Lecture II
St. John of the Cross
4th January, 1919
It is perhaps important
and especially a propos where the kind of considerations now in point
are concerned, to look back on many things connected in former times
with some particular spiritual stream. For you have seen that it is
a question of spiritual events that lie at the basis of the physical
world, making it necessary at present for man to take a new standpoint
in relation to the whole understanding of his connection with the world
and with the rest of mankind. Yesterday we pointed out how much must
be differently understood which, apparently well founded, shines forth
here and there into the spiritual life of mankind. You must really be
clear, my dear friends, that when impulses founded in this way are taken
seriously then, as life goes at the present time, opposition arises
against this seriousness and against these impulses generally, the opposition
of hate, the opposition of envy, of fear, which proceed from the pettiness
of men and so on. Only a deep understanding of things can help to clear
away the many hindrances to which the adherent of such a spiritual revolution
is exposed. For this deep understanding is well adapted to strengthen
the soul, so that this soul is a match for much that always makes itself
felt precisely in opposition to the most earnest endeavours in world
activity. And so we wish today to enlarge in many ways upon what was
said yesterday.
I pointed out yesterday
how man, just by standing on the ground of Spiritual Science, can be
absolutely objective towards other spiritual streams, how he certainly
has no need to misjudge other spiritual streams. From this standpoint
I said that on certain points, compared with many of the statements
made today by philosophers and theologians outside the Church, through
their training the representatives of the Catholic clergy are superior.
Just at present we live at a time in which everyone wishing to take
the questions concerning a world-conception seriously should come to
an understanding about these things. The different currents of world-conception
and the social currents of the present day both require this. Without
very fundamental observation, the temptations arising from the scholarly
approach cannot be properly fathomed, cannot be recognised in their
actual lack of significance in the light of the greater demands of the
present. The temptation to fall in with the objections of scholarly
opponents of the endeavours of Spiritual scientists today is not to
be underrated. It is true that if men have sufficient power of discriminations
if they would bestir themselves to go into the facts concerning the
basis of Spiritual Science, the broad base on which it stands, they
would be less exposed to this temptation. But such power of discrimination
is rare. What as Spiritual Science, according to how we understand it,
wishes to join in with the world current accounts for many kinds of
attacks, including those, for example. from the standpoint of the Catholic
faith. It is necessary to grasp such things at this time because in
the chaos that is about to break upon us, unfortunately far too little
appreciated, far too little heeded by men—in this chaos many different
things of a disconcerting nature will proceed from what is contained
in the Catholic doctrine.
Now today I should like
to make you familiar with the kind of judgment about some particular
spiritual scientist that an orthodox Catholic may pronounce if he has
reason to assume this spiritual scientist to be an unintelligent reader
or listener. One of the most common objections against what we here
mean by Spiritual Science is its being pantheistic. One of the chief
objections made, for example, in the articles by the Jesuit, Zimmermann,
in the publication “Voices of the Time” is this—that
Spiritual Science is Pantheism.
You know how often I have
spoken about this point. You know how I have said that the only wad
of overcoming this commonplace Pantheism, so dominant in many places
today, is to put in its place the concrete spiritual world of which
Spiritual Science speaks. It is naturally not intended, on the part
of those from whom the objections come, to go deeply into the truth;
taking into account all the prejudice belonging to certain religious
partisanship, their efforts go much more in the direction of bringing
forward what has a definite suggestive or hypnotic effect. Pantheism
is indeed the view that in everything spread out in Nature, spread out
anywhere in the phenomenal world, there lives the divine, that, in a
way, nature herself is to be looked upon as direct revelation of the
divine. It is just this which I have always attacked—this watered-down
Pantheism that is forever talking of how behind the outspread world
of phenomena there is spirit, spirit, spirit. I have always called your
attention to how this is much the same as refusing on the physical plane
to recognise tulips, roses or lilies as anything but plants, plants,
plants. Spiritual Science goes straight to the individual, concrete
spiritual beings and does not speak in the pantheistic general may about
the spirit. Another characteristic of Pantheism lies in saying: Pantheism
has no wish to separate outer nature from the divine spiritual but would
mingle both together. Now, my dear friends, one must indeed be a Jesuit
to make it appear that it is believed where the actual ranks of the
beings of the higher hierarchies are spoken of in this way as being
individualised among themselves and having a personal and superpersonal
existence in themselves—it is believed that there can be any question
of the mingling of this hierarchical world as a whole with external
nature. Whoever can think in accordance with reality will be unable
to make anything at all of the accusation of Pantheism, where such a
description of the world of the hierarchies, and the connection of the
individual beings of the hierarchies with nature, is concerned.
