Our life is a colourful splendour. The one, however, who reflects himself in our being wants to be found.
Sometimes streams change their course. The source remains in the same place, as does the sea, but the path between the two is then different. Where water once flowed, dead tributaries remain, pools, ponds, lakes. They continue to be fed from below by groundwater and from above by rain. So they remain indirectly connected to the stream, but at the same time they become something of their own. To this end, the enchantress nature adorns them, decorating each in their own way. A meadowland is created with marvellous places, biodiversity and wonderful biotopes, “images of life” (Greek bios=life, topos=image, place).
We strive for spirituality and talk about being “in the stream”. Everything flows, even the condensed substance is in motion. We want to “flow”, however, on a higher level, in streams of spiritual light. Because we sense: there is oneness, there is freedom, joy, love, true life. But – could it not be that we are only more beautiful and more magnificently equipped pools, ponds, lakes or dead branches of a river?
Souls also form landscapes, wonderfully blooming, darkly brooding or destroyed, poisoned ones. In almost all of them, in one way or another, there is conflict, open and loud or subtle, hidden behind the scenes. We need each other, we work together, perhaps we like each other – and yet there is something that separates us and turns us or wants to turn us against the other. These are often banal occasions, in which we are seized by our individuality, our separateness, our being special, our stepping out of the stream. The good will to live harmoniously together is there. But there is also a hidden unwillingness, an inner adversary. And it seems to be gaining power. Is our individuality subject to a development towards increasing catastrophes? The writer Hans-Magnus Enzensberger (1929-2022) wrote an essay in 1993 with the title: Prospects of civil war (Aussichten auf den Bürgerkrieg).
In it he states:
It [the civil war] is not only waged by terrorists and secret services, mafiosi and skinheads, drug gangs and death squads, neo-Nazis and black sheriffs, but also by inconspicuous citizens who overnight turn into hooligans, arsonists, amok runners and serial killers.
And he diagnosed a common denominator:
This is, on the one hand, the autistic character of the perpetrators and, secondly, their inability to distinguish between destruction and self-destruction. In the civil wars of the present day, all legitimisation has evaporated. Violence has freed itself from all ideological justifications.
100 years ago, Rudolf Steiner, looking into the future, declared that our cultural period would one day end with a “war of all against all”:
We have only to realise what the basis is, the real cause of this war. This basis or cause is the prevalence of egoism, of selfishness, of the self of people. […] Anyone who does not realise that the ego is a double-edged sword, will hardly understand the whole meaning of the development of mankind and the world. development. On the one hand, this ego is the cause of the fact that people harden within themselves, that they place everything that is available to them externally and internally in the service of this ego. It is this ego that causes all human desires to be directed towards satisfying the ego as such. How the ego strives to acquire a part of the common earthly possessions as its own, as its property, just as this ego endeavours to drive all other egos out of its territory, to make war on them, to fight them: that is one side of the ego. But on the other hand we must not forget that this ego, this self, is at the same time that which gives man his independence, his inner freedom, what elevates man in the truest sense of the word. His dignity is founded in the ego, the self. It is the disposition to the divine in man. (in: Apocalypse of St John)
Our ego is the explosive factor, in it we carry our downfall within us. But also our rise. The only question is how quickly we actualise one or the other. Enzensberger speaks of the autistic of our consciousness and the self-destruction that comes with it. You can observe them everywhere, the acts of despair, the break-up of aloneness. People’s selves are overloaded with tensions. Tearing tests are piling up. Too much of the incompatible has accumulated in the conscious and unconscious. The media is fuelling this, carrying the flames of conflict from all over the world into us. And at some point we throw the unholy fire that is ignited within us outwards. For everything inside pushes outwards, in line with the creative process. However, we have the great opportunity to surrender all the destructive forces that enter and work within us to the divine aspect of our innermost being – and they will emerge from us transformed.
The stream is still there, sympathy is still there, love, empathy, spirituality. They continue to knock, wanting to return, to purify and fulfil us. But it doesn’t really work, our efforts remain piecemeal. Too much has been deposited in us, the results of thousands of years of quarrels.
Let the dead bury their dead; but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God (Luc. 9:60). These are strange words – we may have read them. Now they resound within, completely new, as it were through inner clouds and vapours. “Now you are dead, but life is waiting for you.” But where is it, life? One statement comes to mind: In the colourful reflection we have life (Goethe, Faust Part 2, Act 1, Graceful Landscape). How long does a sentence have to work in us before it truly reveals its meaning?
