The Holy Spirit

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. –Genesis 1:1-2

We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God … the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal; who from the very beginning of time by His omnipotent power created out of nothing [de nihilo condidit] both the spiritual beings and the corporeal. –Fourth Lateran Council of 1215

Rudolf Steiner, speaking of ethereal or ‘negative’ spaces in regard to the understanding of the laws of living processes, uses the idea of “nothingness” – ein Nichts – and he brings together with this concept the word chaos…[Chaos] used in it’s ancient sense – the Greek word Xaos…describes a region empty of formed matter, but ready to receive new, living growth or development, such as is to be found in a seed or any other germinating process….An embryo is actually such a receptive, ethereal space – a realm of empty nothingness into which new formative process can work… -Olive Whicher, “The Heart of the Matter”

To attempt to explain the Holy Ghost is to attempt image building of something altogether different from any manifestation. To try to say what “it” is not, is to say that the “Holy Ghost” is not the precise opposite of everything in manifestation, but is different from and equal to it because “it” empowers, contains, and is the all-pervading medium. The only “thing” one can liken to “it” is space – that of space which is not its fields, is not energy, but is the “manifestation of nothing,” paradoxical as this statement is, that allows energy’s manifestations to operate within it and matter to exist in it in discrete state. It both encompasses and involves energy’s dual nature that gives rise to the trinity in being: negative, positive, neutral. -Preston Harold, “The Shining Stranger”

Hopefully one can see the parallels contained within these four citations. The concept of the Holy Spirit seems to leave many of us bereft of a hard and fast definition. How does one hold onto “spirit?” Once you try and grasp it, it slips right through your fingers. Preston Harold concurs:

A scientist would be as hard put to explain what space itself is as a theologian is to explain what the Holy Ghost is – both can only discuss what takes place through it….The all-pervading space that contains Einstein’s motionless ether may be likened to the Holy Ghost of God, a priori, that which cannot itself be examined because the ether, motionless, stands between it and all manifestation within it. The ether alone as the seat of the electromagnetic fields may be likened to the being of God, the Father, one’s refuge, that allows him to “Be still and know…” The Son may be likened to the elementary particle, endowed with the “electric charge”: I will be. Jesus speaks of the Son ‘sitting on the right hand of the power,” and His teaching points to the Father as the seat of the power that is being given over to the Son.

We will continue discussing the relationship between the Holy Spirit and space in our next installment. Until then, peace.

Evil’s Quota

In order for love to thrive in its fullness, it must travel a difficult road:

By his presence a man creates a situation: poses the possibility of exerting or receiving the force of destructive or constructive potential. Is this an accidental creation? This question is not to project that the helpless victim of disaster or crime and his grieving relatives must suffer because of like suffering imposed upon another, somehow, somewhere, sometime. Rather it is to say that man’s quota of violent, destructive potential must be expended before Love can complete itself, can complete him. This quota is the same for every person, for he is no more, no less, than one and can but contain its measure, expend this measure, receive this measure. What then, is one’s measure of good, evil – the two major influences or ideas pervading the consciousness of man, causing him to express the energy of both?

Good and evil cards on a gold scale.

Both positive and negative forces pervade this world. Both are necessary for life’s manifestation. It is here that we constantly fool ourselves, thinking that we must do all we can to destroy or overcome evil. But Jesus tells us not to pull up tares, because in so doing we will pull up the good wheat with them. Both must grow together until the harvest which will be the appropriate time for separation. There is obvious moral evil we should stand up against and do our best to overcome, but we fool ourselves if we think we can in someway rid the world of all evil. If we do so we rid the world of ourselves! So what is the balance between good and evil, positive and negative that is necessary for life’s manifestation.

In the physicists’ wave theory, one finds a division of energy in the frequencies associated in a light wave-group which moves like a particle localized somewhere within the area of the storm of space. A boundary to the wave-group “is provided by interference of waves of slightly different length, so that while reinforcing one another at the center they cancel one another at the boundary.” As example, in the light wave theory one finds, roughly speaking, that 1001 of the shorter, interfering, limiting waves of a wave-group occupy the same distance as 1000 of the longer waves. The numbers in themselves have no significance…274 and 273 (would work), for example. For the sake of simplicity it may be said that one frequency has a measure more in count than the other. The two frequencies are equally essential to bear light energy.