There is a further thing
that is quite unique and is given particular prominence in the articles
from “Voices of the Time”, namely, that in sir Spiritual
Science it is said—and this is supposed to be heretical in the
Catholic churd—that the divine is living in man's soul, that the
soul of man is itself a drop in the ocean of this divine. Such and similar
utterances are collected there and established as heresies within the
Catholic confession.
Thus it is shown how the
teaching that a divinity should live immediately in the soul is heretical
and to be condemned. Now faced with this a reasonable man might say:
There is no need for you to draw my attention to such foolishness. But,
my dear friends, that is not important, that is not the question. But
it must be a matter of these things playing a real part in the world,
that where men would deceive themselves these things should play a really
powerful part, and that we must already be alive to such things. But
they are connected with something besides. And now we will turn our
attention from any particular attack that has been made. Let us imagine
a man, a Jesuit, who has either been made apathetic where his own reflections
are concerned or consciously lives in them—what I mean is, he
knows that for himself he has no need to reflect about things but has
only to judge the faithful according to the sense of the officially
recognised creed. For once we will look at the kind of pronouncements
such a man can make about the path of Spiritual Science. I an simply
telling you here the average—I should not like to say opinion
for opinion does not meet the case, but average utterance of an official
representative of the Roman Catholic Church about the path of Spiritual
Science, as this would come from a modern believer.
He would perhaps say: The
Catholic Christian would not dare take such a path as the one recommended
by Spiritual Science for gaining insight into the supereensible. For
all the Church Fathers and every exponent of Church doctrine—the
cleric of today would perhaps say—condemn such a path. By such
a path man is supposed to acquire the special faculty of rising to the
supersensible world. That, however, is heresy, that should never be
an aim at all. All that may be striven for by an orthodox Catholic is
what their teachers of religious doctrine hold to be the legitimate
vision. This 'legitimate vision' is that the present day hall-marked
cleric of Rome considers valid. What does ne understand by it?
You will be able to form
a concept of what he understands by it when you distinguish between
two kinds of gifts which, in the sense of the orthodox Catholic Church,
man can receive as a believing Catholic. The one kind of gift is the
so-called gratiae grate detae, what is given through grace,
the supernatural gifts of grace, one might say the Greek charisms.
The other gifts are those which may be called the universal human gifts.
The gifts that ae out of the ordinary, the charisms are bestowed
by God in a way that is out of the ordinary upon men who are out of
the ordinary. The Maid of Orleans would perhaps be given as an example.
These gifts cannot be striven for, they are bestowed as special gifts
of grace upon outstanding men and may not be striven after, accouding
to the dictates of the Church. What may be striven for, however, is
a certain enhancement of the general life of the soul which does not
bring men to any extra-ordinary faculty but to a raising og the faculties
that are universal and human. Such a raising of universal human faculties
has nevertheless the effect—so says the Roman Catholic Church
today of making man capable of being permeated with the Holy Spirit.
Therefore this is what
we say: The ordinary mortal thinks something, feels something or does
something. According to the dictates of the Church, according to the
dictates of the State, he has in duty bound to do these things in a
certain ways with his ordinary mortal reflection he can endeavour to
perform his action in accordance with the Church, in accordance with
the State: in the opinion of the Church this is the same as being in
accordance with God. He may also notice, however, if in other things
he is an ordinary Catholic Christian, that the Holy Ghost often intervenes
in his acting, thinking, feeling, and that because the Holy Ghost is
working in him the practice of certain virtues becomes easy which otherwise
is difficult. This, however, may not be striven for in such a way that
man would go beyond the ordinary point of human endeavour, and develop
special faculties for penetrating to the supersensible worlds all striving
of such a kind is reprehensible.
