On Prayer- Rudolf Steiner

It is not God Himself that one should seek in one's own soul. God is sought by means of an instrument, and this at least will not be found in the outer world. It must be sought within the soul — through true prayer, through mystical devotion, meditation and concentration at various levels. With the aid of this instrument we must approach the kingdoms of the world. Then we shall find God everywhere, for he reveals himself in all the kingdoms of the world and at all stages of existence. Thus we seek in ourselves for the instrument, and with its aid we shall find God everywhere.

Observations such as these on the nature of prayer are not popular today. How on earth — people say — can prayer change anything, whatever we may ask for? The course of the world follows necessary laws and we cannot alter them, but if we want to recognise a force, we must look for it where it is. Today we have sought for the power of prayer in the human soul, and we found that it is something which can help the soul forward. And anyone who knows that it is the spirit which works in the world — not an imaginary, abstract spirit but actual, active spirit — and that the human soul belongs to the realm of the spirit, will know that not only material forces, following unalterable laws, are at work in the world; but spiritual beings are also at work there, although their activities are not normally visible. If we strengthen our spiritual life through prayer, we need only wait for the effects; they will certainly come. But the effects of prayer in the outer world will be sought only by someone who has first recognised the power of prayer as a reality.
Anyone who does recognise this might try the following experiment. Let him look back over a period of ten years during which he scorned prayer, and then over a second period of ten years during which he recognised its power. If he then compares the two periods, he will soon see how the course of his life has changed under the influence of the forces which prayer poured into his soul. Forces are made evident by their effects. It is easy to deny the existence of forces if nothing is done to call them forth. How can anyone have the right to deny the power of prayer if he has never sought to make it effective within him? Can we suppose that we should know the light if we had never kindled it or looked for it? We can learn to recognise a force which works in and through the soul only by making use of it..

What are these various objections? We are asked, for example, to contrast an active present-day man who uses his powers to help his fellow human beings with a man who quietly withdraws into himself and works on the forces of his soul through prayer — surely we must regard this second man as an idler compared with the first? You will pardon me if I say, out of a certain feeling for the knowledge of spiritual science, that another point of view exists. I will put it in a somewhat exaggerated way, but there are good grounds for it. Anyone familiar today with the underlying causes of life will feel that many writers of leading articles in newspapers would be rendering better service to their fellows if they prayed and worked for the improvement of their souls, far-fetched as this may sound. Would that more people were persuaded that to pray is more sensible than writing articles. The same could be said of many other intellectual occupations.

Moreover, to understand the whole life of man, an understanding is necessary of the force that works through prayer, and this comes out with especial clarity if we look at particular aspects of cultural life. Who can fail to recognise that prayer, not in its one-sided egotistic sense but in the wider view of it that we have taken today, is a constituent of art? Certainly, in art we find also the quite different aspect expressed in comedy, in the humorous approach which raises itself above what it portrays. But there are also odes and hymns, which are not far removed from prayer, and even pictorial art shows examples of what could be called “prayers in paint.” And who would deny that in a great majestic cathedral we have something like a prayer expressed in stone and reaching heavenwards?

If we are able to grasp all this in the context of life, we shall recognise that prayer, seen in accordance with its true nature, is one of the things that lead mankind out of the finite and the transient to the eternal. This was felt especially by those who found the way from prayer to mysticism, as did Angelus Silesius, mentioned today and in the previous lecture. He felt that he owed the inner truth and glorious beauty, the warm intimacy and shining clearness of his mystical thoughts — as shown for example in “The Cherubinean Traveller” — to his self-training in prayer, which had worked so powerfully on his soul. And what is it, fundamentally, that permeates and illuminates all mystics such as he? What is it but the feeling of eternity for which prayer has prepared them? 

