Cults, ritual act
Cults One is the way to acquire knowledge of spiritual worlds and of God, the other is "the experience of the divine in the soul" (B171. 12.6.1921). The physical body serves man as his shell, which allows him to attain ego-consciousness. If a person loses the physical body, he would also lose his consciousness. Through his sacrificial act at the turn of the times, the Christ has brought us a new imperishable physical body, the new Adam or Phantom Body, a nonmaterial basic abstract of the physical body. In this new phantom body, it will be possible for us to attain consciousness even without the earthly corruptible physical body. On our path to higher knowledge, perception and consciousness, everything depends on how we relate to the Christ-being. Only by forming a new body from his body, as our new temple, in connection with the Christ, in which we resurrect in the spiritual world in connection with the Christ substance, will we attain consciousness in the spiritual worlds (B009, 21.1.1913 and B123, hours 8 to 19). Human life depends on receiving food and drink. Our physical body uses them as stimulation to form and maintain the physical body. For the spiritual world forms our body through the powers of image. The future food of man will more and more come directly from the spiritual coming. The beginning for this is given to us in the Holy Communion by Jesus Christ. In which He teaches us to accept His body, accept His blood, remembering Him and to walk in us for our food and drink. So we get in touch with the Christ Being and His substance (B001, 1.10.1911). Spiritual nourishment for us and a connection with the new phantom body of humanity. Thus, the cultic act of Christian sacrificial celebration, transformation, transubstantiation1 is a way to bring us more and more into contact with the Christ, to place us on the future path of humanity, where we build up our own imperishable body, with which we can then also attain consciousness in the spiritual world (see also B023, as a guide to connecting with the Christ-being). Whoever can and may experience the Christian cultic action of the celebration of Mass in a humble, fulfilled mood will be able to feel the strengthening that comes from it. "Take my body, take my blood, for the sake of our love! ... "Take from the bread, boldly transform it into body strength and power... "to work the works of the Savior... Take from wine, transform it anew into life's fiery blood, joyful in association, faithful to our brothers ...", (Richard Wagner: Parsifal). In the ritual acts that were performed at all times in mystery places by priests and sacrificial agents in the temples, they brought their souls into such states that higher spiritual beings could be present through them in these sacrificial services. "A supernatural event takes place in the sensual image", (B155, 3.3.1923). High spiritual beings, of the angelic hierarchies could communicate with people, give them impulses from the spiritual world. The form of worship changes with the development of man, since the event of Golgotha it is more and more connected with the ego development of man and thus with the I Am, with the Christ. "... if one only looks at these basic elements, then the Sacrifice of the Mass is an external pictorial expression for initiation or initiation. ... Reading the Gospels, what does it mean? It means the sounding in, the revelation of the word in the church... That which man can give to the supernatural world of his own accord, that which is attempted by him in the offering of the sacrifice, as a counteroffering so to speak, the real prayer, that comes before us figuratively in the Offertory2. ... The third part, the transubstantiation, the transformation, consists in symbolically representing that consciousness which develops in man when he feels the divine substance in him, when he feels the divine substance in his own soul. ... Not me, the Christ in me. - He does not only sacrifice himself, he becomes aware that the supernatural lives in himself. And the fourth part of the Sacrifice of the Mass is then Communion, which is nothing other than this: Having become one with the supernatural, man allows all his earthly being to be poured into union with the supernatural. This fourth part illustrates what the one to be initiated, the one to be initiated, also had to experience in the older and newer mysteries", (B171, 14.6.1922 11.00 a.m.). The cult as an expression of the connection with the Christ, the inner Christianization of man (B171, 14.6.1921 evening). A correctly performed act of worship by priests together with the community brings about a real experience of the presence of higher beings in the participants. A clearing of the mind and a loving warming through, as this is also expressed in the foundation stone saying: "Christ Sun warms our hearts, enlighten our heads; that good may come what we from the heart reasons, What we have made of heads ...to lead with purpose." (B067, 25.12.1923, "Grundsteinspruch" in the morning). Legitimate cultic action will increasingly be connected with the consciousness of the people performing the action. Through man's connection with the Christ, the consciousness of man who has acquired corresponding spiritual-scientific concepts and ideas, the higher beings now speak. The Christian act of sacrifice is a cult from above, when spiritual beings can lower themselves into the human community present. Another cult is when the human community present is lifted up to the spiritual world through spiritual-scientific (anthroposophical) work, through the awakening in the spiritual-soulfulness of the other. "Through the cult, the supersensible in word and action is brought down into the physical world. Through the anthroposophical branch, the thoughts and feelings of the anthroposophical group are lifted up into the supersensible world. And when the anthroposophical content is experienced in the right attitude by a group of people, whereby human soul awakens to human soul, this human soul is actually elevated to a spiritual community. The only thing that is involved is that this consciousness is really present. If this consciousness is present and such groups appear in the Anthroposophical Society, then in this, if I may say so, reversed cult, in the other pole of the cult, there is something community-building in the most eminent sense. To put it metaphorically: the cult community tries to induce the angels of heaven to go down into the cult room so that they can be among men. The anthroposophical church