Guardian Angels E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 193

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Throughout the ages, traditional folklore has spoken of guardian angels as spirits who guide and protect human beings. In modern times, however, their existence has largely been written off as myth and superstition.Based on his personal experience and cognition, Rudolf Steiner speaks of guardian angels and other spiritual beings as a reality. Their existence, he says, is a spiritual and scientific fact which can be fruitfully researched and studied through clairvoyant means. Furthermore, working consciously with these entities can assist each of us in fulfilling our evolutionary goals.In these six specially selected lectures, Rudolf Steiner elucidates the role of the guardian angel, and also discusses our relationship to the heavenly hierarchies of spiritual beings as a whole, and how they shape our human form as a result of their cosmic activity.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

GUARDIAN ANGELS

Connecting with our spiritual guides and helpers

Rudolf Steiner

Compiled by Margaret Jonas

Translated by Pauline Wehrle

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Earlier English publications: Lectures Two and Three in Cosmosophy, Vol. Two, Completion Press, Gympie, Australia 1997; Lecture Four in The Problems of Our Time, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., London, no date; Lecture Five in Anthroposophical Movement, Vol. VIII, No. 25; Lecture Six in Anthroposophie News Sheet 1936, No 21

Originally published in German in various volumes of the GA (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach: Lecture One in GA 350; Lectures Two and Three in GA 208; Lecture Four in GA 193; Lecture Five in GA 205; Lecture Six in GA 98. This authorized translation is published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach. All lectures are reproduced in complete versions with the exception of Lecture 4 which has been edited for incidental remarks

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2000

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 272 4

Cover by Andrew Morgan DesignTypeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Introduction by Margaret Jonas

PART I

Lecture OneGuardian angelsDornach, 13 June 1923

Lecture TwoThe human form and cosmic activityDornach, 22 October 1921

Lecture ThreeLucifer and AhrimanDornach, 23 October 1921

PART II

Lecture FourReconnecting with the hierarchiesBerlin, 13 September 1919

Lecture FiveThe human being and the hierarchiesDornach, 17 July 1921

PART III

Lecture SixHow worlds and beings relateMunich, 29 April 1908

Notes

Note Regarding Rudolf Steiner's Lectures

Introduction

Belief in a guardian angel appointed to guide and watch over each human being is part of most religious systems and is gaining ground again with newer spiritual teachings. It is, however, often dismissed as mere fancy or figurative speech although many stories abound of the miraculous intervention of these beings in the lives of people—especially children— when threatened with danger. According to esoteric teachings the angels are the spiritual beings closest to the human being, whom they guard, guide and lead from one incarnation to the next, bearing the ‘higher self; but the ranks of the others (9 in all1), often called ‘choirs of angels’ or ‘gods’, which were known to spiritual teachers such as St Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite and Thomas Aquinas, have become less familiar names in more recent centuries.

Due to his spiritual capacities and insights, Rudolf Steiner was very conscious that human beings today, whilst needing to develop their own independence of thought, or ‘ego-consciousness’, have become more and more sundered from their spiritual counterparts, which few now have the clair-voyance to perceive—or, if they do, they lack the discriminatory knowledge with which to discern the nature of the being in question. One of his aims was to enable people to connect again with these spiritual beings, not just for their own benefit but for the whole destiny of the earth’s evolution and the other kingdoms of nature. His intention was to lead people from belief to recognition, knowledge and understanding of them, through the development of the often dormant higher human faculties. But first we have to be furnished with the necessary description of those whom we may encounter.

In addition to three important cycles of lectures on these nine ranks,2 he gave a number of others most of which have been published. There are, however, some which until now have lain hidden in very early publications or journals, and which throw more light on our relationship to these angelic kingdoms. Each of the chosen lectures has something specific to say about the angels—the guardian spirits, and also in some cases, about the other ranks and their interrelationships.

The first lecture was given to the workers at the Goetheanum, the centre for anthroposophy in Switzerland, in response to a dramatic account of a young boy’s life being saved. Steiner takes pains to show here how a guardian angel is able to intervene in everyday life, throwing much light on the interpenetration of the world around us with the spiritual.

