Foundation Stone Community

Collection of contributions and thoughts out of our inner work on the foundation stone meditation

Table of Contents

• The Mystery of Evil: A talk by Carrie Keys
• Links to the foundation stone meditation
• ABOUT THE FOUNDATION STONE
• SPIRIT BEHOLDING, talk by Fatima Godinho
• A Christmas Imagination, talk by Helmut Raimund
• Booklet about the Foundation Stone, presented by Bart Lakeman
• To the Berlin Friends

The Mystery of Evil: A talk by Carrie Keys

26th April 2024

More than a hundred years on from the time this lecture was given, we have the advantage of learning from world development and soul development that has happened since. Perhaps more of the faculties needed to understand the Mysteries are now ours. With preparing this talk, I hoped that it would be a catalyst for research on the ‘Mystery of Evil’ and would inspire others to also give talks, so that together we can build up a foundation for understanding this. R. Steiner encouraged this with utmost urgency then, so it must be more so now. I offer this to you as ‘fertilizer’ for your own thinking and experiences. And I appreciate your interest and our interactions.

We look around us and we see evidence of good in nature, especially in the Spring. We see the beauty of colour, delicate forms of leaves, their substance just emerging– shiny, full of moisture, unfolding. We feel joy in the song of birds, in the variety of their forms and movements. To see them flitting from branch to branch, swooping from cloud to tree and tree to earth, we feel music in this expression of life. In our senses we feel a joyful response, and in our breast, comes a renewed call to life!

The other seasons are also full of life, only the forms and the movements are different. In autumn the leaves are full and dry, colourful, but descending to earth. The insects move slowly, some moving towards hibernation and death. There is life in looking forwards in spring, and a sense of life in looking back, in autumn.

This peaceful procession of nature, its changes and polarities, is usually not disturbing for us, even the extreme of a tumultuous storm. Although devastation by natural forces might well cause an outcry, it’s not likely to call forth blame. When things seem out of balance, however, when we sense an intruder– either an invasive species or manmade interference– we might well point the finger of blame and call it evil. There are other lesser names for that which stands in opposition to order in Nature, or to explosive transformative chaos in life–mischief, vice, disaster, invasion.

People are known to attribute a sense of foul play, morality, right and wrong to their sense of smell. We can smell something fishy, smell a rat, something can be ‘off,’ smell rotten, or stink. It is usually when intention is linked to it, there is a sense of evil being at play. We can even impute evil to animals who act out of instinct, such as wolves or hyenas, who have no capacity for making decisions. When such malevolent things or actions happen, people may say, “something got into him/ it,” or “he forgot himself,” or “something possessed him.” By contrast, in the Bible, Jesus says to those who come to be healed by Him (not ‘I give you,’ but), “Your faith has made you whole.” (Luke 8:48) “Faith is substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) In this kind of event of healing, there is not another agent intruding, but one’s Self that has actively received healing.

Being familiar with the Bible, I was curious to see what words in Hebrew and Greek had been translated into the English word ‘evil’. I found that there was more than one word. What surprised me was that in each of about six verses I looked up, the word for ‘good’ was a noun, whereas the word for ‘evil was an adjective. This made me wonder if ‘good’ was indicating a whole, and ‘evil’ perhaps indicating what is not whole (perhaps a polarity, such as Luciferic and Ahrimanic?): broken, partial, incomplete, impure. This merits further investigation.

In contrast to the freedom Christ stands for, mankind in his lust for power can trap or block freedom. Mussolini said, “Fascism … is the merger of corporate and government power.” That is to say, a system of government may become like a business that uses the people to meet its own ends, or the ends of its elite, masterminds, and often madmen. In the Third Reich, many searching, but demoralised, German youth became mesmerised with Hitler’s charisma (false spirituality) and galvanised by the nuanced orthodoxy of Nazi propaganda. Hitler coined the SS motto, “My honour means loyalty” Their honour was not allowed to be truth, certainly not in questioning the existing ‘order’. There was an assumed enemy, and secrecy was the method of protecting against interference, even within the party. These conditions allowed crimes to go on unchecked, behind a veil of self-satisfaction and self-justification.

