Listening

How willing are we to try to understand each other? How willing are we to listen to a person who holds an opinion about God or politics or society that differs from our own? How do we move towards peace and love – the ideals celebrated at Christmastime?

For the past three years, we have discussed our souls and spirits. We see that the smallest aspect of ourselves is our current physical body. We realize that we existed before birth and will continue to exist after death. We know that we accrue and pay off karma in every lifetime. These are basic truths of spiritual science and knowing them helps us practice a love and peace that can hold all of humanity.

If we decide to begin on the path toward initiation knowledge (see April 2020 post: Primary Source) in earnest, we must accept that it will require dedication and will and courage. We will need to clean up our acts. Toward the middle of his book, How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, Rudolf Steiner gives seven requirements for spiritual training. They are sobering, to say the least, requiring an honesty with oneself that initially seems impossible. The seventh one tells us something about loving each other. (If you want to know about all of them, please get the book.)

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… To believe in and love humanity is the basis of all striving for the truth. Our striving must be built upon trust and love for humanity—although it does not begin there. Rather, it must flow out of the soul’s own forces. And this love for humanity must gradually expand into love for all beings, and indeed for all existence…

Simply listening to what others say with reverence and devotion, rather than immediately opposing it with our own opinions, need not lead to our becoming slavishly dependent on them. Those who have achieved something on the path to knowledge know that they owe everything to patient listening and assimilation, not to their own obstinate personal opinions. We must always remember that where we have already formed a conclusion, we cannot learn anything. If we desire only to judge, therefore, we can learn nothing… our willingness to learn should be unconditional. It is far better to withhold our judgment on something we do not understand than to condemn it. We can leave understanding until later.

How to Know Higher Worlds, Chapter 5, by Rudolf Steiner.

Learning to listen requires the trust that we will not lose ourselves in the other’s opinion. We may have observed that this seems particularly difficult with the onslaught of today’s media blitz on every aspect of our lives. But how we listen is a vital key to peace and love. Steiner addressed this in a lecture he gave around the same time he wrote the book quoted above:

It is our duty to enter into what another person says; we need only make it clear to him that we value him at that stage of truth where he now stands. Everyone must learn for himself, and knowing this, we shall become tolerant towards every form of truth. We come to a better understanding of things; we do not battle against people but seek to live with them...

Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Anthroposophy no religion is attacked, and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.

This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of spiritual development is empty.

At the Gates of Spiritual Science, Lecture 11, September 1, 1906, by Rudolf Steiner.

Christmas occurs near the winter solstice, a time celebrated for thousands of years. The return from the shortest day of the year; a return to the light. Let us connect the idea of light with love. Let us see that light is related to knowledge and understanding. Love and understanding will lead us to peace… starting within ourselves.

Enchanted Flowers

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour …

It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy and Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the world we safely go

Joy and Woe are woven fine
A clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.

Fom Auguries of Innocence by William Blake.

Imagine all the joyful occasions like weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and so on without any flowers. Or, on the other side, the difficult occasions like funerals or hospital visits that would seem so barren without the beauty of flowers to offer hope.

In our day to day lives, flowers decorate our homes and yards, and cities with parks and botanical gardens are considered more desirable. And lest we forget, without flowers, we would have no fruits and far fewer vegetables. Flowers fulfill physical needs and psychological needs; what an amazing breadth of service flowers perform.

For our part, we make sure the plants for which we are responsible have all the earth, water, air and sunlight they need to thrive, but do they need anything else from us? We might wonder since everything physical has its spiritual counterpart—something invisible—what lies behind the flowers and plants we see. We might wonder if that spiritual part requires something besides the four elements.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

One who simply grows up into our modern civilization observes the things of the outer world: he perceives them, forms abstract thoughts about them, possibly derives real pleasure from a lovely blossom or a majestic plant; and if he is at all imaginative, he may even achieve an inner picture of these. Yet he remains completely unaware of his deeper relation to that world of which the plant, for example, is a part. To talk incessantly about spirit, spirit, and again spirit is utterly inadequate for spiritual perception. Instead, what is needed is that we should become conscious of our true spiritual relations to the things around us. When we observe a plant in the usual way, we do not in the least sense the presence of an elemental being dwelling in it, of something spiritual; we do not dream that every such plant harbors something which is not satisfied by having us look at it and form such abstract mental pictures as we commonly do of plants today. For in every plant there is concealed—under a spell, as it were—an elemental spiritual being; and really only he observes a plant in the right way who realizes that this loveliness is the sheath of a spiritual being enchanted in it—a relatively insignificant being, to be sure, in the great scale of cosmic interrelationships, but still a being intimately related to man.

The human being is really so closely linked to the world that he cannot take a step in the realm of nature without coming under the intense influence exercised upon him by his intimate relations to the world. And when we see the lily in the field, growing from the seed to the blossom, we must vividly imagine—though not personified—that this lily is awaiting something…

All about us are these elemental spirits begging us, in effect, Do not look at the flowers so abstractly, nor form such abstract mental pictures of them: let rather your heart and your Gemüt (heart, mind, soul) enter into what lives, as soul and spirit, in the flowers, for it is imploring you to break the spell.

