RS about atheism
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Mon Feb 23, 2004 4:12 pm
Subject: RS about atheism
"Not to find the Father
god, to be an atheist, is an illness. Not to find the Son God,
the Christ, is a misfortune."
- "The Mission of the
Archangel Michael", Dornach 28th November, 1919, GA 194:
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Lectures/MissMich/19191128p01.html
Here is a more comprehensive excerpt where
the above quote is included:
It was impossible for the
ancient Greeks who retained the remnants of ancient Mystery culture
to be an atheist ­ although it happened in a few abnormal
cases, but not to the degree it occurs today. Atheism has only
arisen in more recent times, at least in its radical form. For
the Greek who was really imbued with dialectics felt the Divine
holding sway in thinking, even in thinking void of content.
If we know this and then look
upon the appearance of atheism, upon the complete denial of the
Divine, we shall find the reason for this atheism. Only those
human beings, my dear friends ­ naturally, we need the methods
of spiritual science in order to recognize this ­ only those
human beings are atheists in whose organism something is organically
disturbed. To be sure, this may lie in very delicate structural
conditions, but it is a fact that atheism is in reality a disease.
This is the first thing we
have to hold fast: atheism is a disease. For, if our organism
is completely healthy, the harmonious functioning of its various
members will bring it about that we ourselves sense our origin
from the Divine ­ ex deo nascimur.
The second point, to be sure,
is something different. Man may sense the Divine but may have
no possibility to sense the Christ. In this respect we do not
differentiate carefully enough today. We are satisfied with words,
also in other spheres. For, if we test today the actual spiritual
content of the view of many human beings of the occident and
are not influenced by their words ­ they say they agree with
Christian precepts, they believe in the freedom of the will,
and so forth ­ we shall find that the whole configuration
of their thinking contradicts what they thus express. Only through
their participation in cultural life have they become accustomed
to speak of Christ, of freedom, and so forth. In reality, my
dear friends, a great number of human beings living among us
are nothing but Turks; for the content of their faith is the
same as the fatalistic content of faith of the Mohammedans ­
although this fatalism is often described as a necessity of nature.
Mohammedanism is much more prevalent than we think. If we do
not focus our attention upon the words but upon the spirit-soul
content, we shall find that many Christians are Turks. They call
themselves “Christians” even though they cannot find
the transition from the God they sense to the Christ.
I only need to draw your attention
to the classical example of a modern theologian, Adolf Harnack,
who wrote the book, Wesen des Christentums. {Essence of Christianity.}
Please, make the following test: scratch out in this book the
name of Christ wherever it occurs and replace it by the name
of God, this will change nothing in the content of this book.
There is no necessity that what this man states should refer
to the Christ. What he states refers to the general Father god
who lies at the foundation of the world. There is no need at
all that he should refer to the Christ with what he states. Wherever
he proves something it is externally and internally untrue as
he borrows the various communications from the Gospels. In the
way he elaborates these communications there can be seen no reason
whatsoever for connecting them with the Christ. We must acquire
the possibility of conceiving of the Christ in such a way that
we do not identify Him with the Father god. Many of the modern
evangelical theologians are no longer able to differentiate between
the general concept of God and the concept of the Christ. To
be unable to find the Christ in life is a different matter from
being unable to find the Father God ­ You know that it is
not here a matter of doubting the Divinity of the Christ. It
is a matter of clear differentiation, in the sphere of the Divine,
between the Father God and the Christ God. This comes to expression
in the soul of man. Not to find God the Father is a disease;
not to find the Christ is a misfortune. For the human being is
so connected with the Christ as to be inwardly dependent upon
this connection. He is, however, also dependent upon that which
has taken place as a historical event. He must find a connection
with the Christ here upon earth, in external life. If he does
not find it is a misfortune. Not to find the Father god, to be
an atheist, is an illness. Not to find the Son God, the Christ,
is a misfortune.
And what does it mean if we
do not find the Spirit? To be unable to take hold of one's own
spirituality in order to find the connection of one's own spirituality
with the spirituality of the world signifies mental debility;
not to acknowledge the Spirit is a deficiency of mind, a psychic
imbecility.
Please remember these three
deficiencies of the human soul constitution. Then we shall e
able to continue tomorrow in the right way. Remember what I have
told you today about the three kinds of consciousness; remember
that it is a disease if we are an atheist, if we do not find
the God out of whom we are born and whom we must find if we possess
a completely sound organism; that it is a misfortune if we do
not find the Christ; that it is a psychic deficiency if we do
not find the Spirit.
This is also the way in which
the paths that lead man to the Trinity differ from one another.