Everyone who prays can have some intimation of this feeling, if through prayer he attains to true inner rest and inwardness, and then to liberation from himself. It is this intimation which allows us to look beyond the passing moment to eternity, and links past, present and future together in our souls. When we turn in prayer to those aspects of life where we seek for God, then — whether we are aware of it or not — the feelings, thoughts and words which enter into our praying will be permeated by the feeling for eternity which is expressed by Angelus Silesius in lines with which we may well conclude today. They can bring to every true prayer, even if unconsciously, something like a divine aroma and sweetness:

"Forsaking time, I am myself eternity,
"Then I am one with God,
"God one with me."

— Rudolf Steiner  The Nature of Prayer 17th February, 1910 Berlin

Rudolf Steiner on the Ego

The ego (ego, Greek ἐγώ , phonetically related to ἠχώ echo ), egoism, is the lower ego hardened in egoism, the lower self of the human being , which acts as the echo of the actual, higher self in the luciferic influence. The astral body, filled with predominantly selfish antipathy powers, presents as a distorted echo. The ego corresponds to the Kama-Manas after Indian- theosophical designation.

With reference to Solomon , according to Rudolf Steiner , the ego is also called Itiel (Hebrew יתיאל, power owner ) ( Ref : GA 116, p. 83 ).

In his Bologna lecture, held in 1911, Rudolf Steiner showed that the ego experienced in regular day-consciousness is a mere reflection of the real ego, which is only misplaced into the physical inner world. Man thus feels isolated from the world and sees himself confronted with apparently insurmountable limits of knowledge. A future epistemology will have to acknowledge that the ego in truth is always already in the external world. Rudolf Steiner had already shown in his "Philosophy of Freedom" that the real ego - not its mere reflection - is experienced in pure thinking independently of the body organization. The true I can only be experienced through appropriate spiritual training in the supersensible world.

"Our ego is still a very sleeping organ for the vast majority of people today. If you think the ego is very strong, you are actually mistaken. For in the will - as I have already explained to you - man actually actually sleeps, and as the ego deliberately activates itself, we have nothing to do with something that stands before us as an ego, but rather with something like that in front of us is how the night is actually before us. 

"Although the night is dark, we expect the night in our lives. If you really look back on your life, it's not just the daylight, it's the nights as well. But in a sense they are always crossed out of the course of time. It is similar with our ego. Our ego is actually noticeable to the ordinary consciousness in that it is not there for the consciousness; it is already there, but it is not there for consciousness. Something is missing in the place, and therefore one sees the ego. It's really like having a white wall and not painting a spot with white; then you see the black. And so, we actually see our ego in ordinary consciousness as the extinguished. And so it is during waking: the ego is initially always asleep; but it seems to be sleeping through thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and therefore the ego is also perceived in ordinary consciousness, that is, it is thought to be perceived. So we can say that our ego is initially not perceived directly.

"Now, a prejudiced psychology, believes that this ego actually sits inside man; where his muscles are, his flesh is, his bones are and so on, there is also the ego inside. If you were only a little over the life, you would very soon realize that it is not so. But it is hard to bring such a reflection before people today. I tried it in 1911 in my lecture at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna. But nobody has understood this lecture until today. 

"I tried to show how it is with the ego. This self actually lies in every perception, that is actually in everything that makes an impression on us. Not in my flesh and bones lies the ego, but in what I can perceive through my eyes. If you see a red flower anywhere: in your ego, in all your experience, which you have, by giving yourself to the red, you can not separate the red from the flower. With all this you have at the same time given the ego; the ego is connected with your soul content. But your soul content, that's not in your bones! Your soul content, you spread out in the whole room. So this 'I', that is even less than the air in you that you are breathing in, even less than the air that was previously in you. This ego is connected with every perception and with everything that is basically apart from you. It works only inside because it sends the forces into it from perception. And further, the ego is still connected with something else: you only need to move, that is, to develop your will. However, since your ego goes with you or the ego participates in the movement- whether you are slowly sneaking, whether you are walking, whether you are moving in the lap-step or somehow turning and the like, whether you dance or jump, that's what I do with the ego. 

