Also one cannot 'authorize' a piece of work set before you. The sole determinant: the choice - the denominator is set by one. One must learn to decide for oneself.
It is one thing to respect authority; it is another to disrespectfully engage in speculation as to that authority. For if one really accepts that there are senior fellows who are trying their level best to assist, but have visions and insight which surpass the current mean, does one suppose that speculation will bring you closer?
Any activity carried out in the name of God is dubious. By all means make effort to comply with the Will of God, but be silent in tribute and take responsibility for what is done by your hand and not lay blame upon another. Up-front honesty, not pretentiousness; humility realized and not false conceit; the harshest judge in the world is yourself.
Added to that, the believers will believe, whatever the case; the disbelievers as well, shall hold to their courses respectively.
Names, names, names! What’s in a name? - everything and nothing! Do we close the temple door; do we refuse entrance or pick and choose? We all know that this is not the way of the Master.
Do we oblige all and make of a zoo that which is curious, and peculiar? Unsensed, we may startle the unpresuming. Would you dispose folk to impositions of placing authority before truth?
Does one imply that all of this comes from a far distant land, a long, long, time ago: the Ancient Wisdom? When in fact it's as close as the heart and lives very much now, to be acknowledged and assessed in the light of this day.
Do we characterize or make caricature - distract, extract or simplify the notions?
The question of authorship is indeed a 'sticky' one. Folk have the right to inquire about the source of these works - as does he who would drink of the well: be it sweet or stale, or for that matter, contaminated.
However, all is made clear in good time, and the messages offered are what they are, without false promise and without instantaneous compliance to demands.
The respect for patience has to be reiterated time and time again. For only through a teaching applied, one may fully come to realize the wisdom of that teaching.
One cannot be covetous. There can be no envy afforded for the typist. A treasure that is imparted, be it secondhand, is as ever valuable and to be valued. Generosity of spirit acknowledges that in this instance someone had to place words on paper and that someone has chosen to execute the job at hand. But ask nothing more of the typist. Learn to be content with what you have. Value that and go on from there.
One name alone can have racial connotations. Real names are private and exclusive, and would provide no real insight to the reader.
We must look and look again at that quiet unpresuming stranger before you. If we look to find the Master in every man, then perhaps we come closer to recognising one whom we should respect as such. There is too much importance given - for the wrong reasons - as to authorship. Hearsay is never acquaintance and but a small imitation of.
They shall come to know the origins of truth by the testing of the lessons.
Your Most Humble Savant,
X
P.S. By the way, folk usually sign their name X when they cannot sign anything else. XXX - Three kisses, that seems nice.
So now I should like you to lay this to heart: that it is not anthroposophical to accept a statement as dogma because this or that person made it, but it is anthroposophical to let oneself be stimulated by, spiritual science, and to test what one receives by life itself.
ReplyDeletehttp://wn.rsarchive.org/…/…/English/APC1929/19100617p01.html
"All these things are stated in Rosicrucianism in such a way that they can be tested by reason. Healthy human understanding can test all these things. Do not believe anything on my authority, but just take what I say as an indication and then test it for yourselves.
I am not perturbed, for the more you examine theosophy or spiritual science the more sensible you will find it. The less you take on authority, the more understanding you will have for Christian Rosenkreutz." (R. Steiner, ROSICRUCIAN CHRISTIANITY, Lecture 2, Neuchatel, 28th September 1911, GA 130). http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0130/19110928p01.html
Rudolf Steiner used pseudonyms- "Aristoteles und das Mysteriendrama", clearly shows the text signed as "Dr. K. Tinter" (in issue no. 16 of Steiner's journal Lucifer Gnosis).
ReplyDeleteAlso Steiner used a pseudonym in one of his earliest texts- 1884. "The full title of his review is: “Goethe und die Liebe und Goethes Dramen. Von A.Z.”
ReplyDelete(Steiner, 2004b, pp. 133-138). As one can see,
"Here the twenty-three year old Steiner did not sign his own name, but used the pseudonym “Von A.Z.”
"You must take nothing on authority. The best Anthroposophists are those who take what is said as a stimulus in the first place, and then place it at the service of life, so as to prove it by life itself. For in life also, at every stage of it, you can test that which has been said out of the sources of Rosicrucianism. It is far from the intention underlying these lectures to set up a dogma and say: This or that is so and so, and must be believed. Test it by the healthy and mentally vigorous people whom you know, and you will yourselves find confirmed what has been said as a prophetic indication of the future manifestation of Christ. You need only open your eyes and without prejudice test it; we make no appeal to belief in authority. The test is a sort of basic attitude, which should, like a golden thread, run through the whole.
ReplyDelete.........Then what ever might color our anthroposophical view from one quarter or another, will vanish away. Neither Eastern nor Western shades should color our views. One who speaks in the sense of Rosicrucianism knows neither Orientalism nor Occidentalism; both are equally sympathetic to him; he only states the truth according to the inner nature of the facts."
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA121/English/APC1929/19100617p01.html
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA121/English/APC1929/19100617p01.html