When the Nuremburg trials were later set up to determine how deep the culpability of the members of the Nazi party lay, unfortunately for those on trial, their sins lay not just in what they had done, but also in what was left undone. That had resulted in horrendous crimes. And what was to be telling evidence of their guilt, in the case of the seven of Hitler’s inner circle whose lives were spared, Gitta Sereny reveals to us in her book, ‘Albert Speer, His Battle with Truth’. Speer was “the only one to assert continuously his recognition of Nazi’s wrongs,” He suffered isolation for his stand during his twenty years in prison. “It was a kind of triumph,” she said, “That price he paid… was an immense moral victory.”

In R. Steiner’s series of lectures, compiled in the book entitled, ‘From Symptom to Reality in Modern History’, he tells us that often events in life get recorded as ‘history’ which are in actuality, mere symptoms of the course of history at a deeper level, the level of the evolution of Humanity. For example, the dawning of the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness Soul) in the 15^th century was characterised by such events as these: a schism in the Church–Roman Pope and French anti-Pope; the Hussite rebellion and Huss’ burning at the stake, which was fed by the ideology of John Wycliffe of England; and the appearance of Joan of Arc, leading to the strengthening of National identity connected to native language, when the English were driven out of France and back to England. Such events were symptoms of the developing Consciousness Soul of mankind.

He goes on to tell that there are mysteries experienced by humanity which are in truth universal forces directing the course of the evolution of humanity. These forces permeate the world and mankind; our experience of them is still for most people, by and large unconscious, but some of their symptoms, or ‘collateral effects’, we are all aware of. There is the Mystery of Death, one symptom of which we experience in that we die. But to say this is the reason for this mystery “is like saying that the reason for the engine of a locomotive is to wear down the rails (tracks)”. Because of this universal force, mankind is endowed with “the full faculty to develop the Spiritual Soul”. (The developing he must do on his own.) Connected with this first mystery is a second, the Mystery of Evil. Again, this universal force permeates all mankind with the tendency to evil, and we are aware of its collateral effect, the evil actions of men. Steiner calls these evil actions ‘caricatures’ of this force whose true purpose is to make it possible for mankind to “receive the spiritual life”. Easy to say, but what does this mean?

To try to understand better man’s relationship to this inscrutable, omnipresent force, let us go back to the beginning of lecture V (G185). Steiner refers to those ‘faculties’ not sufficiently developed in man (in 1918), which preclude man’s interest in understanding this mystery. In the same passage, he exhorts us to ‘resist our resistance’ to understanding it, because it is so essential to wake up to it. He speaks in an almost grandfatherly way warning us against ‘slovenly thinking’ and prompting us to probe with deepest emotion for this link to the reality of spiritual life. Later he calls it “the central nerve in the evolution of humanity.” He encourages us by saying, “The will to understand will come in time, and we must see that it does come. In every possible way we must see that it does come.” (When I read this, I began preparing this talk.)

K. Koenig, in the book of his lectures, ‘A Living Physiology’, warns that the inertia in man “threatens to lead to his destruction”. In modern life, two things spring to mind that are sought after and that enable mankind’s inertia—becoming comfortable and the plethora of conveniences which are available. Many a great invention has been praised for enabling such ‘benefits’. They are signs of progress, especially in the West, and yet how many other discoveries may have been blocked because people were lulled into blissful unawareness by some convenience (in a search for success)? This may often be justified, of course, and not only by individuals, but by marketing strategies as well. What Steiner calls ‘slovenly thinking’ can become a lifestyle. There are many ways of overcoming the trap of such a sedentary, or fashionable lifestyle—self-discipline and interest in the outside world. Yet the trap might not be escaped without pursuing one of the most enduring tenets of wisdom, ‘Know Thyself, O Man’. In his book, ‘The Untethered Soul,’ Michael A. Singer presents a picture of a comfortable life as ‘life in a bubble’. He tells how, within the bubble, one may act to protect oneself from threats (to one’s emotions) and defend (one’s biases) against intrusions, jealously guarding one’s own boundaries and feeling them true and complete. It is a natural state in human maturation to have limits to our consciousness, and to resist disturbance at our boundaries. What is not always activated is the awareness that those boundaries are our own; by coming near to them we exercise the will to ‘Know Thyself’. If we dare to risk challenging our boundaries, we may expand our bubble, and having overcome old perceptions to a certain extent, may experience that polarities exist within one’s expanded awareness. As M. Stott points out in his article (New View, 2009), Steiner encourages this in his lectures on Education (‘Methods of Teaching’), where an example such as something ‘rational’, like a circle with finite circumference, is also described by something ‘irrational’ such as the number for Pi with infinite decimals (‘Two times Pi times radius equals the circumference.’).