Now here I have described
the objections an orthodox, hallmarked, Roman Catholic cleric would
make to what is found, for example, in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
and its Attainment. He would say: man strives for special faculties
that would place him in a position to unite himself in a certain way
with the spiritual world. But he may not do this. He must remain perfectly
passive until he notices that in his mind and soul there enter impulses
of the Holy Spirit. He may not bring about ax qualitative change in
his behaviour, only an enhancement, as it were, a facility in becoming
virtuous, a facility in other faculties exercised ter man on the external
physical plane.
You can read this kind
of thing today not only against our Sairitual Science but against all
man-made endeavours towards producing a human being who sees a spiritual
world ground him just as rhynical men with his physical senses, sees
around him a physical world. This is familiar even among those who believe
they are standing on the firm ground of Christian belief dictated by
Rome. And it in widely recognised that anyone thinking differently about
the things I have just been describing to you, is a heretic. In giving
such a description it must alters be made clear that these things still
have tremendous influence today upon millions of human beings. We must
not be so egoistic as to think that because one has ceased to believe
in thaw oneself (and this too is only a matter of belief) there is no
further need to worry. This is exactly what is such a pity today, particularly
where the social movement is in question, men are so egoistic that they
look only to the needs of their own soul and have no wish to extend
their gaze to what unites men, to what is permeating millions and millions
of men, as a drivinfr impulse which, when it then breaks forth, can
appear in the font we nee things now arising in the word, Today it is
necessary to be quite clear about the sources of these things and the
necessary attitude to take towards the things themselves.
Now these clerics stamped
with the mark of Rome as a rule appeal to the Fathers of the Church.
They go back to the Church Fathers of earlier centuries and from their
sayings take what they believe to be in harmony with all I have just
described. Now, naturally, I cannot read out to you for hours at a time
the doctrines of the Church Fathers; I should like, however, to draw
your attention to something in this direction, namely, the attitude
to these things that can be taken by man in this age of the consciousness
soul which began with the fifteenth century.
First, therefore, we must
keep in mind that the way into the spiritual world, as Spiritual Science
understands it, is held to be heretical; so says the modern cleric recognised
by orthodox Rome. In the second place we have to remember the accusation
against Spiritual Science—that it speaks oft man being able to
partake of the divine; this also is heretical, as once more stated today
by the Catholic cleric approved by Rome.
Let us be willing to look
for once rather more closely at what an outwardly—not inwardly
as we shall soon see—an outwardly well-reputed Church Father,
outwardly well-reputed also by Rome, says about a matter like the vision
of which I have previously given you a description. John of the Cross
[ Note 1 ], for example, speaks about what vision
should be for orthodox Catholic Christians who through this vision my
be said to get beyond the mere general belief of the Church and rise
to a kind of higher perception of the divinity pulsing through the world.
The Catholic Church today allows a man through vision to get beyond
purely general belief. But it forbids him to get as far as superphysical
faculties, that is, faculties leading into the super-physical world
in the same way as external senses lead into the world of the senses.
Now St. John of the Cross says: “The time has come (he is referring
to the time of vision) when the reflection and contemplation undertaken
previously by the ordinary powers of the soul should gradually cease,
when the soul sees itself bereft of its former enjoyments and palpable
delights.”
Thus St. John of the Cross
admits the state in which ordinary reflection is silenced, the reflection
by which man comes to terms with the things of the physical plane that
are perceived by the senses and understood by the intellect. He admits,
therefore, that man deprives himself ordinary contemplation which the
soul experiences in such contemplation and in such relation to external
nature ceases. This he admits.
Condemned to a state of
barrenness and aridity (he goes on to say) the soul can no longer deliberate
by means of the intellect.
