Gladys Mayer Meets Rudolf Steiner

She first came across Steiner’s work in 1915, when she read The Way of Initiation. In April 1922 she attended Steiner’s series of lectures on education at Stratford-on-Avon, then went to the Vienna Congress in June. The following year she visited Steiner in Dornach and decided to become a painter and art teacher at the Goetheanum.

“On not only one occasion but three times in the space of about six weeks, I had to face madness and impending tragedy in my own immediate environment. Twice in this period, on distinct occasions and amongst unrelated people, I had to intervene when a murder seemed imminent, and once to check an intended suicide. I began to ask myself: ‘Is the world about me going mad?’

"But The Way of Initiation had already begun to bear fruits in spiritual experiences which guided me through events of terrifying responsibility, from day to day, and sometimes from moment to moment. I knew the spiritual worlds as reality, and Spiritual Beings as my aid. I received pictured instruction, through which healing was brought to the madness of one friend, and through which I was able to save the life of another. At length, I received the instruction to go to Rudolf Steiner for further advice…I met him frequently for something over two weeks: each time I met him he greeted me with a smile and a warm hand-clasp. Each time I asked him, ‘May I come and speak with you?’ he put me off with the reply: ‘Frage mir nochmal (Not just yet).’ Friends in Dornach told me this did happen sometimes, and of course it had a reason…Meanwhile, my spiritual instruction was going on, but it had developed a new phase.

"Every night I awoke about two hours after midnight, and was aware of a continuous experience. At first it was a Star, very distant, that was shining on me: then it was gradually coming nearer, and at length it was a man with a lamp who stood by my bed. By the light of the lamp I was aware of another, greater figure, and from this other one, though I could not see him clearly, came words instructing me in the spiritual understanding of what was going on around me. I was shown, unexpectedly, the concealed suffering in the heart of a nearby friend: it was as though I were lifted up by the unseen Teacher to learn to know, through the Light of the Lamp, what was happening behind the veils of sense appearances.

"At length, after about 14 days, I became anxious to know from whom I was receiving such teaching. I had become accustomed earlier to receiving instructions from an unseen Spiritual World. I had been made aware of the reality of spiritual discarnate Beings. But this Teacher was more concrete. I could see him unclearly towering above me, too great, it seemed, to be in any way connected with a human form. I could see the great form, but not yet the face of this Being.

"At last, I could bear it no longer: I felt I must know more. I seized hold of him, as it were, with all my soul forces, and challenged him, saying: ‘Who are you?’ Then, as there came no answer, I asked wonderingly: ‘Are you the Christ?’ ‘Nicht so’ (Not so). Then, because these were German words, a further thought came to me. ‘Are you, can you be, he whom we know on earth as Rudolf Steiner?’

"There was an instant stillness, and then the answer came softly, ‘Eben so’ (Even so).

"I was still not satisfied. It seemed impossible for anyone so spiritually great to be also a human being. So I pressed further. ‘Then show me your face,’ I asked.

"Immediately away to my left, where was situated the studio in which Rudolf Steiner lived and worked, I saw a tiny distant picture of his face and form resting with eyes closed, as it seemed to me, not in sleep, but in deep meditation.

"I understood now why I had been kept waiting. I had doubted, and doubt came in through a false spiritual perception. It could be put right only by my seeing and recognising him in truth, in supersensible experience, as my Teacher. I came to him joyfully the next day, and asked confidently: ‘Now can I come to see you?’

"I knew what the answer would be, and was not mistaken. When we talked together, I felt that I had known him for all time. I told him of all the terrible and wonderful experiences I had gone through, where earthly disasters had been averted through spiritual enlightenment, yet had eventually left me with responsibilities I felt were too great for me to bear alone; and how these responsibilities had eventually brought me to him. He listened quietly, and one had the impression he made his whole being receptive, soul to soul. Then he explained my experiences with the simple words: ‘Dies ist eine karmische Sache (This is a karmic matter).’ I felt enormous relief. Here, at last, is someone who understands, who takes all these astounding events calmly, and is competent to give advice. This is a matter of karma.”

*****

“As it seems to me, he has given certainty of the Spirit, guidance to the awakening faculties of spiritual seeing, and example of strength, courage and love to attempt the tasks of the New Age…But are we awake enough? The Teacher is there working with us, and through us, but he waits always for our conscious co-operation…Because humans are so very hungry for the certainty, the wisdom and the good, which this teaching, entrusted to Rudolf Steiner out of the divine worlds, can bring to our suffering Earth.”

