turn their understanding of PoF into dogma if they are not careful. I hope that more people will have the experience of PoF that Steiner worked so hard to convey and hoped they would have.
Cheers,
Patri
"thinking of the heart" sells tickets
If you want to get a large turn out for a lecture or sell books present the theme "thinking of the heart". Of course within conceptual intuition you will find inspired feeling and empowered willing ---not dry intellect, but you may have to go through intellectual separation to get there. Many flee this cold preliminary stage so miss out. "Thinking of the heart" is usualy about the vague intuitive feeling people seeking to justify this old path as the modern path of intuition. Below is a great piece that is a reality check against this.
The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception
12. Intellect and Reason
By Rudolf Steiner
Intellect
Making distinctions like this is the task of the intellect (Verstandes). It has only to separate concepts and maintain them in this separation. This is a necessary preliminary stage of any higher scientific work. Above all, in fact, we need firmly established, clearly delineated concepts before we can seek their harmony. But we must not remain in this separation. For the intellect, things are separated that humanity has an essential need to see in a harmonious unity. Remaining separate for the intellect are: cause and effect, mechanism and organism, freedom and necessity, idea and reality, spirit and nature, and so on. All these distinctions are introduced by the intellect. They must be introduced, because otherwise the world would appear to us as a blurred, obscure chaos that would form a unity only because it would be totally undefined for us.
Reason
The intellect itself is in no position to go beyond this separation. It holds firmly to the separated parts. To go beyond this is the task of reason (Vernunft). It has to allow the concepts created by the intellect to pass over into one another. It has to show that what the intellect keeps strictly separated is actually an inner unity. The separation is something brought about artificially, a necessary intermediary stage for our activity of knowing, not its conclusion. A person who grasps reality in a merely intellectual way distances himself from it. He sets in reality's place — since it is in truth a unity — an artificial multiplicity, a manifoldness that has nothing to do with the essential being of reality.
Heart
The conflict that has arisen between an intellectually motivated science and the human heart stems from this. Many people whose thinking is not yet developed enough for them to arrive at a unified world view grasped in full conceptual clarity are, nevertheless, very well able to penetrate into the inner harmony of the universe with their feeling. Their hearts give them what reason offers the scientifically developed person. When such people meet the intellectual view of the world, they reject with scorn the infinite multiplicity and cling to the unity that they do not know, indeed, but that they feel more or less intensely. They see very well that the intellect withdraws from nature, that it loses sight of the spiritual bond joining the parts of reality.
What was felt is clearly penetrated and seen as a unity by Reason.
Reason leads back to reality again. The unity of all existence, which before was felt or of which one even had only dim inklings, is clearly penetrated and seen by reason. The intellectual view must be deepened by the view of reason.
In reason's view of the world the human being merges with the world in undivided unity.
Recognising the Etheric Christ
Thanks Patri for opening this theme.
i remember that Steiner has suggested that it would be a tragedy for world evolution if the Reappearance in the Etheric goes unnoticed by humanity.
I find it very important to make it clear that PoF offers a method through which one may be able to recognise that one has indeed experienced this event. The percept may be brought together with the correct concept.
It is not something to crow over, or make personal claims about. I have met a number of people who describe a profound experience, but who have not recognised what they have experienced. Yet it is possible to realise what they have experienced and to stand as a witness to it. I would not advise telling somebody that what they have experienced is different to what they think. One can be grateful for such conversations in other ways.
Keep up the good work Tom.
The Etheric Heart
An activity now begins of which it is important to take account in connection with distinguishing between true and false pictures. It can only be called thinking of the heart. This is something that comes about in the course of the development of which we spoke yesterday. In ordinary life we have the feeling that we think with the head. That of course is a pictorial expression, for we actually think with the spiritual organs underlying the brain; but it is generally accepted that we think with the head. We have a quite different feeling about the thinking that becomes possible when we have made a little progress. The feeling then is as if what had hitherto been localised in the head were now localised in the heart. This does not mean the physical heart but the spiritual organ that develops in the neighbourhood of the heart, the twelve-petalled lotus-flower. This organ becomes a kind of organ of thinking in one who achieves inner development and this thinking of the heart is very different from ordinary thinking. In ordinary thinking everyone knows that reflection is necessary in order to arrive at a particular truth. The mind moves from one concept to another and after logical deliberation and reflection reaches what is called ‘knowledge’. It is different when we want to recognise the truth in connection with genuine symbols or emblems. They are before us like objects, but the thinking we apply to them cannot be confounded with ordinary brain-thinking. Whether they are true or false is directly evident without any reflection being necessary as in the case of ordinary thinking. What there is to say about the higher worlds is directly evident. As soon as the pictures are before us we know what we have to say about them to ourselves and to others. This is the characteristic of heart-thinking.