Excerpt from: Michaelmas and the Soul-Forces of Man, Lecture 2, by Rudolf Steiner, September 28, 1923.

Steiner says quite specifically that the elemental beings of flowers are released to advance their spiritual lives when we human beings perceive them fully. It’s hard to imagine, right? It’s hard to believe that we are so connected to all that exists, right? And even harder to believe how deeply runs our responsibility to all of earth, of nature.

If we think about the help we receive from our guardian angel and other spiritual beings, we may get a sense of the relationship we are considering today between us and these elemental beings of flowers. We, too, are instruments of divine forces. Maybe we will look differently at the flowers attending our feelings of joy and woe knowing that when we do, we help to free them.

As we work in this our third year of the blog, we will continue to uncover specific spiritual realities such as this one… even though it won’t be “easy” to believe them. But if, additionally, we take up the work of acquiring spiritual sight, none of this will seem so fantastic; we will see all of it for ourselves.

Invisibility

The power to become invisible is a fascinating idea explored in many works of fiction. In his book, The Invisible Man, H. G. Wells’ main character is an optics expert who develops a procedure that makes him invisible. A magical ring makes its wearer invisible in The Lord of the Rings books and a magical cloak makes its wearer invisible in the Harry Potter books. Like these characters, we might enjoy the obvious advantages of being invisible. However, none of us would be happy if the people we know and love were invisible to us.

So, as we’ll see, it takes a moment to get used to the idea that they are.

We need to create new ways of thinking about the human material/physical body—the visible body—because the more comfortable we become with the premise that what we are seeing is just the material vessel of the people around us, that who they really are is invisible, the more we might actually “see” them. Of course, we are invisible too, so if all we focus on when we think of ourselves is our physical body, we are missing what matters the most, our invisible self.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

When you encounter a fellow human being today, your conscious impression is really an entirely materialistic one. You tell yourself (not aloud of course, and perhaps not even as a conscious thought, but on a deeper level of awareness), “This is a person made of flesh and blood, composed of earthly substances.” And you say the same of animals and plants…

Let us take the most extreme case, human beings… What your physical eyes perceive is the mineral element that fills out the structure. You see whatever the person has absorbed from the external mineral world. You do not see the being who did the absorbing, who united with the mineral element. Hence, when we encounter another human being, we speak correctly only if we say to ourselves: “What stands before me are material particles that this individual’s spirit-form has stored and gathered, thereby making something invisible visible.”

Actual human beings are invisible, truly invisible. All of you sitting here listening to this lecture are invisible to physical senses. But a certain number of shapes with a certain capacity to attract particles of matter are sitting here, and these particles are visible… the real individuals sitting here are supersensible beings, hence invisible.

Excerpt from: The Mission of the Archangel Michael: Revelation of Essential Secrets of the Human Being, Lecture 3 by Rudolf Steiner, November 23, 1919, Dornach, Switzerland.

Steiner calls the above thought experiment “Michaelic thinking”. Who is Michael?

As described in Historic UK, “St. Michael (pronounced Micha-el) is one of the principal angelic warriors, protector against the dark of the night and the Archangel who fought against Satan and his evil angels.” Rudolf Steiner has written and lectured extensively about the Archangel Michael as the bringer of light, an exalted being who is the ruler of cosmic intelligence. Michael is one of seven archangels who, one after the other, guide humankind throughout time; he is now once again overseeing humanity. His wish is to guide us toward a conscious experience of the spiritual world, to make the invisible visible through the light of spiritual knowledge. We, however, must do the work of preparing ourselves to meet him.

One of the ways we can prepare ourselves is to acknowledge that we, and everyone else, existed before our birth and will continue to exist after our death; we are eternal beings. Another way of preparing ourselves is by reminding ourselves every morning that everyone we see as we walk through the day is invisible. When we can accept that, we will learn to accept that there are other beings that exist who are not in physical bodies at all, who are completely invisible to us. We need to know and acknowledge these beings too.

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Michaelmas/

Why Bother?

Not everyone walks into an art museum with the same enthusiasm, but almost all of us will find at least one painting we think is beautiful. We may even recognize it from somewhere. We will spend a minute or so in front of it, enjoying its colors and forms whether we understand what the artist is trying to express or not. And then we move on.

Let’s say a docent walks up while we are standing in front of our favorite painting and starts to explain it. We may learn about the artist, the painting’s composition, its historical context, etc. Now we see the painting differently; it is more beautiful than it was before. The painting didn’t change, we did. And from now on whenever we see a piece of art, though we may immediately recognize its beauty, we know that it is also filled with mysterious meaning we can’t see until we understand what we’re seeing.

For all of time, humanity has searched for meaning to the mysteries of life.

Why not be satisfied with a feeling? Why bother to understand?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… All an investigator of the spiritual world is doing is simply recalling to people’s memories something they have forgotten.