‘The Initiate and the Teacher’, published in 1959 in The Golden Blade by the English artist, Gladys Mayer (1888 – 1980).

https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/GoldenBlade_1959.pdf

Formic Acid

In plants it is the oxalic acid that provides the basic life-giving substance. Oxalis clover, rhubarb, and wood sorrel have lots of oxalic acid, and there we can taste the sour acid element more easily than in most vegetables. In the animal kingdom, specifically in the stinging insects, it is the formic acid that plays a major role. Formic acid (formica=ant) is the poison we feel when an ant bites us, or a wasp or bee stings us. Each of these species produces a variation of formic acid.

As the bees and wasps receive nectar and pollen from the flowers, they are able to take in some of this oxalic acid, but they do not only take, they also give to the plants. As these insects fly and crawl through nature, they distribute formic acid. An old forest ranger in Germany once told me that wherever ants are missing in forests, the plants lose their vitality and die more quickly than if there is an ample amount of these insects around. Thus, ant colonies are being reestablished and protected in European forests to keep the trees healthy.

This formic acid, in finest dilution, wafts through the air, and in Spring the germinating seeds and budding perennials receive this formic acid that has been produced the year before. These insects not only produce the poison in order to sting, but it is exuded constantly and given off to the atmosphere in the finest dilutions where it remains, ready to serve as the plants spring tonic. So, on such a basic level, these stinging insects are the nurturers of life on earth since they provide something so essential to plants, which, in turn provide food, directly or indirectly, to all other beings.

Each one of these two acids acts as an invigorator, as a boost to the life processes for the other kingdom. It is with the help of these minute quantities of formic acid that the earth's entire plant life grows and thrives. And, on the other hand, it is the plants oxalic acid that stimulates and invigorates the animal and human kingdoms.

The commonly accepted image we have of life being based on fight and competition, with the survival of the fittest, loses its sting when we consider these grand, symbiotic, mutually beneficial, interrelationships.

Let us take a closer look at the role these acids play in our very own lives. As we eat our spinach, broccoli, chard, carrots, fruit and berries, we also take up the oxalic acid contained in them. Now a mysterious transformation occurs; we are able to change this acid into our very own formic acid. Actually, one can achieve this very process in the chemical laboratory. Glycerin is added to oxalic acid in a retort; when heated, carbon dioxide escapes and the steamy vapors condense to and behold formic acid. Similarly, we have small amounts of glycerin in our body and the fire of our digestion is able to instigate this transformation in us.

Just as our entire endocrine processes those governing growth, health and reproduction function by virtue of miniscule amounts of the secretion created by the pituitary gland, these same miniscule amounts of formic and oxalic acid provide the basis for life processes in our body. Let us be reminded that without deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), no life on Earth would be possible. It is this process of transforming oxalic acid into formic acid that allows us to live as spiritual beings in a physical body (as described in Rudolf Steiner's lectures, Bees). We are still at the very beginning of a science investigating life itself that takes processes, chemical transformations, into account and not only the substances themselves.

For our life on Earth we depend on the vast numbers of individual stinging insects, which enliven the plant kingdom with their formic acid. Our attitude toward these insects will have to undergo a drastic revision, away from disdain, anger, and fear toward one of gratitude and respect, toward nurturing and partnership instead of killing or exploitation.

We can now understand that our lives depend on honeybees, ants, wasps, and hornets. But why does the honeybee take a special place among all these formic acid-producing insects? In contrast to the solitary and bumble, carpenter and orchard bees, or hornets and wasps, the honeybees live through the winter as a colony of 10,000-20,000 individual workers. By the end of March, they may have already doubled their numbers and by summer solstice may reach 40,000-60,000 in number. Bumble and orchard bees, wasps and hornets have only young queens surviving the winter, and it takes two to three months until a colony of several hundred insects can do their enlivening work in nature. The vast numbers of honeybees flying already in early Spring not only contribute to the much needed pollination, but to the amount of formic acid released into nature.

by Gunther Hauk Gunther_Hauk.htm

unsafe practices for inner awakenings.

There are of course unsafe practices for inner awakenings. However many are characterized by the nature of the substance - the herb or the metal or the magician and so forth - so that revelatory incurrences are tainted as it were, with the colors of association. In other words, if I am to employ some means to illumination, that very assistance will necessarily afflict what it is that I see. If I ingest an illuminatory herb or plant, the plant itself shall conjure its dreams, its visions, its ways of viewing the world and me. Therefore it is no accurate communion with the self-soul or into the vacant spirit-space either. This is because the herb/plant has only a limited access to comprehension and is not permitted into the holy interiors of Man. Equally if one were to employ a metal in ritualistic conjuring, then the perception would fain to its (the metal's) approval.

If I am reliant upon another individual to stimulate me artificially into such awakening then I do so via his perception, his experience, also, and by this there can be no 'self' discovery, but moreover a binding with the other fellow, along with explicit misconceptions of one's own interior. 