Rudolf Steiner, from his Macrocosm and Microcosm, Lecture 9.
science path
Steiner presented his path for today's scientific age in The Philosophy of Freedom. He also upgraded other old paths to help those who prefer them such as found in Knowledge of Higher Worlds. This quote from Macrocosm and Microcosm sounds like something for the other non-science paths. For those on the conceptual intuitive science path this sounds like a good example of faith-based speculative spirituality. (from the readers perspective)
After doing a chapter 10 study of speculative metaphysics I am trying to root the fixed speculation out of myself. If you are not at that stage to turn it into experience or you are not suited for the old paths this stuff becomes a trap because you can be attracted to the lofty new age Eastern ideas or use it to validate unrelated experience. I can see why this knowledge was kept secret and only given to those who were ready. I think it takes discernment in reading material. You can see the lack of experience trap those who pour over all of Steiner's lectures have fallen into.
Thanks so much, Patri
I love that quote. I'm noticing how well Steiner characterizes what he is calling "ordinary thinking". Move from thought to thought and lead up to a conclusion. It somewhat corresponds to what Tom was pointing to as the logical type thought that can be more cold but still has it's place.
Steiner then contrasts that type of thinking with a thinking that has an immediacy that is felt and works deeply within the image. There is a lack of separation that heart thinking requires. And I'm thankful for you bringing this quote tonight because it also speaks to something we've been discussing this very evening in a study group.
More than once Steiner made a point that he finds freedom more often demonstrated in the uneducated. We were watching these amazing video interviews with people from all over the world who are experiencing extreme conflicts in their nations, communities and villages. You've seen these people. Minimal education, but bright and full in everything they discuss. We watched these people describe the pain and violence that surrounded them everyday and we were listening with our heart's to notice what was actually there.
What I love about this is how peace is not a result of some sophisticated development. I'm not denying that there won't naturally be those who see spiritual imagery and "know" that such so-called percepts are the Christ or whatever term their community calls for. I know that, yes, within the anthroposophical community their are those describing having experienced stigmata and henceforth are considered- by some- to have connected the correct concepts to their precepts. I understand that their will be all sorts of highly intense spiritual imagery experiences and classified according to different systems of thought. But, for now, I'm talking about what I think is the thinking of the heart that Steiner advocates and why he never seemed to associate human freedom (or even the hope for increased real love) with the sophisticated development of future jupiter. He DID indeed talk about the future development of man on jupiter, but never in a way that denied the reality of freedom right now.
There would be absolutely no conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians if the simplicity of the heart's intelligence wasn't buried under the cold concepts of silly belief systems that have no basis in reality. Everybody would fall down laughing the moment they saw the nature of their conflict from the eye's of the thinking heart. The reason we see so easily the greatness in the eyes of these poor uneducated people is because we see that they are simply no longer believing the silly story of separation. What shines is not abstract spiritual knowledge, but the living moment to moment recognition of what matters, of what is actually real and of the only thing we are living for...
The mind wants peace to be something that comes about in the future because enough highly developed souls have built up heart capacities that represent the next stage of evolution or whatever. The mind imagines this type of future. I love what Steiner said because I sat in a roomful of people this evening who immediately felt blessed to see that peace really is now. And it is only the denial of what is alive right now that creates the maze of separation and future-great-leaders. There is something inherently elitist, perhaps, in any thought system which denies what so many people are presently seeing. Rather than teach them the right names for it, if we could somehow just let ourselves see it without superimposing our images. I remember how when I thought there really were such people as "anthroposophists", I used to listen to beautiful stories of freedom and immediately drape my anthroposophical mental pictures over the meaning that was being communicated, as if the people sharing such beauty were somehow missing something, somehow less in touch with the "reality" of their experience- because they could not fit their experiences into the vast mental landscape that I was absorbing through Steiner lectures. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I used to imagine that "in the next life" such an experience would be "more" spiritual.
Watching how people are responding to Obama and McCain, as if the outer divisiveness isn't simply the reflection of what happens priory in each of our own minds, I now want to call upon the faces of those who are staying grounded in the heart's active intelligence. To them an election can never be more than another opportunity in which to participate with that love. Some use the tool of their intellects to demonstrate that love and others use the tools of their humor or the warmth of their hands. I look at the news and read the worried articles about this election and I am struck by how smart and certain most of the worried ones are. It seems everybody is aware of the right direction. Strange how those who are not necessarily certain of the solution are often the ones demonstrating it.
Real anthroposophists should easily be able to "say" why one person who shows absolutely no interest at all in politics is demonstrating perfect freedom just as "perfectly" as another person who primarily uses politics as the place of such expression. What I find in my anthroposophical circles is that this type of recognition is not common. Many teachers of PoF (even) will give the impression that a true understanding of PoF will necessarily lead to such and such political insights. Golly Ms. Molly!!!
Anyway, I am replenished by any and all reminders that the real Heart is never only a feeling, a thought or an impulse to action. It is what comes before and after those and it is what infuses all real thought, feeling and action with life and true possibility.