Now imagine that during life on earth you come across another person with whom you remember experiencing something 20 years before, but which he has completely forgotten. By talking with him, however, about the incident which you yourself remember clearly, you can bring the other person to recall it also. It is just the same process, though on a higher level, when I speak to you about the spiritual worlds, the only difference being that pre-earthly experiences are more completely forgotten than those of earthly life.

Now people might say: ‘Why should we be asked during our life on earth to take on this extra task of concerning ourselves with matters which, in accordance with cosmic ordering or, one might say, with divine decree, we experience during life beyond the earth?’ There are those, too, who ask: ‘Why should I go to this trouble before death to gain knowledge about the supersensible worlds? I can very well wait until I am dead. Then, if all these things really exist, I shall come face to face with them.’

All this, however, arises from a total misunderstanding of earthly life. The facts of which the spiritual investigator speaks are experienced by human beings in pre-earthly existence, but they are not then the subject of thought, and only during life on earth can thoughts about them be experienced. And only those thoughts about the supersensible world that have been worked upon during earthly life can be carried with us through the gate of death, and only then can we understand the facts we experience between death and rebirth.

… At this present stage of human evolution people’s lives are extraordinarily hard if, during life on earth, they give no thought to the spiritual world. For having passed through the gate of death they can no longer acquire any real knowledge of their surroundings. They are in the midst of what is incomprehensible to them. An understanding of what is experienced after death has to be striven for during life on earth… it was different for people of earlier ages. But, at the present moment of humanity’s evolution people will have to rely more and more on acquiring here on earth an understanding of what they are going to experience in the supersensible world between death and rebirth.

Excerpt from: The Evolution of Consciousness, Lecture 3: New and Old Initiation Science, August 21, 1923, in Berlin.

Consciousness evolves. Spiritual knowledge, once our birthright, once innate, must now be attained through our thinking. Spiritual awareness disappeared so that our thinking could develop freely, and now we need to lift the power of our thinking into the spiritual realms to understand what we will experience between death and rebirth. Until we can acquire this knowledge firsthand, we need a docent. We have the many works of an initiate, Rudolf Steiner, to provide us with this knowledge. We have much to learn before we cross the threshold.

Love/Fate Relationship Redux

In January of 2020, Love/Fate Relationship began its journey to become the most widely read post since I began the blog. It has over 3.5 times as many views as the next most viewed post and is largely responsible for gathering viewers from 70 countries. In light of this, and because it’s the 3-year anniversary of Who Are You?, I decided to repost it.  

Why do we love the people we love? It isn’t always due to common interests because sometimes we are drawn to people before we even know what their interests are, and we certainly aren’t drawn to everyone who shares our interests. Conversely, sometimes we know right away that we don’t like someone. We might say we have a gut feeling, but do we understand the origin of such a feeling? Probably not. So what’s going on?

Perhaps the whole phenomena is like consciousness itself: unable to be explained within the confines of our rational mind but rather must be considered with spiritual ideas.

Maybe it’s fate or karma that draws us to those we love. We are all familiar with the word karma; it’s an old Sanskrit term dating back before 1500 BCE and recognized as a universal law in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Karma connotes both action and result. We use it mostly when we consider good deeds that result in good fortune or the opposite, bad deeds that result in less favorable results. We will try to use this word more broadly to consider what it is that attracts or repels us from the people we feel strongly about.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner* has to say:

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny… We meet some human being. As a rule, the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to that meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind, but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it.

If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence… and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation.

There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other’s existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant… What occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behavior.

Excerpt from: Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. VI, Lecture given in Berne, Switzerland, January 25, 1924 by Rudolf Steiner. [See note at end of post.]

The above passage from Steiner’s lecture on karmic relationships asks our acceptance of the idea of karma in terms of our relationships to others. If we can entertain such an idea, we must ask whether all karma is just personal? Do we deserve to meet our soul mate – interesting term – or to meet an arch enemy? Based on what? What does Steiner mean by iron necessity guiding us toward certain people? Questions such as these expose us to some of the deep mysteries of our lives.

When we contemplate the people we know in our lives, we can easily recognize those with whom we feel a deeper (karmic) relationship, whether it’s good or bad, and those with whom we feel but a passing relationship. We can trace the events that brought us into the lives of those we care about. We can marvel at the multitude of decisions we (and they) made that resulted in our meeting each other. Enjoy the beautiful complexity of our lives as a welcoming first step toward understanding the bigger picture of karma.

* See Having an Openness of Mind in sidebar.

“Is Love at First Sight Real?”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201801/is-love-first-sight-real?amp

Dr. Steiner’s gave his lectures on karmic relationships the year before he died, and they are arranged in eight volumes. Eight volumes! While extensive, these books by no means cover all Steiner had to say about karma. For example, the two posts appearing after Love/Fate Relationship have different sources. One is Theosophy, a book rather than a series of lectures. This introductory book gives us an overview of Steiner’s spiritual science and is a great place to start researching spiritual science in earnest. The state of the world begs us to understand our purpose for being, and Steiner’s insights provide us with a means for that understanding.  