Although the frequencies are not equal, they occupy the same distance, are equal to each other in the sense that they are equal to sharing the same “house,” the wave-group that acts like a particle. To call one of the frequencies good and the other evil is pointless. Most important is their difference that allows for interaction to provide a boundary for the wave-group’s action; the one measure of difference may be seen as more: (+), good, or as less: (-), evil, or vice versa, depending on how one views the situation.

Could we think of the wheat and the tares as the different length light waves? If so, then Jesus saw both as needed to bear light energy. No wonder he told his disciples to let the “field” be, and no wonder Preston Harold claims that it’s pointless to invoke good and evil as descriptors. Could the boundary at which they cancel one another out be the harvest Jesus spoke of? Both wavelengths are necessary to create this boundary. In our next post we will explore more of the psychic parallels of this science of light. Until then, peace…

Learning Experiences

Why does our knowledge of love’s fullness have to be so painful to obtain? Why doesn’t God completely reveal to us our full nature?

By giving His power, the power of the word, to man, God destroyed His absolute power to reveal Himself and the secrets of creation. But before man appeared on the scene, the secrets had been told in mammon – in the temporal – which reflects them oppositely and truly, as though in a mirror, itself material, a form that is real is seen, albeit its “mirror-image” is not its reality in being. Thus, truth-bearer must make unto himself a friend of mammon, “unrighteous” as mammon is, and he must reveal the working of the flesh, offensive and error-provoking though his words may be.

Being part of the material realm limits us in coming to full knowledge of the reality and fullness of God. If we want LIFE, we must deal with the limitations and consequences thereof. The Apostle Paul says as much in his letter to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21) 

According to Paul here, we were not created by God already perfect, then fell, and now are in the process of regaining paradise. Rather, we have been subjected to futility from the beginning by our creator! Why? In hope that we will come to know the freedom of being children of God (being set free from slavery to mere mammon). It is the only way we can know love for ourselves. In other words, the Eden story isn’t a time-based story; it is rather an eternal happening, goading and guiding us into a better future. The story is a “trap” God sets for us, striving for the “beginning,” which in eternity is also our “completion.”

And here Preston Harold sounds like a modern day Paul:

Mammon is the mirror, and perforce the mirror lies – for it, itself, is not what it reflects in its being or as its being. God, First Cause, love, life itself, is not matter as revealed in mammon; God…is revealed through mammon’s examination to be “spirit,” or a type of “energy” unknown and unknowable in physical terms…. The reality underlying the world of appearances cannot be reduced to physical terms, it is only indirectly knowable as reflected in mammon’s mirror, and as it is intuitively experienced by man…. But in mammon’s mirror, in evil, or in pure matter, or in life’s temporal history with all its evil-doing, the image of good and its working may be beheld. This is to say, there is evidence that life is building into man a factor that will in time deliver him from evil without robbing him of its desirable aspects, and that this factor is in truth the saving grace of life.

Amen! Until next time, peace.

The Word, our Larynx, and Creation

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  And God said, “Let there be…” Genesis 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were created; without him nothing was created that has been created.  John 1

We step aside now to consider Harold’s quote from our last post, “If man is child, he will outgrow his present garment, his mental and physical vesture.” To do so we will again turn to look at what Rudolf Steiner had to say about this possibility. In a previous post here we considered what Steiner had to say considering the past conditions of humanity. In this post we will look to see where his spiritual scientific imaginings lead him in ruminating on man’s future.

The quotes from Genesis and the Gospel of John at the beginning of this post, telling us that everything that exists came into being through the word, point the way for Steiner’s understanding of humanity’s future. I will let Steiner speak for himself. From his lecture on June 28, 1907 in Kassel, Germany:

Imagine that we can transform air into a liquid and then into a solid. Already today, it is possible to solidify air. You know that steam, the gaseous form of water, liquefies when it cools and is transformed into solid ice when it freezes. Now imagine that I pronounce the word “god” in air-filled space. If you could solidify the air at the very instant these sound waves are present, a shape –perhaps a shell-like shape, for example – would fall to earth. The word “world” would produce a different shape. You would be able to capture my words, and each word would correspond to a shape made out of crystallized air.

