A Change of Heart is a Complicated Matter

 A Change of Heart is a Complicated Matter

From the Preparation for the Formation of the Heart Chakra

 Some more snippets from the chapter 5, ‘The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming”, from the work in progress on the second edition of ‘The New Experience of the Supersensible’.   

 The first part of the 'Green Snake' bridge of spiritual memory and continuation of consciousness is constructed in the etheric body, from head to heart. It is made from the forces of spiritualized thinking and perception, created in the Michaelic yoga. When it is completed, we turn to the construction of the second part of the bridge, in the astral body, made from the spiritualization of the soul forces. Below we describe some of the discoveries that man makes in this process, and how the beginning of the meditative practice is formed, that is used for this purpose.   

 Before we demonstrate the next steps of the meditative practice in the soul and heart, it will be useful to reflect once more on the real meaning of the spiritual scientific meditative praxis and deepen it, to address the new requirement of our research. The ongoing creation of the deep structure for the spiritual path, is based on the following meditative practices. We already described how we use the meditative exercises based on the three stages of the rose-cross meditation from Occult Science and the six meditative exercises of Knowledge of the Higher World. What must be added now, is the main general exercise, given in two versions by Rudolf Steiner to all the pupils in his first esoteric school. ^[1] Even though in this part of the chapter, the praxis of Occult Science is not mentioned, we must remember that in the real praxis, it continues in the manner described in the first part. And the same applies to the constant practice of the six meditations from Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, that compose a special spiritual organism. We must however always bear thewhole mediative composition in our minds and hearts, because we can only single out and described the use specific exercises, more directly required in specific research tasks.^[2]

 In the previous part of this chapter, dedicated to the spiritualization of perception, we mainly used three of the six meditative exercises of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. ^[3] Now we shall concentrate our work on the second and sixth meditations, to help us generatesome of the forces required in the construction of the second, astral-soul layer of the bridge, in which we have to individualize and recapitulate the second stage of the modern Christ experience.

 In the previous part of the work, after the confrontation with the death forces in the brain was completed, we could transferr the etheric center from the head to the heart via the larynx, in a peaceful and harmonious way. True, during this part of the bridge construction, some disturbances could be noticed, stemming from forces from below the heart. But because they could not really disturb the work, we didn’t need to confront them, until the formation of the heart center became the main task. And indeed, when we began to concentrate the work in the heart, we soon realized that it is constantly interrupted and made difficult, by these forces. We felt that though the true ‘I’ can regulate the three soul forces in the heart center, it cannot master these lower forces. As a matter of fact, after a certain progress was archived, based mainly on the previous work, a strict limit was encountered, beyond which we could not progress. A closer inspection discovered that this disturbance is caused by forces streaming from the soul-and bodily regions, in which the lotus flowers below the heart are located: the ten petalled lotus flower in the solar plexus, the six petalled lotus flower in the lower abdomen, and the four petalled lotus flower in the base of the spine. The more the work on the formation of the heart center progressed, these lower forces, taken together, became increasingly disturbing, as we showed also from another point of view in Cognitive Yoga, where we designated their joint inhibitory resistance by the term ‘the diaphragmic threshold’. Through the spiritualization of thinking and perception we could pave the etheric path from the head to the heart and back, create a spiritualized etheric flow, and form a strong etheric heart center. But now we had to face mainly astral forces erupting from below the heart. This became especially noticeable, whenever we established a certain state of harmony and equilibrium in the etheric heart and believed that we can continue to preserve it in a state of peaceful, harmonious, rhythmic, and balanced activity. From a certain stage, however, we realized that now peaceful formation of the astral heart center is possible beyond this limit, and it became necessary to turn the work to the lower centers below the heart. We realized that if we first purify and spiritualize these lower astral forces we can return to the heart with their inner support, and that this will enable us to continue the formation of the astral heart center to a certain stage. It proved necessary, in other words, before we continue with the formation of the heart center, to secure its harmonious development, that requires an appropriately balanced soul mood, to give it the right formation in the middle between the head and the lower body and limbs.

  Let me give a concrete example of how this confrontation and overcoming takes place. For this purpose, we found out that we must concentrate on the use of the second and sixth meditative exercises from the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

The second meditation in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds aims to spiritualize the faculties of listening and hearing to such an extent, that the soul of the pupil will merge and become one with the soul of another being and experience its spiritual essence. Furthermore, this faculty can be developed to hear, in the human heart and soul, the inner spiritual Word that resounds in the universe. This exercise aims to ‘focus on... the fact that the sound communicates something that lies outside our own souls’. This is an altogether new and also totally opposite experience from everything we experience in our daily consciousness. In this exercise, we should ‘immerse ourselves in this "otherness," inwardly uniting our feelings with the pain or pleasure expressed by the sound’. In ordinary consciousness, even in the most intense experience of sympathy and empathy, we are still aware of the fact that we experience our feelings of sympathy and empathy. If our self-observation and knowledge is honest, we will never say that we experience in this way the true inner being of anyother being, also naturally not of ourselves, and that in ordinary consciousness we are totally enclosed in the strict and impassableboundaries of our subjective inner life, from which we are projecting our representations, feelings and desires on the external world. But now, ‘our soul must be filled only with what is happening in the being from whom the sound comes’. If one seriously tries to practice it over long periods of time, this exercise is revealed as the best way to bring first to full consciousness our inability to do so, and to feelthis self-imposed restriction, in all its intensity. Because obviously, if we don’t experience this fact in full consciousness, but believe that we already experience the other being when we listen to his and her voice, we are simply deluding ourselves, which is very common. But if- says Rudolf Steiner- ‘we practice this exercise systematically and deliberately, we will acquire as we do so the faculty of merging, as it were, with the being that made the sound’. And if we continue in this direction, wholly merging with the other through voice and sound, eventually, the sounds ‘become the meaningful language of nature... we now learn a new language of the soul... indeed, we begin to hear with our souls’. If we deepen this inner, spiritual hearing, we can reach so far, that ‘the perception of the “inner Word” awakens. Gradually truths reveal themselves to the student from the spiritual world. He hears speech uttered to him in a spiritual way’.