Lectures Two and Three deal with the guardian angel’s relationship to the other members of the spiritual hierarchies, and how these beings live in our dreams and life of imagination. There is something else very important for us to know—different kinds of angels exist and some would hinder the evolutionary development of mankind. If we can recognize these other beings we are less likely to be misled by them. Steiner does not speak of the popularity of ‘channelling’, but we would do well to remember this when faced with such experiences.

Lecture Four gives us the remarkable fact that each night in sleep we plan the day ahead with our angel. ‘People should be filled with the conviction that in the course of the day they should help to bring about what they prepared with their angel the previous night.’ And how easy it is to forget it. This lecture is especially potent as it was given against the background of the suffering of the 1914-18 war. It also contains some important comments on language—especially English.

The fifth lecture continues with connections to the other ranks of the hierarchies and to our own subtle ‘bodies’, and how the guardian angels stand back somewhat with respect to adults and their protective watch over us becomes less automatic. As adults we now have to raise our consciousness to a spiritual level, befitting an angel, and are no longer protected in the same way as in childhood. There are those adversary beings, too, who would sever the connection altogether and imprison us in a web of untruths. These are the beings who inspire materialistic thoughts, to whom Steiner gave the name ‘Ahrimanic’ after Ahriman,the Persian name for the opponent of the light.

The last lecture should interest those who want to understand the properties of minerals and crystals, especially in relation to healing, for we learn of the angels’ connection to these, and how the higher beings are alive in all the kingdoms of nature around us. The lecture concludes with some unexpected astronomical ideas on the spiralling movement of sun and earth, which Steiner was to refer to again in later astronomical lectures, but is rarely taken up and understood.

Today many people are awakening to angelic guidance in their daily lives and are seeking it consciously, and it is hoped that these lectures will offer a fuller picture to aid the understanding of their experiences and to enable them to make the communication more conscious. This growing intimacy is undoubtedly to be welcomed, but there are dangers and pitfalls of which people need to become aware. Not all ‘spirits’ are beneficent, any more than are all humans. It is beyond the scope here to take this further but it is hoped that the lectures will awaken seed-thoughts to help readers with their own discoveries and insights, for who knows (to paraphrase St Paul) when we may entertain an angel unawares.

Margaret Jonas

PART I

Lecture One

Guardian angels

Rudolf Steiner:Does anyone have a question?

One of the Workmen:I would like to describe an experience from my childhood which is connected with destiny and which religion, for example, would explain with the term guardian angel. As a small boy of nine or ten I happened to be setting up skittles when suddenly a voice called out: ‘Get out of the way!’ so urgently that I immediately jumped aside. The next moment the large ball hurtled over the spot where I had been standing. I asked who had called me, but nobody had the answer to that, and the voice could not possibly have come from there.

Another example happened in a smithy where people brought their ploughshares to be sharpened. There was a huge wheel there. About five or six of us boys were playing around it. I was perhaps eleven years old. I was standing on the spoke of the wheel to pull it down. I was enjoying myself. I told the other boys to pull out the catch so that I could move up from one spoke to the next. They all pulled hard, but they could not budge it. Although I was the smallest, I went myself to have a look. The wheel whizzed round tremendously fast, and I would certainly have been killed if they had succeeded in loosing the catch.

I would be glad if Herr Doktor would tell us whether in cases such as these a higher power might be at work.

Rudolf Steiner:Yes, I would like to talk to you about matters of this kind, but they must of course be discussed on a scientific basis. Anthroposophical spiritual science does not take these things the way they are very often taken by people who succumb to superstition and suchlike. These things should also be looked at in a thoroughly scientific way of course—for they are far more important for life than people usually think. I would like to begin by telling you something by way of preparation.

You know, people actually notice only a very small part of life. A large part goes unnoticed, and because they do not notice it they believe this part of life does not exist. For example if someone is going past a house and at that very moment a slate falls off the roof and kills him, people notice that very clearly, and it causes a great sensation among the acquaintances of the victim and even beyond. People have a lot to say about it. It has come to their notice, you see, and so they talk about it.

