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Wednesday, December 23, 2015

The Occultist, Esotericist, & Mystic

The occult perspective studies and implicates principles and powers which comprise the underpinning realities (also manifest in the physical existence). It enters into the dynamics of influence, the correspondence and conjoining of powers (contrary or sympathetic) and it comprehends the greater and lesser cosmology in operation throughout its many examples.

Being a science it is plain and not given to opinion, when studied or presented as is. Although the observation of consequences plays an integral part in the science of occultism, there is no means through it alone to arrive at a further knowledge of that which is being studied. There can be a materialistic approach and overview to the machinations of law, invocation and consequence. Also there can be but a maze of detail, yet not the kernel of discernment provided - neither the wherewithal to know pertinence, aptness or distinction.

Esotericism seeks out the planes of the soul and spirit and knows them as the foremost reality:

  • determining, preferring, weighing, perceiving the beauteous characteristics;
  • being able to spiral inwardly to the core of a truth and travel further again;
  • understanding the hidden factors present;
  • accounting for those things which make all other things different and outstanding;
  • appreciating the presence of the Holy Power in Persona,
  • coming to significance, rather than by being adrift in fact.

In Occultism one can put a name to a Master so that he is:
  1. known for who he has been historically, or
  2. is known as who he is best representing currently.
Representing as such, is not out-and-out forgery, for many teachers have had a Great One envelop their persona with properties passed on and assumed to the extent that the emanatory forces are almost coincidental. In this way we can have one hundred Master Jesuses on any given sphere, all cooperating with the essential soul who has them organized. (The number 'one hundred' here is an extreme example of possibility, whereas in fact there is seldom more than just the one.)

From the esoteric perspective we may look to a Master and have with him the associative impression (knowing his signatory feeling inspired within his presence), realizing that his true name is only known to himself and all other names are borrowed or spent, but inaccurate anyway.

_____________________________________

Here is an old joke as they say, but a good one! In short it goes:

Q. What do you call an occultist who loses his love for this world?
A. A mystic.
Q. What do you call a mystic who loses his love for this world?
A. An occultist!


We set about to find what the consequence would be for an occultist who went about his life without such empathetic and inspired loves in this World; if his activity within the world was humorless and tiresome, if his body became a burden, if his knowing was self-interested and self-based only, if his seeking was seeded by not the love of the subject but rather too his love of self excluding all but God - what would you have? You would have a mystic!

Conversely, what would you have if you had a mystic who did not seek the greater consciousness but preferred to narrow down his own; if his love shared was abstract conjecture and his sense of universality not a living reality but rather an intellectual fundamental? You would have an occultist!

Sadly, such converse patterns can occur. As undignified as the above remarks may appear, it is nonetheless a phenomenon of sorts to be observed in many good folk who do begin quite splendidly and yet result with an uncanny over-balancing from one tendency, towards impulse and fall into another!

With both individuals it can well begin by a form of 'self-lessness' and unselfishness, which deters the men in question to seldom partake in that which brings them real joy. Both the ascetic and the scientist can believe that they are putting their ideals into being by living out day-to-day with a romantic, yet distant worship of the ideal of such love, denying however, their own liberties of expression. The result which comes is but a premature death of either soul or ego or both. For without a loving connection in the world the faculties and conjunctures eventually will withdraw and seek a connection elsewhere.

The properties of the mystic who loves within this World brings to the World an enhanced consciousness in toto. Men need a certain requisite of happiness in order to cherish their life and its greater Principle.

The occultist who successfully loves within this world brings in the future for all men. This same love will transpire into a reasonable knowledge, one that can be worked a'further, and brought into its usefulness by its empathetic answers to the needs. We need qualify the world with both occupations for the Kingdom, for herein we have the soul and ego of Man then best represented - the containment and the activity; the spirit of the past and the spirit of new life to come, learning from each other the hidden and mystical ways of both.

-B.Hive

Quotes from:

The Arterial Objective of the Work

The Greater & Lesser Principles


Friday, December 04, 2015

The Arterial Self - problem a

The Arterial Self - Problem a


A man is shopping with a friend and happens to pass by a window which has electric trains displayed. He falters before the exhibit, entranced by the memories which this begins to awaken, memories which largely are consisting of wanting and marveling and so forth.

The friend who is beside him is preoccupied with an itinerary and uninterested in the toy trains, and so urges the man to continue their walking. He intimates, but the friend presses with some words which cajole him with a mock affection and a dismissal of his interest. He gives way and then does follow - although for the rest of the day he will be disturbed but not know why.