My Country Now

“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

—Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize in Literature 1913)

What does it mean to love one’s country or one’s culture? Is it an innate feeling? Is it what we are taught? Is it our country or our culture that we claim allegiance to?

Today we will focus on the issues of nationalism and culturalism as they play out in our current lives. The lecture featured below was given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin just three months after the beginning of World War I. Steiner chose this subject knowing that emotions were running high because people from many of the countries opposing each other in the war were working together to build a center for Anthroposophy with sounds of gunfire nearby.

Though not all of us are at war now, the civil unrest and so-called culture wars in many of our countries can feel like we are under attack. So, it’s not just nationalism that is dividing us. The divisiveness within our own countries feels threatening. Extreme views have found a voice in various media thus creating group polarization, while balanced news has become ineffectual at bringing cogent reason to these groups. Everywhere we look, our sense of self as belonging to a particular race, gender, and culture is being provoked; we are being divided. These divisions are real, but how do they appear in light of reincarnation and karma?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

There is one particular great truth that we should have in mind these days as we look for love and understanding, for a loving comprehension of what is happening all around us – an insight that, fundamentally speaking, is at the center of everything we aim for in spiritual science. In our day this has to present itself to our souls with the full gravity and moral weight inherent in it. It is the realization – and this has by now become the simplest and most elementary fact in our spiritual life – that life on earth recurs. The fact is that in the course of time our souls progress from body to body. The part of man that is eternal hastens from body to body through man’s successive incarnations on earth. On the other hand, there is the part that has to do with human existence in a physical body, the part present on the physical plane that provides the configuration, the formation, the particular stamp to human existence in an outer physical body.

One particular thing that provides the outer stamp, determining the character of a person as it were, in so far as he is living in a physical body on the physical plane is what may collectively be referred to as nationality. This is something we should never forget, especially today. If we turn the mind’s eye to what we call man’s higher self, the concept of nationality loses significance. For when we pass through the gate of death everything encompassed by the term ‘nationality’ is among the things we cast off. And if we do in all seriousness want to be what we think people with spiritual aims should be, it is proper to remember that in passing through successive incarnations the human being belongs not to one but to a number of different nationalities. The part of him that links him to a particular nationality is among the things that are cast off, have to be cast off, the moment we pass through the gate of death…

The only life impulses we are able to take there are those that animate the efforts of our hearts and minds and in the final instance aim to join all peoples on the earth in brotherhood …

Truths that belong to the realm of the eternal do not have to be easily understood. Indeed, they may well be truths which at times go against our feelings – truths we achieve with difficulty particularly in difficult times, and also find difficult to achieve and retain in their full strength and clarity in difficult times such as these …

Today we see the members of different nations facing one another in dislike, in hatred. I am not at this point speaking about what is going on in the combat situation. I am speaking of what is going on in the feelings, the passions, of human souls. Here we have a soul. It needs to prepare for its reception into a spiritual world through which it will now have to pass between death and its next birth, a world that will guide it towards an incarnation that will belong to quite a different nationality from the one it is now leaving.

This is a fact which shows very clearly, in the best and most powerful way, how man resists the higher self that is within him. Consider some real ‘nationalist’ today, someone with national feelings who directs his antipathy very particularly against the members of another nation and, indeed, may be ranting and raving against this other nation in his own country… This is man raging against his own higher self. Wherever the ranting and raving is worst, wherever the hatred felt against other nationalities is greatest and where the most lies are told about them, someone seeing things not as Maya but in truth can perceive the true reason, which is that a great many members of the nation that rages most, is most cruel in its attitudes and lies the most, will have to assume that other nationality at their next incarnation.

Excerpt from: The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations, Lecture 2: Nationalities and Nationalism in the Light of Spiritual Science by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 31, 1914

If each of us, every citizen of every country, recognized the spiritual reality that our patriotism – our affinity to our own nationality or culture – will be discarded at the entrance to the afterlife, we might be able find a more expansive view of ourselves and others. When we incarnate once again, we will most likely be citizens of a different nation or a different gender or a different race than we are now. With this in mind, can we contemplate ourselves and others without the passions that stir so many of us to dark thoughts and even physical violence toward those who aren’t like us in thought or appearance? Can we accept two distinct ideas at the same time – that we must honor each other’s gender, race, and culture, while at the same time acknowledge that these factors are temporary circumstances of this lifetime? Can we seek unity?

From The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

“…We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all...”

Hanging in the Balance

Some people find validity for their own views by deeming as good those who agree with them and evil those who disagree with them. These terms, strong as they are, become meaningless or even laughable when they are applied so indiscriminately. But these terms are not meaningless in the cosmic order. In fact, without both good and evil, humanity would never develop free will.

