The
occult perspective studies and implicates principles and powers which
comprise the underpinning realities (also manifest in the physical
existence). It enters into the dynamics of influence, the correspondence
and conjoining of powers (contrary or sympathetic) and it comprehends
the greater and lesser cosmology in operation throughout its many
examples.
Being
a science it is plain and not given to opinion, when studied or
presented as is. Although the observation of consequences plays an
integral part in the science of occultism, there is no means through it
alone to arrive at a further knowledge of that which is being studied.
There can be a materialistic approach and overview to the machinations
of law, invocation and consequence. Also there can be but a maze of
detail, yet not the kernel of discernment provided - neither the
wherewithal to know pertinence, aptness or distinction.
Esotericism seeks out the planes of the soul and spirit and knows them as the foremost reality:
- determining, preferring, weighing, perceiving the beauteous characteristics;
- being able to spiral inwardly to the core of a truth and travel further again;
- understanding the hidden factors present;
- accounting for those things which make all other things different and outstanding;
- appreciating the presence of the Holy Power in Persona,
- coming to significance, rather than by being adrift in fact.
In Occultism one can put a name to a Master so that he is:
- known for who he has been historically, or
- is known as who he is best representing currently.
Representing
as such, is not out-and-out forgery, for many teachers have had a Great
One envelop their persona with properties passed on and assumed to the
extent that the emanatory forces are almost coincidental. In this way we
can have one hundred Master Jesuses on any given sphere, all
cooperating with the essential soul who has them organized. (The number
'one hundred' here is an extreme example of possibility, whereas in fact
there is seldom more than just the one.)
From
the esoteric perspective we may look to a Master and have with him the
associative impression (knowing his signatory feeling inspired within
his presence), realizing that his true name is only known to himself and
all other names are borrowed or spent, but inaccurate anyway.
_____________________________________
Here is an old joke as they say, but a good one! In short it goes:
Q. What do you call an occultist who loses his love for this world?
A. A mystic.
Q. What do you call a mystic who loses his love for this world?
A. An occultist!
We set about
to find what the consequence would be for an occultist who went about
his life without such empathetic and inspired loves in this World; if
his activity within the world was humorless and tiresome, if his body
became a burden, if his knowing was self-interested and self-based only,
if his seeking was seeded by not the love of the subject but rather too
his love of self excluding all but God - what would you have? You would
have a mystic!
Conversely,
what would you have if you had a mystic who did not seek the greater
consciousness but preferred to narrow down his own; if his love shared
was abstract conjecture and his sense of universality not a living
reality but rather an intellectual fundamental? You would have an
occultist!
Sadly, such
converse patterns can occur. As undignified as the above remarks may
appear, it is nonetheless a phenomenon of sorts to be observed in many
good folk who do begin quite splendidly and yet result with an uncanny
over-balancing from one tendency, towards impulse and fall into another!
With both
individuals it can well begin by a form of 'self-lessness' and
unselfishness, which deters the men in question to seldom partake in
that which brings them real joy. Both the ascetic and the scientist can
believe that they are putting their ideals into being by living out
day-to-day with a romantic, yet distant worship of the ideal of such
love, denying however, their own liberties of expression. The result
which comes is but a premature death of either soul or ego or both. For
without a loving connection in the world the faculties and conjunctures
eventually will withdraw and seek a connection elsewhere.
The
properties of the mystic who loves within this World brings to the World
an enhanced consciousness in toto. Men need a certain requisite of
happiness in order to cherish their life and its greater Principle.
The occultist
who successfully loves within this world brings in the future for all
men. This same love will transpire into a reasonable knowledge, one that
can be worked a'further, and brought into its usefulness by its
empathetic answers to the needs. We need qualify the world with both
occupations for the Kingdom, for herein we have the soul and ego of Man
then best represented - the containment and the activity; the spirit of
the past and the spirit of new life to come, learning from each other
the hidden and mystical ways of both.
-B.Hive
Quotes from:
The Arterial Self - Problem a
A
man is shopping with a friend and happens to pass by a window which has
electric trains displayed. He falters before the exhibit, entranced by
the memories which this begins to awaken, memories which largely are
consisting of wanting and marveling and so forth.
The
friend who is beside him is preoccupied with an itinerary and uninterested in the toy trains, and so urges the man to continue their
walking. He intimates, but the friend presses with some words which
cajole him with a mock affection and a dismissal of his interest. He
gives way and then does follow - although for the rest of the day he
will be disturbed but not know why.
Commentary:
Immediately
we may all understand this type of event. It describes the anomalies
which exist even between good friends whereupon one may have no
understanding of the other in a particular regard. However, in all
peopled transactions there are further events conspiring and no simple
occurrence is insignificant or without its outfall.