Commentary:
Immediately we may all understand this type of event. It describes the anomalies which exist even between good friends whereupon one may have no understanding of the other in a particular regard. However, in all peopled transactions there are further events conspiring and no simple occurrence is insignificant or without its outfall.

When we urge another or pressure for their agreement it is worth noting that even enthusiasm can injure if we are asking for a dishonesty from them, expecting a compliance. The variations of this are difficult to gauge however, because there are differing moods and frequencies of health and all manner of considerations which may well affect a man on any given day. So then the question is how best are we to interact with each man and woman affording their true natures without also compromising our own.

Firstly, we may view this problematically, and in the personal this is both necessary and articulate. If we can understand the transactional differences underlying soul-honesty we may then begin to see the insult to Christ when we forfeit our selves, and then how to avoid such decadence.

In the case of the man and the railway train window we know that he was experiencing something which was then important to him. It was not what one might call a religious experience, but it was arterially speaking, important. It caught his attention to the exclusion of all else, it worked in upon him and began to release thoughts and feelings which were submerged within his memory and even his longings. 

Curiosity was stimulating his astral body and there was a subsequent tingling at all of his junctures and points, to fingertips and toe-tips. The adrenaline worked most naturally around this and so too his etheric body began to liven up, drawing about itself the forces which concentrate around the chest and head (or wherever there is such interest manifest).

A sensation of timelessness alleviated and elevated his time-consumed consciousness, absorbed and quite drawn out from his ego. Yet also participating with his ego, he had managed to direct his attention to the colorful parts moving around and around before him. This was a longing from the past awaiting to be answered. When he was interrupted in this experience his first reaction was to pull back and continue the fixation. But alas! He was sorely interrupted and imposed upon.

The insult added to the injury here, was not that the friend dismissed the interest as being unimportant, but that the man himself gave way and did not determine there and then his true feelings upon the matter. Men become so used to this effort of congeniality that they mistakenly believe that there is no consequence, and one could certainly set about to please all others before self and maintain that the higher good was concurrent, however it is not. No surrendering to another's ways and wants is beneficial unless it has been ordained by the Arterial Self as a natural act.


The Arterial Self is not a 'Higher Self' as described by the yogis or mystics, it is rather the preferential deliberating nature which has choice before it, and all choices can be good. The higher attributes could rightly select a poverty that requires a man to serve charity, and when his body deteriorates from hunger and overwork the 'higher' soul could be well satisfied, and yet the Arterial Self may protest this with good reason.

Here then is a distinction therefore between the two. It is not a case of the Arterial Self being immoral because it does not always choose the most righteous course of action, it is moreover because it knows its capabilities and what it can and cannot afford, and its preference.

Here we can see also that the spirit may dismiss the physical world's requirements, almost as unlawfully as the physical world's persistence upon the soul…. and deliberating the two is given to the over-ego, the Arterial Self, as opposed to the developing ego and its experiments into the bargain.

There has always been the question about instantaneous purity as sanctioned by the moralists, as becoming possible. Such a 'perfected' man who has contradicted his Arterial Self and with an immature capability that has forced himself beyond his means, may invoke the very opposite to that he has set out to achieve.

One of the reasons for this lies in the consequence to all actions depending upon their origin rather than their physical set sequence. A 'good' action from an inadequate man is moreover interpreted lastingly from the initial motivation as experienced within the Arterial Self, and if the Arterial Self is out of agreement with this action it shall become null and void. This is because there is a protection afforded the core self of a man, that he is liable moreover within his true nature and not out of it.

Conversely, if he were to suffer the dictates of his acting conscience (social conscience, spiritual guiding, whatever) and abstain from his favorite foods in order to diet, but the purpose was not agreed upon by his Arterial Self, he will not take advantage of any long-lasting health result. Also he will go back to preferring those foods he instinctively hungers for, and seek to satisfy that particular hunger. Here we can also suggest that the hunger and the foods themselves are not the critical issue. We can respect the man in his desires - and yea, the point is in that very respecting.



Goodness is its own reward, however insincere goodness is spiritually impotent. The significator has to remain with the core person and what they may achieve out from there; all else is superficial and of little lasting importance.

