The Secret of the Madonna

The babe in the womb cannot take nourishment without, and similarly all cords of ours lead to Christ. In reality it was Christ who bore Mary, as with all of us. The mystery of the Madonna is such, that she is quite separate to Mary Mother of Jesus. For the Holy Madonna is His Being also: one of the same, but not of the same. The Christ Child is verily Mankind in infancy. Our aspect of containment and protection is His Face of she: the Holy Mother. He the Creator, is manifest in dual notation.

He too, is compelled to make good what He has done. Within the continuum of time all things may come together. What was, and that which is to be, may manifest concurrently.

The two Aspects of Christ are not in contradiction to the One who is Perfect in Both. Without such polarity there would be complete unraveling...

Is Christ an Individuality? Some would speak of an 'Impulse' alone or a 'Force', or a condition and so forth. He is more of an Individuality than we are as yet - by the bye - individual-duality.

-B.Hive

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Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Times

The dedications of animals to the altar and the sacrificial killings which have long been offered, have been in former times, utilizing the animal as an intermediary once again. Entrail readings are a demonic practice requiring that the point of death become the unction for the message to be conveyed from entity to person; working in a way not dissimilar to the above inasmuch as the creature involved is impressionable to the wilfulness thus conveyed in its physical being. But the forces released, into and out of the blood, into and out of the astrality of the creature, into and out of the demon and man also - these forces set in play, are without those influences of nurturing love as mentioned earlier - running opposite and contrary to any such regard - and therefore are most dangerous to the man who may be involved. 

Temple sacrifices were usually maintained in ways which strictly controlled the hour and operandum of the slaying. It was believed (with reason, for it was perceived also), that man could communicate with the lesser gods with such dedications of death, transporting a wish or a pledge through to the spiritual worlds. It did in fact, create a definable statement, which once imparted hung with a stern reality of permanence until addressed. 

If a man knew this craft, which was at one time an accepted form of powerful prayer, he could witness manifestations coming out from the expiring ethers surrounding the carcass, with visions unfurling of futuristic events as supplied to him from the attending beings whose presence he had called for. However the actions of clairvoyance have since changed, and although by our standards today we may find procedures such as this, most deplorable and corruptive, we may give respect to the issues of the past when it was moreover an acceptable endeavour to manage thus. 

-B.Hive

Johannine Christianity

Domenico Zampieri

"Two directions of Cain and Abel — in John the middle. It is necessary to recognise what comes from the two directions (Ibid). For this reason, the mediaeval Rosicrucians called themselves "Johannine Christians." 

-Rudolf Steiner (GA 112: Lecture of 24th June 1909: "The Gospel of St.John in Relation to the Other Three Gospels")

Note: The Movement for Religious Renewal or the Christian Community, which was founded out of a purely anthroposophical impulse, represents an important step in the process of the uniting of both streams. One of Rudolf Steiner's pupils gave the following account of what he said during an esoteric Lesson that he gave in Christiania (Oslo) in May 1923:

"During the meeting he continued to recount the Temple Legend in a very impressive way. Then he went on to speak of how the sons of Abel found their way to the sons of Cain when the theologians asked him for a new ritual" (GA 263, p. 419). 

In the sense of these words and the special task of Rudolf Steiner standing behind them (preparing the way for the uniting of both streams in the consciousness soul epoch), the fact that Rudolf Steiner gave both groups a cycle of lectures on the Book of Revelation – the anthroposohists in June 1908 (GA 104) and the priests of the Christian Community in September 1924 (GA 346) acquires a special significance.

Moreover, in both cycles — although from different aspects — the need for a spiritual development of the element of will is emphasised. This makes it understandable why Marie Steiner, as she reflected at the end of her life about this important task of Rudolf Steiner, wrote in a letter to a Christian Community priest about the need for combined work between these two streams: 

"In the course of pondering these problems it has occurred to me that the moment might eventually come when both movements will no longer need to compete with one another but the knowledge of anthroposophy will quite naturally be able to unite with a ritual which has become knowledge. Of course, this is an ideal for the future." 

(Marie Steiner-von Sievers: "Correspondence and Documents").

As we have seen, throughout the whole of his anthroposophical activity Rudolf Steiner constantly worked out of the Johannine-Rosicrucian stream of the middle, to which he himself belonged, towards the union of both tendencies. Thus in speaking about the sources of his supersensible knowledge he used from the outset what are essentially two completely opposite expressions: on the one hand, he used the expression "occult research", referring to the direction from below upwards (the Cain principle) and, on the other, he spoke of "spiritual revelation", indicating the direction from above downwards (the Abel principle). Especially in the karma lectures of 1924, Rudolf Steiner spoke several times about the results of his own spiritual-scientific research in the realm of karma but also about the spiritual beings who guide the anthroposophical movement in the higher worlds, whose "revelations" became significantly stronger as a result of the Christimas Conference. 

