News 37: 15 September

Anthroposophy in Hawkes Bay

Newsletter 37-24 for Sunday 15 September 2024                   

Calendar of Coming Events-- Diary Dates

In the Rudolf Steiner Centre, 401 Whitehead Road, Hastings
unless stated otherwise.

• Friday 27 September at 7pm Leading thoughts group.
  Michael letter "The Activity of Michael and the Future of Mankind" p81 followed by Leading Thoughts 112 to 114.  All welcome to the discussion.
• Sunday 29 September. Spring Festival.  Details soon.

 Quotation:

The Christ Impulse in Historical Development 1. Part 2

A simple reflection can show that there is a more characteristic world in the inner life than that of the mere having of thoughts.  It is there whenever we say to ourselves: as human beings we feel ourselves to be moral.  That is the world where we connect a feeling of sympathy or antipathy with certain definite experiences.  This goes beyond intellectual experience.  Someone shows goodwill to another and we are pleased, or he shows ill will and we are displeased.  That is something quite different from what is experienced purely intellectually.  Mere reflection does not produce in us the feeling of whether a deed is moral or not.  A person can be highly intelligent in an intellectual way, without feeling the repulsive nature of a purely egotistical action.  That is another realm of experience, which we also become aware of when we admire what is beautiful and elevating in works of art, or are repulsed by what is ugly.  What elevates us in works of art cannot be grasped by the intellect but only by our life of soul.  So we can say: something comes into our life in this way which is beyond the intellect.  If an occultist observes a soul at the moment when it is experiencing aversion from an immoral deed, or pleasure in a moral one, he perceives a higher level of soul life.  The mere having of thoughts is on a lower level of soul life than pleasure in or aversion from moral or immoral deeds.  If the human being develops a more intensified feeling in this way for what is moral or immoral in his strengthened etheric body, this can be, seen to bring not only a constant increase of strength in his etheric body but an increase of strength in his astral body too, an especial intensification of the astral forces. 

So that we can say: a person who has particularly sensitive feelings about moral and immoral deeds will acquire especially strong forces in his astral body, whilst a person who only improves his etheric body intellectually—with exercises, say, that strengthen the memory—can certainly develop his clairvoyance very far, but he will not get beyond the etheric-astral world, because the intellectual element alone is active within him.  If we want to get beyond the astral world we must do the kind of exercises in which we develop sympathy for moral deeds and antipathy for immoral deeds.  Then we do indeed ascend to a world that is behind our world in a different sense than purely astrally.  We then ascend to the heavenly world.  So that we can say: in the cosmic world of the invisible, the heavenly world of the macrocosm corresponds to what relates in us to impressions of morality and immorality, and the astral world of the macrocosm corresponds to what relates in us to the intellectual sense perception of the physical world.  All that develops within the intellectual element corresponds to the astral world, whilst what can be developed in relation to moral or immoral deeds corresponds to the heavenly world, the world of Devachan.

Then there is yet another element in the human soul.  There is a difference between feeling happy about moral deeds and feeling responsible enough to carry out what thus appeals to you, and to withstand doing what is not moral.  A feeling of responsibility for his actions is the highest level a man can reach in the world today.

So the human being's soul stages can be set out like this:

1. The sense man.
2. The intellectual man, who relates to the first invisible world.
3. The aesthetic man with moral feelings, who is attracted or repelled by moral and immoral deeds.  This corresponds externally to the lower Devachanic world.
4. The morally active man.

The actual carrying out of what he feels within himself to be the highest moral ideals corresponds externally to the higher Devachanic world, the world of reason, ruled by those beings who represent absolute reason in the world.  When the human being can grasp that his moral impulses give a shadow picture of the highest world from which he comes, he has understood a great deal about the macrocosm.

So we have the physical world and the world of the intellect, the moral world or the heavenly world of lower Devachan, and the world of reason or higher Devachan.  Cosmic worlds cast into us shadow pictures of the sense world: i.e.  the intellectual world; intellectual clairvoyance; the aesthetic world; moral feeling; the world of reason; moral impulses for deeds.  Through a kind of self-knowledge man can perceive these different stages within himself.

