Human Sexuality & Zarathustra, part 2

Follows from part one.

You see, when the animals, plants, elementals combine - as former man combined - they do it by merging into the one Life, dipping into the one stream (of Life, of consciousness) and into further cooperation and conciliation with the planet as a whole. Largely though, this is and has been an unconscious task, whereupon the combining does not individually enlighten the participants as to a greater appreciation of 'otherness'.

Now what is meant here is to say that during propagation there is an experience and knowledge of Life and of self in Life, in this manner. The partner as such is somewhat 'faceless', characterless - and many adult men and women still actually abide with that basic concept of propagation today. They can be stimulated into activity with a certain soulic or egoic partner particular to them. This behavior may or may not be 'innocent' in its conduct (which is another matter) but is indicative of the time before Christ's incarnation.

Then came the possibility of the principle of duality realizing actuality in both the consciousness and the expression of human love. Here through Christ we were given not only the power of the Ego within our own deciding, but also the gift of appreciating the characteristics and beauty of others.

Through the Love of Father God we can and do come to a fundamental Love of our brothers and sisters - a love which can also be manifest in charity, in compassion, in family, in community, and so forth. This love, through Him, is only requiring a referral to Him for us to find it. Both simple and immediate, it is as apparent as our very arterial being in living reality.

Secondly there is yet a detailed appreciation that can become incorporated and developed within the individual whereby he hearkens and hears the spirit within, the heart's beat, the silent language. He becomes adroit in new matters and in a profound kind of love; and this too can be shared now with all kinds of folk along the way. 

This Loving from Christ leads us to be strong enough within our own sense of selfhood to be enabled to inquire of the mysteries of others and meet them halfway. This is not a condition of overtaking or consuming - this is not even as personal perhaps as it may sound - but it is to define a love for individuals which is specific to them and that which is loveable within them.

It is not manufactured by us, embellished by us, nor the generic kind of love which may be called for. If we love through the power of Father God it is generally an unconscious form of love, not distinct to any one personage, as they themselves earn or require that we might know it. Certainly He does know of all specificity, but in this we shall not. However, through Christ's gift of duality we do.

Before Christ's Incarnation men could only ever see and experience through their eyes and through Heaven's. The angels could speak to them (more so than now in point of fact), yet they had not the wherewithal as was just described above, to be able to literally see beyond themselves. All accounts of life were heraldic or familiar. They were 'familiar' as in family. For once again to see and be out from the one identity of family, of race, of faith etc. was cooperatively single-minded, even though collective on the face of it. The consciousness did not and could not distinguish individualities (even themselves) in contrast, in definition.

Added to this the egoic control over the imaginative facilities did not exist. The 'I am' of the individual was not sufficiently developed for them to govern the imaginative cognitive powers that they would then be furthered in understanding conditions beyond themselves and own experience. They could cooperate with the angelic domains to generically receive impressions, but could not dictate where their imaginings might take them, or contribute once there.

Spirit coagulated with new consciousness. Consciousness had hitherto coagulated with Cosmos, but now, in the stead of the mind being as spread evenly and justly within the one system so combined, consciousness moved as a free agent, now empowered by spirit to go where it willed. And it drew its newly formed substance, and thus substantiality, from Christ.

The coagulated effort of fertilization and then all processes which encompass the ongoing germination, are processes that require more than the holy life and drive of the Holy Spirit to be lively inspired; they require this cooperative combining that transpires spirit into matter.

One can imagine the emanatory forces which expire out from any article of life could just popple and fizz their way out of existence were there not a cohesive element which is semi-contrary to the incoming and outpouring vitalities as they are. But even more than this, and even more than that (i.e. Tat) is CONVERSE.

Two fat gentlemen met in the lane
Bowed most politely,
Bowed once again,
How do you do? How do you do?
And how do you do, again?

In this simple children's rhyme we have the manner of approach, of correctness and of cordial attitude implied quite well. We can review this verse internally and find that it works tremendously when applied to our approach to others, to considerations and to even the most obscure of situations.

