Illumination

THERE was a man who sought to know
The secret things of life-
His end, beginning, years between,
His dreams, the purpose and the strife,
That surged about him, to and fro,
And visions dimly seen.

For long he sort to understand
The wisdom of the soul.
He found in seeking scraps of Truth,
Wise words, but portion of the Whole;
And still he sought the Ultimate,
And thus he spent his youth.

The path he trod was dark and long,
With pitfalls laid about,
But climbing on at last, he found
A Light, that shining, helped him out
Of that morass he floundered in,
And lit the path around.

And oft the trav'ler stopped to tend
His small and feeble light.
The shadows deepened and the flame burnt dim,
And but one step ahead the path was bright,
But as he passed a radiance lit the way
For those who followed him.
- Jean Eckhart

Comparing Drinks with Solids

When an adult or an infant is debilitated through illness or malnutrition it is preferable to feed them with fluidic foods and their recovery will be all the greater for it.

Even an apple in its solid state can be more difficult for an ailing system to consume, when compared to that same apple either juiced, stewed or pureed. And much more so of course, becomes the differentiation when we examine meats and breads upon the organism.

In many respects there have been considerations as to whether or not humans were ever destined to consume non-fluidic foods. Esoterically there is a great importance given to all substance which is fluidly mobile, for its proportion of ‘trapped vapours’ … its fluidic constitution remonstrates both life and congeniality proportioned to the bulk.

The soulic forces can only physically inhabit their substances in that which is fluidically responsive to them. When matter becomes consolidated the forces begin to draw back … and if no water is present within that substance they rescind entirely. (Water is the manifestation of the Heavenly Ego, which provides the perfect ‘body’ for all soulic forces intervening in the physical.)

 -B.Hive

Christ & the Individual

Although it is difficult to appreciate, Christ knows everything you are (and can be) and is quite capable (for He does) of concentrating on a single man and his dilemmas and understanding them, that He may answer them.

There is not one single problem within a man that He personally has not met with on that level. Now, it is that the contestants to Man may be a different matter, inasmuch as those aliens who promote ill-health and ill-being may be foreign to Christ's comprehension. However, Christ understands from the aspect of man, rather than the aggressors who spin in, and their thinking, their ways.

He can and does take seriousness seriously. All of us know the elevated point of view where we might judge another's tribulations as so minor as to be inconsiderable, but Christ Himself is so sensitive to His children that He still suffers their suffering constantly.

Yes, He may present Himself in the form of a man; which does not mean to say that all that is Him, is then comprised and compacted in that form, but rather His totality is divisible and bipolar to need.

Does He have feelings as we have them? All heart, all sadness, all peace. Does He have His good days and bad days? The Greater Beings - the ones that stride the spheres in a brilliance of unspeakable beauty - they have been known to suffer their strifes and hardships, disappointments and contestants. They are given to romance too, for it is far, far longer than poets have scribbled sonnets that Heaven has contrived its pairings with happy satisfaction therein.

It is difficult for one to picture the variations within the one, that expressions large or small may be still one and the same.

There is no space that a man or woman may venture into, that Christ also cannot go to, if need calls. Many, many souls have for one reason or another been met with by Christ and counseled directly. And this has occurred in all the various ways in and out of the physical-etheric bonds. However, the question as to He indwelling in us and the distinction in sleep or projection, when one withdraws, goes like this: His Signature is borne by us in our adhesion to physical and etheric matter. By His Signature so impressed, we have an open connection living within us, as we represent Him also. The Sun forces illuminate the truth all around us and within us, of this.

We are best concentrated and contained when in incarnation. When we spread out in sleep or after death and are given to soul impressions and focus, we are for the most part continuing on from that which we were, or gleaned during our physical incarnation. This is a bonding in a particular way, with Christ in His Plan.

That which we are in aspects lower (in those spheres within the Earth), and also in those separate to the physical/etheric world, is in one sense quite separate to Christ. The ego defines a distinction, for to return to loving Him Man must indeed be apart in that respect.

Once again, it shall be said though, that there is no field a lamb can stray where it cannot be found by Christ. He is never that far away. He hears prayers at any distance, for He knows each and every one, remarkably.

-B.Hive

The Sun & Moon Forces

As they say about old ghosts that hang around: "Have chain, will rattle!" In other words, give any being the wherewithal to make a whole lot of noise about itself and it most surely will!

The consciousness of our Christ pulsates into the World, being the Sun forces, which peak, flow and draw back. At each saturation the generalities are revitalized and everything is strengthened and at its best - or worst, as the case may be.

There has been a question along these lines to do with those influences as shouldered by the Moon in its relation to our world. Moon-dust is magnetically attracted to the planet, which draws it away into the seas, the clouds and the troughs of mist, and into the deposits of dew.