Most people have had experiences where either their emotions have blocked them—because of what they ‘know’ to be ‘true’– or their biases have blocked them. Any discussion of the matter seems ‘futile’ to them. Modesty and humility in the face of such alarming encounters with one’s boundaries allows discoveries to be sought out. Flexibility in the face of whatever is hardened within us, and an effort to resist our resistance, our penchant for living with ‘completed’ knowledge, can open the door to the imagination. Reason can serve the imagination in making discoveries ‘beyond our dreams’. Koenig calls this way of pursuing truth ‘active thinking’–something that is akin to Goethean observation. He says (p. 45), “…if you try merely to repeat what I’ve told you, you will not be able to arrive at the true images. You have to create it anew for yourself and then it will be justified. Then you will see that it is an act of creating images, images which cannot just be taken and pocketed, but can only be remade… this is a kind of warning… for if you think you can simply repeat what you have just heard it would become a grey, colourless picture.” And who better to learn from than Koenig, who gave his lectures from the images?

If we are to learn to develop active thinking, how can it be done? We can start by giving up any requirements to be comfortable or convenient in its pursuit. We can teach ourselves to value flexibility and evidence, to seek truth and take risks at finding it outside of our bubble, or at that boundary point. Here are some examples where I think ‘active thinking’ was at work:

1) I had a friend who rode bareback. She wanted to learn to stand on the horse’s back while riding. She wanted her teacher to describe to her what she was to do—she naturally wanted to feel ‘safe’. She told me her teacher simply shouted to her, “Just do it! Just do it!” as she was riding by at a fast pace. She somehow overcame herself; she summoned courage and willed her body up. She did it! How clear is that picture for you? Does anyone feel a sense of awe and reverence in seeing that image? Along with modesty and humility, wonder and reverence are needed elements of attitude to bust boundaries. Was that ‘truth’ she found? Could she equally have blamed her teacher and called her method of ‘commanding’ her impossible? She would surely have found people who took her side.

2) I studied Theoretical Mathematics in University. In solving problems and finding proof to defend theories, mathematicians often describe going through and ‘Aha! moment’, also known as a ‘Eureka moment’ to others (see link to article in bibliography). The experience involves determined engagement in finding a solution to the problem: focusing; passionate longing; and exploring all angles by working it out physically somehow, combined with reason and imagination. This is to be ‘in labour’, but the birth is a little miracle. It comes as a realization, out of nowhere into the space held for it, like a gift. It can and sometimes does, vanish just as mysteriously as it came if it is not grounded right away, by writing it down. Steiner has mentioned this with regard to spiritual revelations.