It may be that the individual’s Arterial Self comes to want for a complete change in diet, because out from their being comes the recollections of such relationships and interactions to foods, alongside a knowing that maintains what is required and needed for future sustenance. Then we find that the dynamics between that man and his nutrition give pleasures which can be experienced even in the simplest of foods. The first pleasure known is in the honesty of self and the compliance to need. Similarly, if not in the advanced relationship, then one can know this simply in the experience of eating the very foods you want the most. The pleasure comes in pleasing yourself, not so much as the substance of the food.

If taken incorrectly these passages may appear to promote an utterly self-centered and self-fulfilling lifestyle. This is not the reasoning of the meaning, but it is moreover a guide to understand what it feels like to be agreeable to oneself. Overindulgence is actually symptomatic of a soul who is not answering their Arterial Self, their true I Am, but living in compromise to it. So the most effective way to reestablish a pleasing of that self becomes prominent in basic codes, expressed in ways which otherwise would not be so excessive.



The importance of 'expressing oneself', albeit truthfully, has been maintained largely amongst the people who are habitually having to come to choices which seem to present and represent over and over begging their attention. Expression from a man does not have to be indicated by grandstanding or imposing around others, but communicating a genuine aspect that is in line with his true feelings and thoughts coming from the core.

Self-expression is creative, skilful and intuitive. Those who have poor vocabulary quite often improvise with an immediate honesty of gesture and face; and for those who are articulate the meanings implied or given, when genuine, are pleasing to those who receive them. There is a great pleasure in the giving and receiving of true genuineness.

So in this conveyance between souls we find perhaps the greatest vitality - there is no other interaction which moves the ethers so! Here too, amongst the real conjunctures where expression runs freely, there is a promotion of Christ, for literally He lives in those very conjunctures of Man.

-B.Hive
The Arterial Self- Problem a

Monday, August 17, 2015

From Luminous Heights


From the luminous heights of the Spirit,
May God’s clear light ray forth
Into those human souls
Who are intent on seeking
The grace of the Spirit,
The light of the Spirit,
The life of the Spirit.


May He live
In the hearts
In the inmost souls
Of those of us
Who feel ourselves gathered
together here
In His name.

-Given by Rudolf Steiner to the leader of the Emerson group in London, Mrs Cull, for use by that group

Thursday, July 16, 2015

The Three Gifts of St. Paul- 4th November 1993 Edit

THE three gifts of St. Paul were: sweet rest, deep and perfect sleep, and death - as restitution to the diseases which provoked undeniable and unrevokable corruption to the physical and mentally-empathetic spiritual constitution.

There are streams whereupon Man is influenced to counterbalance the trials and woes encountered. As the 'bad fairy' cursed, an equal dictum surmounted the action of the evil and delivered Man by such concessions; albeit not exactly by way of the powers of a 'good fairy' alone, but rather by many good fairies, good Angels, good Men, and a Good God besides.

There are discoveries made as to what these equations have been and are, today. The protectors of these mysteries incorporated, have sought them out and made them known to themselves, thoroughly exploring for the record and safekeeping of Man; as one would add to the journal of progress.

As like any scientific finding, it is not unusual that the names are linked, because as overshadowing protectorates they have become to be associated with that stream until such a time, that it itself is no more. For even should they depart the world and the reaches thereof, their original etherisation and mingling through investigation, remains.

Important Law: For every ill wind there brings with it a blessing to follow. This is how "out of evil cometh good", for it is truly so. The provisions for such counterbalance were commanded out from necessity. For one may ponder unto themselves, if there be one gravely evil curse by which no good may equal and bring up the value of, then it should bring about an unraveling of else that is good by its very challenge. Still to this day there becomes a shift and an immediate need for an answer: that the deck falls and one card goes down, and the next hand played need better it.

The principle as tossed around of 'neither nor completely bad' conforms to this. Also whilst on this point, it is important to add that the viewpoint of the cynic is dangerous indeed. If we may not qualify an evil perceived but are intent in thought upon only its upset, then we err on the side of the very perpetuation thereof. Though this appears a mean criticism, it is nonetheless true. 

Another interesting insight is this: many who have committed themselves into the penetrating studies as was first described, have fallen short of the perfected examination because they themselves have 'come under' the ill and the evil of the first part of their particular investigation. It is a dangerous element that they have chosen to make bare and make known. It is a courageous task which may know no fulfilment if the novice becomes incapable of following through with the greater induction of Grace. Of course, eventually he is saved by the very answer so put there, but whether or not he survives intact to return to the world forged anew, is another matter. It is no defeat in real terms, only in terms of the object of striving at that time.