From the first line there is an implication of sameness, and yet the two do set about to find out about each other. There is a darling respect and cooperation between both, there is firstly an honoring of custom - the gesture of bowing is in itself non-invasive, but rather a formal manner of explaining that you approach in considered humility. First bow was perhaps of custom, of habit, of beginnings - but they did not rest on just one, they did bow once again. "How do you do?" they ask each other - this is not just repartee or banter, it is a direct question of the other. This verse is exactly what Christ gives us - the humble approach, and the converse between two.

This converse is remarkable! "Converse" has not just the meaning indicating worded conversation or "conversant", which is to be familiar or with fellowship; it also has in the past been a word for sexual intercourse: to keep company with. You can see the aptness of this word. For a little fun we can also examine one more meaning it may hold - and that is of contrariness, of something, which is opposite, and clearly not of fellowship … this word can fall out from itself!

The riddle of this is that within the holy realm of sexual converse it also did exactly that. What was to have been (and still is in terms of propagating infants) a further coagulation of spirit within both the man and the woman, an event which draws both consciousnesses to each other, in such a way that teaches the male of the female, the female of the male, and the ego to the ego … there was something that went horribly wrong. Emptiness is often the experience described after the sexual converse - not in just the expired vitalities, but even of soul - described in many languages and silently recognized as an experience of a 'little death' or death to the self. It is not the value-added experience one might assume in the best of spiritual contexts! 

This emptiness is neither tiredness nor relief - it is that which is afeared by the chaste, the impotent and the celibate - it is giving self without the recollection, retaining person (and now forever) without the knowing: the true knowing. The sun goes dark, and what was an experience of soulic commune with all, and then to become a 'knowing' of the other with great exhilarated combining, does in truth drive the self to the opposed and converse end of their own measure, touching, yet not touching the truth of the other. It is not the desire, the act or the reality that is most shunned, but this emptiness, this little death, this unknowing that follows.

If propagation is what is sought for, then the reward of this will bring evidence of itself of course. Spirit will coagulate and a third consciousness will enter in. Yet this does not solve the problem so described above, it just redeems it.

If the act is banal, and the man or woman is insensitive to differentiation, then this feeling of little death is usually lost amongst an alcoholic wash, or further negation of self. But most men and women suffer from depressions and residual disturbance after their locking together.

Let us explain: 

Men and women are not indefinitely characterized by their sex. During many lifetimes there are experiences of being one and then the other. They are simply not men or women by true distinction; they have been both. It is not uncommon either that we acknowledge masculine or feminine attributes in individuals which may be separate to their physical gender. We also recognize the spiritual context of the two in their place and principal functioning throughout nature. 

We have established that during sexual converse life can enter in. The obvious life of the newborn-to-be, the cosmic life and vitality of the mutual love, a pure life or dreadfully an obscene life-form can enter in to what the two conspire to. But equally there was a time when there were gateways adjacent, whereupon folk could excarnate temporarily leaving their physical body in an ecstasy resulting from the peak. Even today something of this excarnating occurs as a result of copulation, but the experience is not retained within the memory and is too brief to miss a heartbeat. However, it is disturbing, for we have not returned to our Father in this little death which has occurred, but rather followed the trail into the center of the earth. We have gone in.

We do this in order to trace origins, to find our way back into a former life; but more importantly still we travel the walk that Christ Himself took when He left His Consciousness for a while also. When the Sun's face had darkened beyond recall, when the ghosts of humanity and still others were to be known by Him; in the halls of the countless Doubles; in the eons now ruined and derelict; through the realms of golden times and golden ages rendered extinct; with a catalogue and gallery of rag-and-bone souls confined beneath the weight of the materializing world; deeper still and into the mysteries of humanhood before the Fall, before old-age, through to middle age and finally to youth …

Food, Thought, and Being

From a perspective of timing and of action of consequence, there are things in the world which tire, which are perishable, which cannot long sustain the life within them, which begin to die of themselves ere we touch their living light.

The shade of death passes through our thinking for example, that by the time it has been received into the consciousness it has already partially expired. It is almost as though the thought itself must be sacrificed that we may initially contain it, and later transform it. Into that body of the sea of conceptualization it goes! And go it does.

The nourishment that we take to ourselves from what was once living - that food - also has died, in part, in whole, and its vitality spills out from invisible gaping pores; its initial bonding link with the world long severed; its form now given over to corruption. We consume that which is of death. 

