Norbert Mulholland will be in Hawkes Bay for the week 15th to 22nd December, tutoring in the Spirit of the Word School, in the mornings through the week;
and giving a talk on the Saturday 20th on "Christian Rosenkreuz and Rudolf Steiner" for our Summer Festival part 1.
Anyone interested in joining the morning chorus and perhaps some poetry/drama sessions is welcome to join for a small contribution of $15 per session or $60 for the week. Please let us know a.s.a.p.
Accommodation needed: If anyone has a spare room where Norbert could stay for the time, please let us know. It would be helpful if we could support him in this.
Astrid Anderson and John Jackson.
021-215 4019 022-122 8002
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Pan EuRhythmy
For those interested in coming together to practice Pan EuRythmy.
I would like to have a meeting regarding forming a Pan EuRhythmy group.
I suggest we meet on Sat 27th Dec at 10am in the centre and talk through the exercises before we venture out to the park.
Are you with me?
John Jackson
Contact email; jacksonj33@yahoo.co.nz
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Editor: some background.
During their Meditation Workshop, Thomas and Agnes led participants 3 times into Cornwall Park to move Pan EuRythmy to music.
(Google reveals) Pan EuRhythmy is a spiritual practice of sacred dance created by Bulgarian mystic, Peter Deunov, involving simple, harmonious physical movements, music, and poetry, performed outdoors in circles to connect with nature's vital forces, promote inner balance, self-perfection, and bring health to body, soul, and spirit. ,It combines gentle exercises, symbolic gestures, and a deep philosophy about universal harmony, aiming to harmonize individuals with cosmic rhythms and foster love and consciousness.
Key Differences
- Pan EuRhythmy [Deunov] is a specific, structured set of exercises for cosmic connection and spiritual growth.
- Eurythmy [Steiner] is a broader movement art that embodies speech and music, serving both artistic expression and therapeutic/educational goals.
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Seeking Truth
continued from last week
(Now, it is quite clear that we are not intended to lose our individuality and our freedom; the whole point of Earth's evolution up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was to enable us to acquire them. And we know that without the force of antipathy in us we could never have done so. But what if we now wish to follow Christ? Then the question confronts us: if we replace antipathy with sympathy and venture beyond the narrow confines of the self towards a wider, more universal experience of the "I", will we lose our individuality and our freedom? Will we lose them? Is this not the existential question today? Even when the Christian in us contemplates the great Pauline ideal, "Not I but Christ in me", is there not a voice that whispers deep down inside us: "No, no, I don't want to give up my own "I", not even for Christ. I want to be myself!" This voice is there in all of us, whether we are conscious of it or not. It is the voice of a very powerful instinct. It is our egoism, the antipathy in us.' )
Would we lose our individuality and our freedom? No, we would not. Let us go back for a moment to what we said in the previous chapter concerning the arising of the "I"-consciousness in the human bodily organization. We quoted from the following passage in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity:
"Now, what takes place in this organization when we think has certainly nothing to do with the essential being of thought, but it does have to do with the formation of the "I"-consciousness through thought. The true "I" lies within the essential being of thought, but the "I"-consciousness does not. This is clear to anyone who observes thought in an unprejudiced way. The "I" is to be found within thought; the "I"-consciousness arises through the fact that in ordinary consciousness the tracks made by the thinking activity engrave themselves into the organization. (Thus the "I"-consciousness arises through the bodily organization. But this should not be mistaken for an assertion that the "I"-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organization. Once the "l"-consciousness has come into being it is taken up into thinking and shares henceforth the spiritual being of thinking.)"
We needed antipathy, the force that separated our bodily organization and our soul-nature from the physical and soul worlds, in order that our "I"-consciousness could arise by their means.
How does it arise? It arises through thought. One might say that the universal "I" thinks itself within the human being and calls forth a reflection of itself in the organization of body and soul. Once this individual "l"-consciousness has come into being it becomes independent of that organization. It is taken up into universal thought and becomes thereby a spiritual reality. This is, henceforth, our spiritual identity, our "I". Our freedom as an individual is grounded in the "I", not in the "self'. It is the. “I”that takes into itself the universal force of thinking and partakes thereby of the all-encompassing being that pervades everything. Eternal truths live within the "I", which edifies from them its highest ideals. This is the basis of human freedom. When man allows himself to be ruled by that which comes from his nature of body and soul, by his urges and passions, he is a slave to this lower nature, even though he may believe he is following his own free will. An action is truly free in so far as the reasons for it spring from the ideal part of one's individual being. The human being is free to the extent that he is able, in every moment of his life, to follow himself, that is to say: to follow his “I”.
Since our "I", once it has arisen, becomes independent of the earthly "self' and partakes of the existence of universal thought, it shares its essence with that of the "I" of every other human being. It receives an individual stamp in each separate human being only because it is related to his individual feelings and sensations, which depend on the organization of body and soul. What distinguishes us from one another above all, and makes individuals of us, is this organization of body and soul – the "sheaths" of the "I". Egoism and antipathy are proper to the three sheaths: the physical body, etheric body and soul, but not to the "I" itself:
"The human "I" is enfolded in three sheaths. The "I" itself is not egoistic; only the sheaths are egoistic. Were the "I" to be liberated from its sheaths, it would immediately seek to expand into the whole cosmos. But it is enclosed within its three sheaths."
These sheaths naturally continue to be the earthly envelope of the "I" even if the latter expands its sphere of experience. Since it is the sheaths that give us our individuality, this is not in any way diminished by an expansion of the "I"-experience. As for the essence of the "I" itself, it is already shared with the "I" of every other human being. These considerations are of importance because they help to shed light on the new direction given to human evolution by the Mystery of Golgotha.
(to be continued)
(Emberson, Paul [2014], “From Gondishapur to Silicon Valley” pp 929 to 931)
