Resurrection

Divine Memory

Nov 232012

To forget is to dismiss the things which do not interest us to the darkness of latent memory; and to recall things is to call anew to active ego consciousness – because t hey interest us – from the same darkness of latent memory. It goes without saying that it is not the images and concepts which come to birth when we recall them, or perish when we forget them; rather, they are present in our mind or are removed from it.

to be endowed with good ‘concentration’, therefore amounts tot he faculty of chasing away swiftly and completely all images and concepts which are not useful for action. It is mastery of the art of forgetting.

To be endowed with ‘good memory’, in contrast, signifies mastery of the mechanism of recall – of that which renders present the images and concepts which one needs. It is mastery of the art of recalling.

There is therefore a continual coming and going between ordinary consciousness of the waking state (or cerebral consciousness) and the domain of memory. Each ‘going’ corresponds to the action of falling asleep or dying. Each ‘coming’ corresponds to awakening or resurrection. Every representation that goes from the field of cerebral consciousness experiences an analogous fate to that stated by the saying: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep…Lazarus is dead.” And every representation that one recalls has a fate analogous to that which took place when Jesus cried with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come out!

Memory therefore supplies us with a key of analogy which allows intelligence not to remain simply taken aback in the face of the problem of resurrection. It renders it intelligible. Indeed, the analogy between the ‘loud voice’ which called Lazarus to life and the inner effort which evokes a memory reveals, mutatis mutandis, the essence of the magic of Jesus’ ‘loud voice’ and of the ‘sound of the trumpet’ of the Angel of the resurrection – as the following shows.

Experience teaches us that we easily forget, and recall with difficulty, the things to which we attach no value – that we do not love. One forgets what one does not love and one never forgets what one loves. It is love which gives us the power to recall at any desired moment the things that our hearts preserve ‘warm’. Indifference, in contrast, makes one forget everything.

It is the same with the ‘awaking and resurrection of the dead’. Here it is not cosmic indifference (what we call ‘matter’) which will effect anything, but rather it is cosmic love (what we call ‘spirit’)which will accomplish the magical act of resurrection, ie, the reintegration of an inseparable unity – the unity of the spirit, soul and body – not by way of birth (reincarnation) but by way of the magical act of divine memory. What can one say about divine memory?

Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XX, The Judgement

Jundi-Shapur

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Sep 232012

The Catholic Church, strongly influenced by the remains of the impulse emanating from Jundi-Shapur, decreed as a dogma at the Eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in AD 869 that men were not to believe in the spirit. … This was because the Church did not desire that everybody should be enlightened about the Mystery of Golgotha, but that it should be kept hidden. In the year AD 869, belief in the spirit was abolished by the Catholic Church.

The dogma then decreed was to the effect that men must not believe in man as spirit, but only as body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual qualities. Thus the truth that man is a being of body, soul and spirit was abolished by the Catholic Church, acting directly under the influence of the impulse of Jundi-Shapur. History often presents a different spectacle from the one in which it is presented for the ordinary use of those whom one party or another would like to control.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha, however, man was related more closely to the spirit. Consequently there are two forces in him: the force whereby in his soul he is allied to death, and the force which liberates him from death and leads him inwardly to the spirit.

When we can experience powerlessness and recovery from it, the benediction of actual relationship with Christ Jesus is vouchsafed to us. For this experience is the recovery of what we experienced in the spiritual world hundreds of years before our birth. We must seek here, on the physical plane, for its mirror-image in the soul. Seek within yourselves and you will discover the powerlessness! Seek, and you will find, after the experience of powerlessness, the redemption from it, the resurrection of the soul to the spirit….

The Christ experience does not consist of the unitary realisation of the Divine, but of the twofold experience of the death in the soul wrought by the body and the resurrection of the soul wrought by the spirit. A man who can say that he feels not only the Divine within him — as mystical theosophists eloquently assert — but can speak of the two experiences — of powerlessness and the resurrection from it — such a man is speaking of the true Christ experience

Rudolf Steiner, How do I find the Christ

Immanence of Christ in human consciousness

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Aug 082012

The manifestation of Christ’s resurrection in the human soul was the Pentecost. That event is the primal phenomenon of the sixth cultural epoch, which the Apocalypse calls the ‘church of Philadelphia’.

The community of Pentecost was no longer a circle surrounding Jesus Christ, but now a circle from which Christ revealed himself to the outer world. The language he used to reveal himself was such that people of all nationalities were able to understand.

The two main characteristics of the philadelphian spiritual culture are the immanence of Christ in human consciousness and the cosmopolitan community that arises from that consciousness. In this sense, the sixth cultural epoch can be called the epoch of Pentecost.

This name acquires even more meaning because the consciousness that leads to the culture of that time must stand the test of ‘keeping the word’ and ‘not denying the name of Christ’ (3:8); that is, much be concerned with the word of Christ and with a relationship to his being as these become realities in the Pentecost.