Now this whole configuration of the human being has altered in the course of time.  In ancient Greek or Egyptian times the human being was not at all as he is today.  In the Greek age man was so constituted that higher beings ruled over the soul element within him, and so he felt a kind of natural obligation towards those beings.  We now live in the age when man is ruled by his intellect, and so he feels something like an aesthetic-moral obligation.  In those olden times however, it would have been impossible for anyone to have thought it possible to act in a way contrary to a moral impulse that presented itself.  In Greece they still felt pleasure and displeasure so strongly that they had to act accordingly.

Then came the modern age where men do not feel any obligation, even where the aesthetic element is concerned, as is expressed in the saying: ‘You cannot argue about tastes’—though people who have a developed taste can probably agree among themselves.

What was felt in earlier times to be a necessity in the moral and aesthetic sphere is nowadays felt to be so in the intellectual sphere: to have a certain line of conduct so that you cannot think as you like but you have to conform to the laws of logic.  This brings us, however, to the lowest level of human experience.  At the moment we are at the transitional level, as we can well see.  For if we look at the past millennia we see the physical body of man drying up more and more, until he has become quite different. 

One and a half millennia ago the physical body was considerably softer and more pliable.  It has become harder and harder.  On the other hand something quite different has occurred in the etheric body too, something that the human being could have less experience of because this etheric body has passed through an upward development.  It is significant that we stand at the important moment when the human being must grow aware that his etheric body should become different.  That is the event that will take place just in this twentieth century.  Whilst on the one hand an intensification of the intellectual element is making itself felt, on the other hand the etheric body will become so much more independent that human beings are bound to become aware of it. 

For a period of time after the Christ Event people did not think as intellectually as they do today.  Strengthening the intellectual element causes the etheric body to become more and more independent, so that it can also be used as an independent instrument.  And during this process it can be seen to have gone through a hidden development which makes possible the perception of the Christ in the etheric body.  Just as the Christ could formerly be seen physically, He can now be seen etherically, so that in this twentieth century a beholding of the Christ will occur like a natural event, in the way Paul saw Him.  A number of people will be able to see the Christ in the etheric, which means that we shall know Him even if all the Bibles are destroyed.  We shall not need any records then, for we shall see Him.  And that is an event equal in importance to what occurred on Golgotha. 

In the centuries to come a greater and greater number of people will reach the stage where they can see the Christ.  The next three millennia on earth will be devoted to the kind of development whereby the etheric body becomes more and more sensitive, so that certain people will experience this and other events.  I will just mention one more event: there will be more and more people who want to do something and then have an urge to hold back.  Then a vision will follow, and these people will perceive increasingly clearly: that which will happen in the future is the karmic result of what I have done.  A few people who are ahead of the rest already feel such things.  It happens especially with children.

There is a tremendous difference between what trained clairvoyants experience and what is described here as something that will come about in the natural course of events.  Since time immemorial the trained clairvoyant experienced the Christ by means of certain exercises.  On the physical plane, if I meet a man, he is there is front of me; with Clairvoyant vision I can perceive him in quite different places and we do not actually meet.  It has always been possible to see the Christ clairvoyantly.  But to meet Him, now that He stands in a different relationship to humanity, that is, that He helps us from out of the etheric world, is something which is independent of our clairvoyant development.  From the twentieth century onwards, in the next three thousand years, certain people will be able to meet Him, meet Him objectively as an etheric form.  That is very different from experiencing a vision of Him through inner development.

This places the exalted Being that we call the Christ altogether in a different series of evolution from that of the Buddha.  The Bodhisattva who became Buddha, was born into the royal house of Suddhodana and became Buddha in the twenty-ninth year of his life, so that he did not need to undergo further incarnations.  When such a being, a Bodhisattva, becomes a Buddha or Master, this signifies a higher form of inner development that any human being can pass through.  The esoteric training of a human being is a start in the direction that can lead to Buddha-hood.  That has nothing to do with what happens round about us human beings.  Such people appear at certain times to help the world forward.  But those events are different from the Christ Event.  Christ did not come from another human individuality, He came from the macrocosm, whilst all the Bodhisattvas have always been connected with the earth.

From: Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz. GA 130

I. The Christ Impulse in Historical Development I. 17 September 1911, Lugano