3) On Mozart’s birth date, 27^th January, I listened to a BBC Radio 3 program featuring a quartet playing one of Mozart’s works. This group of professional musicians, talented, skilled and prepared, listened to each other as they played, improvising parts of it. The commentator observed their “tremendous willing in the face of technical difficulties,” their “lack of inhibition… invented as it goes,” and called their excellence, “serious virtuosity.” He noted their “lightness of spirit,” said they had “flexibility, yet with discipline,” and they “understood the voice, the way breathing comes into music.” What they had mastered individually could expand to spiritual dimensions through their communication, by participating in creative collaboration. Steiner said (from M. Stott article), “To adopt the right attitude towards the universe around us, we need to have known what it is to feel helplessness in our attempts at understanding, what it is to have had to call on the full range of our inner resources when trying to grasp something.” (Methods of Teaching, lecture 4) Because they had known that ‘helplessness,’ did that enable them to suspend their consciousness in listening as they played? We recognise in the word, ‘play’, something essential to the life of the Spirit: “Except you become like a child, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 18:3)

Now, once all ‘training and gear’ mentioned above have been acquired, imagine standing like a knight at the Crossroads. He will not cross over just because it is required, as a law—he seeks freedom. He is also unsure of ‘why’, out of his volition, he shall cross over. He is caught between opposites.

I once had an experience that I will tell you about:

I call it ‘FIST’, like what is formed with a closed hand. I came to it at a personal crossroads. I sat on the edge of my bed and was about to rise, but I felt held back somehow. I was upset by a situation where I blamed others for wronging me. It wasn’t the first time. I saw myself like a fist, formed with one finger pointing out away from me, blaming others. I was feeling like I couldn’t move from where I sat until I lowered that finger and drew it back in to my fist. I did this slowly, listening to my soul as I did. Inwardly, I felt frightened by what was happening, but also more complete like an egg or a seed. I felt humble as I reflected on that place I’d identified with formerly– two poles of avoidance: one the outer ‘requirement’ I resisted; the other the inner commitment I shied away from. Instead, I began to experience what was ‘necessary’. And within that egg-shaped fist, I felt a new and almost sacred ‘power of responsibility’. It was hard at times after that, to leave that crutch behind with that finger tucked in, but there was no turning back. Time seemed to change somehow: I had become less influenced by the past, more aware of the present, and more receptive to the future.

In writing this, I’ve mused about what FIST might stand for: ‘Fruitful Insight of Significant Turning’? or ‘First Initiative in Self- Teaching’? Either might do. I’ve also pondered whether such experiences as this could be what Steiner points to in the lecture, ‘The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body’, where he says that to build future Brotherhood, angels will try to make us aware of steps to take, through pictures in our astral bodies.

Steiner speaks of the ‘Guardian of the Threshold’ (‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds’, ch. IX); one who encounters the Guardian meets three beasts: Spirit doubt; Spirit fear; and Spirit mockery (Class Lesson). Without overcoming these beasts, one is not allowed to cross over the Threshold between this earthly world and the spirit realm, lest danger befall him. Let’s reflect on what might have happened in each of the three examples of spirit- encounters, had these beasts not been overcome:

1) The girl who stood up on the back of the running horse could have mocked the spirit, by scoffing at her teacher and not making any attempt.

2) The mathematician who experienced the Aha! moment might never have received a revelation if they had not held a space within, expectantly, and instead doubted any such possibility.

3) The musicians, had any of them feared listening, communicating, and becoming flexible in their playing, or if they were hardened by fear of mistakes or failure, their music may not have transcended the parts into the whole.

(explore: ‘Song of a Man Who Has Come Through’ D. H. Lawrence)

I am reminded here that Steiner warns (‘Knowledge…’) that for every step one takes in spirit knowledge, one must take several steps in morality. This can be tied into gaining self-knowledge through ones expanding consciousness.

Once I had my FIST experience, nuances of my soul-pain, previously indistinct from my moods, began to separate in my awareness and light up for me; guided by my conscience, I saw steps in morality I could take to ease these inner struggles. I began to own my pain and take action to resolve it. To ‘Know Thyself’ became necessary to me, and the power of responsibility became a way towards freedom in the steps I took. This is a freedom towards my higher self, not a freedom from (avoidance of) laws and commitment. Perhaps this is what Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians 1:19, when he writes, “This Christ Jesus, proclaimed among you by us, has never been a blend of yes and no, but was and is, yes.”