But now look at the following instance. Someone wants to go out in the morning. However, at the last moment he notices that he has forgotten to do something which absolutely has to be done, so he is delayed for five minutes. Then he sets out. In this case the slate falls down five minutes before he goes past, so when he comes along it does him no harm. If he had gone by five minutes earlier the slate would have cracked his head open. But nobody talks about this of course, for nobody can see the connections. Nobody can possibly know what would have happened if he had not been delayed for a few minutes. He himself naturally forgets about that. It is not the sort of thing people notice, yet all the same it is part of life. Innumerable things of this kind take place in which our destiny prevents us from having an accident, but we just do not notice them. The reason why we do not study them is because it is not so easy to see the connections. People follow them up only if they are so striking that they cannot help noticing them.

There was once a man who often sat at his desk, and the rest of the family lived downstairs. He spent a lot of time in his room on the upper floor. Then one day a member of his family dreamt that in a few days time a terrible accident was going to happen to this man, and he would be shot. So what did he do? When he had been told about the dream and advised to be very careful because he could be shot, he decided not to go out, but stay all day in his room. Yet he had a nasty feeling about the whole affair, for he had often been aware that such things as prophetic dreams exist—this was some while ago, when people took more notice of these things. He had this uncomfortable feeling, and because of this he became more aware of certain things. So it happened that at a certain moment he became so restless that he had to stand up and move away from his chair. And at that very moment a bullet whizzed right past his chair! There actually was an old gun that had been hanging in his ante-room for a long time—the door was open—and a servant had taken it down. The servant did not realize it was loaded and, holding it carelessly, he triggered it off so that the shot went exactly in the direction where his master had been sitting.

If you look you will see a double interlinking of destiny. First of all there is a commonplace dream, while on the other hand, because his destiny has not yet run its course and he has to stay alive, an inner urge gets him out of the way at the vital moment. So now we can connect it up with the other matter. He could also at the vital moment quite easily have heard: ‘Get out of the way!’ like you did. How would that have come about? He could just as well have heard that. You know, when we speak about a spiritual world we must realize that we must not allow ourselves to say stupid things about it. But that is just what we would be doing if we were to believe—as a lot of people do, at least those who are spiritualists—that in the spiritual world there are Germans, French people, English people, Spaniards and Chinese people. But these people would have to be there, if you were able to hear ‘Out of the way!’ from the spiritual world, for in that case there would have to be a spiritual being who speaks your language. It would have to speak French of course to a Frenchman. For if it were to speak another language the Frenchman might think it was either an inarticulate sound or even think it was a dirty word. So it would be a very foolish thought to imagine that a spirit had spoken the words ‘Get out of the way!’, for a spirit can be neither a German nor a Frenchman nor an Englishman. In fact this is what is so ridiculous about the spiritualists, that they think a medium is putting them in touch with the dead, and when they get an answer they think spirits speak like that. Of course they don’t. Despite the fact that spirits exist they do not speak that way. No, the truth is like this.

This kind of connection with the spiritual world, which enables us to talk scientifically about it, presupposes that we get out of the habit of assuming that the spirits speak in an earthly language. We must first of all acquaint ourselves with the supersensible world, and then be able to translate into an ordinary language what the spirits say in a supersensible language. If the man sitting at his desk had heard ‘Get out of the way!’—it could very well have happened that way. But let me tell you what really happens.

You have heard me say that the whole of the human being is filled with the power of reason. I have often explained to you that the liver perceives processes in the human abdomen, and the lungs perceive things, in fact the whole human being is a sense organ. What the heart perceives is the blood circulation. In normal life, however, we do not use these organs for perceiving. We use our eyes and our ears and so on, and not these organs. These organs have a very definite characteristic. Take for instance the liver. You can cut the liver out of the body; it is an organ you know from animals because you have probably seen certain kinds of livers, goose livers at least. But this organ has an etheric body that is connected with the rest of the etheric body, it has an astral body too and finally the ego works through it. So this organ, the liver, has a certain spiritual element in it. In your head you perceive spirit, but in your liver you do not perceive spirit consciously. The way you are organized in ordinary life you are aware of none of this, just as I told you recently that you cannot perceive the spirit in the small lens of your eye. Yet you can see the whole of the sky with the small lens of your eye. Actually, spiritual beings hardly speak through the organs of the head at all. For there the whole world is speaking; the stars in their movements and so on speak through the organs of the head. But spiritual beings really do speak through the other organs, for instance the liver. The stomach speaks to the liver—but spiritual beings do so as well—and also to the lungs. Spiritual beings speak to all those organs we do not use in normal conscious life.