When
we urge another or pressure for their agreement it is worth noting that
even enthusiasm can injure if we are asking for a dishonesty from them,
expecting a compliance. The variations of this are difficult to gauge
however, because there are differing moods and frequencies of health and
all manner of considerations which may well affect a man on any given
day. So then the question is how best are we to interact with each man
and woman affording their true natures without also compromising our
own.
Firstly,
we may view this problematically, and in the personal this is both
necessary and articulate. If we can understand the transactional
differences underlying soul-honesty we may then begin to see the insult
to Christ when we forfeit our selves, and then how to avoid such
decadence.
In
the case of the man and the railway train window we know that he was
experiencing something which was then important to him. It was not what
one might call a religious experience, but it was arterially speaking,
important. It caught his attention to the exclusion of all else, it
worked in upon him and began to release thoughts and feelings which were
submerged within his memory and even his longings.
Curiosity
was stimulating his astral body and there was a subsequent tingling at
all of his junctures and points, to fingertips and toe-tips. The
adrenaline worked most naturally around this and so too his etheric body
began to liven up, drawing about itself the forces which concentrate
around the chest and head (or wherever there is such interest manifest).
A
sensation of timelessness alleviated and elevated his time-consumed
consciousness, absorbed and quite drawn out from his ego. Yet also
participating with his ego, he had managed to direct his attention to
the colorful parts moving around and around before him. This was a
longing from the past awaiting to be answered. When he was interrupted
in this experience his first reaction was to pull back and continue the
fixation. But alas! He was sorely interrupted and imposed upon.
The
insult added to the injury here, was not that the friend dismissed the
interest as being unimportant, but that the man himself gave way and did
not determine there and then his true feelings upon the matter. Men
become so used to this effort of congeniality that they mistakenly
believe that there is no consequence, and one could certainly set about
to please all others before self and maintain that the higher good was
concurrent, however it is not. No surrendering to another's ways and
wants is beneficial unless it has been ordained by the Arterial Self as a
natural act.
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
The Arterial Self- Problem a
From the luminous heights of the Spirit,
May God’s clear light ray forth
Into those human souls
Who are intent on seeking
The grace of the Spirit,
The light of the Spirit,
The life of the Spirit.
May He live
In the hearts
In the inmost souls
Of those of us
Who feel ourselves gathered
together here
In His name.
-Given by Rudolf Steiner to the leader of the Emerson group in London, Mrs Cull, for use by that group
THE three
gifts of St. Paul were: sweet rest, deep and perfect sleep, and death -
as restitution to the diseases which provoked undeniable and unrevokable
corruption to the physical and mentally-empathetic spiritual
constitution.
There are
streams whereupon Man is influenced to counterbalance the trials and
woes encountered. As the 'bad fairy' cursed, an equal dictum surmounted
the action of the evil and delivered Man by such concessions; albeit not
exactly by way of the powers of a 'good fairy' alone, but rather by
many good fairies, good Angels, good Men, and a Good God besides.
There are
discoveries made as to what these equations have been and are, today.
The protectors of these mysteries incorporated, have sought them out and
made them known to themselves, thoroughly exploring for the record and
safekeeping of Man; as one would add to the journal of progress.
As like any
scientific finding, it is not unusual that the names are linked, because
as overshadowing protectorates they have become to be associated with
that stream until such a time, that it itself is no more. For even
should they depart the world and the reaches thereof, their original
etherisation and mingling through investigation, remains.
Important
Law: For every ill wind there brings with it a blessing to follow. This
is how "out of evil cometh good", for it is truly so. The provisions for
such counterbalance were commanded out from necessity. For one may
ponder unto themselves, if there be one gravely evil curse by which no
good may equal and bring up the value of, then it should bring about an
unraveling of else that is good by its very challenge. Still to this day
there becomes a shift and an immediate need for an answer: that the
deck falls and one card goes down, and the next hand played need better
it.
The principle
as tossed around of 'neither nor completely bad' conforms to this. Also
whilst on this point, it is important to add that the viewpoint of the
cynic is dangerous indeed. If we may not qualify an evil perceived but
are intent in thought upon only its upset, then we err on the side of
the very perpetuation thereof. Though this appears a mean criticism, it
is nonetheless true.
Another
interesting insight is this: many who have committed themselves into the
penetrating studies as was first described, have fallen short of the
perfected examination because they themselves have 'come under' the ill
and the evil of the first part of their particular investigation. It is a
dangerous element that they have chosen to make bare and make known. It
is a courageous task which may know no fulfilment if the novice becomes
incapable of following through with the greater induction of Grace. Of
course, eventually he is saved by the very answer so put there, but
whether or not he survives intact to return to the world forged anew, is
another matter. It is no defeat in real terms, only in terms of the
object of striving at that time.