What was given then as a ‘dispensation of grace’, however, must now be earned or submitted to before the cultural epoch of the spirit self can be realised. We must study the path that leads from the consciousness soul to the spirit self (manas) in order to understand the meaning of ‘keeping my word’ and ‘not denying my name’.

When it comes to understanding ideas, the point is not to spin them into a system of logic, but to root them firmly in the spiritual moral organism of Christ’s cosmic work. In the Apocalypse, such work is called the ‘name of Christ’ and ‘not denying’ his ‘name’ is the soul attitude that accepts as true only ideas indebted not just to logic, but also always to the moral forces.

Not to deny the ‘name’ is moral logic, just as amoral, formal knowledge is itself a denial of the name of Christ, since it excludes the voice of goodness from the realm of knowing.

Valentin Tomberg, Christ and Sophia, Letters to Future Churches

Divine Memory

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May 302012

The ‘last things’ – or the spiritual horizon of humanity – are not the same for the whole of humanity. For some everything finishes with the death of the individual and with the complete dissipation – maximum entropy – of the warmth of the universe.

For others there is a ‘beyond’, an individual existence after death and an existence of a non-material universe after the end of the world. For still others there is not only spiritual life after death for the individual but also his return to terrestrial life – reincarnation – as well as cosmic reincarnation, ie, an alternation of states of manvantara and pralaya.

Others, again, see for the individual something beyond repeated incarnations, namely the state of supreme peace of union with the eternal universal Being (the state of nirvana). Lastly, there is a part of mankind whose existential horizon goes beyond not only post mortem existence and reincarnation, but also even beyond the peace of union with God – it is resurrection which constitutes their spiritual horizon.

It is in the Iranian and Judaeo-Christian spiritual currents, ie, in Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity – that the idea and ideal of resurrection have taken root.

Memory supplies us with a key of analogy which allows intelligence not to remain simply taken aback in the face of the problem of resurrection. it renders it intelligible. Indeed, the analogy between the ‘loud voice’ which called Lazarus to life and the inner effort which evokes a memory reveals, mutatis mutandis, the essence of the magic of Jesus’ ‘loud voice’ and of the ‘sound of the trumpet’ of the Angel of resurrection – as the following shows.

Experience teaches us that we easily forget, and recall with difficulty, the things to which we attach no value – that we do not love. One forgets what one does not love and one never forgets what one loves. It is love which gives us the power to recall at any desired moment the thing that our hearts preserve ‘warm’. Indifference, in contrast, makes one forget everything.

it is the same with the ‘awakening and resurrection’ of the dead’. Here it is not cosmic indifference (that we call ‘matter’) which will effect anything, but rather it is cosmic love (that we call ‘spirit’) which will accomplish the magical act of resurrection, ie, the reintegration of an inseparable unity – the unity of spirit, soul and body – not by way of birth (reincarnation) but by way of the magical act of divine memory.

Lazurus, come forth!

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Jan 222012

The resurrection within Christianity of the Hindu and Buddhist spiritual life, to which the church owes the arising of the whole monastic movement and the founding of religious orders in late antiquity, as not the last event of its kind in churh history.

Others followed according to the law that all truth and love of the past that have timeless values are called back out of the realms of forgetting, sleep and death into the daylight of Christian spiritual life through the call that from age to age reminds, rouses and awakens.

Through this call sounding forth from Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, saying ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ – the most noble and valuable aspects of pagan antiquity were also resurrected.

The Platonic and Aristotelian treasury of thought arose radiant in transfigured form and inspired great spirits of the church to take up the philosophia perennis, in which lay the task of lifting up the chalice of pure human thinking and sacrificial offering to divine revelation.

For this was the essential aim of the scholastics: the raising up of the chalice of crystal clear human thinking upon the altar of Godhead – the Godhead manifesting in divine revelation.

Lazurus, come forth!, Valentin Tomberg

A vestige of this night

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Jan 082012

And to be sure, the Resurrection is a victory, but it is at the same time the emergence out of this night into the world that has no desire to understand.

Once again, the Lord enters into his relationship, not only with the Mother, but also with the disciples, who constantly fail to understand and constantly must be converted anew.

Of course, the Lord now carries the mark of the Resurrection, but the sign of the night remains, and at no time will the Mother forget how it looked beneath the Cross. And John will never recover from it; he is the witness, he knows what he saw.

And the others know at least what they heard about it. All of them carry in themselves a vestige of this night. And the fact that the Lord then ascends into heaven and sends out the Spirit and makes the disciples into true apostles, who are permitted to die as martyrs in the manner established by God, does not free them from the fact that the Son died on the Cross for them, it does not free them from this night and from the contemplation of this night.

They remain – and every believer and person at prayer remains – encompassed by the night, by a world that is not of this world, by a fulfillment that goes beyond any promise, by a mystery that does not belong to them, but to God alone.

Since the Son is both God and man at once, the contemplation of his essence and life can move in both spheres; but it must always pass from one over into the other. Neither sphere may be cut short on account of the other.