Having now become aware of some of what is needed to approach the ‘Grail Castle’ of spiritual life, what is it we can expect to meet when we come there? Will we be closer to it by seeking to understand the Mystery of Death and the Mystery of Evil? In a way, ‘yes’, because it is a spiritual land of Selflessness and Brotherhood. The proper task of the Mystery of Death is, “to endow man with the full faculty of the Spiritual Soul”;  for the Mystery of Evil, he says we receive an answer, “when we try to pass the Guardian of the Threshold and learn to truly know the human being”, for “the very entry of man into the fifth Post-Atlantean Age—which is the age of modern civilisation—consists in him receiving into himself the tendencies to evil.” In other words, “He who crosses the threshold into the Spiritual world will undergo the following experience: There is no crime in all the world, but that every single human being inasmuch as he belongs to the fifth P-A age, has in his subconscious the inclination towards it…Whether in one case or another the inclination to evil leads to external evil action depends on quite other circumstances than on the inclination itself.” (for reflection on the case of ‘Mary Bell’, see article by S. Gulbekian, New View, 1998)

The purpose of these universal forces is this: “when man is summoned to develop the conscious Spiritual Soul (fifth P-A age) their function is to call forth in him the inclination to receive the spiritual life… in the great universe these forces of Evil hold sway. Man must receive them, and in receiving them he implants in himself the seed, the tendency, to experience the spiritual life through the conscious Spiritual Soul… when man reaches the stage of the Spiritual Soul he may break through into the spiritual life… otherwise he would never come to the point where, out of his own Spiritual Soul, he has the impulse to receive from the Universe, the Spirit: which from henceforward must fertilise all cultural life, unless indeed this is to die away.” He further says, “If man could not struggle and resist, he would not be able, out of himself, to receive the Spirit.”

On the path of Selflessness, in ever deepening soul development, “Man must pass through the Spiritual Soul if he wishes to absorb, in his own way, the forces of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. To this end he must completely unite the forces of death with his own being, during the course of the fifth P-A age (before 3000).”

Dying to oneself is also known from the Bible. Paul, who beheld Christ before the gates of Damascus, writes: “…that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” (Ephesians 4:22-24)

Steiner emphasizes that, “…when we think of these things, we come very close to the central nerve of the evolutions of humanity.” He says, “At the same time all these things are connected with the disasters which have overtaken mankind today… like signs of an approaching storm… signs which at the present stage show the very reverse of what is coming.” Further, he reassures mankind that, “These things are said, not to encourage pessimism, but as a call to awakening, an impulse to strong actions.”

On earth we are subject to gravity in our physical bodies, and similarly as a consequence of ‘the Fall’, mankind came to know good and evil, becoming ‘like gods’, and is now subject to the ‘tendency to evil’. We can compare our senses’ agency in guiding our bodies into balance through struggling to resist falling on the earth, to our moral agency in struggling to resist the tendency to evil.

In this world we know ‘up and down’, ‘standing and falling’, in relation to gravity. To a small child it matters not so much if they are on their feet or falling, as it does that they are playing; their flexibility is a way of training their senses and their skills. Their environment plays a large part in how they fare—whether there is love and helpful boundaries set– and perhaps in considering this, we can see parallels with the conditions surrounding those who, (by the Mystery of Evil) being ‘permeated with the tendency to evil’, take on to receive the spiritual life. The experience of resistance is strengthening; a supportive, loving environment is encouraging of development. Flexibility and joy, a playful attitude within boundaries of discipline: all these form a framework for spiritual growth. Here polarities of ‘create and destroy’ (anabolic and catabolic) come to mind, as well as ‘synthesis and analysis’ and ‘contract and disperse’.

(“Even if lightning strikes may shatter/ our sense-built dwellings to ruins, / We are building soul-dwellings/ on the iron-framed, weaving light of knowing, / And downfall of the outer (sense world)/ shall become the rising of the soul’s own innermost.”) (from ‘To the Berlin Friends’, stanza 5)

Steiner stresses that, “The mission of the age is to recognise these goals that mankind may strive towards them consciously.” For, he says, we “now witness an inner rebellion of mankind against what is to accompany these things. In future, tendencies making for social separation will have to be overcome”.

