The Seven Initiations by Rudolph Steiner

Lecture extract by Rudolph Steiner on 26 February, 1906

''The Washing of Feet is the first stage of the Christian Initiation.

The second stage of Christian Initiation is the scourging and smiting. One must bear calmly what formerly hurt one - to take upon oneself the suffering of the world. The strength aquired by the soul is symbolized as scourging and real blows. Then one day one feels a sort of prickling or stinging all over the body - a sign that one has stood the test. This is a real experience that a person goes through when he follows this path.

The third stage is the crowning with thorns. Changes take place in the brain, something that later becomes noticable in the waking state.

The fourth stage is the crucifixion. Through this the person learns to feel his own body as a foreign object, something like a piece of wood. Physically the stigmata appear. In the case of certain saints this is no myth.It indicates that they have reached the fourth stage.

The fifth stage is the mystical death.

When a person has gone through this fifth station to can progress to the sixth stage, the burial and resurrection. Everything pertaining to this planet becomes the body of the Christian Mystic. He feels as though the whole Earth was part of him. He has ceased to be a separate being.

The seventh stage is known as the Ascension into Heaven. It signifies that he is completely taken up into the spiritual world.

The gospel of St John is a description of the Christian Initiations. He who takes it as an account of an external happening does not understand it. It can only be comprehended if one has lived through it inwardly.''

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H.P.Blavatsky and the astral sounds

The Voice of Silence extract by H.P. Blavatsky


''Before Thou set-st thy foot upon the ladders upper rung, the ladder of the mystic sounds, thou hast to hear of Thy Inner God in seven manners:

The First is like the nightingales sweet voice chanting a song to its mate.

The second comes as a sound of a silver cymbal of the Dhyanis, awakening the twinkling stars.

The next is as the plaint melodious of the ocean-sprite imprisoned in its shell

And this is followed by the chant of the Vina

The fifth like sound of bamboo flute shrills in thine ear

It changes next into a trumpet blast

The last vibrates like the dull rumbling of a thunder-cloud

The seventh swollows all the other sounds. They die, and then are heard no more.

When the six are slain and at the Masters feet are laid, then is the pupil merged into the One, becomes that one and lives therein.''

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Be ye Perfect!

I think all metaphysicians and Yogi Masters would agree that even though the world appears to be somewhat topsy turvy in appearence beneath the apparent chaos there is a certain pattern.....a pattern of Perfection which is virtually inherent within ALL things.

It is this Pattern of Perfection which we can observe through creation and actually constitutes what is known in the East as the Law of Karma......a Law or Pattern which is BEFORE the Effect in one aspect and all-pervasive throughout Creation in the past, present and future, in a second aspect......and even AFTER the Effect (OR Transmutation of all matter and energy into its original creative source), in a third aspect!!!

So we see here that Karma or Perfection itself contains at least THREE main ASPECTS when this is applied to or in relation to Manifestation.

One could, of course, equally say it has two main aspects which include its role within and outside creation - the Collective Function within Creation and the Individual Function in the Unmanifest Realm Beyond Creation where there is God Alone!

Both of these concepts would be correct individually and collectively.

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Kundalini Experience - A Brief Study

This experience is mentioned by Gopi Krishna and describes its occurance some 12 years after his first reported mystic experience of Kundalini.

''Without any effort on my part and while seated comfortably on a chair, I gradually passed off, without becoming aware of it, into a condition of exaltation and self-expansion similar to that I experienced on the very first occasion, in December 1937, with the modification that in the place of the roaring noise in my ears there was now a cadence like the humming of a swarm of bees, enchanting and melodious, and the encircling glow was replaced by a penetrating silvery radiance, already a feature of my being within and without.

The marvelous aspect of the condition, lay in the sudden realization that although linked to the body and surroundings I had expanded in an indescribable manner into a titanic personality, conscious from within of an immediate and direct contact with an intensely conscious universe, a wonderful immanence all around me.

My body, the chair I was sitting on, the table in front of me, the rooms enclosed by walls, the lawn outside and the space beyond including the earth and sky appeared to be most amazingly mere phantoms in this real, inter-penetrating and all-pervasive ocean of existence which to explain the most incredible part of it as best I can, seemed to be simultaneously unbounded stretching out immeasurably in all directions, and yet no bigger than an infinite small point.