Adrienne von Speyr, Light and Images

Time Atomic

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Apr 232011

‘Then her great, beloved brother
Smiled a little, charmed sweet Isis.
‘Sister, bride, my only lover,
Let this not be made a crisis’.

‘‘Let the depths of Dionysus
Hidden stay; and so his mystery
Shall become a sign of our love
So he shall preserve our History.

‘‘All who preach the resurrection,
All who speak of life, eternal,
All who walk in love’s reflection,
They shall keep the faith, diurnal.

‘‘Orpheus shall keep with thee
A vision of the deepest mystery.
As we’ll share the vine shall Bacchus
Pass the knowledge down through history.’

Looking through the space for Hermes,

Author of a timeless vision,

King of Egypt clicks his fingers,

ummons then a great revision:

‘‘Thoth the Ancient – Time Atomic –
Step beyond the cloak of Hades.
You have made a greater promise;
Once, upon a time, you made it.

‘Show me now the emerald shining
Deep within your mind – your greatness -
Show my wife the sacred Ibis,
Let us all forget our lateness.’

Hermes gives himself a second
And a third, so time is taken -
Rather than make haste, unreckoned -
Pauses while the epochs waken.

The Vernal Lamb

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Apr 232011

‘‘Come, fair queen, the virgin Isis,
Wife of mine who loves me tender,
One who made me whole, my goddess,
She who is my soul defender.

‘‘Where the sun doth shine at midnight,
In a place of cryptic splendour,
Let the mage of mathematics
Make an early learning centre.

‘‘In my belt are three magicians
Come to praise a child, the true king,
In whose arms the vernal lamb lies.
Spring has come; the falcon Prince flies.

‘‘‘Royal Stars – Antares, West light;
Formalhaut of Northern waters;
Aldebaran, Bull’s Eye, East Side;
Regulus, the Solstice, South sight -

‘‘Cross in space, the throne upholding.
Fix for Earth the four directions.
Keep in place the sign, the sun’s King.
All uphold the resurrection.

‘‘Let the rainbow – seven colours -
Born of light, be veils for Isis.
Maiden bright, a Holy Mother,
Star more bright than any other.

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Dec 022010

The resurrection is the final victory not only over death (as the separation of the soul from the body) but also over sleep (as the separation of the soul from the world of action) and over forgetfulness (as the separation of consciousness from the world of past memories).

This means to say that resurrection signifies not only the re-establishment of the integral unity of the spirit, soul and body of the human being, but also the uninterrupted continuity of his activity and the uninterrupted continuity of his consciousness – the whole of his memory.

Now, the emergence of complete memory of the entire past is equivalent, for consciousness, to the last judgement, where the whole past is reviewed in the light of conscience. It is conscience itself, the soul itself, which will judge itself.

And it will then find that it is guilty under all the headings of accusation of divine law which live in the completely awakened conscience. And there will not be a single soul that will justify itself before its own awakened conscience. It is not authorised to justify itself. Justification lies in the realm of the Divine and it is only the Divine that is authorised to justify.

Thus, there will at first be the realisation of the complete equality of all members of the human community in the consciouness of their errors and their faults. This consciousness will be common to great initiates, high priests, heads of nations, and simple workers in the diverse domains of human effort in the past.

This great experience to come of human equality – in the light of completely awakened conscience – is prefigured in the penitential rite of the Mass, during the prayer at the foot of the altar, where priest and congregation say together: Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis, fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Unknown author, Meditations on the Tarot, Letter XX, The Judgement

Chaos in the elemental world

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Jun 232010

When Christ appeared twenty centuries ago, he came for the benefit of humanity. His descent took place vertically in the sphere of human existence. The consciousness of nature, however, is on a horizontal plane. Consequently, the effects of the Mystery of Golgotha are accessible to nature only through human beings.

The world of nature does not experience the being of Christ directly, and, because of this, a certain sense of hopelessness is becoming stronger for nature. We can say that humankind is the destiny of nature; we must bring salvation to the world of nature, because we have the moral connection with the spiritual world. But nature has a dynamic connection with the spiritual world; it must obey the world of spirit.

Nature can experience the warmth that comes from the sun, but not the moral warmth, which can come only from human beings. Unfortunately, this does not happen. Because of this, misfortune occurs again and again in the elemental world.

The Bible mentions the primordial chaos (tohu wa bohu). The Genesis of Modes portrays the earth’s becoming, particularly from the view of the elemental world. At that time, the beings of nature, the animals, were brought before human beings, who gave them names. Through this act, a certain influence proceeded from humankind toward the beings of nature, and this determined their karma; human beings determined nature’s karma.

Chaos is again arriving in the elemental world. It is the duty of humankind to return order into that chaos by using moral powers.

The etheric return of Christ will signal a restoration of hope for nature; it will be a sign of resurrection for nature….Much is taking place, and anyone who is truly paying attention can see this.

Valentin Tomberg, Christ’s return in the etheric