THE WAY OF INITIATION or The Superphysical World and its Gnosis

The readers of this magazine [The Theosophist] cannot have forgotten the very instructive articles that were published some time ago entitled, "The Superphysical World and its Gnosis". They were translated from the German of Dr. Steiner by Mr. Max Gysi, who now issues them in a book form. Our President [Annie Besant] says in her foreword to the book : 

"Dr. Steiner's views, representing a deeply mystical Christian Theosophy, are of very great utility, supplying a side of theosophical thought which might otherwise miss fitting recognition. He is the natural heir of the great German mystics, and adds to their profound spirituality the fine lucidity of a philosophic mind.

"If English readers find herein presentiments of great truths that seem somewhat unfamiliar, let them seek to gain new views of truth by studying it from another standpoint. If they read sympathetically, seeking to understand, rather than in the spirit of antagonism, seeking to criticise, they will find many a gem of value, many a pearl of price, among the thoughts herein presented, and Theosophy's jewelled diadem will be the richer for their insetting."

A good portrait of Dr. Steiner accompanies some biographical notes by Edward Schure. We need not dilate upon the merits of the contents as our readers are familiar with them. We hope the volume will have the warm reception it deserves.

-B.P. Wadia


http://www.iapsop.com/archive/materials/theosophist/theosophist_v30_n5_feb_1909.pdf

Viewing the Dawn

The viewing of the dawn can promote......considerate patience. You cannot hurry the dawn yourself – it is obvious just what you have with an unripe dawn – you have but predawn gloom. If you hurry too much you can miss its occurrence in its most real sense – you can actually miss experiencing the arraignment of this paradise. The tension and anticipation, the melody, the mood, the airs … the expanding forthwith day. 

For the unripe personality they will say “Oh, there will always be another dawn tomorrow I can see” … but for the mature they realise that not one is ever alike unto another. The unripe personality very rarely will catch this daily event. Yet the mature individual will take in many. The unripe individual will probably busy himself or chatter the moments away, whilst the mature nature might be held in great fulfilment within just a moment of a moment of its glory. 

We can actually work over our personalities during this morning episode for the better in this regard. The unripe individual who is determined to curb his immature aspects within his worldly and inner behaviors will benefit fantastically by learning to take in the morning’s awakening with peaceful and solemn consideration.

-B.Hive 

Dedication to Love & Humility - Rudolf Steiner

There is no worse phrase than this: ‘look deep into yourself'. There one finds, however, only the lower self. One must seek lovingly outside oneself, and then one will find what one is seeking. I have known people who said: "what do I need? I don’t need anything at all, because I’m Atma (soul)" – and even though they constantly say “Atma, I’m Atma”, they do not become conscious of Atma, all they know about it is that it is a word with four letters. It leads to closing oneself off when gazing into yourself. 

For we are part of the whole. The finger is only finger because it is part of the body. If we separate it from the organism, then it is no longer a finger. The finger does not separate itself from the organism; but the human being is so “clever” that he believes that he could detach himself from the earth, although if he is just a few kilometers above the surface of the earth, he perishes. 

[…] It is the worst possible mistake to want to find the god within yourself. Losing oneself through entering into all the details of the world, that is the right path. He who dedicates him or herself to love and humility will find godliness, while he who seeks God in himself, hardens.

- Rudolf Steiner – GA 98 – Natur- und Geistwesen – ihr Wirken in unserer sichtbaren Welt – Vienna, November 7, 1907 (page 38-39)

Rudolf Steiner's Birth Date

Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius could not have been born on the Wednesday the 27th and be baptised in the church at Draskovec on the same day, as it was 11:07 pm at night.
[Copy of Baptismal Record, stating the 27th as the date of the Baptism]
The 25th makes more sense, as witnessed in his own handwriting, and the testimony of Eugenie von Bredow (who says "hitherto we celebrated on the 27th"- she knew of both dates). By 1921 he was celebrating his birthday on the 25th.

He was born late Monday night on the 25th. Mother and baby were exhausted, they had the Tuesday to recover and arrange a baptism on the Wednesday. That makes for a sensible timeline- even though the baptism still seems rushed.

How can we be sure if even Dr. Steiner wasn't sure. Here he was at the advanced age of sixty, considering that his birth date was wrong. He wouldn't have done that lightly.