For just as a person needs both hands in order to build an earthly temple, with the right hand being the more active of the two and the left being more concerned with the heart, so for the gradual building of the great spiritual temple of humanity there is a need for the combined activity of both streams, the best representatives of which will gradually unite in the middle stream founded by John, which is represented in our time by anthroposophy. Hence Rudolf Steiner could say with full justice "that through our anthroposophical movement one can penetrate to the very sources of Rosicrucianism" (GA 131: Lecture of 6th October 1911), that is, to its deepest esoteric tasks.

-Sergei Prokofieff

What is the Arterial Self?

The Arterial Self is not a 'Higher Self' as described by the yogis or mystics, it is rather the preferential deliberating nature which has choice before it, and all choices can be good. The higher attributes could rightly select a poverty that requires a man to serve charity, and when his body deteriorates from hunger and overwork the 'higher' soul could be well satisfied, and yet the Arterial Self may protest this with good reason.

Here then is a distinction therefore between the two. It is not a case of the Arterial Self being immoral because it does not always choose the most righteous course of action, it is moreover because it knows its capabilities and what it can and cannot afford, and its preference.

Here we can see also that the spirit may dismiss the physical world's requirements, almost as unlawfully as the physical world's persistence upon the soul…. and deliberating the two is given to the over-ego, the Arterial Self, as opposed to the developing ego and its experiments into the bargain.

There has always been the question about instantaneous purity as sanctioned by the moralists, as becoming possible. Such a 'perfected' man who has contradicted his Arterial Self and with an immature capability that has forced himself beyond his means, may invoke the very opposite to that he has set out to achieve.

One of the reasons for this lies in the consequence to all actions depending upon their origin rather than their physical set sequence. A 'good' action from an inadequate man is moreover interpreted lastingly from the initial motivation as experienced within the Arterial Self, and if the Arterial Self is out of agreement with this action it shall become null and void. This is because there is a protection afforded the core self of a man, that he is liable moreover within his true nature and not out of it.

Conversely, if he were to suffer the dictates of his acting conscience (social conscience, spiritual guiding, whatever) and abstain from his favorite foods in order to diet, but the purpose was not agreed upon by his Arterial Self, he will not take advantage of any long-lasting health result. Also he will go back to preferring those foods he instinctively hungers for, and seek to satisfy that particular hunger. Here we can also suggest that the hunger and the foods themselves are not the critical issue. We can respect the man in his desires - and yea, the point is in that very respecting.

Goodness is its own reward, however insincere goodness is spiritually impotent. The significator has to remain with the core person and what they may achieve out from there; all else is superficial and of little lasting importance.

It may be that the individual’s Arterial Self comes to want for a complete change in diet, because out from their being comes the recollections of such relationships and interactions to foods, alongside a knowing that maintains what is required and needed for future sustenance. Then we find that the dynamics between that man and his nutrition give pleasures which can be experienced even in the simplest of foods. The first pleasure known is in the honesty of self and the compliance to need. Similarly, if not in the advanced relationship, then one can know this simply in the experience of eating the very foods you want the most. The pleasure comes in pleasing yourself, not so much as the substance of the food.

If taken incorrectly these passages may appear to promote an utterly self-centered and self-fulfilling lifestyle. This is not the reasoning of the meaning, but it is moreover a guide to understand what it feels like to be agreeable to oneself. Overindulgence is actually symptomatic of a soul who is not answering their Arterial Self, their true I Am, but living in compromise to it. So the most effective way to reestablish a pleasing of that self becomes prominent in basic codes, expressed in ways which otherwise would not be so excessive.

The importance of 'expressing oneself', albeit truthfully, has been maintained largely amongst the people who are habitually having to come to choices which seem to present and represent over and over begging their attention. Expression from a man does not have to be indicated by grandstanding or imposing around others, but communicating a genuine aspect that is in line with his true feelings and thoughts coming from the core.

Self-expression is creative, skilful and intuitive. Those who have poor vocabulary quite often improvise with an immediate honesty of gesture and face; and for those who are articulate the meanings implied or given, when genuine, are pleasing to those who receive them. There is a great pleasure in the giving and receiving of true genuineness.

So in this conveyance between souls we find perhaps the greatest vitality - there is no other interaction which moves the ethers so! Here too, amongst the real conjunctures where expression runs freely, there is a promotion of Christ, for literally He lives in those very conjunctures of Man.