Of the spheres which will meet us as we journey inward, inside our very Globe, there shall be death there for the finding - and a deathly world, a counter world, a domain for the food, a domain for the thought-world. Quite naturally the realm belonging to the life of the food is the etheric world and the life of the thought-world is that of the heavenly astral. However, as we explore the nether regions of the literal past these counter realms of fragmented life offer layers of an exiled etheric existence and a contaminated astrality.

When Christ passed through death, and journeyed through to these converse layers He came to the third antechamber of the Earth - the one that gave over to BEING. This is the internal Sun.

Do you remember the story of The Tinderbox? 

Here is the part we should like to talk about:

"Do you see yonder large tree?" said the witch, pointing to a tree that stood close by the wayside. "It is quite hollow. Climb up to the top, and you will find a hole large enough for you to creep through, and thus you will get down into the tree. I will tie a rope round your waist, so that I can pull you up again when you call me."

"But what am I to do down in the tree?" asked the soldier.

"What are you to do?" repeated the witch; "why, fetch money, to be sure! As soon as you get to the bottom, you will find yourself in a wide passage; it is quite light, more than a hundred lamps are burning there. Then you will see three doors; you can open them, the keys are in the locks. On opening the first door you will enter a room. In the middle of it, on the floor, lies a large chest. A dog is seated on it, his eyes are as large as tea-cups; but never you mind, don't trouble yourself about him! I will lend you my blue apron; you must spread it out on the floor, then go briskly up to the dog, seize him, and set him down on it. When that is done, you can open the chest, and take as much money out of it as you please. That chest contains none but copper coins. If you like silver better, you have only to go into the next room; there you will find a dog with eyes as large as mill-wheels. Don't be afraid of him; you have only to set him down on my apron, and then rifle the chest at your leisure. But if you would rather have gold than either silver or copper, that is to be had too, and as much of it as you can carry, if you pass on into the third chamber. The dog that sits on this third money chest has eyes as large as the Round Tower. But don't be alarmed; if you set him down on my apron, he will do you no harm, and you can take as much golden treasure from the chest as you like.

"Not a bad plan that, upon my word!" said the soldier. "But how much of the money am I to give you, old woman?"

"Not a penny will I have," returned the witch. "The only thing I want you to bring me is an old tinder-box which my grandmother left there by mistake last time she was down in the tree."

"Well, then, give me the rope and I'll be gone," said the soldier.

"Here it is," said the witch, "and here is my blue apron."

So the soldier climbed the tree, let himself down through the hole in the trunk, and suddenly found himself in the wide passage, lighted up by many hundred lamps, as the witch had described.

And so, in the hollow of a deceased tree the soldier ventures down - down into a realm which is lit by many hundreds of lamps. Do you recall in previous lessons how it has been discussed that this journey inward may often be confused with a journey outward into the Cosmos at large?

The word 'lamps' is actually far more accurate than to say 'stars', because even though one might very much confuse the lamps for stars in a starry space, they are not. This is what one is first met with however, venturing into the realms within. They signify also the starry points of conjuncture within one's own astral body that are 'alight' with activity.

The witch in this story personifies the corrupted condition which is taking the soldier into these depths he is about to encounter. He is secured to the upper world by a "rope tied to the waist"” - his astral chord intact - and he ventures into the realm of death.

The first dog is sitting, guarding the chest of copper pieces. What may appear contrary to some, is that there is a correspondence between Venus and the etheric world. The goodness in the etheric world is supremely affectionate - the principles of propagation and of life, are verily of Love actively manifesting continually, and the forces which have imbibed it in the past are of this domain.

The second dog is sitting guarding the chest which holds the pieces of silver. This connects us with the Moon and the realm of the astrality - the second sphere encountered on our journey in.

The third dog is sitting guarding the chest with the disks of gold … the metal of the Sun - this denotes the final treasure to be uncovered - hoarded and stored by the dog.

The dog is obedient to the protection of all three realms. He has no will in this matter, and when later placed upon the blue apron of the witch's own egoic willing, he does not resist, but dutifully sits where put, without cunning or reaction or offering a threat to the soldier.

He is a soldier of Christ that can move about these three chambers without interference or fear. Interestingly the witch herself could not go to these places as she might instruct another.

