By continually meditating upon passages of the Gospel of St. John, the Christian pupil is actually in a condition to reach initiation without the three and a half day continued lethargic sleep.
If each day he allows the first verses of the Gospel of St. John, from “In the beginning was the Word” to the passage “full of devotion and truth” to work upon him, they become an exceedingly significant meditation. They have this force within them, for this Gospel is not there simply to be read and understood in its entirety with the intellect, but it must be inwardly fully experienced and felt.
It is a force which comes to the help of initiation and works for it. Then will the “Washing of the Feet,” the “Scourging” and other inner processes be experienced as astral visions, wholly corresponding to the description in the Gospel itself, beginning with the 13th Chapter.
-Rudolf Steiner
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"The Mystics knew that the John Gospel is a book of Life. I have already spoken of this. From the 13th chapter onwards, the John Gospel is not merely a narration of certain facts and happenings, but every sentence is a source of occult forces. And when we read this Gospel from the 13th chapter onwards, we quicken in ourselves spiritual forces; we become different human beings. It is not a question of knowing the actual sentences or of learning them by heart, but of really experiencing their meaning, in such a way that we become one with it. The occultist says: Each single sentence, from the 13th chapter onwards, is so written that it signifies, first and foremost, an inner experience. Something happens in us when we sink ourselves into the words and let their magical content work upon us. Things light up in us which we did not know before, helping us to realise the tasks lying immediately ahead of us."
-Rudolf Steiner
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