Epiphanias, 6th of January
From the Gospel of St. John And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am […]
Christmas tale
Once upon a time there was a great King. He was the greatest of all kings; he was seated on a throne of gold that gleamed like the sun itself. He was different from all other kings, for he didn’t have to enlarge his realm; he had already everything that exists. There was nobody angry […]
Endless eyes of the night…
Once upon a time there was a strange feeling in the air. It happened every year, it started a few days after the shortest day of the year – in the western world. A certain evening was completely different from all other evenings, and the following night made the change even more enchanting. Maybe some […]
What is thinking?
Tonight (14th of December) I will give a lecture about mindful thinking. In the oriental spiritual traditions thinking is mostly seen as: having thoughts. And thoughts hinder the mindful perception of everything other than myself. Being absorbed in thoughts means being absorbed in myself. Not that this is always a pleasant thing to be absorbed […]
Mindful living
A few years ago I practised mindfulness for a while. I had heard so much about it, and that it also was accepted – for instance – in the medical world as a form of meditation that is beneficial for body and mind, that I wanted to learn more about it. I bought a book […]
Manicheism in a novel
I looked back at my life and to the meetings with him. I experienced the enormous power of that man, negative power, lack of will to tolerate the positive sides of other people. A destructiveness, yet with an old initiation as its foundation, but then as a kind of ‘stolen secrets’, not with an arduous […]
Amfortas and Parsival – Compassion
The habit of feeling one’s own I as completely equal in worth to another I in the encounter, could widen itself to more vast thoughts and feelings that embrace not only one other person, but one’s whole family, all one’s friends, all one’s colleagues … all the human beings in the whole world. The great […]
Manichaeism from the anthroposophical point of view
Rudolf Steiner: ‘Now we should like to study the matter thoroughly according to the traditions which are supposed to have originated from Mani himself, and so see what it is all about. An external clue is given us in the Manichean legend; just such a legend as the Temple Legend, which I recounted to you […]
Quousque
A challenge to me and to everyone who speaks and writes: Do you believe that your sentences,A thousand times already read,Do you believe, your treasures,A thousand times already balanced, Could still move a heart,Could kindle a longing for God?Could still enrich the spirit,Could remove the burden of grief from a soul? If you don’t want, […]
Thoughts
In ancient times, wisdom was not conveyed in plain thoughts, but clothed in images. These images are not to be understood by our intellect as plain truths. Wisdom is given, but given in pictures. Everyone who is living in our stressful world will recognize the ‘gifts’ from Pandora’s box: cares and troubles – and hopes, […]