Of the first realm come to we find a dog whose eyes are smaller than the other two. His appearance by contrast would be gentle. This Venus condition here pertains to the singularity we first spoke of in the soulic consciousness as experienced in the world before the egoic condition predominated.

There is a divine cooperation here, and yet it is also quite an automatic cooperative … and when Paradise overwhelms men to become witless and will-less, it then becomes the realm of Lucifer. You can often find it difficult to find the differences between descriptions of the true paradisiacal state and Lucifer's paradise ad perpetua. However we can remember here that these inner realms now spoken of are the contrary adjuncts to the conditions which preceded them, that live on today in the current etheric and pure astral as it still is. Also, that the ancient Sun still imbibes the old etheric world, as it does the New.

Armies of dark spirits have long campaigned the lower realms of the Earth. Hell was ever depicted traditionally as 'below' the earth and not as part of the Heavens above. 

The second sphere come to, that of the ancient Moon, is of the time in which the senses were awakened and the stars began to resonate in Man. Forces outside of himself entered in, compelling and sometimes dividing forces, sparring tensions, which now may be known as desires, and later to thoughts. The ancient Moon did not reflect back the Sun when it was not-so-old as to be living. For it was, in part, just as our Earth is now - the Sun itself, in the making.

This ancient Sun, the kernel to the Globe, is of the first ego but not of the ego today. It was the feminine ego, a womb of knowing; not adventurous, but receptive - a very different type of "I". Even today the form of the ego is as a containing womb and its action is retentive rather than advancing.

The genitals of both male and female were primarily to be organs of the egoic expression originally. Coupling the female aspects of the Divine Father God with the distinctive creative masculine aspects of Christ, there could have been an expression of the ego which was represented differently to each gender. One would have been consistent with the experience formerly developed, whilst the other was to be newly worked upon.

Of course none of this translates today in ways that make much 'sense' at all. One cannot imagine 'willing' in the penis, thinking in the scrotum, nor loving in the womb (rather than the heart); but the forces which drew together these empathetic organs were the oldest known to Man. The wand, the staff, the magic stick … these became exterialized in function, in but a very minor way compared with the cognitive transactions which could have been developed within this member. There is nothing else like it within the anatomy!

As an organ of the ego it works with the kidneys in the assessing of the fluids expelled, and so is the open doorway to evacuate that which is unwanted, whilst also deliverer of further life as well. Perfect to design and consistent with the ego at large, the male member swells becoming engorged with the blood of the will (albeit without the active consciousness now) - but there it was in the engineering, ready to express and determine physical/astral/etheric life. It operated on active physical percussion. Once again however, this was not just a rhythm of the stars, set as the organs dance and cooperate together, this had an action offered which could be driven differently and discerned by the individual to purpose.

There used to be a saying not so long ago: "Make Love not War". The dual-fold egoic expression, had it occurred through the genitals, would have necessitated differing, yet complying mutual exchanges. As it is, the one-sided wombless lung-charged expression today, has ego replacing family, race and tradition with just self. This attitude of 'self' which runs against all else, is fundamentally aggressive by nature. We can also witness this in male-orientated countries where the authoritative power is assumed by men single-mindedly. 

So now it will take ever longer to shift the whole propagative operation up to the larynx, using the lungs, the tongue and the throat to create from. You see, men fashion the bodies that they utilize - not the clothes maketh the man!

So what happened? Why did a cherished plan turn back upon itself and disable the physicality so? What was it that changed so severely, which chastised the womb from its loving, and castrated the testes from their thinking. How is it that what was to be the most conscious center within the physical frame became so disempowered, even to the point where their expression and function brings the consciousness to the black-hole of a little-death experience?

Back, back, through the contra worlds of the former etheric, back, back, through the halls of moonlit shades; back, back we make our way to the former Sun and feel its benevolence soak right through us.

Firstly, the organs themselves were too pure to take on the irregularities of a developing ego. They refused to make connection. As cooperative as could be, it was a physical/etheric impossibility. Only the adept could operate his consciousness, will and intelligence through these centers.

Secondly this was all-in-all indicative of the overwhelming predicament that the soul in its struggles to incarnate was finding all over the body. Often Christ refers to the 'lambs' and the 'sheep' as needing looking after, and this is indicative of the innocent purity of the physical world, which really did beg for some conciliatory approach from the natures of the men within.