When we look back to civilizations from Egypt to the present, we find abundant evidence of humankind’s endeavor to understand its place between heaven and hell. Before that, humanity had an instinctive clairvoyance; we didn’t have to believe in spiritual beings, we experienced them. This state of being did not cultivate free will. With the consciousness we’ve developed since then, we don’t directly experience the spirit, nor are we are likely to believe in things simply because an authority has told us what to believe. Our thinking of today, based on logic and reason, demands an approach to the concepts of good and evil that makes sense, especially if we hope to incorporate these concepts into our understanding of karma and reincarnation.

Karma is continually playing out so that we can fix our error (evil) in order purify our souls, to evolve as souls, to become good. If we are willing to identify a virtue as being good, our natural inclination is to identify the opposite of that virtue as evil. So, for example, we could say that courage is good, so cowardice is evil. But it is more complicated than that. Aristotle said, “Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, hold the balance between the too-much and the too-little.” What does he mean?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that free will can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favorably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express the true attitude of man by saying; this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the center of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtue valor, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one’s disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may turn the scale in either of these directions.

In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness, he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects… the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once and for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man always to observe the eternal moral principles, he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this.

Freedom in this consists rather in man’s being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is lost to the world or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes. In the course of evolution, evil became not only a possibility, but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time.

Excerpt from: Anthroposophical Ethics, Lecture III by Rudolf Steiner. May 30, 1912. Norrkoping.

If we sit with this for just a moment, we can see how this way of looking at good and evil helps us to become less judgmental of others – instead of being evil, they are off balance. It helps us be less judgmental of ourselves, too. In a way, we can see that we already possess the virtue; however, we may have too much or too little of it. We must swing to the other side to become more centered.

As we explore this method of viewing virtue or good as the mean between two extremes, we find a practical way to work on ourselves. For example, we may admire someone we know who always keeps their temper, who exhibits the virtue of patience. By placing patience as a mean between its two extremes—its deficiency is irascibility, and its excess is apathy—we can see which side of the scale we tip to and work toward the center. Likewise with all the virtues. Here is the spiritual work/life balance.

Stop Lying Around

The enormous suffering in our world today is exacerbated by our inability to trust what we are being told by our leaders, our media, and each other. What is real? Each side thinks it knows, and the incivility between factions has reached alarming and often dangerous levels.

We need to remember that these cultural divisions are made up of individuals like us, and each of us needs to take seriously the karmic effects we have on ourselves and others by our thoughts and deeds. We may not be able to make one faction stop hating the other or suddenly convince our leaders and our media to tell the truth, but we can make these demands of ourselves. Neglecting to do so has consequences more dire than we might know.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Human beings determine their future by their past, and because their innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts them in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.

We will now consider the chain of events that becomes comprehensible if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is often said in everyday life: Thoughts don’t cost anything!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where someone who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.

The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at somebody, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbor against a fellow human being does not hurt him. However, those who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything we think and feel has its effects in the astral world, and the clairvoyant can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to someone, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone, the clairvoyant perceives a form of light, shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing lovingly around that person’s etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand, a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.

Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if someone voices a thought that is true or one that is untrue. A thought is related to a specific thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress. But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thoughtform of the teller comes up against the thoughtform that has proceeded from the event; the two thoughtforms collide causing mutual destruction. These destructive ‘explosions’ caused by lies work in the way a tumor works in the body, destroying the organism. Thus lies kill the astral forms that have arisen and must arise, and in this way, they obstruct or paralyze a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity, and everyone who lies obstructs it. Therefore there is this esoteric law: Seen with the eyes of spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it also kills the self. Anyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a person thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the spiritual world.

Excerpt from: Rosicrucian Wisdom: An Introduction, Lecture 6. The Law of Destiny, May 30, 1907 by Rudolf Steiner.

We are each of us a work-in-progress. If we take an earnest look at ourselves, we realize we might be judgmental toward others and we might exaggerate or shade the truth. We do not have to struggle alone toward addressing these faults. As we learned in the last post, we can ask for help from our guardian angel, as hard as that may be for some of us to believe. As Steiner often says, the fact that we don’t believe in angels does not deny them their existence. Steiner also said that more and more people will begin to experience their angels.

In her first book about angels, Angels in My Hair, Lorna Byrne describes her lifelong relationship with her guardian angel and other angels, as well as the guardian angels of each person she meets. In her humble narrative, we get a glimpse of how angels work with us to guide and protect us. Though we do not all share Byrne’s gift of sight, we know that we can acquire this gift by various methods already referred to many posts since this blog began in September of 2018.

And here’s the thing, every single one of us has a guardian angel – even those with whom we disagree. Let’s ask our angels to help us be more truthful and more tolerant. Let’s ask the angels of others to help them to be the same. Let us encourage peace and charity to enter our hearts and thereby make the world a better place.

Lorna Byrne: The Lady Who Sees Angels Documentary on YouTube >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssAmweLstLE

What Angels Do

From the moment we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep at night, we do lots of things. We do other things while we sleep. As discussed in previous posts (August – November 2019), while we sleep, our astral and ego bodies enter the spiritual realms leaving our physical and etheric bodies behind. Last month we discussed our encounters with our guardian angel; what else is there to know?