One can begin to see avenues of important instruction already from this lesson: -
  1. That 'open-thinking' which attempts to reveal deeper implications is prerequisite to understanding and aligning oneself with the more advanced souls. Ipso facto: closed-thinking (the one point of view perspective) may not enable intuitive progress as to the necessary illumination to follow.
  2. That all negative insight requires the accompanying thought and prayer of gratitude that: evil does pass; it may not remain the same, its sting and its injure will dissolve in the provision of the accompanying Grace so bound to it. Which not only shall bring restitution to the assaultee, but further on, shall redeem that very evil and purify it with a new objective/relationship to Man.

This is the one thing that the 'dark path' cannot realize. One could too easily say that we may dismiss such men who revel in unnatural desires as that they willingly see only one half of the above truth; and this is open to question and is philosophical. But from this viewpoint we would suggest that they are in fact incapable of crossover and much discouraged by the predator food-chain they perceive to be the world.

Almost as one evil stacked upon another, and keenly experienced, the men who are under the spell of great evil have not awakened to the mercy which verily sustains them. It is therefore, a pitiful inadequacy, and one may see that with such fellows, charity, good wishes and prayers on their behalf, are the supplement required, rather than blatant condemnation. 

It is truly a divine mystery that overall, Christ Himself is Chief Protector of the Keys, and by Him, through His Eyes, one may challenge the individual streams incoming, and under His Governance be saved.

St. Paul, through Christ, came to the blessed meaning of death, which hitherto was the scourge and the final defeat. The Devil himself did laugh and parade when a man caught in sickness of soul, then of mind and finally in blood, was believed to be overcome hopelessly. But the illness manifest did not vanquish the soul within. If not surmounted there was afforded a 'disassociation' out from the combining forces and a man could, through sleep and eventually death, begin a renewal that was not hitherto possible.

He could discard and dismember; and fortune of fortunes, perceive the minor ill and begin to correct the fault within. Hell itself was transformed, no longer an eternal sufferance - which prior to Christ there were elements thereof: because of the connection, the combining, in which a man was inextricably linked to his faults, his damnation, to his sins and to that part of Hell he had frequented and connected with.


-B.Hive

Monday, June 29, 2015

Worries

 Worries put pressure on the physical body. We should do our duty, and also against opposition, but we shouldn't worry too much. It's hard to strike the right balance here between concern and standing above it, but too much worry dries out the brain so that it can't take in new thoughts. 

The greatest man of sorrows or soter was Christ, and as it says in (I Peter 5:7) we should cast all our care on him; for he cares for you. That is, we should give all worries past a certain point to Christ so that He can make our physical body healthy and strong, so that our soul is also healthy.


-Rudolf Steiner, from the Contents of Esoteric Classes



Esoteric Lesson: Kassel, 6-27-1909

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Striving Towards Perfection - Dr. Steiner

After Parzival stood before Titurel and had the experiences of which we spoke, an intimate and deep feeling of shame arose in him. This feeling of shame permeated him completely. He had gone through catharsis and had thought that he was now so good and pure that he could become one of the followers of the Master of all masters, the Christ. In this feeling of shame he was reminded of Christ's words: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God.” He now knew how very imperfect he was still and how much he still had to take into his striving for the good, how much he was still lacking in order to be good.

And a second feeling, a feeling of fear, overcame him. He thought that he had gotten rid of that a long time ago. But it was a different kind of fear from the ones he'd known previously. It was a feeling of his own smallness and weakness as a man compared with the sublime Godly being when he let a second word of Christ live in his soul: “Become perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”

These two words should live in the soul of every esoteric. An esoteric should kindle full devotion for divine beings in his soul. Thereby the consciousness develops that what one does isn't so good, but that one should always try to become more perfect. We should look at what's developing in one's soul. God lives in developing things. If we get to the point where we're acting in a good and noble way, then it's God in us who's good. The God who lets us act in a good and noble way is our archetype itself, that created us. We must become a complete copy of this archetype.

Be it ever so hidden, there's a selfish motive in everything we do. We must realize that we can't be selfless. It's a world karma that lets us act egoistically. But world karma is God. Everything that God is and does in the way of good is better than we could do it. An esoteric should tell himself: Let me do something that I have made it my duty to do, let me do it as hard as I can and in such a way that I tell myself that the divine element that's at work in me is doing this and I'm only the instrument of this godly element — then the Higher Self in its striving towards perfection is revealed to him.

-Rudolf Steiner, August 30, 1909: From the Contents of Esoteric Classes