"Everything that comes from activity on your part is what the ego does. But that's not in you either. You think it takes you with you. When you dance a dance - do you think the dance is in you? It would not have room in you! What would be that place? But the ego is there, the ego is doing the rounds. So in your perceptions and in your activity, there sits the ego. But that's actually never in you in the fullest sense of the word - much like your stomach is in you - but it's actually always something, this "me", which is basically outside of me. It is just as out of the head as it is outside the legs, except that walking is very much involved in the movements that make the legs. The ego is really very much involved in the movement that makes the legs. The head, however, is less involved in the ego."

(Ref . GA 205, p. 218ff )

Steiner on Swedenborg

Now, my friends, let me ask you to be really, really clever for a moment, and clever in a way that people who want to develop their clairvoyance usually are not. Obviously, Swedenborg did not perceive these beings from Mars with his ordinary senses, with his ordinary sense of sight. After all, he was seeing them in the spiritual world. In other words, he could not see them with his sense of sight or hear them with his sense of hearing or even understand them with his ordinary capacity for thought. As I have explained to you, this capacity for thought was actually a gift of the ancient Moon stage, that is, something that developed before the Mars forces came into play… [ Note 5 ] [gap in the stenographic record]. Among all the powers of cognition known to human beings, there was nothing that could have enabled him to understand these beings.

Thus we are confronted with the strange fact that Swedenborg undoubtedly recognized the beings he saw, but did not recognize them by means of any higher forces. He recognized them by means of some ability he should not have had because he was lacking the necessary consciousness — ordinary powers of consciousness on the physical plane are inadequate to explain what he was seeing. But in that case, how was he actually seeing? Now, Swedenborg had spent his life not only as a great scholar but also as a very pure person, and so a certain energy was transformed within him. All people on the physical plane have this energy, which is somewhat similar to clairvoyant ability. On the physical plane, however, it is used for a different purpose. What was this energy that enabled Swedenborg to see as he did?

Swedenborg was seeing by means of a force that perceives outer appearances without touching them in any way and without making use of the eyes. What kind of a force is that? On earth, on the physical plane, it is the force that comes to expression in sexual activity, the mysterious force that pulls people together in earthly love, a force different from all other powers of perception. Swedenborg had stored up this force, and when he reached a certain age it was transformed in him, although it remained sexual energy in some respects. He used this sexual energy to see spiritual worlds. That is, transformed sexual energy is actually the basis of Swedenborg's clairvoyance.

You can conclude from all this that human beings during their evolution on earth are provided with a force that expresses itself as sexuality during earthly life, but that will be transformed once it is no longer bound to the physical body. On the other hand, you can also come to the conclusion that the forces leading to clairvoyant vision are very intimately related to forces involved in what are now the lowest drives in human nature, and that one of these realms can be attracted by the other, so to speak.

My friends, it follows that clairvoyance is not something to be toyed with. Of course, what I have just said does not apply to spiritual science as such, but it does apply to all kinds of clairvoyance people grab for in passing without working to acquire it legitimately. We cannot take seriously enough the fact that clairvoyance is not to be developed by simply applying a transformation of our usual mode of perception on the physical plane to higher planes of existence. These higher planes require that we work toward a new mode of perception applicable to the spiritual world, a mode of perception that has nothing to do with sexual energy, since that is physical and exists only for the physical plane. Applying the same mode of perception to higher worlds as is applied on the physical plane, that is, the assumption that people can still perceive in the same way as they do on the physical plane, is what makes people relate clairvoyance and sexual energies.

There are several ways of avoiding this, and we are now at a crucial point in human evolution where these things must be understood. What I have just told you is ancient knowledge, and in olden times people knew how to protect themselves. They knew that people approaching the spiritual world had to recognize both their own weakness and the fact that strength of character, inner discipline, and doing away with any unrestrained emotional impulses are necessary for ascending into the spiritual worlds in the right way. Ancient initiates were aware of human weakness and took steps to prevent any possibility of mixing the two spheres.

