Hildegard Quote

We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.

Hildegard of Bingen

I mean, immediately I read it I felt that the language sounded too modern. 

My suspicions were confirmed:

"Thank you Morgana Morgaine for solving the mystery of whence came the unlikely Hildegard quote about an interpreted world. At least you attributed it correctly in your book. I checked vol. 21 Fall 1991 Gnosis as Nathaniel suggested, and the quote is indeed from the last paragraph of Elaine Bellezza's article entitled "Hildegard of Bingen, Warrior of Light". The byline says that "Elaine Bellezza is a free-lance artist and writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area." The article is a dramatic view on individuation as a holy war (the topic of the magazine issue) with Hildegard as example of the process and using quotes from Rilke and Jung. Here is the entire final paragraph:

"We often look to someone like Hildegard or to other great people throughout the ages as if what they have is not ours to have; we admire them, honor them, study them. We want to make use of them, and we allow them to consummate our inner light for us. We allow them to be the still point of our turning world. We feel incapable, yet the world wants to infuse us and to be infused by us. At that point no one can help us, not angels, not men, not Hildegard, not Jung, not Rilke. We cannot live securely in a world which is not our own, in a world which is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to put our ears to our own inner voices, to see our own light, which is our birthright, and comes to us in silence."

So the quote is taken out of context from an inspirational manifesto, and it was clearly never meant to sound like Hildegard. Unfortunately the misattribution has been promoted extensively on the internet in multiple soundbite images, quote portals, and blogs. The misquote has gone so far as to now head the introduction of the 2016 book by Dr. Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook "Hildegard of Bingen: Essential Writings and Chants of a Christian Mystic- Annotated and Explained" - perhaps future editions will correct this embarrassment for what appears to otherwise be a well-researched introductory volume.

Thus Hildegard has joined the ranks of those whose names get attached to someone else's words for instant pedigree, including Einstein, the Buddha, and Thomas Edison. A dubious distinction perhaps, but as Lincoln once said, you can't believe everything you read on the internet."

The Ego & Color Perception - Rudolf Steiner

If you try to ignore all sensory content, that in the vast majority of cases, and in the vast majority of people, there is a certain tendency to sink into a kind of sleep state; but that means just dampening the ego. It may be remarked that the ego-consciousness, as it is in daytime awakening, is essentially linked to the presence of sensory content. So that we can say: We experience our self at the same time with the sense content. Actually, we do not experience our ego for the everyday consciousness other than with the sense content. As far as the sense content is concerned, ego-consciousness is present, and insofar as ego-consciousness is present- at least for ordinary life- the sense-content is sufficient. It is perfectly justifiable, starting from the point of view of this everyday consciousness, not to separate the I from the sense-content, but to say: by red, by this or that sound, by this or that sensation of warmth, by tactile sensation, this or that taste, if the sensation of smell is present, the ego is also present, and insofar as these sensations are not present, the ego, as it is experienced in the usual waking state, is also absent.

"I have put this more often than a finding of soul observation. In particular, I have made it clear in a lecture I gave at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna in 1911, where I tried to show how what should be experienced as the ego should not be separated from the whole range of sensory experiences. We must therefore say that the ego is essentially first bound - I always speak of experience - to sensory perceptions. It's not true that we do not now consider the self as reality; on the contrary, it is only in the course of these three lectures, today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, that we want to point out the ego as reality. We now want to focus on what we call the ego experience in the realm of our lives."

( Ref : GA 206, p. 118f )

With every perception, the ego and the astral body, which live in the psychic-spiritual outer world, are brought into the body. Rudolf Steiner explains this using the example of color perception. The colors have no physical reality, but nevertheless are not merely subjective phenomena, but belong as objective mental reality to the soul-world.

"Physics must be content with the light that is in the room. You cannot undertake the consideration of colour at all without first lifting it into the region of the soul. For it is sheer nonsense to say: Colour is something subjective which produces an effect on us. And if one goes further and says, — and in doing so one conceives an inexact picture of the Ego — that there is some external objective inclination which affects us, our Ego, it is rubbish; the Ego itself is in the colour. The Ego and the human astral body are not to be differentiated from colour, they live in it and are outside the physical human body in proportion as they are bound up with colour out there; they only reproduce the colours in the physical and etheric body. That is the point. So that the whole question of the effect of an objective on a subjective colour is nonsense; for the Ego, the astral body, already exist in the colour, and they enter with it. Colour is the conveyer of the Ego and the astral body into the physical and into the etheric body."

-Rudolf Steiner 

( Ref : GA 291, p. 59f )

Color is the revenge of the gods against Lucifer

"Color is the revenge of the gods against Lucifer," Dr. Steiner said to me on one occasion, during a conversation about my work with regard to the healing force of painting. It was only later that the meaning of these words became comprehensible to me. The Lightbearer, who locks up his light in the glow of passion, in a wealth of shades of feeling, within the individual experiences of the human heart, is purified through the objective experience of color and offered to the world. Thus when, out of cosmic space, the Christ-Spirit enters into the heart, then, brought to rest, the Spirit of Separateness (Lucifer) is freed from his imprisonment in the world and becomes pure Holy Spirit. So color can have a healing and salutary effect. (It is for this reason that oftentimes luciferic people have an antipathy for strong colors.)

Luciferic souls do not generally like strong colors.

I want to repeat so as to make it unmistakably clear: The Doctor had brilliant things to say about Gnosis and the Christ; that is well known. But anyone who has not himself experienced Steiner cannot really form any idea of what took place in our hearts: "He was more heart than head." He was inspiration, not only imagination. His words about the Christ were inspirations -- heart-thoughts that transformed hearts more than the heads.

When the Doctor spoke about the Christ, his head was silent; he spoke out of the sun-filled heart. The words of his lecture cycles on Christ are like an exhalation - not of oxygen, but of carbon dioxide, the symbol of mysterious life processes. . . . 

The doctor stood "close to the door," but not to this door, the wooden door toward which the heads turned. One ran one's head against the wood - and lost consciousness. But there was another door - the heart -- and it was to that door he called us. . . . 

You might think, "Nonsense! What doors is he talking about?"
I speak of those doors through which you shall not enter as long as you have not changed your whole world. One must speak of it differently, without the acrobatics of theoretical knowledge, without Ahriman, without ahrimanizing, without the condescending smile that has become customary meanwhile in our circles. 

That is how Steiner spoke, and so, too, his student Michael Bauer. "Thou art our letter, written in our heart," says the apostle. -- Without the language of the heart -- silence. . . . 

The Doctor and the Christ theme: In the end, everything that he has said leads toward the theme of "Christus." All the gifts he brought to unfolding are, with infinite reverence, offered up to the Christ theme. The multiform unfolding of anthroposophical culture is Steiner's "silence." The Doctor traveling from city to city -- the Doctor who builds bridges from the social question to art, from art to natural science, from there to the tasks of pedagogy -- is the Doctor who is silent concerning the essential. This culture is a brilliant tapestry of outlooks, of vistas that can cause dizziness. One cannot help but ask, "Is all this splendor meant to be a field for man's activity?"

-Andre Belyi