Thus, by shutting off his
senses, by stopping the activity of his intellect, (and this is necessary
for the attainment of vision) man with his soul comes to a kind of barrenness
and aridity. By this he really comes to that participation in the divine,
held by St. John of the Cross to be permissible. When therefore the
soul no longer reflects with the intellect or even finds any physical
support, then the senses are no longer enriched. The spirit has the
advantage without receiving anything from the senses. It can thus be
seen that in this state, God is the principal agent.
Now let us go minutely into
this matter. St. John of the Cross says: Man can reflect, he can take
up outer perceptions through his senses, the soul can become passive,
the soul of itself does nothing further. Thereby God becomes the principal
agent in the soul. He Himself instructs the soul and gives it suitable
knowledge. In visions he presents the soul with wholly spiritual possessions,
more particularly knowledge and love of God, without the soul having
to reflect or enter upon other exercises which are no more possible
to it than formerly.
Take these words of the
canonised John of the Cross, one who is still recognised today in Rome
as an orthodox Father of the Church. Take these words first in relation
to the accusation of Pantheism recently made against Spiritual Science
for having spoken, for example, of the life of soul as being like a
drop in the ocean of the divine, therefore having itself a divine nature,
which today according to preaching and believing clerics is heresy.
But, my dear friends, St. John of the Cross describes the possibility
of coming to a passive condition of the soul when reflection and sense
perception are shut off and God is the chief agent, when, in his own
words, God presents the soul during vision with wholly spiritual benefits
Himself, instructing the soul, imparting to it an infusion of wisdom.
Now I ask you: What sense
have these words if it is said further that the human soul is never
brought into a real connection with the divine Being? What does the
statement mean that God Himself is alone active in the soul, when it
is supposed to be heretical to speak of men coming into direct, conscious
connection with God? When anyone says: the soul is related to the sum
of the divine-spiritual like a drop in the ocean that is of the same
nature an the water of the ocean as a whole—should this be understood
as unpermitted Pantheism if truth held good, and when at the same time
it is recognised, for example, that an orthodox Father of the Church,
St. John of the Cross, admits the possibility of God Himself taking
over the chief activity in the soul? To recognise how far truth is the
governing factor in official circles you must keep consciously in your
soul the following fact—that, at the sane time, such masters are
appealed to as St. John of the Cross who really teaches Pantheism (if
one is to call it Pantheism) in a far more marked way than Spiritual
Science. But this is held to be heresy! So, what is one to do? St. John
of the Cross is allowed to pass for a Church Father of authority, and
people are deceived by being told that Pantheism is forbidden. But this
means further that nobody may assert it to be heretical if it is said:
God is so directly present in the soul that the human soul can be conscious
of this!
No, my dear friends, people
today should not be loose in their thought; they dare not think loosely
if still greater misfortune is not to befall mankind. Today men should
be able consciously to keep the fact before them that it is possible
officially to convey this kind of misrepresentation of the truth throughout
the world.
Another utterance of St.
John of the Cross is: ”Priceless are the inner benefits imprinted
by this silent vision into the soul when it is unconscious. In short
they are nothing but the extraordinarily tender and most mysterious
anointing by the Holy Ghost who, as he is God, acts as God.”
“The Holy Ghost acts
as God immediately in the soul,” says St. John of the Cross (this
was Catholic doctrine at the time of John of the Cross before the age
of the consciousness soul) “And works upon, and inundates the
soul in secret with such a measure of riches, gifts and graces that
it is beyond description.”
And now I would ask you:
what are we supposed to understand when one of those who write about
heresy today says it is heretical to assert that God is identical with
the human soul!
This is the position of
things. But men are so little awake that they pay no attention today
to how the truth is 'managed'. in the final analysis it rests on man
having troubled so little about what has been given out as truth in
the world, that so fearful a catastrophe should have fallen upon it.
And it rests on this also that truth can be hated in the way it is still
hated at present by certain people.
Today in Rome the approved
clerics take particular pains constantly to emphasise that no difference
should be said to exist between the ordinary faculties the faithful
develop by belief, and the enhancement of belief that is expressed in
vision. No difference is supposed to exist or at the most a difference
of degree; for when a real difference is striven for, this is heretical.