During the repetition of the Old Moon, there was a shedding of the animal kingdom and the great divorce out from many properties which hitherto had hindered us. However, this separation affected also our very own physicality - our relationship also, with the body as it remained. For although it works in more closely than any other creature could possibly accommodate, it could not negotiate the incarnation of man to that degree. In a very true sense we are all impotent at this point of time.

Lastly, and yet more importantly, when our dear Christ leaned one way the entire Earth went on tilt. He was incarnate in a male body. This body was perfect to the possibility that could have been realized. There was no womb and woman to match Him.

This was the reason why there were two 'Jesus' children. The Zarathustrian was meant to have been born female - yet was not. The Christ was to imbue the female egoic force and make it then incarnate in working expression. The Zarathustrian child was hermaphrodite, having both a phallus and womb, yet not properly compatible with the body as was to be hoped for.

He, dear soul, was to have been a 'she' perfectly placed with the egoic consciousness in the receiving womb. Just as Zarathustra received Christ - Mind to mind, being to being and drew Him out from the Sun 'I to I' - he, then she, was to provide the first living example of this dual-two-part egohood manifest within the physical. Unfortunately it wasn't to happen.

The 'small death' we experience, as discussed before, is the sadness of Zarathustra, dying and dying again, but never to fulfill that physical connection that was envisioned.

Zarathustra became lost in the Underworld; distraught and confused he fled back into the sphere of the Old Moon, and of the Old Sun, looking for Christ. He sorrowed there for three years without Him.

When Christ did, at the end, venture into death, it was following after his beloved Zarathustra's trail. Amongst these ruined epochs, with forgeries and recollections of a once life, He had come to that substance, in those places, which were the antithesis of His Being. 

Prior to the Crucifixion He could not, even in 'sleep', enter in. He did have to cross the threshold of death from the disassociated physical body to secure the safety of both this world and the other, reconciling His Presence within the interior. Leaving His physical body prematurely to go into those spheres would have meant death to the already sorely strained constitution.

Once again had Zarathustra inspired our Lord and awakened His Compassion: His now complete and sympathetic comprehension of those conditions devastating and threatening to the human experience. This time, from yet an even more perilous outlook, somewhere in between the old light of the ego and the new, He went to him - He found him and brought him out from the abysmal loneliness that was, into a fine and celebrated companionship today. 

Addendum:

Quote from Robert Powell's article SUB-NATURE AND THE SECOND COMING:
Concerning the lost Kingdom of the Mother, it is interesting to consider Rudolph Steiner's words to Countess Johanna von Keyserlingk at the end of the Agricultural Course (Whitsun 1924) at which he laid the foundations for a new and conscious relationship to Demeter through a spiritually-based agriculture (biodynamic farming):

Rudolph Steiner was good enough to come up to my room, where he spoke with me about the Kingdom in the interior of the Earth. We know that at the moment Christ's blood flowed onto the Earth a new Sun-globe was born in the Earth's interior. My search had always been to penetrate the depths of the Earth, for I had seen raying up from there an Earth-core of gold, which Ptolemy designated as the "Archetypal Sun". I could not do otherwise, again and again, than to bring this golden ground into connection with the land of Shamballa, of which Rudolph Steiner had spoken. He had recounted how this land had disappeared from the sight of human beings and that Christ would open the door to those human beings seeking it, to lead them to the "sunken, fairy-tale land of Shamballa" of which the Hindus dream . . . I asked Rudolph Steiner, "Is the interior of the Earth of gold, originating from the empty space within the Sun, actually belonging back there again?" He replied, "Yes, the interior of the Earth is of gold." For the sake of certainty, I asked him further, "Herr doctor, If I stand here upon the ground, then beneath me, deep in the interior of the Earth, is the golden land. If I were to attain to freedom from sin and were to remain standing in the depths, the demons would not be able to harm me and I would be able to pass through them to the golden land. Is this so?" He replied, "If one passes through them together with Christ, then the demons are unable to harm one, but otherwise they would be able to destroy one!" He added the significant words, "However, they are able to become our helpers. Yes, this is so. The path is right, but it is very difficult".