To discover how to realise this in a practical way, mankind “must develop more and more interest in fellow human beings” (described in ‘Knowledge…’). This will lead to his development in four ways:

1) He will need to learn to understand the other pictorially (“…the element of Art contains a deeper and more real knowledge of man.”) and (“education can receive from Art certain ways of understanding necessary for the future.”); by becoming familiar with the creative processes of painting and sculpting, he can observe the shape of a man’s skull and understand the karma from his past life in the structure and shape of his skull. By observing the way he walks, he can further recognise the other man’s Ego-being, also applying understanding gained from music and poetry. Men will become more transparent to one another in future. (As Paul says in I Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” There will arise then an “inner experience of the warmth ether—this will be a reflex of the heightened interest between man and man.” We will have the sensation of warmth or cold in encountering another, but the most troubling will be when we meet someone who is neither warm nor cold.

2) In the present time, “there is no longer a relationship to language which sees through the language to the inner human being.”

Man will learn to hear through speech into the soul of man and know the other’s relationship to the 3^rd Hierarchy, Angels, Archangels and Archai. We need more and more to wrestle in our soul for the right words, and to “struggle for this step by step, sentence by sentence,” and not to be satisfied using well-known, convenient phrases. “What matters is the region of the soul from which things spring… it is important that the way of saying it is permeated by that inner force which proceeds directly from the Spirit.” Referring to the ‘central nerve’ of the evolution of Humanity, he says, “Much of the force of so-called evil will have to be transmuted (‘changed into another form or nature’) this way.”

Speech will take on more meaning and that which is to bear greatest meaning will be what comes out of an Anthroposophical world context. Those who can listen will be able to experience living colours with the sounds, and this will enable mankind to communicate internationally.

3) A person’s breathing will become fast or slow in an encounter with another, in response to the other’s feelings. So intimate will human encounters become in the future.

4) Insomuch as a person “shall have to will, or will to will, one thing or other in association with another,” they shall have inner experiences similar to that which we now have when we digest some kinds of food.

These describe aspects of man’s more highly developed thinking, feeling and willing. The more man develops his higher self, the more he will experience freedom. In the sphere of willing, men will have to digest the other; in the sphere of feeling, they will have to breathe one another; in the sphere of understanding through speech, they will have to feel one another in living colours; lastly as they learn really to see one another, they will learn to know one another as Ego-beings. (“All physical things are images of something spiritual—we will see through the picture nature of man to his spiritual archetype.”)  For their full development, the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan periods of evolution will have to follow; all these forces will first reside in the inner realm of the soul.

“Disasters are occurring around us, but in most cases show the reverse of what is to come. But for the moment the permanent way is badly laid, and a fairly long time will pass before it gets better, for many people are setting to work just now to replace the faulty rails—and not by any means with better ones.

“Spiritual Science does require, at least for certain special occasions that one should lay aside some of the habitual inclinations of today. Alas, almost at once, everyone falls back into the old ruts,” (we want to ‘get back to normal’) and “that’s what makes it so very difficult to speak of such things without reserve… we touch upon public issues in respect of which, mankind is bent on hurling itself into the abyss, and we must continually utter this warning, this call to awakening”.

We can see with a measure of amazement how much of these concerns and this guidance, of a hundred years ago, still hold true today. May we seek and engage in ever stronger actions and not forget that “we must see through these things if we would gain a foundation for understanding the so-called Mystery of Evil,” today.

(‘Sieghafter Geist!‘ Verse by R. Steiner)

Victorious Spirit!

Flame through the impotence

Of irresolute souls

Burn out the egoism

Ignite Compassion,

That Selflessness

The Life-stream of Mankind

Wells up as Source

Of Spirit-rebirth.

Bibliography

Talk on ‘Mystery of Evil’ by C. Keys

R. Steiner, ‘From Symptom to Reality in Modern History’, chapter V; GA185, Dornach 1918.

The Golden Blade magazine, 1985: ‘Evil and the Future of Man’, GA185, (alternate translation).