One can begin to see avenues of important instruction already from this lesson: -
- That
'open-thinking' which attempts to reveal deeper implications is
prerequisite to understanding and aligning oneself with the more
advanced souls. Ipso facto: closed-thinking (the one point of view
perspective) may not enable intuitive progress as to the necessary
illumination to follow.
- That all
negative insight requires the accompanying thought and prayer of
gratitude that: evil does pass; it may not remain the same, its sting
and its injure will dissolve in the provision of the accompanying Grace
so bound to it. Which not only shall bring restitution to the assaultee,
but further on, shall redeem that very evil and purify it with a new
objective/relationship to Man.
This is the
one thing that the 'dark path' cannot realize. One could too easily say
that we may dismiss such men who revel in unnatural desires as that they
willingly see only one half of the above truth; and this is open to
question and is philosophical. But from this viewpoint we would suggest
that they are in fact incapable of crossover and much discouraged by the
predator food-chain they perceive to be the world.
Almost as one
evil stacked upon another, and keenly experienced, the men who are
under the spell of great evil have not awakened to the mercy which
verily sustains them. It is therefore, a pitiful inadequacy, and one may
see that with such fellows, charity, good wishes and prayers on their
behalf, are the supplement required, rather than blatant condemnation.
It is truly a
divine mystery that overall, Christ Himself is Chief Protector of the
Keys, and by Him, through His Eyes, one may challenge the individual
streams incoming, and under His Governance be saved.
St. Paul,
through Christ, came to the blessed meaning of death, which hitherto was
the scourge and the final defeat. The Devil himself did laugh and
parade when a man caught in sickness of soul, then of mind and finally
in blood, was believed to be overcome hopelessly. But the illness
manifest did not vanquish the soul within. If not surmounted there was
afforded a 'disassociation' out from the combining forces and a man
could, through sleep and eventually death, begin a renewal that was not
hitherto possible.
He could
discard and dismember; and fortune of fortunes, perceive the minor ill
and begin to correct the fault within. Hell itself was transformed, no
longer an eternal sufferance - which prior to Christ there were elements
thereof: because of the connection, the combining, in which a man was
inextricably linked to his faults, his damnation, to his sins and to
that part of Hell he had frequented and connected with.
-B.Hive
Worries put pressure on the physical body. We should do our duty, and also against opposition, but we shouldn't worry too much. It's hard to strike the right balance here between concern and standing above it, but too much worry dries out the brain so that it can't take in new thoughts.
The greatest man of sorrows or soter was Christ, and as it says in (I Peter 5:7) we should cast all our care on him; for he cares for you. That is, we should give all worries past a certain point to Christ so that He can make our physical body healthy and strong, so that our soul is also healthy.
-Rudolf Steiner, from the Contents of Esoteric Classes
Esoteric Lesson: Kassel, 6-27-1909
After
Parzival stood before Titurel and had the experiences of which we
spoke, an intimate and deep feeling of shame arose in him. This feeling
of shame permeated him completely. He had gone through catharsis and had
thought that he was now so good and pure that he could become one of
the followers of the Master of all masters, the Christ. In this feeling
of shame he was reminded of Christ's words: “Why do you call me good? No
one is good but God.” He now knew how very imperfect he was still and
how much he still had to take into his striving for the good, how much
he was still lacking in order to be good.
And a second feeling, a
feeling of fear, overcame him. He thought that he had gotten rid of
that a long time ago. But it was a different kind of fear from the ones
he'd known previously. It was a feeling of his own smallness and
weakness as a man compared with the sublime Godly being when he let a
second word of Christ live in his soul: “Become perfect even as your
Father in Heaven is perfect.”
These two words should live in the soul of
every esoteric.
An esoteric should kindle full devotion for
divine beings in his soul. Thereby the consciousness develops that what
one does isn't so good, but that one should always try to become more
perfect. We should look at what's developing in one's soul. God lives in
developing things. If we get to the point where we're acting in a good
and noble way, then it's God in us who's good. The God who lets us act
in a good and noble way is our archetype itself, that created us. We
must become a complete copy of this archetype.
Be it ever so
hidden, there's a selfish motive in everything we do. We must realize
that we can't be selfless. It's a world karma that lets us act
egoistically. But world karma is God. Everything that God is and does in
the way of good is better than we could do it. An esoteric should tell
himself: Let me do something that I have made it my duty to do, let me
do it as hard as I can and in such a way that I tell myself that the
divine element that's at work in me is doing this and I'm only the
instrument of this godly element — then the Higher Self in its striving
towards perfection is revealed to him.
-Rudolf Steiner, August 30, 1909: From the Contents of Esoteric Classes