Our guardian angel sees far back into our past and forward into our future. Steiner talks about “nudges” we may get that save us from catastrophes, or “feelings” we may get to call someone we know who needs to hear from us. These contacts with our angel during waking life are very subtle and almost always pass by without our noticing; angels are careful to give us total freedom to respond or not. Though we may be amazed when we narrowly escape a disaster by leaving home late or missing a flight, it wouldn’t occur to most of us that perhaps an angel had intervened.

Steiner reveals that the “limits to man’s knowledge” were lifted at the end of the 19th century, and the capacity for us to know the spiritual world directly is once again possible after a long period of darkness. We can actively pursue this knowledge and experience the spiritual world for ourselves; we might as well get started. One of the things we can learn about is the work of the angels in our astral bodies.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say.

Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels – particularly through their concerted work, although in a certain sense each single Angel also has his task in connection with every individual human being – these Beings form pictures in man’s astral body… If we are able to scrutinize these pictures, it becomes evident that they are woven in accordance with quite definite impulses and principles. Forces for the future evolution of mankind are contained in them. If we watch the Angels carrying out this work of these – strange as it sounds, one has to express it in this way – it is clear that they have a very definite plan for the future configuration of social life on earth.

People may shy away from the notion that Angels want to call forth in them ideals for the future, but it is so all the same. And indeed in forming these pictures the Angels work on a definite principle, namely, that in the future no human being is to find peace in the enjoyment of happiness if others beside him are unhappy.

But there is a second impulse in the work of the Angels… Through the pictures they inculcate into the astral body their aim is that in future time every human being shall see in each and all of his fellowmen a hidden divinity… To conceive man as a picture revealed from the spiritual world, to conceive this with all the earnestness, all the strength and all the insight at our command – this is the impulse laid by the Angels into the pictures. Once this is fulfilled, … every meeting between one person and another will of itself be in the nature of a religious rite, a sacrament, and nobody will need a special church with institutions on the physical plane to sustain the religious life. If the church understands itself truly, its one aim must be to render itself unnecessary…

And there is a third objective: To make it possible for us to reach the Spirit through thinking, to cross the abyss and through thinking to experience the reality of the Spirit… Purely through the Spiritual Soul, through their conscious thinking, people must reach the point of actually perceiving what the Angels are doing to prepare the future of humanity. The teachings of Spiritual Science in this domain must become practical wisdom in the life of humanity…

Spiritual Science for the spirit, freedom of religious life for the soul, brotherhood for the bodily life – this resounds like cosmic music through the work wrought by the Angels in the astral bodies of mankind… Man must gradually come to understand this in his wideawake consciousness.

The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body. Lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Zurich, October 9, 1918.

Most of us are unable to be happy near someone who is suffering, and we are disheartened by institutions that fail to recognize the divinity in each person. Thus these first two tasks of the angels are already familiar to us even if we don’t believe in angels; we already hold these objectives as ideals. The third task of the angels is the one least developed in us: crossing the abyss to the spirit through thinking. Dr. Steiner’s task was to build the bridge between our physical consciousness and our spiritual consciousness through spiritual science. It’s our task to take up this work in all seriousness.

Rudolf Steiner, a 20th century initiate, is not our only source for spiritual knowledge, but his research by direct experience in the spiritual realms, which he calls spiritual science, combined with his standing as a natural scientist makes a compelling case for reading his work. He wrote dozens of books and articles and gave thousands of lectures. One of Steiner’s basic works, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, is a great way to begin.

This book is available to read free at: https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/theosophy.pdf.

Or have it read aloud at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdk5FaUY3U

A Clear Consciousness

Accepting the premise of reincarnation and karma might be easier for us than imagining that spiritual beings inhabit the world outside our senses. Spiritual science, however, teaches us that these beings are a profound reality. One way to open ourselves to this idea is by reviewing what we already know: we are spiritual beings who live in physical bodies for a time and enter the spiritual world when we die. We reside there between our death and subsequent rebirth. Furthermore, we know that when we go to sleep, our astral and ego bodies leave our physical and etheric bodies behind as they enter the spiritual world. What do we find when we go there?

The Buddhist and Hindu deva, Islam’s malaikah, Judaism’s malachim or mal’akh, and the Christian angel are all names for a hierarchy of beings acknowledged within the core tenets of these religions. Devas or angels, who are the beings belonging to the closest realm above us, do not incarnate into physical bodies. What little we’ve heard about them outside of our religious texts is often sensationalized or trivialized or romanticized, so that even if we are willing to open our minds to the idea of angels, our references may include movies like It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart or pictures of beings with harps, halos and wings. Are we curious to know more?