From this point, the entire existence of which my body and its surroundings were but a part, poured out like radiation, as if a reflection as vast as my conception of the cosmos were thrown out upon infinity by a projector no bigger than a pinpoint, the entire intensely active and gigantic world picture dependent on the beams issuing from it.

The shoreless ocean of consciousness which I was now immersed in appeared infinitely large and infinitely small at the same time, large when considered in relation to the world floating in it and small when considered in itself, measureless, without form or size, nothing and yet everything. It was an amazing and staggering experience for which I can cite no parallel and no simile, an experience beyond all and everything belonging to this world, conceivable by the mind or perceptible to the senses.

I was intensely aware internally of a marvelous being so concentratedly and massively conscious as to outluster and outstature infinitely the Cosmic Image present before me, not only in point of extent and brightness but in point of reality and substance as well.

The phenomenal world, ceaselessly in motion characterized by Creation, incessant Change and Dissolution, receeded into the background and assumed the appearance of an extremely thin, rapidly melting layer of foam upon a substantial rolling ocean of life, a veil of exceedingly fine vapor before an infinitely large conscious Sun, constituting a complete reversal of the relationship between the world and the limited human consciousness. It showed the previous all-dominating Cosmos reduced to a state of transitory appearence and the formerly care-ridden point of awareness, circumscribed by the body, grown to the spacious dimensions of a mighty universe and the exalted stature of a majestic immanence before which the material cosmos shrank to the subordinate position of an evacent and illusive appendage.''

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An experience of Kundalini awakening

In 1937 Gopi Krishna had what he calls his first Kundalini experience.
He states:

''Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterful, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.

Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by suprise; but regaining my self-control, keeping my mind on the point of Concentration.
The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light.

It is impossible to describe the experience accurately.

I felt the point of Consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light!

It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of perception, appeared to have receeded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it.

I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction.

I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe.''

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I will be Thine always

''I may go far, farther than the farthest star, but I will be Thine always.

Devotees may come, devotees may go, but I will be Thine always.

I may bound over the billows of many lives, forlorn beneath the skies
of loneliness, but I will be Thine always.

The world may leave Thee, while engrossed in Thy playthings,
but I will be Thine always.

Thou mayest take everything away that Thou gavest me, but I will be Thine always.

Death, disease, and trials may riddle and rend me, and yet,
while the ambers of memory shall flicker, look into my dying eyes,
and they will mutely say, ''I Will be Thine Always.''

My voice may become feeble, fail and forsake me, and yet,
with the silent, bursting voice of my soul, I will whisper to Thee,
''I Am Thine Always.''



Paramahansa Yogananda

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I Offer Thee a Garland of Devotion

''Let the Flowers of my Devotion blossom in the Garden of my heart,
with the dawn of Thy coming. Let me weave a garland of them,
and place it at Thy feet!''


Paramahansa Yogananda

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The Spiritual Eye and the Three Gunas

''Atop the astral spine is the luminous sun of the Spiritual Eye: a halo of golden light surrounding a sphere of opal blue, in the center of which is the piercing white light of a star of five rays.

Within this Spiritual Eye, the yogi may discern his state of Karmic purity or impurity according to the reflection there of the spiritualized or materially inclined vibrations issuing from the spinal astral currents.

The predominance of the sattvic, or rajasic, or tamasic qualities in his nature indicate themselves in the form of an astral triangle of three points of light seen in the spiritual eye.

The top luminous point is Sattvic; and when this quality predominates, it is of dazzling white.

The left point is the Rajasic quality whose whose characteristic is red; and if it is the most brilliant point, the rajasic nature is predominant.

The Tamasic quality is a dark point on the right; and if that darkness is predominant over the other two points in the astral triangle, it indicates the temporary strong influence of the gross delusive quality.

The entire record of the physical, astral, and spiritual qualities of the devotee are classified within this trilogy of lights.

If all three points of light are harmoniously even, it indicates a perfect balance or equilibrium in the yogi; the tamasic quality properly maintaining the gross materialization of the bodily instrument, the rajasic quality vitalizing the body through the astral powers, and the Sattvic quality guiding the consciouness in proper determinations.''

Paramahansa Yogananda

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