R. Steiner, ‘Occult Science‘, trans. G. & M. Adams, 1962.

R. Steiner, ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds’, 3^rd ed., 1947.

R. Steiner, ‘The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body’, Zurich, 1918, trans. DS Osmund.

R. Steiner, ‘The Etherisation of the Blood’, Basle, 1911, trans. M Cotterell.

Alfred Schuetze, ‘The Enigma of Evil’, 1978, trans. Eva Lauterbach.

Karl Koenig, ‘A Living Physiology’, K. Koenig Archive, 1999.

Michael Singer, ‘the untethered soul’, 2007.

Gitta Sereny, ‘Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth’, 1995.

The Holy Bible, trans. New King James version.

New View magazine, Sevak Gulbekian, ‘Evil and Freedom (case of Mary Bell)’, 4^th qtr. 1998.

New View… Michael Stott, ‘Reason in her most exalted mood—Fostering a new faculty through Waldorf pedagogy’ 2^nd qtr. 2009.

Anil Rajvanshi, What causes the Eureka moment in the brain? | South Asia Monitor, Dec. 2021.

D. H. Lawrence, ‘Song of a Man Who Has Come Through’, poem.

R. Steiner, ‘To the Berlin Friends’, verse/ letter. R. Steiner, ‘Sieghafter Geist’ /’Victorious Spirit‘, verse

Links to the foundation stone meditation

Rudolf Steiner Archiv

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19231227p02.html

https://amzn.eu/d/etgX6a7

ABOUT THE FOUNDATION STONE

SPIRIT BEHOLDING, talk by Fatima Godinho

Script of the talk given by Fatima Godinho at the first day of our Christmas Meeting on the 27.12. 2023

What changed with The Christmas Conference 1923? -about a foundation stone community, by W. Radysh

A Christmas Imagination, talk by Helmut Raimund

This link leads you to Helmuts website, to read the Imagination itself.

https://www.givespiritavoice.com/2023/12/27/a-christmas-imagination/

the first part of the talk had been taken out of the beginning of an essay “About the Soul”, Part one,

which you can find on the link to Helmuts website below

https://www.givespiritavoice.com/2023/12/28/about-the-soul-part-one/

Booklet about the Foundation Stone, presented by Bart Lakeman

at our conference at the 27th of December 2023

you can read it on our website using the link below

To the Berlin Friends

by Rudolf Steiner, translated by Christopher Hakkennes,

spoken by the Aberdeen Speech Choire at the Holy Week Conference 2023 in Aberdeen

Man sees With the world-begotten eye,

What he sees thus binds him

To world’s joy and world’s pain,

It binds him unto all

That springs to life, but not less

To all that is plunging

Into dominions of dark depths.

Man beholds With the Spirit-given eye,

What he beholds binds him

To Spirit-Hope and Spirit-Endurance,

It binds him unto all That roots within Eternities

And bears fruits in Eternities.

Yet man can only then behold

When he feels the Inner Eye

To be Spirit-God-Organ,

Which on the Stage of the Soul

In the Temple of man’s body

Fulfils the deeds of the Gods.

Mankind is Forgetting Its divine Inner Being.

Yet We want to raise it

Into the bright Light of Consciousnes

And then, across ruins and ashes

Will we bear this Flame Divine

In our human Heart

Even if Lightning-Strikes

May shatter our Sense-built dwelling to ruins:

We are building Soul-Dwellings

On the Iron-framed, weaving Light of Knowing,

And downfall of the Outer

Shall become the rising of the Soul’s Innermost.

Sorrow surges up

From violent Elemental Powers,

Hope is glowing

Even though Darkness seethes all around us

And Hope will, one day,

entre into our memory

When, after the Dark,

We may live again in the Light.

We do not want to be

Without this Glow

One day in future Brightness,

Because now, in our Sorrow,

We did not plant it Into our Souls.