Sergei Prokovieff goes into the reasons why he (Steiner) may have wanted to hide the date. He does cite the avoidance of occult attack: See pages 29 and 30 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=SfZymMqqDJ0C&pg

http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Steiner,_Rudolf

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=955186131206993&set=p.955186131206993&type=3&theater

“At the beginning we note the following unusual circumstances: Rudolf Steiner was born shortly before midnight on February 25, 1861, in the tiny village of Kraljevec. (see Note 1) Owing to negligence of the midwife the child was bleeding almost to death. It was questionable how long it would survive. If this birth had been normal the child would have been baptized a few days later in the church of Kraljevec, but now an emergency baptism was called for. However, the schedule of the church of Kraljevec could not accommodate this emergency. So the child was carried two miles through wintry February cold and snow to the church of Draskovec, a neighboring village. There it was baptized on February 27, and named:

Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius Steiner

or, as we would say:
Rudolf Joseph Laurence Steiner.

It is significant that the church of Draskovec was dedicated to St. Michael. It was a St. Michael Church! [the church is in fact dedicated to St. Roch, not Michael]. Apparently destiny had arranged circumstances so that St. Michael would stand guard, as it were, like a god-parent, at this human being's entry into the physical life on earth.”

-From: Dr. Ernst Katz, ‘The Mission of Rudolf Steiner’
Guenther Aschoff:

This is Rudolf Steiner’s newly made, baptism certificate from 1879: the first photograph from Max Benzinger (from the 1^st of February, 1914 (above) and the second photo from Max Benzinger (?) from 1918/1920 (underneath), kept in the Rudolf Steiner Archives – (almost completely deciphered): a copy of the newly prepared baptism certificate from 1879, by Guenther Aschoff.

"Newly made" where is the photo of the original which shows the name "Adolf" instead of "Rudolf"?
Guenther Aschoff:

Rudolf Steiner’s certificate of baptism had to be obtained from the parish of Draskovec, which was appropriate for Kraljevec. One can understand how irritating it may have been for his parents having received the document in Neudoerfl, only to discover the incorrect first name written, as well as the incorrect birthplace. There it was written ‘Kraljevec 24’ instead of ‘the railroad station’ as well as the office and the name of ‘Gabriel Mestritz’. The parents then went to the priest Johann Widder in Neudoerfll and pleaded with him to prepare a new copy of the baptism certificate; and that Record of Baptism was received and has remained.

At the birth, those present were the mother and father, also the stationmaster, Laurentius Diem and his wife Frau Josefa Jakl, the godmother, as well as a midwife. The midwife applied bandaging to the navel after the birth. For some reason, perhaps a poorly bound bandage, there was a great loss of blood; so the parents decided to call for an emergency baptism. To carry this out, a baptised Catholic must speak, ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ It was already midnight or shortly thereafter, and those present didn’t want the newly born infant to die without being baptised.

  On the next day, or the day thereafter, the baptism was repeated at a church in Draskovec.  The priest on duty, Gabriel Mestritz, registered the birth and baptism as taking place on the 27^th of February, 1861, under the name ‘Adolphus Laurentius Josephus Steiner’. As the place of residence he gave ‘Kraljevec 24’. At the end he wrote ‘Gabriel Mestritz’ for the name of the authorised priest attending to the baptism.

Where on the "newly created" baptism does it say "birth". It just states the baptism day of 27th.

Being born a Catholic, it is not hard to imagine that the young Rudolfus celebrated his baptismal day, as it was a Catholic tradition to do so:

"Melkite Catholics encourage families to celebrate the baptismal day rather than the actual birthday." http://www.resourcemelb.catholic.edu.au/object.cfm?o=205&pid=1476&showrm=true&uptam=false

Birthdays were not generally celebrated in the early 17th century. Some people marked the anniversary of their baptism, as the day of their birth as a Christian. It was a day of retrospection, of prayer and meditation, rather than a public celebration. https://www.plimoth.org/sites/default/files/media/pdf/edmaterials_celebrations.pdf

Baptism anniversaries are joyous occasions that can be celebrated by the entire family. If parents, grandparents, and baptismal sponsors pay attention to these “birthdays”, children will come to regard these anniversaries as significant. We help our children value the remembrance of their “birth” into the family of God. http://www.neiasynod.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Baptismalb-daybrochure.pdf

More important than our real birthday, the anniversary of the moment when our mother gave us our physical life, is the anniversary of the moment when we received the life of our soul as children of God. https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=407

Jesus & the Archangel

The higher we go we find that Christ is of the Trinity and then condescends through the Seraphim, Cherubim and so on to become an Archangel and then man.

