You are welcome to listen to the ‘I Think Speech’ Podcast on the theme of Holy Thursday.
And so we continue: ‘Encountering the Inner Layers of the Earth as a Christian/Rosicrucian Initiation, in relation to the Beatitudes and the 9-fold human being’ - The 4th stage of Christian Initiation: The Bearing of the Cross, refers to the Sentient Soul – the virtue of carrying “the world in one's conscience”. We can picture Atlas bearing the world on his shoulder. This virtue holds a feeling of identification with the whole Earth, the end of the feeling of separateness. In modern times, human beings strongly identify with the body. (For instance: In Spinoza’s Ethics, it says that the basic fundamental idea of man is ‘the body in action.’) The disciple must cultivate the notion that in the sum-total of things, their own body is not more important than any other body, whether it be the body of an animal, a tree or a piece of marble. The Self is not bound by the skin; it is united with the great entity of the universe, just as our hand is united with the rest of our body. The hand cut off from the rest of the organism would be dead. That is why the disciple must live into every other being, and identify with the Spirit of the Earth.
To identify ourselves with all beings doesn’t mean that the body is to be despised. “We must bear the body with dignity as we might do with some external object, just as Christ bore His Cross”. The Spirit must wield the body as the hand wields the tool.
At this stage the disciple must be conscious of the occult powers that are latent within their body. The Higher “I” must work to spiritualize the Sentient Soul, enabling us to feel the outpouring of brotherly love as righteousness; a longing similar to what we previously experienced unconsciously as the physical longing we call hunger and thirst.”
We must thirst for the things of the soul. “Blessed are they that hunger & thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Or as Steiner reveals: “Blessed are they who, through the Christ-Impulse, learn to hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they will find a strong force in their inner being whereby, because they are working for the righteousness of the world, they shall find within themselves the satisfaction of this quality.”
This strengthening of the Sentient Soul is the medicine for the 4th layer in the interior of the earth, called the Water or Form Earth. This layer possesses the negative of every form found in the mineral layer; for example a rock in this realm would look like a plaster cast, creating negative space. “It contains the forces encountered in the Mineral Earth as entities cast into form.” Steiner tells us that in contemplation on this stage of initiation, called The Bearing of the Cross, a physical illness may erupt. This is the sign that the disciple is ripe for the fifth stage, where, because of the fever a sudden illumination occurs which brings us to the next higher stage in the initiatory process.
In looking at the 4th stage in the Rosicrucian Initiation, we see that the earlier Christian step of ‘Bearing the Cross’ becomes: ‘Preparing the Philosopher's Stone’.
We take the Rose Cross Meditation further through exercises expanding the etheric body living so strongly in the Rose, or in general the plant kingdom, representing the etheric realm, which connects us to the breathing process. We need the plant-world for our breathing. If the plant kingdom was not here on Earth we could not live, for it gives us oxygen - & also the plant assimilates the carbon which we breathe out. The plant builds its own organism from this; & gives back oxygen. So, through the plant-world, oxygen is continually renewed for humankind.
Humanity could not exist by itself; eliminate the plant-world & the human being would die out in a short time.
So, we see the cycle: We breathe in oxygen, which the plant breathes out; we breathe out carbon, which the plant inhales, using this carbon to build up its physical nature.
The plant & the human together become an instrument by which life is sustained.
Thru this development in the Rose Cross Meditation from Imagination to Inspiration, we prepare the Philosophers Stone -which is the transformation of carbon into life.
In a simple lump of coal we see how the plant builds its body from carbon, for coal is nothing else than the dead remains of plants.
Rosicrucian training guides the pupil thru a regulated breathing process that involves consciously taking in light - like we would a breath of air. Using this new light-breathing process to form a new Spiritual organ that can affect the transformation of carbon into oxygen within the human being.
What is done today by the Rose externally, will, thru a future generative organ which the Rosicrucian pupil is at the forefront of developing thru this training, be achieved within humankind.
This new spiritual organ, the transformation of the larynx into a creative instrument, is slowly being prepared. Thru the regulated light-breathing process the human being will bear within the instrument for the preparation of oxygen – Taking the etheric nature seen in the plant, out of the mineral nature, to the etheric to the stage of Life-Spirit & then into the higher purified astral realm of the Spirit Self.
The human being will one day be able to retain the carbon within, & thru this new organ of regeneration, succeed in building their body from it. This will in turn transform the physical body which will become more plant-like - more potent in its formative abilities that become less mineral/material – more capable of generating light & time building forces.
This the transmutation of human substance - the Modern Alchemy which leads the human being to build up the body like the plant does today, but on a higher level. We can call this the preparation of the “Philosopher's Stone” & carbon is its outer symbol.
But it is not the Philosopher's Stone until the pupil is completely purified & made ready to receive this mystery. In this morally chaste way, the Human Being can turn towards the ‘holy love lance’.