How did they do it? Simply by keeping people away from the opposite sex whenever truly spiritual matters were being spoken of. That is, the female sex was not allowed to participate in gatherings in which spiritual scientific matters were discussed. That is why in the past women were excluded from all spiritual-scientific gatherings. This measure prevented the men from mixing the two spheres in any way, because they were bound by strictest oath not to discuss what went on in the lodge outside the lodge itself. Women, then, could have no connection to spiritual science other than the white gloves, which were a significant symbol of this whole state of affairs. [ Note 6 ]

Now these times are long gone, and spiritual scientific movements such as ours should attempt to do away with such constraints. However, the spiritual realm must still be kept totally free of the other sphere I mentioned; these two realms are not to be mixed.

What we have seen recently is a case of the worst possible mingling of spheres, a case in which sexual drives were at work but were interpreted as something quite different. They were interpreted as all kinds of mystical things, but in reality they were sexual drives. It is important to face this fact squarely and to understand it from the inside, out of the inner nature of the cosmic order. Only our recognition of the very great dignity and solemnity of spiritual life can guard us against egotism in spiritual activity. Once egotistical mysticism enters, nothing can save us from mixing the two abovementioned spheres in the worst possible way.

-Rudolf Steiner

Causal Body

At each death, at the end of each incarnation, this memory-picture has appeared before his soul and left behind what I have called a concentrated essence of forces. So with each life a picture is added. After his first incarnation a man had his first memory-picture when he died; then came the second, richer than the first, and so on. The sum-total of these pictures produces a kind of new element in man. 

Before his first death a man consists of four bodies, but when he dies for the first time he takes the first memory-picture with him. Thus on reincarnating for the first time he has not only his four bodies but also this product of his former life. This is the “causal” body. So now he has five bodies: physical, etheric, astral, ego and causal. Once this causal body has made its appearance, it remains, though it was first constituted from the products of previous lives. 

Now we can understand the difference between individuals. Some of them have lived through many lives and so have added many pages to their Book of Life. They have developed to a high level and possess a rich causal body. Others have been through only a few lives; hence they have gathered fewer fruits and have a less developed causal body.

-Rudolf Steiner 

Kāraṇa-Śarīra:

A Sanskrit term which literally translates as “causal body” and is equivalent to the theosophical use of the term CAUSAL BODY. An alternative term, sometimes used, is kāraṇopādhi (i.e., kāraṇa + upādhi). It is one of three such bodies identified in the Vedānta literature.

It is the reincarnating soul or jīva, retaining within itself the essence of one’s life experiences which cause the conditions of one’s future incarnations.
Since the kāraṇa-śarīra or Causal Body is the receptacle of the essences of a life’s experiences and tendencies, and since in the normal process of REINCARNATION the vehicles which would normally store specific memories and behavioral tendencies are shed, it is only in unusual cases of rapid reincarnation that one would recall a former life. Furthermore, the distilled experiences of a human incarnation could never result in the rebirth in an animal form, so theosophical theory does not admit of the popular Hindu notion of transmigration. Only in cases of the most extreme cruelty or debauchery could future incarnations be considered even a human retrogression. Evolution of consciousness and conscience may be slow for the majority of people, but it is steady.

It is stated in theosophical literature that the kāraṇa-śarīra or Causal Body is formed at the time of Individualization, that is, at the transition from animal to human consciousness.

-Richard W. Brooks 

https://www.theosophy.world/encyclopedia/karana-sarira

A Fresh Look at Health & Illness- extract

THERE are two causes of sickness and two types of death which we may discern, one which brings the ultimate blessing, healing and life, and that which only answers with cessation.

Pneumonia brings the rains within, where the patient is awash with such fluids as would drown him. As the fevers rise to dispel the cold, as the tremulous changes challenge the life within, they also in their own way, bring blessings. With both congestion and with heat there are effects upon the nature of the individual which exceed the physical condition and all that that implies. 

