Self-love Masked as Real Love

The love one person believes he feels toward another is for the most part nothing but self-love. A person supposes that he loves another, but in this love really is loving himself. You see here a source of an antisocial disposition that must be the source also of a terrible self-deception. In other words, a person may suppose that he is giving himself up in an overwhelming love for another person, while he really does not love the other person at all. What he feels as a state of rapture in his own soul in association with the other person, what he experiences within himself by reason of the fact that he is in the presence of the other person, that he makes declarations of love, if you please, to the other person — this is what he really loves. In the whole thing the person loves himself as he kindles this self-love in his social relationship with the other person.

This is an important mystery in human life and it is of enormous importance. This love that a person supposes is real, but that is really only self-love, self-seeking, egoism, masked egoism — and in the great majority of cases the love that plays its role between people and is called love is only masked egoism — is the source of the greatest imaginable and the most widespread antisocial impulses. Through this self-love masked as real love, a person becomes in preeminent degree an antisocial being. He becomes an antisocial being through the fact that he buries himself within, most of all when he is unaware of it, or wishes to know nothing of it.

-Rudolf Steiner Dornach, December 6, 1918

The 'I' & Love

Love is possible only because of the freedom of our ego, 'I'. The 'I' comes to love freely.

"But on the other hand we must not forget that the “I” is at the same time that which gives man his independence and his inner freedom, which in the truest sense of the word elevates him. His dignity is founded in this “I,” it is the basis of the Divine in man. […] Thus the “I” will be the pledge for the highest goal of man. But at the same time, if it does not discover love, if it hardens within itself, it is the tempter that plunges him into the abyss.

"For it is that which separates men from one another which brings them to the great War of All against All, not only to the war of nation against nation (for the conception of a nation will then no longer have the significance it possesses to-day) but to the war of each single person against every other person in every branch of life; to the war of class against class, of caste against caste and sex against sex.

"Thus in every field of life the “I” will become the apple of discord; and hence we may say that it can lead on the one hand to the highest and on the other hand to the lowest. For this reason it is a sharp two-edged sword."

-Rudolf Steiner – GA 104 – The Apocalypse of St. John: Lecture VIII – Nuremberg, 25th June 1908

If it were impossible for man to sink into the abyss of evil, he would not have been able to attain what on the one hand we call love and on the other freedom; since to the occultist freedom is inseparably connected with the idea of love. It would be impossible for man to develop either love or freedom without the possibility of sailing down into the abyss. A man unable, of his own free decision, to choose good or evil, would be a being who would only be led on a leading-string to a good which must be attained of necessity and who had no power to choose the good of his own fully purified will, by the love which springs from freedom.

If it were impossible for man to follow in the trail of the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible for him to follow God out of his own individual love. It was in accordance with a wise Providence to give the possibility of freedom to the humanity which has been developing through our planetary system, and this possibility of freedom could be given on no other condition than that man himself has to make the free choice between good and evil.

-Rudolf Steiner – GA 104 – The Apocalypse of St. John – Lecture XII – Nuremberg, 30th June 1908

John's Gospel is a Book of Life

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

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

The Irreverence which is Blasphemy

Blasphemy against Father God is a belittlement of His True Greatness. It becomes an attempt to assume a false strength or quality in which we are but ungrateful, ungracious and unbecoming to that of our own condition or of others. Blasphemy is that one sin within us that can corrupt the universe and injure Heaven. It divides our own fair natures, poisons our perceptions; is the wellspring of all anxiety and doubt; accuser of our brothers and our beloved; and falsifier to the truth. It is the satanic weevil amongst the golden flax of virtue.
The irreverence which is blasphemy is unforgivable in the eyes of the godly. What a stern and pious remark - even depressing at the outset - but it is most necessary to remember, in order to answer those who would blaspheme by arguing otherwise, because the perils of this sin are too great to 'belittle' (as is the wont and way of this sin). Within the human condition we have been given the most marvelous of licenses to incredulate - except that one; if for no other reason (and yes, there are many) irreverence to Father God severs our own life-chord to Him, discharging the Holy Spirit into devil, turning our souls into dust, literally.

• Tensions and passions,

• contradictions and imperfections, contrasted by exaltations;

• colors, grades, depths, detail, and simplifications;

• obstinacies and weakness as well;

• frustrations of self and vanities of self,

• false observations and mean criticisms (accurate but unkind),

• crudities and false charity,

• brevity and long-windedness,

• acquisitiveness and dismissiveness,

• selfishnesses and masochisms too;

• distractedness and self-absorption,

• laziness and self ambition

- ALL of these characteristics live in each of us, and manifest in argument to one another, yet hold the possibility also to become quite wonderful. ALL of these conditions are transmutable, but the irreverence of blasphemy is not.

In the physical world all forms of murder, including self-murder, are blasphemous. In the insistence of death, in the denying or forfeiting of life, that life, which He has given, is offensive and insultuous to Father God. In the thought world, all annihilative projections of hate, harm, or discreditation to Father God are blasphemous. The open curse and the evil thought - these are as perilous as they are scornful. In the spiritual worlds we blaspheme when we make doubt as to our own goodness and the goodness of others, in which He does reside; and Doubt is the bedfellow to Satan - not the prick of the conscience, he is the poke of demise!