By taking on these initiatory steps the Rosicrucian soul prepares the way, so that, some time in the future, the whole of humanity can achieve a consciousness like that gained by the initiate today, when we raise our thinking into the higher worlds.
~hag
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ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
1483 – Birthday of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino) Italian painter & architect. In Rudolf Steiner’s last address he speaks about this individualities’ previous lives as John the Baptist & Elijah.
1515 – Birthday of St. Teresa of Ávila, From the Pastoral Medicine lecture #5: “In the case with such personalities as St. Teresa there is continuous healing coming from the spirit. When we study these individuals, we find that as a first stage the ego organization separates from the rest of the human organism. It then draws the astral body closely to it, in a certain sense away from the physical-etheric organism. This is in the waking state. What is the consequence of this? You can easily see that this puts the individual into a kind of dream condition. From a spiritual-scientific point of view the ego, by drawing the astral body to itself, is not allowing it to enter the physical and etheric bodies completely, and this brings about a kind of dream condition. But because of the special karmic density, both ego and astral body are strong, and they bring into the dream condition receptivity for the perception of the spiritual world. Dream is transformed into a state in which the individual is really able to see into the spiritual world and to feel the presence of spiritual beings.” ~Rudolf Steiner
1592 – Birthday of John Amos Comenius, Czech bishop Pansophia educator. Rudolf Steiner speaks of him as an adviser to Harun-al-Rashid in the Karmic Relationships Vol. 6 lecture 8. “…Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor passed through the gate of death. But after their life between death and rebirth they continued to pursue their earthly aims in remarkable ways. It was their aim to introduce Arabian modes of thinking into the European world with the help of the rudiments of the Intelligence now spreading in Europe. And so after Haroun al Raschid had passed through the gate of death, while his soul was traversing spiritual, starry worlds, we see his gaze directed unswervingly from Baghdad across Asia Minor, to Greece, Rome, Spain, France and then northwards to England. Throughout this life between death and rebirth his attention was directed to the South and West of Europe. And then Haroun al Raschid appeared again in a new incarnation — becoming Lord Bacon of Verulam. Bacon himself is the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid who in the intervening time between death and rebirth had worked as I have just described.
But the other, the one who had been his wise Counsellor, chose a different direction — from Baghdad across the Black Sea, through Russia and then into Middle Europe. The two individualities took different paths and directions. Haroun al Raschid passed to his next earthly goal as Lord Bacon of Verulam; the wise Counsellor during his life between death and a new birth did not divert his gaze from the sphere where influences from the East can be increasingly potent, and he appeared again as Amos Comenius (Komenski), the great educational reformer and author of “Pan-Sophia.” And from the interworking of these two individualities who had once been together at the Court in Baghdad there subsequently arose in Europe something which unfolded — more or less at a distance from Christianity — in the form of Arabism derived from influences of that past time when the Intelligence had first fallen away from Michael on the Sun.
Here we have indicated something that lies as sub-strata of the soil into which we to-day have to sow the seeds of Anthroposophy. We must ponder deeply over the inner and spiritual reality behind these things”.
1941 – DeathDay of Virginia Woolf, English novelist, essayist, short story writer.
1943 – DeathDay of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian pianist, composer, & conductor
1985 – Deathday of Marc Chagall, Russian-French painter & poet
1994 – DeathDay of Eugène Ionesco, Romanian-French playwright & critic
Hi Hazel,
You know that I always appreciate the wealth of your offerings, and this Holy Week presentation is also coming from the hand of our friend, Max Leyf, which makes it a smorgasbord for deep consideration. Holy Thursday is important because Christ washes the feet of all twelve disciples, as He Himself is the very first to undergo the seven stages of the specifically Christian Initiation. Thus, He is the model for the process that must come forth in every human life. It is like Revelations, which John wrote in old age, and wherein we can find ourselves in every word. This is true. Rudolf Steiner sought to encourage the Christian Community Priests in September 1924 to see this final book of the New Testament as the fourth mystery epoch of our time. Sadly, by this time, he could not talk to them anymore about it for the sake of clarification. He could barely get up one more time to give the last address, in which he honors Elijah, John, Raphael.
https://dokumentationen.kulturimpuls.org/biografien/724
Carl Unger was one of the most important pioneers of the anthroposophical movement. As a direct student and collaborator of Rudolf Steiner, he made valuable contributions to the scientific foundations of anthroposophy and was also instrumental in the founding and development of the Anthroposophical Society.
Carl Theodor Unger was born into a Jewish merchant family with a scholarly tradition: his grandfather was the Erfurt mathematics professor Ephraim Salomon Unger (1789-1870), his father the banker Julius Saul Unger (1837-1909). His mother Henriette Elise, née Mannheimer (1851-1932), was also of Jewish descent. Unger was the third child, the two sisters Paula and Ella were older and the brother Otto was younger. A foster child was added later.