It will become more and more necessary for mankind to enter into
these concrete facts of soul life and not to remain stuck in
general, nebulous notions. People are specially inclined today
toward these nebulous notions. To replace this inclination by
the inclination to enter into concrete facts of soul life is
an essential task of our age.
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: holderlin66
Date: Mon Feb 23, 2004 5:18 pm
Subject: Re: RS about atheism
--- In anthroposophy_tomorrow@yahoogroups.com,
Tarjei Straume wrote:
And what does it mean if
we do not find the Spirit? To be unable to take hold of one's
own spirituality in order to find the connection of one's own
spirituality with the spirituality of the world signifies mental
debility; not to acknowledge the Spirit is a deficiency of mind,
a psychic imbecility.
Please remember these three
deficiencies of the human soul constitution. Then we shall e
able to continue tomorrow in the right way. Remember what I have
told you today about the three kinds of consciousness; remember
that it is a disease if we are an atheist, if we do not find
the God out of whom we are born and whom we must find if we possess
a completely sound organism; that it is a misfortune if we do
not find the Christ; that it is a psychic deficiency if we do
not find the Spirit.
R.S.
"Consider what people
have been learning for quite a long time now and what they think
it right to instill into children; consider what is accepted
as the basis of modern education — all this should not be
judged in accordance with the views of someone who, believing
he is very clever, says he understands these things and knows
they are entirely correct. No, all this should be judged in accordance
with how it influences and fructifies the soul, and in terms
of the impressions it produces on the soul.
And when a person becomes
cleverer and cleverer, in the sense in which it is fashionable
to call people clever to-day, he develops in his soul certain
forces which in this incarnation may make him very well able
to dominate the conversation in circles wedded to materialistic
or monistic ideas; but then certain vital forces necessary for
the human organism are worn away. And when such a person has
taken into himself only these typical dregs of modern education,
in his next incarnation he will lack the forces that are required
for properly building up the human organism. The "cleverer"
a person is by the standards of the time we are now facing and
the closer his intellectual attunement to it, the more of an
imbecile will he be in a later incarnation."
Bradford comments;
Critical problems of the Intellectual Soul,
speaking to those who understand soul strata, soul structure
and soul development, have arisen very clearly before us. It
is a good time to evaluate carefully in a Goethean manner, how
we observe, when such opportunity presents itself, living soul
conditions. So here we enter into a very living relation to the
problems of the Intellectual Soul Development in this our 5th
post Atlantean epoch. Here we encounter, in ourselves, A-Typical
problems that are normally hidden. But when opportunity arises
for us to study the problems of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch
carefully we should.
http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Lectures/19130207p01.html
R.S.
"Let us take an Initiate
of later times when, having freed his ego and astral body from
his physical and. etheric bodies and come forth from them, he
looked down at them from outside, and let us picture what he
saw in them. He saw something which could be very disturbing,
if he had not learnt to understand it thoroughly. And he still
sees it today. The physical and etheric bodies have woven into
them something which flows through them like streams or strands
running in various directions. As the nerve fibres run through
the physical body, so is there woven into the physical body something
finer than the nerves, of which occult sight reports: That is
dead — so dead that there really is something like a piece
of dead substance in the human body.
"It is now condemned
to be dead throughout the time between birth and death, but during
the Eastern period of human evolution it was still living. Yes,
one has the experience that in human bodies there is something
dead which once was alive. And one sets out to discover what
it really is. "Dead" is to be understood here in a
relative sense; the dead part is indeed stimulated by its environment,
but there are tendencies and currents in the human body which,
in comparison with the life that animates it, have always a disposition
toward death. We investigate how this has come about, and we
find that the origin of it is as follows.
"Once in ancient times
men's souls possessed a certain faculty of clairvoyance, and
in the latter part of the Egyptian-Chaldaic civilisation this
clairvoyance still existed to such a degree that a man, when
gazing into the starry heavens, saw not merely the physical stars
but also the spiritual beings united with them. And so, when
in the intermediate state between waking and sleeping the human
soul looked out into the universe and saw something spiritual,
the impression received was different from the impressions made
upon the human soul to-day, when people study science in the
modern way or are living mostly in the ordinary consciousness
of the times.
"But all the souls living
and embodied to-day were also incarnated in the Egyptian-Chaldaic
epoch. All the souls present here to-day once looked out from
their bodies into starry space, took part in the spiritual life
of the universe and received its impressions. This sank into
our souls and became an intrinsic part of them. All the souls
of to-day once looked out into the universe and received spiritual
impressions in the same way as they now receive impressions of
colours and sounds.