My body with its marvellous shape, its organ structure and its limbs, my ego and even my lifetime – they are reflections, are a colourful splendour. They come from somewhere, they are not just there. Everyone has an origin, an archetype whose image they are. Their freedom is also projected into them. In it we have moved on, moved away from what is in our innermost being. But now it calls us to return, to be at one with it again, with ourselves. The innermost wants to envelop us, to carry us maternally as its child, to guide us as we mature. Our leaving, our progressing, proves to be a walk into the unstable, into the unenveloped, into an outside that has lost touch with its inside. The consequence of this is according to philosopher Peter Sloterdijk “psychosis”, the “latent primal theme of modernity”. The process of modernity [implies] an initiation of humanity into the absolute outside. (Sloterdijk, Spheres [Sphären])
We consider the material forms of the world to be the sole reality. The blessing of science opens the door also to a superstition with the greatest consequences, the belief in the absolute outside. That is, the belief in death as the end of life. We have forgotten the active, the constantly creative pole, the pole of life, And so we draw everything into the imbalances of our consciousness that could stabilise us. We are now enveloped by something that is alien to us. The consequences of this self-destruction are that we also destroy the environment in which we live. Many people feel nothing any more of the inner life of nature.
But the potential to become whole again still exists. “You are not as alone as you think, you are not yet completely destroyed” is how you could interpret an inner voice. “You are my revelation, I want to show myself to the world through you.”
Sometimes people find themselves in mortal danger. Their inner structure breaks apart, perhaps after an accident, a serious illness or a near-death experience. And suddenly there it is, the I Am. Calm, serene, filled with peace, joy, love. Untouched by the external scenery which may be dramatic, it lights up, one with everything and yet itself.
But you don’t have to be in mortal danger to have such an experience. The inner abysses of our being are sufficient. They can awaken a powerful longing, can evoke a cry for help in us that resounds in the depths of our inner self.
And an answer comes. The apparent nothingness looks at me, speaks “words of silence”. I search for this gaze again and again – and eyes for it arise in me. I listen to the “words of silence” again and again – and ears for them arise in me.
There are words emerging from the dawn of humanity that reflect this experience:
He is not grasped by talking, nor by thinking, nor by seeing. “He is!” Through this word he is recognised and not in any other way. “He is!” This is how he is comprehensible insofar as he is the essence of both. “He is!” Whoever grasps him in this way, to him his being becomes clear.
(Kathaka Upanishad, Sixth Valli)
It is true! It is certain! It is the full truth!
What is below is equal to what is above,
and what is above is equal to what is below,
so that the miracles of the One may be accomplished.
(Tabula Smaragdina)
The poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) is one of those who transfer “it”, the great, into our time. He says of those who are maturing: They hear the word, long spoken from morning to evening [East to West], only now.
For: Near is / and hard to grasp is the God. / But where there is danger / the saving also grows. Whoever opens himself to this inner saviour and unites with him, a new sun rises in him, in him the God appears in golden clouds of his aura (from the poems: Friedensfeier, Patmos and The Archipelagus)
For this we are both womb as well as midwife. The God within us, the eternal I Am, wants to rise as a saviour. As those whose umbilical cord has been cut off, we can find the maternal ground again, can entrust ourselves to it and pour ourselves into it, as it were. Our souls resemble water, the primordial ground resembles fire. If our longing is great enough and we align our lives with it, the water turns to wine, as the parable says. We find connection to the cosmic vine and become its branches.
A second form develops within the present one, a form of light, of “water and spirit”.
Light, the carrier of life, dies into us and structures itself into a spiritual “body”, subtle, ethereal, expanding and contracting at will. The immortal form comes into being through the perfect surrender of our ego and the inner God at the same time. They unite in joint creation, both die into the new image, the immortal human being.
The deeds of the past still cling to the old body, they still accompany us. Yes, the shadows only really emerge now, under the influence of the light. For they want to be redeemed, to be transformed into wisdom through realisation. This happens through forgiveness, grace, acceptance. We have to endure them, have to see through them. Everything we do and don’t do in this process is reflected in the structure of the new spiritual body. It gives it the depth of maturation; the harvest of our long separateness is brought in.
Time also changes. Previously an expression of karmic forces, it now becomes lighter, rises to another level. As far as the new spiritual body is concerned, we emerge from the causalities of the past. The vertical dominates and fills the moments. The extent to which this happens depends on the extent of our devotion to the supratemporal I Am. And also on our ability to overcome with its help the shadows rising from the subconscious. Gradually, our “place”, the new image of life in the spheres of the soul between below and above, is established. Time and timelessness intertwine here and enable paths in upward-flowing streams. From moment to moment, the new creation takes place, the One pours himself into his image.
Be helpless, astonished,
unable to say yes or no.
Then we are lifted from the stretcher of grace.
We are too befuddled to see this beauty.
If we say we can, we are lying.
If we say, “No, we don’t see it”,
then this “no” decapitates us
and closes our window to the divine.
So let us rather be uncertain about everything,
except ourselves,
and even that only so that miracle-working beings can come to our aid.
Completely beside ourselves, we lie in the circle of nothingness, silent,
and will finally say with astonishing eloquence:
“Guide us!”
When we have completely surrendered to this beauty,
we will be powerful kindness.
(Rumi)