But St. John of the Cross says: “The difference consists in man
seeing only darkly through belief, whereas with perception of the soul
theveils are removed from Him”. (He means God). At the time when
St. John of the Cross wrote these things down, before the age of the
consciousness soul, this was Catholic doctrine. What today holds sway
as Catholicism where these things are concerned is only the shadow and
no longer the light. It is really very beautiful how John of the Cross
describes for that age the mystical path of Knowledge, the way into
the tensible. He says: “The narrow portal is the night of the
senses. To pass through it, the soul has to get free from itself and
cast its shell.” At that time these things were said not in the
way that Rome speaks, but rather as Spiritual Science speaks. Spiritual
Science is the real continuation of the noble strivings to enter the
spiritual world as they appear in John of the Cross. But Spiritual Science
is the continuation suited for the present age: it reckons with the
progress of mankind
The narrow portal is the
night of the senses. To go through it the soul must become free of itself
and cast its shell. And by then taking beliefs which has nothing to
do with the senses, for its guide, the soul travels along the narrow
path to the second night—the night of the spirit.
And very beautiful is the
description by St. John of the Cross of the union with the divine-spiritual:
“The union is accomplished when the two wills, namely, the will
of the soul and the divine will, become one.”
It could not be more clearly
expressed that a divine will exists holding sway over the world, and
a will belonging to the soul, both of which merge in vision. But today
that is said to be heresy. Truth would be honestly upheld were it said:
Today St. John of the Cross is no longer a saint but a heretic. This
is what the cleric of Rome would be bound by duty to say if he wished
really to uphold his assertions.
Thus, St. John of the Cross
says that union is brought about by the two wills, that of the soul
and the divine will, becoming uniform, which means, when there is nothing
in the one will that is opposed by the other.
But then in the sphere of
the orthodox Roman Catholic clericalism it is definitely intended that
the path of individual knowledge should be barred to the mere believers
and also to the bumbler clerics. Today, therefore, while misrepresenting
people like John of the Cross, people such as John of the Cross are
constantly having attention drawn to them. It is pointed out that John
of the Cross would at that time have only allowed vision to be resorted
to if men first received three signs. The first of these signs by which
the soul felt itself summoned to vision, that is, to mystical vision,
would be inability to contemplate and to make use of imaginative powers,
antipathy towards outer contemplation. Thus when the soul feels loath
to receive sense-perceptions and to reflect, the time has arrived when
it should give itself up passively to the will of God.
The second sign would be
perceiving that one no longer desired to employ the imaginative power
of the senses in special outer and inner imaginations. Thus the first
sign is becoming tired, the second is ceasing to have desire. The third
inner sign would be the sensation of most intimate joy felt by the soul
in being alone, therefore without sense-perceptions and reflection,
but with attention focussed purely on the divine.
Now, my dear friends, you
will not read what is in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
intelligently without saying to yourself something which it is true,
is modified to suit the time, namely: with those three signs I can now
first find myself completely in harmony. There is absolutely nothing
against the three signs. One has only to meet them with understanding
in accordance with existing conditions. Let us then consider the three
signs, which John of the Cross sets up as signs on receiving which the
soul may turn to mystical vision, and thus to the path into the spiritual
supersensible world.