If we can make the leap to imagine that we are not alone in the spiritual world, what do we encounter in spiritual science when we contemplate the realm of malachim? What is our relationship to this realm of beings? And, more specifically, what is meant by the term guardian angel?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

When we wake from sleep, we pass over into the world of animals, plants, minerals – the three kingdoms of Nature belonging to the world of sense. When we fall asleep, we pass beyond the world of sense, we are transported into the realm of the first rank of Beings above man – the Angels. And from the time of falling asleep until waking, we are connected with the Being who is allotted to us as our own Angel, just as through our eyes and ears we are connected with the three kingdoms of Nature here in the world of sense. Even if at first we have no consciousness of this connection with the world of the Angels, it is nevertheless there. This connection extends into our astral body.

If, living in our astral body during sleep, we were suddenly to wake up, we should contact the world of the Angels, in the first place the Angel who is connected with our own life just as here in the earthly world we are in contact with animals, plants, and minerals.

Now even in the earthly world, in the world of sense, if a man is attentive and deliberately trains his thinking, he sees much more than when he is unobservant and hasty. His connection with the three kingdoms of Nature can be intimate or superficial. And it is the same with regard to the world of spiritual Beings. But in the world of spiritual Beings, different conditions prevail.

A man whose thoughts are entirely engrossed in the material world, who never desires to rise above it or to acquaint himself with moral ideas extending beyond the merely utilitarian, who has no desire to experience true human love, who in his waking life has no devotion to the Divine-Spiritual world – on falling asleep, such a man has no forces which enable him to come into contact with his Angel. Whenever we fall asleep, this Angel is waiting as it were for the idealistic feelings and thoughts which come with us, and the more we bring, the more intimate becomes our relation to the Angel while we are asleep. And so throughout our life, by means of what we cultivate over and above material interests, we garner, in our waking life, forces whereby our relation to the Angel becomes more and more intimate.

But the idealistic thoughts and feelings, the pure human love, the spiritual feelings which have arisen in our waking life and have united us with our Angel, these accompany us when we pass through death. And the more idealistic thoughts and feelings, human love and piety we have brought to our Angel, the clearer does our consciousness become.

Excerpt from: Cosmic Forces in Man, Lecture II: The Soul of Man, November 27, 1921, Oslo

None of us would actively wish to have our consciousness diminished… at least not permanently. Fortunately, most of us do bring some of the right elements into our sleep at night. We may want to do more. Though we can find many paths toward the divine, following the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path is one means by which we can prepare ourselves to live in harmony with our guardian angel’s intentions. The eight endeavors are: right conceptions, right resolves, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right aspiriation, right recollection and right contemplation.*

We have enormous freedom in this regard. The choices we make now, however, have far-reaching consequences, which we will explore in future posts. We will also continue to study the vast richness of our cosmos filled with beings other than ourselves with whom we live and learn.

*For more information on Noble Eightfold Path https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eightfold-Path

What the World Needs Now…

Let’s start a bit differently by enjoying Andra Day’s cover of the song bearing the title of this month’s post.

When romance appears in our lives, it changes us. The whole world becomes more beautiful, more harmonious, more livable. Our lives have new meaning as we anticipate today, tomorrow and the next day filled with joy. Love is a force that elevates us—that moves us to turn our attention away from ourselves and toward another. We also can see ourselves reflected with glorious light in the eyes of the person who loves us; we ourselves are more beautiful.

It is this aspect, however, that entangles romantic love with a good measure of self-love. As long as the love we give is returned, the glow remains. When love isn’t returned, or it withdraws, we suffer; we may even hope the other will suffer, too. Romantic love can be selfish.

What the world needs now is more unselfish love; love reaching beyond our personal relationships. Love that becomes an actual force in the world. This won’t be easy. In the excerpt below, Dr. Steiner discusses why our subconscious awareness of our own karma makes this kind of love so difficult to give.

In our previous studies of karma and reincarnation, we discovered that everything we think, say and do in this life matters forever. We are born with karmic debt from previous lives that we will work out in this or a future life, and we accrue karmic debt in this life that we will work out in subsequent lives. Deeds of unselfish love, however, do not follow this formula. Deeds of love given freely can only mitigate our past-life debts; they do not benefit us in our own future karma. Yet these free deeds of love are enormously important because they become a world-changing force.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

If we grasp the meaning of the law of reincarnation, we recognize the significance of love in the world, both in a particular and in a general sense. When we speak of karma, we mean that which as cause in the one life has its effect in the next. In terms of cause and effect we cannot, however, speak truly of love; we cannot speak of a deed of love and its eventual compensation. Deeds of love do not look for compensation in the next life…

By everything we do out of love we pay off debts. From an occult point of view, what is done out of love brings no reward but makes amends for profit already expended. The only actions from which we have nothing in the future are those we perform out of true, genuine love. This truth may well be disquieting and men are lucky in that they know nothing of it in their upper consciousness. But in their subconscious all of them know it, and that is why deeds of love are done so unwillingly, why there is so little love in the world. Men feel instinctively that they may expect nothing for their “I” in the future from deeds of love. An advanced stage of development must have been reached before the soul can experience joy in performing deeds of love from which there is nothing to be gained for itself. The impulse for this is not strong in humanity. But spiritual science can be a source of powerful incentives to deeds of love.