tries to lift up the souls of men into the supernatural world, so that they may be among the angels", (B155, 3.3.1923). In cultic acts a community of people can form such a vessel in which higher beings can sink down. If a cultic action is carried out in the sense of the leading lodge of world development, it can also work as a kind of magical action, a white-magic action. Through it, well-intentioned beings of the hierarchies can work their way into the earthly realm and the earth thereby takes a small step forward in the development towards the planned state of Jupiter (B118, 21.10.1907). Thus something like an enveloping, protective sphere develops around the cultic action and the people around them. The adversary beings have an effect on the unaltered weaknesses of the people, this effect can be reduced by the cultic action, the person becomes freer for his moral deeds. But this process requires a corresponding spiritual and moral maturity for the person who performs the ritual act. If the members of such a human community want to contribute to fruitful development, they can work on the intensive refinement of their qualities. Thus, effects can arise which are helpful to the individual. To find the source of this help in the cult and its performers is a question of high spiritual-scientific knowledge. Thus many will not see the source and thus will not perceive the sacrifice that the cult practitioners make. Thus, through those who make sacrifices, a following of Christ is created in the voluntary action for fellow human beings in the experience, instead of experiencing gratitude or hostility. As the Christ said to John: "Not what you believe, what I have suffered I have suffered". For it was not physical suffering that he suffered, it was mutilation and denial of the Word that he suffered. Thus, an action carried out out of love is created, without any desire for anything in return. The human community, united in the regular cultic action, has a spiritual experience. This is community-building to the highest degree. The memory of the prenatal time, of the common karma stream germinates in the consciousness of the people. "That is why cult binds, because in cult that which is carried down from the spiritual worlds is that which powers of these spiritual worlds are, because man has before him in his life on earth that which is supernatural. ... A comprehensive common memory that reaches over into the spiritual, that is what the community-building power of cult is", (B155,27.2.1923). Through the cult man comes into contact with the gods, "Every community-building process boils down to the fact that among those who come together to form a community there is a higher spiritual-essential being that, as it were, descends from spiritual worlds and binds people together", (B155, 3.3.1923) - it is a reflection of the initiation process. Today man is called upon to turn back to the spiritual world out of his own ego powers. To tread the path to the spiritual world. To connect the physical world with the spiritual world through his ego-being. To settle spiritual future impulses into the physical-sensual world. When man connects himself with the spiritual world, in connection with the high guiding spirits of the world, the Christ-being, from which he acts, all his actions become cultic, world-changing actions. Through the recognition of higher worlds, new thoughts about the future arise. "The thoughts that we receive from spiritual research are enlivened by imagination, inspiration and intuition. If we take them up, then they are independent entities that exist on earth ... This thinking represents the spiritual form of communication of mankind. - For by leaving his mirror image of the outer nature to himself, he is only repeating the past, he is living in the corpses of the divine. By enlivening his own thoughts, he connects himself through his own being, communicating, receiving communion, with the Divine-Spiritual who permeates the world and secures its future. Thus, spiritual knowledge is a real communion, the beginning of a cosmic cult in accordance with the present humanity, which can then grow by becoming aware of how man now sees his physical-mineral and vegetable organism with his astral and ego-organism, how, by making the spirit alive in himself, he now also banishes the spirit into that which surrounds him otherwise as dead, as the first-dying", (B162, 31.12.1922). A person who achieves this achieves deeds for the real future development of humanity. About Christian-religious work Rudolf Steiner said: "... there is no absolute border between exoteric and esoteric, the one flows over into the other and the esoteric becomes exoteric when it is pronounced -, they must still have their own content in which they live", (B171, 12.6.1921, 15.00 o'clock). Spiritual should live esoterically in us and the parts for which it is time, can be expressed and actively realized in the world. We keep another part for ourselves. Just as meditation represents the connection to the spiritual world for the individual human being, so the cultic action is the connection of a community to the spiritual world, so spiritual beings can be present in the community. "But the priest's work must be that the priest is above all aware of an esoteric connection with the spiritual world itself, not only with concepts about the spiritual world", (B171, 12.6.1921). "Once again, if such things are considered to be the main thing, that man knows himself to be imbued to the smallest sensation with the immediate existence of the divine in the physical, and if the preacher feels himself to be such an authority that he knows I am carrying the divine life into it, I am not carrying out an official act in the present sense, but I am carrying out a mission from God", (B171, 13.6.1921). At all times there have been secret societies and mystery sites that performed rituals as worship, as service to the gods. For the benefit of cultural development, for the benefit of fellow human beings. Today, the knowledge of being human as a spiritual being, but also the knowledge about the worship services must be publicly accessible. The Anthroposophical School of Spiritual Science is one such institution. A culture that does not have in itself any free spiritual life, any spiritual-scientific knowledge of humanity, any connection with the Christ-being, any services and Christian rituals that are conducted and lived, is a culture in decline or dissolution3, (B010, 3.9.1906).
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