"It is all there still,
in the depth of our souls, and the souls created their bodies
in accordance with it. But our souls have lost remembrance of
it! For modern consciousness it is no longer present in the souls
of men. And that which corresponds to the old up- building forces
which the souls used to receive, cannot now build upon the body,
with the result that the corresponding part of the physical and
etheric bodies remains lifeless.
"If nothing else were
to happen, if men went on living merely with those sciences which
are concerned with the outer physical world, then men would deteriorate
more and more, because their souls have forgotten those former
impressions of the spiritual world which go with the vivifying
and building up of the physical and etheric bodies.
"That is what the candidate
for Initiation sees to-day. And he can say to himself: Souls
are thirsting to vitalise something in the physical and etheric
bodies which they have to abandon as lifeless because the impressions
they once absorbed do not penetrate into modern consciousness.
This is the disturbing impression received to- day by the candidate
for Initiation.
"Thus there is something
in man that is withdrawn from the sovereignty of the soul. I
beg that you will take these words with all earnestness; for
a characteristic of modern man is that something in his nature
is withdrawn from the rule of the soul, something that is dead
in contrast with the life of the organism that surrounds it.
And by working upon this dead part, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic
forces exercise on man a very great influence in a quite special
way.
"While on the one hand
men can acquire more and more freedom, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic
forces insinuate themselves precisely into that part of the organism
which has been withdrawn from the sovereignty of the soul. That
is why so many people in modern times feel (and quite rightly
say they feel) as if there were two souls dwelling within their
breast, and as if one wanted to tear itself away from the other."
(snip)
"One needs to learn what
has to be poured into the still living part of the soul in order
to become master of the part of the physical body that has died,
and the part of the soul that has become unconscious.
"In fact, there was in
Goethe something that can be called, in a crude sense, a double
nature. To a superficial view the two sides can hardly be brought
into harmony. On the one hand there is the great, high-minded
soul who could bring forth certain portions of the second part
of Faust, and gave expression to many deep secrets of human nature
in the Fairy-Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily;
and one would like to forget everything one knows from biographies
of Goethe and pay homage only to the soul who was capable of
such achievements.
"On the other side there
,appears in Goethe, tormenting him and often causing him pangs
of conscience, his other nature, "human, all- too-human",
in many respects. In earlier times the two natures of man were
not so widely separate in their development; they could not diverge
in this way. A person with a biography comparable with Goethe's
could not rise to such heights as are revealed in certain passages
of the second part of Faust or in the Fairy-Story of the Green
Snake and the Beautiful Lily, and at the same time be so divided
in his soul. That was not possible in earlier times.
"It has become possible
only in later days, because there now exists in human nature
something we have already spoken of — the part of the soul
that has become unconscious, and the part of the organism that
has died. The part that has remained alive can be so elevated
and purified that the impulse which leads on to the Fairy-Story
of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily; can be nurtured there,
while the other part may remain exposed to the attacks of the
outer world.
"And because the forces
described are able to make their abode there, circumstances may
arise in which there is very little agreement with the higher
ego of the person.
"It should be understood
that the soul living in Goethe had once belonged to an Egyptian
Initiate, and had then lived in Greece as a sculptor and a disciple
of philosophy; then, between this Greek incarnation and the one
as Goethe, there comes an incarnation (probably only one) which
I have not yet been able to find. If we keep this in mind, we
can see how a soul who in former incarnations could rule the
entire man can be led downwards, and then has to relinquish a
part of the total human nature, which then lies open to the influence
of evil forces.
"That is what is mysterious
and so hard to understand in a nature such as Goethe's; but by
the same token it brings to light many hidden aspects of the
human soul in modern times. Everything brought about by the duality
of human nature lays hold, in the first place, of the Intellectual
Soul, and the Intellectual Soul divides into those "two
souls", whereof one can sink fairly deeply into matter and
the other can rise into the spiritual.
"...we must say that
in our time and on into the far future there will still be many
natures similar to that of Goethe, persons who with one part
of their being rise up into the heights, while with the other
part they are connected with the "human, all-too-human".
Persons who in earlier incarnations showed no sign of these peculiarities,
but on the contrary displayed a certain harmony between the outer
and the inner, may enter fresh incarnations in which a deep disharmony
can show itself between the external and the inner organisation.
"Those who know the secrets
of human incarnations will not feel confused in face of this
disharmony. For in proportion as these things increase, the human
faculty of judgment grows also, so that the old principle of
authority comes to an end. Hence there will be an ever more insistent
call to test the fruits of the Mysteries."
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