The first sign would be
the inability to contemplate and use one's imaginative power, reluctance
towards contemplation. We must remember how these words were written
before the age of the consciousness soul was fully established. Than
when the age of the consciousness soul is established man turns his
gaze upon nature as she is presented to him by modern science. But the
historical development of mankind must still be reckoned with. We have
to reckon that the men around St. John of the Cross were not soaked
and steeped in the conceptions that shower in all directions out of
modern natural science. St. John of the Cross had only those about him
who led a life of devotion to the Catholic Faith, who took their world
outlook from this Catholic Faith and were preached to from the pulpits
of Catholic Churches. One has to speak differently to such men from
how one speaks in the twentieth century to men soaked through by scientific
conceptions. For what does it actually mean to be permeated by a scientific
outlook? Whether they admit it or not all men are that nowadays down
to the last peasant in the last cottage, if he is not just an illiterate,
and even illiterates are permeated by scientific conceptions in the
form of their thought. Anyone who looks at the world today in the way
it must be looked at in the sense of the modern world, if he has a living
need for knowledge must, because scientific conceptions inform him only
about what is dead, must come to see that scientific observations make
it impossible for him to be satisfied with them. There arises exactly
what St. John of the Cross describes as the first sign. This sign is
produced by the scientific kind of conception. At the time he wrote
it was granted to few, today it is granted to all who even begin to
think. We must take note of this difference. Were St. John of the Cross
to write today he would say: Certainly at that time to those men who
felt incapable of observing things outwardly and of setting the imaginative
power in movement, mystic vision had to be recommended. Today everyone
given up to unprofitable conceptions of science, at a definite point
of time becomes capable of abandoning these conceptions, particularly
when in their souls they have a longing to find some kind of path to
the divine-spiritual. St. John of the Cross spoke to very few candidates;
today all thinking men are candidates. This exactly represents the progress
of mankind. Thus when man who lives in the scientific age feels this
longing today, it is the fulfilment of what St. John of the Cross accepted
as the granting of the sign.
The second sign is man's
perceiving that he no longer desires to use the imaginative power of
the senses for special outer or inner imaginations. My dear friends,
the moment science can do no more than afford man a view, a perception,
of how he has developed from what is animal, the soul in reality begins
to perceive that the desire has flown simply to observe in the outer
world what the senses reveal. For these reveal that man has descended
from the animals; one no longer has any desire in that direction. And
bemuse the time has come—formerly only for the few, now for all
thinking men—in the actual sense of John of the Cross one turns
to what is the idea behind evolution, that is, one turns to the path
into the spiritual world.
The third sign is the experience
of joy in the depths of the sea en feeling itself alone in its contemplation
of God. Now this inward joy will certainly be felt, as soon as they
find their way into the supersensible world, hy all who in this scientific
age have absorbed only those concepts offered them by science.
Once again we are faced
by the fact, the significant fact, that it is just our Spiritual Science
of today that so thoroughly fulfils what, for his time and in his sense,
was demanded by such a man as John of the Cross.
The stream of development
flows on and today fulfilment has a different appearance from What it
then had. There are other contributing factors. whoever looks today
with an honest sensefor truth at the evolution of mankind, will say
to himself: Because we have entered upon the scientific age, the feeling
for super-sensible knowledge must be kept alive in men. Such demands
as those of John of the Cross will be fulfilled without further adoif
man treads the path marked out, for example, in Knowledge of the
Higher Worlds and its Attainment. If he takes this way there will
be revealed to him not what was revealed at the time when St. John of
the Cross was writing, but there will be revealed to man what lies today
on the path of human evolution. At this point we can no longer speak
in the sense of pure positivist Christianityas did St. John of the Cross,
for the serious fact lies before us, referred to both yesterday and
many times previously that today in a certain respect man either consciously
or unconsciously passes by the Guardian of the Threshold. There he comes
to recognise that he must speak not only of a single divinity but of
the divine hierarchies. There he comes to know how Ahriman and Lucifer
are to be contrasted with the divine hierarchies. But, my dear friends,
just as the Catholic Church wanted to hold men back from accepting the
Copernican view until the year 1827, in a similar way it will want to
keep men from the supersensible knowledge that is a necessity for our
times. Why in this? It is because it does not wish men to be awake to
what is streaming into the evolution of mankind from spiritual heights.
It is true that there may
be some and there are some who with a certain honesty say the following:
Man today is not prepared to approach directly with his soul what comes
from the spiritual world; this only does him harm. Then when he meets
the Guardian of the Threshold he will not be able to distinguish illusion
from reality. Therefore let us give him a grizzly picture of setting
out on the spiritual path so that he runs no risk. - Such people do
not reckon with the necessities of the age, they reckon with a narrow,
limited conception, but it is possible that they are sincere. The majority,
however, of those who say things such as: “One dare not set out
today on the path to supersensible knowledge” mean something else.