This analogy was used in the Christian (esoteric) schools. Each object first exists as a thought concealed within a being, a thought that is then spoken and solidified. Christians imagined that the creation of the universe began with the thoughts of things, which were then pronounced by the divinity and sent forth into space. The plants and minerals you see are divine words that have solidified. Everything we see… is a divine word become solid…

If you bear all this in mind, you realize that the word was once a creative force. Today, we human beings are still mere beginners at what our forefathers once did. Today’s sexual procreation, whether by plants, animals,
 or humans, is simply a transformation of the divine creative word of former times… Our most nearly finished aspect is sexuality, while the beginning of a new means of procreation exists in the human larynx… The larynx we now use to produce words will become an organ of procreation that brings forth increasingly denser and more exalted creations. In the future, what is now air will be the substance of beings… In future evolutionary stages of the earth, what we can now only say, will then emerge in forms that endure. Ultimately, the larynx will become the organ through which human beings reproduce their own kind.

Steiner also suggests that the transformation of the larynx is just the tip of the iceberg:

Much more could be said about such organs, which we have incorporated into our respiratory system here on Earth but which actually belong to the heart system. They are present in the body as mere potentials now, but will gradually evolve further.

So what will the future human garment look like, which Harold posits we are growing into? If Steiner is right and earthly conditions will change so a new biology and subsequent forms are needed, what will they be? What will be the actual appearance of a human who can reproduce via the larynx? Whose cardio vascular and respiratory systems are transformed? One hint I’m getting from Steiner in this quote is that what are now involuntary functions within us will in the future become voluntary. But I’m afraid there can be no rock-solid answers at this point. Only our imaginations can suggest what we might become. I’ll leave that to each of us!

Until next time, peace…

The Mystery of Mankind

The biggest question human beings can ask is the question of existence.  Who are we and why are we here?  Is there a reason?  Is it all just meaninglessness and nonsense?  Lots of people have claimed to have the answer to the delight or consternation of many.  In his “Cipher of Genesis,” Carlo Suares muses that once you really try to comprehend your true beginning and why you are here, you come upon a brick wall of meaningless that is utterly hilarious.  There really is NO reason; nothing “out there” will provide the answer!  And it is then that you become born of God, your search for meaning truly beginning as you are left to find it completely within yourself.  Preston Harold tells us the Bible doesn’t tell us in a scientific, objective way where we come from but rather WHO WE ARE.  And WHO WE ARE still remains a great mystery:

Ardrey observes, “Were a brotherhood of man to be formed today, then its only possible common bond would be ignorance of what man is.”  Perhaps the question of man can never be answered to the satisfaction of scientists, but as each man seeks to answer it to his own satisfaction there is a source to which he may return that by its very nature should inspire his confidence: humanity’s legends…  The Genesis legend may be viewed as telling the story of man from the dawn of life, retelling it through each day.  It tells the story from every point of view and it is also a mound of truth enfolding the inner facts of life just as a “Tell” enfolds artifacts that reveal the lives of those who built and rebuilt upon the same spot.

Even though science has gifted humanity with great strides in knowledge and will continue to do so (it has by no means exhausted its promise), it does have its limits.  Our author states…

 Freud’s contribution to knowledge cannot be denied, and the value of Darwin’s work is inestimable, but together their theories do not suffice to explain Homo sapiens.  

From the beginning, Darwin’s theory was questioned by Wallace, who could find no explanation for the sudden, unparalleled growth of brain evidenced by man.  Adler added to Darwin’s theory Lamarck’s: that the least fit often survive and become superior.  But in the combination one still cannot find the germ through which was born in an animal the feeling of guilt for killing an enemy, the idea of a supranatural diety, and the concept of life after death.

And thus the need of Homo sapiens for legends and the search for meaning: 

…the Adam legend says that man was sired by an energy or spirit proceeding from a non-animal being.  Although man is born into the animal world, he is of this cast only in the sense that all in creation is of the supreme Creator… Humanity’s legends, man’s pristine and continuing concept of God, of deathlessness, and his conscience make of him a mystery that science has scarcely touched upon and psychology has served only to deepen.  Freud wrote, “The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence, “ but in truth the man who does not ask this primary question – or who does not admit that he asks – is sick, sick of evasion of the only reality he knows: himself in being.

How many among us in this day and age are sick?  Kyrie Eleison.  Until next time, peace…