Save as PDFAs we have often shared, there are three basic practices to a religious life where there is not formal cult, but the practices are a reversal of cult. These three practices are pointed to briefly in the Karma of Vocation. These practices are:
1) SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
2) BAPTISM BY CULTIVATION OF THE AGES OF MAN
3) SERVICE TO GOD.
We have spoken to these three practices at various times. In the case of spiritual communion, man attempts to rise in conscious practice to communion in the world of idea. The normal clairvoyant process of enlightened ideation can be replaced by a conscious intuition of idea, and here then, the communion can take place. What has to be realized is that our normal idea activity is a clairvoyant one, and we have to replace this with a conscious activity, which is a reversed cultic activity in coming to KNOW.
With baptism, there is also a kind of communion, a communion of the soul. Here comes the need to find the archetype of man, as an etheric being in time. Man in the process of baptism, is continually in the process of finding the life of the etheric body ever changing and it is this ether body, a body that is lifted out of the usual life processes, that can come to serve the soul of the striver. As a part of vocational life, it is an activity that is lived in relation to others and social forms. Here the intimate exchanges of soul and spirit that take place between human beings in the process of vocational life, become the basis for religion in a new form. It is just this intimate aspect of working together that is hidden for the most part today by the way human beings work. Needed is to uncover this intimacy, and for this quite new working circumstances are necessary. This secret has been found and is being mistakenly used in some industries. In some industries there is a grouping of workers around a task in a factory. This is a first step in the direction of intimacy, but for the wrong reason. Here we are trying to find our way to this intimacy in our working groups. In Waldorf education the effort to identify and work with the first three seven year periods is a beginning at the intimacy that man can come to experience as an etheric being. When man with his intimate relations communes in the social process, soul meeting soul, then there is a communion in soul. This communion in soul is being relentlessly searched for, but is not being found as it is hidden in our karmic relationships. It is hidden just by the fact that it exists in our working relationships, where fraternality is not present for the most part. In working activities, in social forms, in fraternal activities, the communion is NOT IN SPIRIT, but IN SON. Thus it is that baptism, to be united with the Christ, this seeking of the ages of man needs to take place.
If we turn to communing with the physical in the world, the FATHER element, then we need to develop a sense for the redemption of our physical existence, as we have somewhat unfolded above. Here there is not a search for a communion through the consuming of substance, in a formal cult. We are, however, seeking a redemption of the fallen physical. Rudolf Steiner in the Karma of Vocation calls this redemptive effort, “Service to God”. When one speaks of “Service to God” then it is quite possible to contemplate our care of the earth, the environment and our fellow man as a physical-bodily being. To serve this task, often means serving the “little thing”. This service to the little thing is a training of modesty in the process of taking up a conscious path of initiation where religious life is a part of the process.
The egotism, that is the expansiveness of our soul as astral body, is immense when it comes to initiation or taking up of a path. In expansiveness, we can speak of the communing with Lucifer. On the other hand, the overwhelming nature of the universe and the spiritual world can be such that one feels reduced to dust. With this experience, we can think of communing with Ahriman. These two mighty beings we need to know in every detail and every possible way. It is just in the work with the “little thing” that we enter a schooling that can hardly be gained in any other way. The grandiosity of the striver can wind up in the hands of the psychologist, psychiatrist or counselor. Such souls become a terrible problem in the social fabric. On the other hand, the reduction to dust leads to the so-called inferiority complex, the poor self-esteem and the sense of helplessness which besets the other half of the work force of the day. Again, it is the therapist who is sought to solve a problem that belongs to a new religious striving on a path of initiation.
Thus the service to god, means a kind of devotion that is the most difficult to come to just because we are so unfrugal, so much in the throw-away mode and so little concerned with “God’s World”. All the preaching in the world will not change this circumstance. The suggestion here is that it will take a path of initiation to be able to master this domain, the domain of God, with a continuous struggle to win Lucifer and Ahriman to a human evolution. Such a communion is then one of real struggle. If one takes the opening scene of the Bhagavad Gita, the war and struggle of Arjuna, then the struggle of the present might be seen in terms of this great poem of initiation which took place in pre-Christian times when man could not have the Spiritual Being of the Christ at his side, and the Spirit within at the same time.
Paul W. Scharff, MD.