-B.Hive
 It doesn't require any particular effort to eat salt for a week in an attempt to descend to subearthly realms, and then eat no salt for a week in an attempt to ascend into higher elemental realms. That takes no effort at all, but there is also nothing to be gained from it except the worst kinds of illusions. Inner work is the only way to really accomplish something in the spiritual world. And inner work, if it is really taking place, will by its very nature lead you to the right thoughts and keep you from getting into trouble with regard to the spiritual world. Without it, however, we are subject to perversions of mystical thinking, and people have every right to laugh at us then.

Spiritual Streams that Proceed from the Great Masters of Wisdom

The world is always flowed through by spiritual streams that proceed from the great Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings. The Masters continuously pour streams of love and wisdom over humanity, but men's souls aren't always ready and open to receive them. 

But meditation words are magic words that open soul portals so that divine life can move in. That's why one shouldn't speculate with one's intellect about meditation words, but should open the soul for forces that are higher than merely intellectual ones. If one speculates about them with one's intellect then only forces that are already in one become active. But higher forces are supposed to awaken. One shouldn't want to solve riddles in one's meditation words, one should let them solve riddles, for they're much wiser than the intellect can ever be. That's why one should let them work on one and take in what they permit to flow into one's soul, let them live completely in one's soul.

Meditation words were born from the laws of the spiritual world and didn't arise through speculation. Something special lives in every vowel. Each of the vowels has a different sound value. And just as the soul feels the effect of sounds, so it should devote itself to the pictures that the words mediate to it. In meditation one should try to think as concretely as possible, and to be as far away as possible from abstract ideation.

Let's take a meditation formula that most of you know. In the first line:

"In pure rays of light"

one can imagine something like palely gleaming moonlight that represents the soft light of the Godhead that flows through creation. This mental image should live quite clearly and intimately in the soul at the words:

"In pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world."

Then come the lines:

"In pure love to all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul."

Now one tries to permeate soft moonlight completely with one's love, to pour it into oneself, so that the mild light begins to radiate through the warmth of one's love, and in the flood of rays one feels the Godhead glowing in one's soul. In the following words:

"I rest in the Godhead of the world,"

one tries to imagine that divine-spirit is flowing all around one. One can feel as if one were in a lukewarm bath, entirely embedded in divine substance that envelops one's whole being like a mild bath.

"I will find myself
In the Godhead of the world"

With these words one can think of a distant light tower that radiates over to one, and can permeate oneself with the feeling that one will find one's own self in divine things.

But it's not only the pictures that live in the soul during meditation that draw us towards the divine and open the soul's portals. A deep wisdom and a high divine life has also been placed into the vowels. It makes a difference whether this or that vowel resounds in the soul. Let's take the vowel i. This always expresses a centralizing, a striving toward the center. The a(h) means something quite different. It's an expression of an inner worship of the divine. The i strives towards the center of the universe, whereas the a(h) remains distant and bows before the Holiest in devotion. So if we look at our formula:

"In den reinen Strahlen des Lichtes"

in the first i the soul strives towards the divine center, in a(h) it retreats devotedly, and in the second i it hurries towards the divine again. In the second line we have the ae:

"Erglaenzt die Gottheit der Welt."

The ae represents a weakened ah. The worshipful devotion of the ah changes in ae to shy reverence. In holy, shy reverence a man doesn't dare to approach God. But in the following o the soul hurries to embrace the divine completely with sacred love and intimacy. The oalways expresses an embracing that is full of love. The following line:

"In der reinen Liebe zu allen Wesen,"

the i again leads the soul directly into the divine center. Then in ah of-

"Erstrahlt die Goettlichkeit meiner Seele,"

the soul again becomes devotion completely. And just as the shy reverence of ae in the second line changed into an intimate embracing of the divine, so in the fourth line the full, warm worshipping of the ah weakens into a shy wanting to embrace that hardly dares to touch the Godhead in oe. In the fifth line,

"Ich ruhe in der Gottheit der Welt"

the u predominates. This always expresses a resting, a being embedded. Now the soul has been fused with the divine in blessed quiet. In the last two lines,

"Ich werde mich selbst finden
In der Gottheit der Welt,"

the soul is led (i) ever deeper into the center of the world.

This is just one way of understanding the formula, and one small part of the deep wisdom that rests in it. It would be confusing if I wanted to tell you all the deep secrets that are hidden in it. There's no letter and no sign in it that doesn't have a deep, deep meaning. That's the way the divine word of creation resounded when it once let the universe arise. You once heard it sounding, but your souls weren't aware of it yet. At that time you descended from the spirit, and you'll go back there in full consciousness. Born out of the spirit, living in an earthly body, you'll return to the divine spirit of the world through the power of the spirit.