Now, my reading of Rudolf Steiner says that Michael is that Archangel.

From The Pre Earthly Deeds of Christ:"He who was later the Nathan-Jesus had been present in the three earlier events, but not incarnated as physical man; he lived in the spiritual worlds as a spiritual Being of the nature of the Archangels; and in the spiritual worlds, in the preparatory stages of the Mystery of Golgotha, in the Lemurian age and twice in Atlantis, he was permeated by the Christ-Being."

Notice he lived as one who had "the nature of the Archangels", but he was of an Angelic nature:

"It may be said, therefore, that there were three Archangel-lives in the spiritual world, and that the Being who lived those lives was the same as he who was later incarnated as man and is described in the Gospel of St. Luke as the Jesus-child. Three times had this Angelic being, who later sacrificed himself as Man, offered himself for permeation by the Christ-Impulse. As in Christ Jesus we have a Man permeated with the Christ-Impulse, so it may be said that three times previously we have an Angel permeated with that Impulse. "​

Dr. Steiner's teaching is that the Nathan child was a pure soul who was not involved in the Fall. He had also been Krishna. I hadn't consider him as an Archangel nature. This is a new thought- and quite convoluted too.

The fact that the "Christ Impulse" incarnated in an Angelic being as stated above, is contradicted by Steiner here:

"I admit that it may seem strange when I say that this great Being was ensouled three times in an archangelic form, and then incarnated in a human being. It would seem a more orderly progression if between His ensoulment as an archangel and His human incarnation He had taken an angelic form. So it may seem to us. Yet, even though it is claimed that the statements of spiritual science are fictitious, truly it is not so. You may gather this from corroborative evidence. If you ask me how it happens that Christ did not descend from hierarchy to hierarchy and only afterward to man - if you were to ask me that, I could only answer that I do not know, for I never make theoretical combinations. The facts adduced by spiritual research are that Christ chose three times an archangelic form, leaving out the angelic form, and then made use of a human body. I leave it to future research to determine the reason, which I do not yet know, though I do know that it is true. "

Was he making a correction, because the Pre Earthly Deeds of Christ lecture was given in March and the Four Sacrifices in June 1914?

From the Four Sacrifices of Christ:

"This danger to humanity was averted in the Lemurian age by a Being Who later, through the Mystery of Golgotha, incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In this earlier age, however, He ensouled Himself - I cannot say incarnated - in one of the archangels.

"While the earth was working through the Lemurian age, a Being living in spiritual heights became manifest - one might say, as a sort of prophecy of John's baptism - in an archangel who offered up his soul powers, and was thus permeated by the Christ."

So in this lecture we are again talking about the Nathan Jesus (though he is not mentioned by name).

Then we find the Nathan Jesus being talked about as though he had been ensouled with the Archangel Michael:

"Once more the Christ Being ensouled Himself in an archangel, and the power thus generated in the spiritual world made possible the harmonization of thinking, feeling and willing........

"Mankind has preserved some memory of how human passion and human thinking were harmonized at this period by forces that descended from supramundane worlds, but the sign of this memory is not rightly understood. St. George who conquers the dragon, or Michael who conquers the dragon, are symbols of the third Christ event, when Christ ensouled Himself in an archangel. It is the dragon, trodden under foot, that has brought thinking, feeling and willing into disorder. All who turn their gaze upon St. George or Michael with the dragon, or some similar episode, perceive, in reality, the third Christ event. The Greeks who in their wonderful mythology made copies of what happened in the spiritual world at the end of the Atlantean age, revered the Sun Spirit as the harmonizer of man's thinking, feeling and willing."

Now the Nathan Jesus is forgotten:

"Then came the fourth, the earthly mystery, that of Golgotha. The same Christ Being Who had ensouled Himself three times in archangelic form incarnated through what we call the Baptism by John in the Jordan in the body of Jesus of Nazareth."

I'm not too clear on all this. Just what is the connection of the Archangel Michael to the Nathan Jesus?