From various directions a certain feeling of fear towards truth holds
the truth back from flowing in. This feeling of fear, this anxious feeling,
is present in the official upholders of widely extended religions; it
is also prevalent in certain societies of Freemseons and similar brotherhoods.
I have already drawn attention to this from another point of view. [
Note 2 ] There are, too, within these Societies some people who are
honest from their point of view, but the force with which they hold
up the progress of mankind is terribly strong. The following calls for
attention. There are those, particularly in the higher grades of these
Orders, who say: Man as a rule is not sufficiently mature to come to
an immediate knowledge of the spiritual world, therefore he should be
held back from direct entrance into the spiritual world. It is a forbidden
thing to enter and man shold only be permitted to get as far as the
practice of ceremonies prescribed in certain ancient rituals. He should
be referred to all manner of symbols which do not lead him directly
into the spiritual world but which as far as possible would indeed be
symbols of great antiquity. I have told you that in this respect certain
Masonic Orders, shall we say, hold to what is in contrast to the dearest
impulse of most of the ladies. Most ladies you must know are young,
most masonic societies would like to be as old as possible! Where possible,
very ancient ritual is indicated or very ancient traditions. Not always,
but very frequently it has an untrue intention, but sometimes it is
honestly meant when it is said Rituals that are very old can do no harm
when carried out by men today, for they are obsolete, they have become
rigid, they are merely the shadows of what they have been. Besides,
human souls have lived so long with rituals, with their symbols mid
what these represent, that they have became habituated to them and will
no longer receive shock from the impression of an immediately experienced
truth. If people are made acquainted with what is thoroughly old, what
still exists only as a shadow, they will be lass exposed to danger.
All these things may be argued, my dear friends, but they have to collapse
in face of the necessity belonging to this turning point of time. The
evil that would come were man to throw back the breaking wave of the
spiritual tide, would be greater than all the rest of evil beside. Our
real duty in face of all those cosmic spirits who have to do with the
evolution of mankind, is to make man realise what, simply throw present
cosmic lrws in any case in the unconscious, is taking place in the soul
of every man today. In the age of the consciousness soul it is an absolute
necessity to call this up into consciousness. It is necessary, also,
where what is arising with such power in social dew ads is concerned,
that that is actually present in the soul of ran should be recognised.
For, externally, existence becomes ever more like a mask, and elmsys
merely phenomenal. The possibility absolutely exists for man to have
such experience in his soul that he posses by the Guardian of the Threshold;
but because of the materialism of the time his consciousness of this
passing will be suppressed. What is suppressed, however, what is not
conscious, not for that reason non-existent! In spite of all, it is
there. Any man passes by the Guardian, but by reason of present education
he suppresses this. What it then represents can be something quite different.
It may be the deeds of Lenin, it may be the deeds or a member of some
kind of Spartacus League. Heed must be paid today to the fact that we
have arrived at the age when through the delusive impulses of materialism
the passing through certain spiritual impulses may be outwardly masked
in a way that is very highly dangerous to mankind.
The times are serious. But
action will be in accordance with this seriousness if in man the honest
will is only there to interpret with his sound human understanding that
can be brought from the spiritual world through a real Science of the
Spirit.
Notes:
X San Juan de la Cruz,
born 1542, died 1591, studied under the
Jesuits in Medina del Campo, became Abbot of the Carmelite Monastay
at Menrezo about 1568; successfully defended himself on an indictment
brought against him by the Inquisition, and founded the Monastery of
Ban= in lam In 1581 the Order of the Carmelites hauled aver to his the
direction of their pal Monastery at
Granada. The Curia appointed him as Pro al Vicar of
We-UM in lam, and in 1566 as Definitor. Through the discipline of his
Order he acquired enemies vho, by their influmea vg Philip II, sumeoded
in eausing, John of thi Woos to be co
the Monastery of Ubede. In 1675 Benedict XIII canonised the "ecstatic
Doctor."
In vision ( this is another utterance of St. John of the Cross ) in
vision we are in a state of receiving.
And another proposition of St. John is the following: In vision it is
God Iho is working. ( within the soul, that is to
2. See a XLVII, Leettlres
8 and 9.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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