Christ as our Savior has brought us such reality of Father God - to know Him, to give thanks to Him, to wish to seek His Presence, His Comfort and His Will in all ways. The desolate world which was that before Christ's coming was disparaged with one great curse and soiled with unbelief. But we know now, and have the ability to know, that all men are the majestic and noble sons of God, and no individual should ever belittle or undermine this fact.

We have the abilities to make yet greater the greatness within, and work too, in time, those aspects which are tedious to us.

• If we can simplify we can also deduce,
• if we know detail we can discern,
• if we are obstinate we can stand strong,
• if we are weak we can be humble as well,
• by our frustrations we are motivated to work harder,
• by our vanities we are also so motivated towards self-betterment,
• with our false observations we can learn that all is transitory and ever changing, and not to look to appearances but esoterically to divine yet further,
• our mean criticisms can recognize our own smugness when it appears, and disarm it;
• our crudities can give us our ease with commune;
• our false charity and insincerities can teach us true propriety, discipline and kindness (for one will still grow into another - slowly, slowly it will grow).
• Our brevity may become frugality,
• our long-windedness may help us to have patience without,
• our acquisitiveness is the babe of the ego,
• our dismissiveness can be discrimination as well,
• and our selfishness can adjust into self-is-ness (being arterial, not dictatorial).
• Our masochisms can learn shiatsu, lessen down into a firm massage of self without the exaggerated overkill,
• our distractiveness can bring us to curiosities yet to be found,
• our self-absorption can offer us the concentration to apply intent, study and reflection;
• our laziness can teach us proper rest,
• whilst our urge for self ambition can be turned universal and transmuted into higher purpose.
• Our imperfections become a point of reference,
• our tensions continually reaffirm our reality of existence,
• our passions encourage the gods with motivation,
• and our contradictions ensure we do not anesthetize into but a static membrane. 

All the while, if a man is faithful to God firstly, then he shall find his way with help in all aspects that he genuinely seeks.

-B.Hive 

The Exercise- The School of Practical Philosophy

Here are the instructions for The Exercise, a central element of teaching at the School of Practical Philosophy:

Find a balanced, upright and comfortable posture from which you need not move.
Become aware of where you are right now.
Be aware of any expectations or concerns that may be present in the mind or heart.

Now, let them go. 

Feel the weight of your feet on the ground.
Feel the weight of the body on the chair.

Feel the gentle pressure of the clothes on the skin.
And the play of air on the face and hands.

If your eyes are open, welcome color and form, light and shadow ... without comment.
Taste.
Smell.

Watch the breath as it enters and leaves the body. (Leave ample time.)

Now be aware of hearing.
Hear all sounds as they rise and fall without comment or judgment of any kind.
Let the hearing run right out to the furthest and gentlest sounds, embracing all.

With the body completely relaxed, the mind clear and the heart open, simply rest in this great awareness for a few moments.

Eternal Masculine/Feminine

Whereas the mystics of all ages, together with Goethe, have spoken of the unknown, undefined element to which the soul is drawn, as the eternal-feminine, we may without misunderstanding, speak of the element which must always animate reverence as the eternal-masculine. For just as the eternal-feminine is present in both man and woman, so is this eternal-masculine, this healthy Ego-feeling, present in all reverence by man or woman. And when Goethe's Chorus mysticus comes before us, we may, having come to know the mission of reverence which leads us towards the unknown, add the element which must permeate all reverence — the Eternal-masculine.

Thus we are now able to reach a right understanding of the experience of the human soul when it strives to unite itself with the unknown and attains to the Unio mystica, wherein all reverence is consummated.

But this mystical union will harm the soul if the Ego is lost while seeking to unite itself with the unknown in any form. If the Ego has lost itself, it will bring to the unknown nothing of value. Self-sacrifice in the Unio mystica requires that one must have become something, must have something to sacrifice. If a weak Ego, with no strength in itself, is united with what lies above us, the union has no value. The Unio mystica has value only when a strong Ego ascends to the regions of which the Chorus mysticus speaks. When Goethe speaks of the regions to which the higher reverence can lead us, in order to gain there the highest knowledge, and when his Chorus mysticus tells us in beautiful words:

"All things transient
Are but a parable;
Earth's insufficiency
Here finds fulfilment;
The indescribable
Here becomes deed;
The eternal-feminine
Draws us on high —

"Then, if we rightly understand the Unio Mystica, we can reply: Yes —

"All things transient
Are but a parable;
Earth's insufficiency
Here finds fulfilment;
The indescribable
Here becomes deed;
The eternal-masculine
Draws us on high."

-Rudolf Steiner

https://wn.rsarchive.org/.../Eng.../RSP1983/19091028a01.html

Rudolf Steiner on Blavatsky

https://theohistory.org/issue-archive/volume-i/vol-i-no-7/?