 However, as our experience showed, on this path, instead of experiencing the above, what happen is that the obstacles actually get more daunting, because ‘only to those who, by selfless listening, train themselves to be really receptive from within, in stillness, unmoved by personal opinion or feeling- only to such can the higher beings speak of whom spiritual science tells. As long as one hurls any personal opinion or feeling against the speaker to whom one must listen, the beings of the spiritual world remain silent’. ^[4] But we quite easily conclude that we are not among those capable of ‘selfless listening’ and what is more, we discover that at a certain point, the more we try the stronger the obstacles become. ^[5] And indeed, repeated and continues practice demonstrates that this meditation is not only ‘difficult’, but that as a matter of fact, for a long time it is rather impossible, to ‘merge with another being’. Therefore, we found out that among the six meditations of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, the second one most directly concerns the formation- and deformation- of the heart center. And that in reality, it is leading us to begin with to a more direct confrontation with our soul limits, and in this way, to a gradually enhanced foreboding and preparation for the meeting with the lesser Guardian of the Threshold. And this ‘side benefit’- which naturally belongs to the central aim of the spiritual path- becomes, in the present stage of our work, of great significance. But since this cannot be truly experienced by mere thinking about it, we shall once more attempt to offer a concrete report, about some of the real experiences that man undergoes when he practices this meditation. Of course, let it also be emphasized again, that when we offer concrete examples, we can only single out few elements from a extended and complex field of spiritual investigations, which cannot be encompassed, let alone described in detail, in each specific use of a meditative exercise. ^[6]

 When I concentrate all my soul forces in listening to human voice, I experience that in the moment in which I succeed in doing it, I lose not only my ordinary self-consciousness, but what is more significant, also my entire experience of my ordinary soul and self. I also lose any feeling of my body and being grounded in physical space. In this moment, it is as if I step out of myself, or ‘hover’ above myself, even if only so slightly. What happens next is however somewhat surprising, at least in the beginning of the process. in the moment I lose myself while merging with the voice, something else enters my being and takes over my consciousness, and it is not the being of the other, but rather the being of my lower self. Let me put it in this way. When I merge myself with the voice and get out of my body, my lower body and soul become empty and opened downward, and my lower self, that was suppressed under the weight of my incarnatedsoul, rises rapidly to take it over for itself. Once I am out, even only a little bit, it hurriedly and horridly comes up, with fierce desire to fill the soul vacuum created in my being. And in no time I totally forgot also the fact that I was listening to an external voice, and I am filled with images and voices, specters and forces that fill me not with the soul and spirit of the person I listened to, but with my lower instincts and desires, drives and wishes; and the more this happens, the deeper, that is lower, morally speaking, will the apparitions show themselves to be. And I will be taken aback by alarming surprise- to begin with- because I expected to experience the revelation of the ‘inner Word’ when I merge with the true of the other person, and found myself overwhelmed by the tremendously unpleasant avalanche of my uprising lower nature; and I would probably say to myself at this moment, this doesn’t seem to be at all ‘the faculty of merging with the being that made the sound’, that Rudolf Steiner indicated, but the complete reversal thereof: I was actually merging with my lower-self...

 Notes

[1] The main general exercise is described below in detail, when it becomes a central part of the astral-soul formation of the second layer of the bridge.

[2] In our work in the School of Spiritual Science, the constant practice of the conditions and subsidiary exercises from Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, go hand in hand with the practice of the Philosophy of Freedom, forming the Jachin and Boaz, the two pillars and foundation of the whole school temple, on which alone the various meditative exercises can become fruitful.

[3] The three exercises are the first meditation on growth and decay, and the fourth and fifth meditations on the development of seed to plan and plant to seed. The third exercise, the meditation on the different between mineral, plant and animal, was referred to only briefly.

[4] Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, chapter 2, Stages of Initiation. Preparation. (GA 10)

[5] If man doesn’t experience this ‘reversal effect’ in all spiritual exercises, it only shows how self-deluded he is. The discovery that our good intentions and meditations are reversed in practice to their opposite, is a positive sign that we are on the right path, and get ready to uncover some of the preliminary, but already greatly disturbing truths of self-knowledge.

[6] On the other hand, it should also be noted that each example is chosen carefully, and therefore a serious study of each example will prove beneficial to the true pupil.