-Rudolf Steiner 

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA266/English/UNK1998/19071205e01.html

The Credo- Rudolf Steiner

This document gives a clear picture of just how immersed was Steiner in the inner life, in the quest for the divine. Some years after his death, the archives published a remarkable document from Steiner’s early years, which was found in 1944. He had titled it “Credo” which in this context means, “What I believe”. It should be clearly kept in mind that this document, in its youthful idealism and simplicity of assertions, does not represent how the mature age Steiner would speak to his students. It is of value in that it presents a very clear statement about his view of spirituality and service to the divine, as the purpose of life. He was only 27 yrs old when he wrote this,


The “Creed”:

The realm of the Idea1 is the origin and sustaining principle of all Existence. In it is never-ending harmony and joyous tranquillity. Any part of Creation which this realm did not illumine, would be something dead and without being, and would have no part of the life of the universe. Only that which derives its existence from the {archetypal} Idea, has significance on the cosmic Tree, from which all things are created.2

The Idea is self-evident Spirit, Spirit sufficient unto itself, in itself, with itself. The individual must have the Spirit indwelling, otherwise it falls away, like a dry leaf from the tree, and would have been, anyway, whilst there, without purpose.

Now, the human Being, when it has become fully conscious {an adult}, feels and knows itself as a separate Being. It also has implanted within its being, the yearning for the Idea. This yearning drives it on, to overcome the separateness, and to let the Spirit come into life within his or her being, so that the soul may become like the Spirit.

Everything which is egotistic, everything which forms the person into this definite, separated-self, must be cast away, this is what the human being must strip away, for this it is, which obscures the light of the Spirit. That which derives from sensual lust, instinctive drives and passions, is desired only by this egotistic self. Therefore, the human being must destroy this selfish will in itself. Instead of seeking that which he or she as a separate being wants, the human being should want that which the Spirit, the Idea, in him wills and seeks. Guide the “Separate-Being” towards this goal, hearken to the voice of the Idea within you for that alone is divine !

What one wants as a separate-being is, within the circumference of the universe, worthless. It is a worthless point, disappearing within the flow of Time. What one wills “in the Spirit”, as it were, that is in the centre, for then, the central Light of the Universe comes into being within us: such a deed is not subject to the flow of Time.

When someone acts as an isolated individual, they remove their ‘self’ from the closed chain of cosmic activity, they are separated away from this. When a human being acts ‘in the Spirit’, she or he then lives ever more into the universal processes of the Cosmos. Destroying all self-centredness, this is the foundation of the higher life. For whoever lets this Selfhood die, shall find an eternal existence. That which is mortal in us in our separate-self.

This is the true meaning of these words of Goethe, “Whosoever does not die before death, shall perish at death”. This means, whoever does not make an end to egotism during the earthly life, shall not have a part of the universal life, which is immortal. For such a person never existed within this greater Life, and had no real existence.

1 This is the famous realm of archetypal Thoughts, of Plato and early esoteric wisdom.2 This unusual phrase refers to a very effective and evocative metaphor, deeply linked to the older Germanic and Celtic worldview; the “Welt Esche” or cosmic Ash tree, from which all the realms in the cosmos have their origin.

There are four fields of human activity in which the human Being deadens all egotism and fully dedicates himself or herself to the Spirit. These are: Knowledge, Art, Religion and loving dedication to an individual in Spirit. Whoever does not live in at least one of these four activities, does not really live at all. Knowledge is devotion to the universe, in Thought; Art is devotion to the universe in sense-perception; Religion is devotion to the world – through the life of Feeling; dedicated Love is devotion with all of ones’ spiritual forces, being directed towards something that appears to one as a worthy member of the Cosmos.

Knowledge is the most spiritualized form of selfless devotion, Love the most beautiful form. For love is truly a heavenly radiance shining into the life of daily existence. Devout, truly spiritual Love ennobles the innermost fibre of our being, it refines and uplifts everything that lives in us. This pure, devout love transforms the entire soul-life into something that is akin to the Universal-Spirit. To love in this most exalted sense means to bear the breath of the Heavens into that realm where there is usually to be found only the most detestable egotism and mindless lust.

One must first know something of the holiness of Love, before one can speak about Spirituality (piety). If a person has made the journey out of the separated condition, through one of these four activities, and merged into the divine life of the Idea (Spirit), then that person has attained to that, for which a seed of yearning was placed in his or her heart: the union with the Spirit. For this is the true destination of the human. Whoever who lives in the Spirit is free, for they have extricated themself from everything of secondary significance. Nothing compels him or her to act, except a coercion which he gladly undertakes, for such a person has recognized the task at hand as the highest duty of all.

Let truth be lived: lose yourself in order to find yourself again within the Cosmic-Spirit !

R. Steiner, ca. l888 (27 years old)

Translated by Dr. Adrian Anderson