Our egoism gains nothing from deeds of love—but the world all the more. Love is for the world what the sun is for external life. No soul could thrive if love departed from the world. Love is the “moral” sun of the world… Our deep concern must be that an impulse for sound, healthy development shall find its way into the affairs of humanity. To disseminate love over the earth in the greatest measure possible, to promote love on the earth—that and that alone is wisdom.

Excerpt from: Love and Its Meaning in the World. Lecture 10 by the same name given in Zurich, December 17, 1912.

The very definition of selfishness is that we keep for ourselves that which we might give to another for their benefit, a sobering thought. But Steiner’s explanation of why “there is so little love in the world” is sobering on a deeper level because so very many of us in modern humanity think that the idea of changing the world with love is one of pure folly, the height of naivety.

Dr. Steiner says the belief that love can change the world is wisdom.

Elsewhere in this same lecture, he says that “when we practice love, cultivate love, creative forces pour into the world.” We see the truth of this when our own world changes because of love. We see the truth of this when we feel inspired by others’ deeds of love in the world; random acts of kindness that creatively work on our own forces of goodwill.

We all have moments when we do something selflessly for those close to us. We all have done things for which we expected no reward just to make someone happy or comfortable or safe. Thus, we are already on the path. This is the beginning of our own impulse toward a “sound, healthy development in the affairs of humanity.” The more we can expand our love to embrace the world of people outside our personal circles, the more we can offer free deeds of love, the more we actually change the world.

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Photo “The Heart Nebula” ©Alan Erickson

Future Karma

In a tradition that some believe dates back to the Babylonians 4000 years ago, many of us make New Year’s resolutions. In fact, if we don’t make a resolution at this time, we more than likely had to make that decision consciously.  Resolutions are personal; we feel vulnerable about whatever we hope to change about ourselves.

We may worry that we will not be able to keep our resolutions. Yet each year we face this issue. Rudolf Steiner says, “On New Year’s Eve it is always fitting to remember how past and future are linked together in life and in the existence of the world…”

When we do make a New Year’s resolution, we usually make one that we believe will improve us. This striving toward a better self is an important decision for our future karma. On the one hand, we understand through karma that we likely deserve our present trials and suffering; that we have a karmic debt from our previous lives that seeks resolution in this one. We can feel trapped by our own karma because the past is written; its consequences are inevitable. But that’s not the only way to look at karma. Though we must accept our present karma as it unfolds, our future karma is ours to master. How do we do this?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

It is often imagined that the human being is subject to the irrevocable law of karma in which nothing can be changed. Let us take a simile from everyday life to explain the working of this law.

A merchant makes entries of debits and credits in his account books; taken together, these entries tell him the state of his business. The financial state of his business is subject to the inexorable law governing the calculation of debit and credit. If he carries through new transactions, he can make additional entries and he would be a fool if he were unwilling to embark on other business because a balance was once drawn up. In respect of karma, everything good, intelligent and true that has been done by a man stands on the credit side; evil or foolish deeds stand on the debit side. At every moment he is free to make new entries in the karmic book of life. It must never be imagined that life is under the sway of an immutable law of destiny; freedom is not impaired by the law of karma. In studying the law of karma, therefore, the future must be borne in mind as strongly as the past. Bearing within us the effects of past deeds, we are the slaves of the past, but the masters of the future. If we are to have a favorable future, we must make as many good entries as possible in the book of life.

It is a great and potent thought to know that nothing we do is in vain, that everything has its effect in the future. The law of karma is the reverse of depressing; it fills us with splendid hope and knowledge of it is the most precious gift of Spiritual Science. It brings happiness inasmuch as it opens out a vista into the future. It charges us to be active for its sake; there is nothing in it whatever to make us sad, nothing which could give the world a pessimistic coloring; it lends wings to our will to co-operate in the evolution of the earth. Such are the feelings into which knowledge of the law of karma must be translated.

Excerpt from: Theosophy of the Rosicrucian. Lecture VII: The Technique of Karma. Munich. May 31, 1907

The human soul’s evolution ultimately flows forward toward perfection, but in any one life, a person can veer from this path in manifold ways; a person can stall or even move backward in the course of one lifetime. We see this happening to our brothers and sisters when they choose to lie, cheat, steal, etc. We see them going in the wrong direction in their current lives, against their own evolution’s flow, often dragging others with them, thus incurring more karmic debt. When we focus on other people’s destructive choices, we may feel disheartened or frozen by a sense of helplessness to generate positive change in the world.

But we’re never really helpless. Even if all we can do in this moment is improve our own selves, no matter how trivial our resolution may seem to the world at large, we actually succeed in making the whole world better. Eating healthier, going for walks, watching less tv, learning a new language, reading more, whatever our resolution is, changing ourselves for the better benefits us, the people we know, and even the people we don’t know. Whether we inspire others or not is beside the point. In every moment that we master ourselves, we are actively working for humankind’s evolution.

May we succeed in keeping our new resolutions.

Happy New Year!