And I love the ever new ways I am reminded that this insight is always shared humanly and spontaneously, surprisingly- never located abstractly as a result of figuring out the bits and pieces of the fragments of the mind.
Jeff
p.s. this is not to denigrate the important function of analysis. Only to recognize that when used it is only a means to an end that is not limited to that one path.
Michael and Heart Thinking
Previously man could only feel how thoughts formed from within his being; from the above-mentioned time he is able to lift himself above his being; he can turn meaning towards the spiritual; Michael meets him there, and shows himself to be related to all thinking activity. He frees thoughts from the region of the head; he clears the way to the heart for them. He liberates enthusiasm from feeling, so that man can mindfully dedicate himself to all which he can experience in the light of thoughts. The Michael age has dawned. Hearts begin to have thoughts; enthusiasm no longer streams from mere mystical obscurity, but from thinking endowed with clarity of mind. To understand this means to receive Michael in one’s sensibility. Thoughts which today strive towards grasping the spiritual must come from hearts which beat for Michael as the fiery Prince of Thought of the Universe.
-- Rudolf Steiner (At the Dawn of the Michael Age in Anthroposophical Guidelines, trans. Frank Thomas Smith)
What do you folk make of this? Does Steiner ever say that PoF leaves our thinking distant from our heart? I experience that the heart can be a source of knowing will in what I think are clearer than daylight moments.
clarity of mind
I think the way to personally verify your heart thinking is of the kind Steiner advocates and that you are not falling into mere feeling is the inspiring "clarity of mind". Steiner is speaking of a scientific thinking of "full conceptual clarity". Simple observation should verify conceptual clarity as part of the experience compared to the very wonderful mystical "feelings" of the harmony of the universe alone. To get this confused would be a disaster.
Reason-Heart-Intellect??
One way to be sure you are on the right track in the development of thinking is to study The Philosophy of Freedom. That will develop the thinking in the way Steiner advocates. You can speculate about conceptual thinking or heart thinking but a very distinct kind of thinking will be developed through study of POF. If pursued in the right way for a long enough time it will lead to an experience of thinking that will likely be more than you were expecting. It also will improve your concentration and sharpen up your daily grasp of reality in a more subtle but very effective way.
If you have already developed this thinking then you can confirm it by reading POF. This thinking is able to dive in and penetrate the depths of POF. So you should get some great results.
The Etheric Christ, Freedom, and Peace in Our World
Dear friends!
Hello everyone after holidays!
Thank you Tom, Patri and all of you for the wonderful work you do.
Thinking and Heart.
Heart thinking…
Everything has already been said here about it.
What can I say more?
The sign of our times is a cold (arymanic) way of thinking. How could it be changed?
In my opinion, our Reason tells us that we can do it only through our Hearts. We are human beings, so we have the possibilities for understanding if something goes wrong. The tread, which joins and leads us from the “cold thinking” to “alive thinking” goes through our Hearts. It doesn’t mean that we’ll have “more feelings than thinking”. Heart is the “organ” of balancing both of them. And as a next step – only through the Heart we can find our way to meet Christ.
(PoF, of course, helps us.)
Here I would like to share with you a kind of poem or, better to say, meditation:
"And lo, I am with you always, until the end of the world."
(Mattew 28:20)
"I am with you until the end of the world"
You say,
"I am with you until the end of the world"
I hear,
"I am with you until the end of the world"
I feel
"I am with you until the end of the world"
I think
I come into the world, carrying you -
I do
You come into the world, carrying me -
You do
You are with me
until the end of the world ...
I am with you ...
Inspiring
Olga, many thanks for sharing these beautiful and inspiring words.
i have a eurythmy workshop in Findhorn tomorrow. I would like to bring your poem-meditation through eurythmy there.
the poem is really lovely
Thanks Olga again for your most enlightening thoughts, and for the poem, it is really lovely and appreciated.
Cheers,
Patri
Patri, thank you for
Patri, thank you for sharing your impressions from Cracow and your visit to the Auschwitz death camp. Millions of people suffered there, not only jews, but also poles, russians, gypsies and people from many others nationalities. The only thing that comes to my mind now is that it cannot repeat ever again!
A few months ago I met somebody, who told me an incredible story about a polish boy, who was a prisoner in Aushwitz camp, after he was picked up in Warsaw, aged 17. His name was Adam Grochowski. He stayed alive only thanks to his art talent.
After WW2 he created first sharp-edged work dripping with the bitterness of a young person robbed of home, family and health. But after his catharsis he started to create series revealing renewed hope and rising joy. At this time Adam also began to utilize female imagery as symbolic of life and happiness.
He became a famous artist and died in 1992 in America as Adam Grant. You can read his entire story on the Adam Grant’s web site.
Love
Olga
Adam Grant
Hi Olga,
Read Adam Grant's biography, most interesting and much thanks for sharing your knowledge of him.
Love,
Patri