-B.Hive

Rudolf Steiner's Indications on Breathing Exercises

The European must be very careful with breathing exercises and embark on only them at a late stage, after appropriate instructions. (Leipzig, July 10, 1906, in CW 94)

Those familiar with Rudolf Steiner's works and his frequent warnings about breathing exercises may wonder how this accords with the relatively numerous exercises accompanied by directions for rhythmic breathing.

it would be wrong to conclude from such warnings, relating primarily to certain potential dangers involved in breathing exercises, that Rudolf Steiner absolutely rejected them. In Esoteric Science (CW 13) first published at the beginning of 1910, Steiner stated that the "ideal" of personal development is not to undertake any exercises involving the physical body at all, including breathing exercises. Instead, he said, everything that needs to occur in the physical body should emerge as a consequence only of pure intuition exercises. But immediately preceding these comments he also wrote that at a certain stage in the practice the spiritual pupil will "briefly experience the need to bring the breathing (or suchlike) into a kind of harmony with what the soul accomplishes in the exercises or in inner contemplation." A similar formulation appears in the lecture given in Dornach on April 24, 1924 (in CW 316).

Rudolf Steiner's view of the indispensable preconditions for breathing exercises was expressed in the lecture series Macrocosm and Microcosm (Vienna, March 1910, CW 119), which he gave a few months after publishing Esoteric Science. Sufficient preparation is absolutely necessary, he said, before one starts doing breathing exercises; and by this he meant careful study of spiritual-scientific literature. His actual words are as follows:

In this domain, unfortunately, many unconsidered instructions are given. Those who know anything of such matters are horrified that numerous people engage in breathing exercises today without due preparation. To the spiritual researcher they appear like children playing with matches. ... Those who wish to work on their breathing should do this only in the knowledge that for spiritual pupils, insight becomes prayer; and that they must be filled with deep reverence.

Without this, no instructions whatever should be given in relation to these matters of profound significance, which require the greatest responsibility.

At the time this was a general kind of warning. But in the years following the World War I, when Indian yoga breathing exercises became increasingly popular in the West, Steiner warned very specifically against them. In various ways he pointed out that in copying such exercises, the modern Europeans could risk destroying their physical body, because their soul life was no longer oriented to sensibility, as it was in the ancient Indians, but instead to intellectual activity. In a life unfolding intellectually, therefore, he recommended using exercises that stay in a purely soul-spiritual realm. This is why exercises such as those contained in How to Know Higher Worlds "touched very slightly at most" on the physical breathing process, as he said in a public lecture in Stuttgart on September 3, 1921 (in CW 78). Likewise, in reports on his own lectures in 1922 (CW 25) he stated that modern people ought not to copy eastern yoga breathing because, "in the course of humanity's evolution they have entered into an organization that precludes such yoga exercises." The word "such" was emphasized by Rudolf Steiner himself, and presumably relates primarily to very specific breathing exercises, described as part of the classic eightfold yoga path in the Patanjali Sutras (second century AD). Rudolf Steiner's library contained a book inscribed with his name entitled Yoga Aphorisms by Patanjali. with notes by W. Q. (German translation of the fourth English edition, Berlin 1904). Aphorism II/51 in this volume states that besides exercises regulating the inbreath, holding of breath, and outbreath to enhance concentration, there

"is another kind" of regulation of the breathing oriented to the breathing's "inner sphere." W. Q. Judge's note explains that this statement refers to a regulation of breathing involving "closely observing a directing of the breath to certain nerve centers in the human body and its consequent influence on these centers in order to produce physiological and subsequently physical effects."

Why Rudolf Steiner gave his esoteric pupils any breathing exercises at all is a question answered in principle in his accounts of the three main types of spiritual schooling methods appropriate in our time.

Here the rhythmic ordering of life, including breathing, is not just a stage of ancient eastern schooling, but also forms part of the Christian-Rosicrucian method, albeit to a lesser degree and in modified form (CW 95).

A lecture of 1922 offers a clear explanation of the difference between the exercises he gives to make breathing rhythmic, and those of the ancient eastern yoga path. In contrast to the exertions of the ancient yogi, who sought to fuse the thinking process with the breathing process, this connection must be entirely separated today. Whereas the ancient yogis returned to their own intrinsic rhythm, modern people must return to the rhythm of the outer world:

"Read the very first exercises I gave in How to Know Higher Worlds, where I show how, say, we should observe a plant's germination and growth. Meditation here focuses on detaching picturing and thinking from the breathing, and allowing it to immerse itself in the growth forces of the plant itself. Thinking should go out into the rhythm that pervades the outer world. The moment that thinking really frees itself from bodily functions in this way, sundering itself from the breath and gradually merging with the outer rhythm, it does not however immerse itself in sensory perceptions, in the sensory properties of things, but in each thing's spiritual nature... All modern meditation exercises are focused on detaching thinking from the breathing process... That is the difference between modern meditation and the yoga exercises of very ancient times."



The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner's: Soul Exercises 1904-1024