Moon-dust expands the physical world, for its particles are spatially intrusive. Water may be weight-measured according to this. Such dust from the old world holds properties which affect Men and their world. The reason why the full Moon activity in this respect is accentuated, is because of the action of the Sun loosening the particles that they, in larger dose are pulled in by the nets (the waters) of the Earth.

From a point of view of clairvoyance, the free particles of moon-dust promote the ways of atavistic seering, in correspondence with past passages of consciousness. The advice given however, to wear a cap on the head at such times of full Moon, is profitable to those who are ill-affected by the impressionistic modality and/or some related illnesses; and too, those who are progressively attempting a 'break' from former ways of thinking or being and wish to change.

This may mean a change within their makeover of almost anything, for the moon-dust promotes the theme-principle of repetition and enforces the law of cycles. Therefore for those who wish to effect some breakaway or change, it is to be at the time of the new Moon, and with a limited exposure to the full lantern.

Conversely, from this one can see how certain medicines may become very useful for irregularities which require a return to cyclic order - utilizing the harmonies of rhythm.

Potato Consumption & Materialistic Thinking

"A...far reaching example, frequently emphasized by Rudolf Steiner is related to potato consumption which has spread and increased enormously in the last few centuries. Steiner explains: "The inner thinking of Europe has been regressing since the moment potato consumption took hold" - now [over] two hundred years. The potato has effects on man opposite to those of sugar, because "it has no relation to the spiritual."
-The Dynamics of Nutrition: The Impulse of Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science for a New Nutritional Hygiene, by Gerhard Schmidt

"The community of potato eaters, still significant in number today, will elicit completely different physical and psychological processes within themselves, which can even be transmitted to their offspring by inheritance. If parents eat too many potatoes, then a human germ develops in which the "soul-spiritual is not properly in the physical body."

Rudolf Steiner actually drew a parallel between increasing potato consumption in the last centuries and a progressively materialistic way of thinking in the European people.

-Quotes from Rudolf Steiner, Lectures to Workers, Dornach, 22nd September 1923

"The potato takes little care of lung and heart. It reaches the head, but only, as I said, the lower head, not the upper head. It does go into the lower head, where one thinks and exercises critical faculties. Therefore, you can see, in earlier times there were fewer journalists. There was no printing industry yet. Think of the amount of thought expended daily in this world in our time, just to bring the newspapers out! All that thinking, it is much too much, it is not at all necessary — and we have to thank the potato diet for that! Because a person who eats potatoes is constantly stimulated to think. He can't do anything but think. That's why his lungs and his heart become weak. Tuberculosis, lung tuberculosis, did not become widespread until the potato diet was introduced. And the weakest human beings are those living in regions where almost nothing else is grown but potatoes, where the people live on potatoes." 

-Rudolf Steiner, Lecture 2, Nutrition and Health.

It is hardly likely that you will ever have listened to sermons on subjects like the respective merits of potatoes or wheat as food! At any rate it will not be your experience that most clergymen think it important to preach about the effect of rye or wheat upon health. They attach no importance to these matters because in their opinion they are not sacred. To pray or to expound the Gospels, that and that alone is sacred according to their way of thinking. ... 

But the Divine is at work in the whole of nature, not only when men pray or converse on the subject of Holy Writ. The Spiritual is an active power in nature. If man prevents the Spiritual from having access to his head because by eating potato food to excess he gives the head too much to do ... well, he may pray, but it will be to no purpose because he has been sidetracked from the Spiritual. That too is something that escapes notice. God did not find the earth as a clod out of which all things were then made; the Divine Power is active everywhere, in every single particle, and it is there that we must seek for its manifestations. But when this is done, the theologians accuse us of materialism!

-Rudolf Steiner
Here is a great alternative to potatoes:

From Hannah Townsend’s review of Ralf Roessner’s book The Light Root in the Autumn 2014 issue of New View magazine (article not online).

To quote from Hannah’s review:

“Rudolf Steiner was apparently just about to depart from the gathering at Koberwitz where he had been giving the course of lectures that would lay the foundation for the development of biodynamic agriculture.....

"As Steiner waited for his car to arrive to take him to the train station, two of the course participants came up to him with a question. They wanted to know whether, if all the indications that he had given were followed, it would be enough to raise the quality of nutrition to give adequate spiritual nourishment for our times. The answer that Steiner gave seems to have been both surprising and direct:

‘It will not be sufficient, even in the most favourable circumstances,’ he said. ‘What should be done is to cultivate Dioscorea batatas in Europe so that it can take over from the potato as the staple diet…’ ”