As far as the body is wakefully concerned it has not the consciousness of death or an understanding of the threat of death. It is true that it may be labored under certain conditions - that the pulse will quicken and the astral body may be inflamed in accordance with the infliction - but it does not factor its own dissolution to be had in a permanent fashion. The body cannot and does not concede to cessation, or for that matter, to rest (totally at rest i.e. of the internal organs)........

The miracle of the healings of Christ, was that through His Intervention an individual not only received a respite from his physical aggravation but also was afforded the full power of virtue which he spiritually required. Physical healers there have been before and after Him who could effect their cures but take the soul no further. In point of fact, the results of many 'healings' have been deleterious because the spiritual connection was disturbed and the fellow concerned made paralyzed in that important area. In this way it was correctly said that we die a little death when we take antibiotics also. 'Spiritual' healers can cause such deathly processes as well, because the correspondence between the inflowing forces and the physical condition are no longer allowed to operate as the determining consciousness would have it. There is a predetermining and an interruption to what would have invoked much virtuous benefit.

However, when Christ confronted the sufferer, the sin and the disease, He came with a choice which was accepted by the day-consciousness of the man for betterment, which his star-consciousness would have enforced upon him. When the choice was brought into the day-consciousness and that day-consciousness embraced the goodness with clarity, that decisiveness in the being of that individual transformed the physical, restoring it accordingly, releasing also the starry-consciousness of its imposing and infill.

The Resurrected Body brought about a likeness which was unlike the previous likeness, didn't it? When Christ Himself had drawn the powers into His Physical Form during the Crucifixion, He did so in a way which affected the process to follow in Man further on. He took the day-consciousness of Man through to death, and brought the star-consciousness into his egoic reckoning. Bringing two realms together, the physical existence was to be blended through the divine insights of Man, that in his conscious abilities he could retain a power which he hitherto had not had within the spiritual worlds before. 

This mystery has not been seen or realized in Man as yet. We are at the very beginnings of this transformation which is given to us in possibility, that we may negotiate two worlds with the powers enabled from both. For those who are the 'runners' for Humanity certain talents in this regard have been won, and yet the true transaction as is possible through Christ has not occurred at this time.

When He was seen in His resurrected Glory, the body which became visible (to many) actually resembled in truth that of their own form spiritually. It shall not be said that the form 'mirrored' that of the individual for a mirror is something of the reverse (in this world). It was that this form was the form that they knew within their star-consciousness. Although a woman may well have perceived a man, what is meant here is that the impression given to the new form of Christ was first and foremostly impressioned by the soul who stood before Him. This is another secret which suggests to us that the physical body is not as it appears and can be remarkably different.

At first the Christ when received was always unrecognized [John 20:14-15]… this of course may be understandable. But what was outstandingly remarkable was that His body shared substance with others, that when the day-night consciousness has become transcended into the one body, the physical properties become respecters to the desire and will of the one God within. 

Christ's Will was to provoke the men into examining themselves consciously through Him and to find the possibility of this, however the nature of the physical world and its propensity is to corrupt over time. The willing of the spiritual star-consciousness in its call to the higher powers was given to remain prevailing during this period of physical uncertainty and corruption:

Truly, truly, I say to you, When you were young, you gird yourself, and walked where you would: but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth your hands, and another shall gird you, and carry you where you would not.
-John 21:18 [American KJV]

This 'other' still calls within us dividedly, yet with the difference now being that Christ Himself has proved the glory of Death and will eventually assist the two in conjoining concurrently in Man. 

To 'feed' within the world is to honor the world. We give to Life and all that it requires and the spiritual worlds will reward us. If there is to be a healing, we pray that Christ's presence be there for us at that time, so that the powers may still enter into us with a wholesome constancy and the spiritual consciousness may converse within us freely.

-B.Hive