While the head is actually geared to perceive only what it sees outside in the outer world, the inner organism of the human being, the lower organs, are geared to have perceptions in the spiritual world. These organs are extremely delicate. Very much so, and this can be deduced from the conditions that arise from them. These are usually not noticed because so much is lacking in medicine today. For instance you will certainly have been aware at some time that someone who suddenly becomes afraid gets an attack of diarrhoea. People don’t notice it because they cannot possibly imagine that diarrhoea can be caused by fear. But it can. Something in the outer world is making itself felt. But the spiritual world can also make itself felt. And these organs do in fact perceive what is going on in the spiritual world, quite different things from those going on in the outer world. I have often told you that we human beings pass through various earth lives. If in days gone by people had been expected to pass through a number of earth lives unaided, they would not have been capable of it. When human beings grow and develop here on earth from childhood onwards, they require a guide, a teacher or something of the kind, otherwise they would remain stupid. Human beings really do have this kind of guide in the spiritual world, who leads them from one earth life to another, and who in fact does take care in each particular life, not of the things over which we have a free hand, but of the things we cannot think about, but with which our human organization is connected. So this is how it comes about that if someone is in a state of anxiety whilst sitting at his desk he can become especially sensitive to what lies ahead of him. We must assess this sensitivity in the right way. We must distinguish quite clearly whether this sensitivity is directed to the spiritual side of things or can after all be explained in physical terms. If we are not prepared to be discerning we cannot talk about such things at all.

I would like to give you another example of this kind. There was once a person who was ill, living on the fourth floor of a house, and the doctor had to visit her every day even when she was well, for her condition was rather unstable. The doctor did not visit at the same time every day but at quite different times, yet every day the invalid knew right upon the fourth floor precisely when he had arrived, even when he was still on the ground floor. Whilst he was still outside the house, outside the front door, she knew he was coming. She invariably knew he was there whilst he was still in the entrance hall of the house, before he had put a foot on the first step of the stairs. The other residents told the doctor this, and said that she knew it clairvoyantly. The doctor was a bit dubious at first. Doctors don’t believe that sort of thing immediately. But when the people kept on pestering him and telling him that their daughter was definitely clairvoyant and knew when he had arrived downstairs—he responded by saying he would put the matter to the test. He took off his boots very quietly before he went through the door, and that time she did not know he was there! Things like this do occur as well, you know, and you have to make thorough investigations. For this invalid had simply acquired very sensitive hearing through lying on her back for so long, and had heard the footsteps from below that other people could not hear.

If, without hesitation, you explain everything by saying it is clairvoyance you have of course no right to talk about spiritual worlds. One must know how to distinguish clearly between what can be perceived with the senses and the things that are beyond being perceived in that way.

The important things here, however, show that the senses can become hypersensitive in a certain way. For in normal life a person is of course not capable of immediately hearing footsteps on the ground floor from right up on the fourth floor. But just as the senses in the head and the senses in general can become more sensitive, so can the inner organs, which are sense organs too of course, become more sensitive to spiritual matters. And if the liver, for instance, senses that it could be shot that day, then it is particularly sensitive, and the result of this is that the liver hears—though not in the form of Italian or English—the warning coming from the spiritual being who is of course real.

But just imagine, now comes the miracle! The liver has to pass this message on to the head, otherwise the person cannot receive it. So on the way from the liver to the head it is translated into the language the person speaks. This is the miraculous part; in fact, this is where it becomes a riddle. This really makes you realize what a remarkable creature a human being is. He is not only capable of getting hunches but, what is much more wonderful, of actually translating unconsciously what comes to him in a spiritual language into his own language.