The Oedipal Threshold file · Web viewIn order to make this bridge between Freud and Steiner...

June 2002 The Oedipal Threshold By Bradford Riley

The Oedipal Thresholdand

Intimate Strangers

By

Bradford Riley

My intention in this essay is to build a bridge from Freud to Steiner. To give credit to Freud for attaching psychological emphasis on the Oedipus myth already links Rudolf Steiner and Freud together. It is my intention to bridge the gap between Freud’s understanding of Oedipus and Steiner’s by examining the arrival of new recognition that can be regained in the soul when we face I AM awareness in the Pauline Sense. There is a dawning revelation of higher psychology that Steiner inaugurated in his Karma lectures of 1924. Steiner’s Karma lectures challenge humanity to meet “Face to Face” instead of relegating ourselves to mere symbols of the soul or shadows submerged in the unconscious regions of our blood and heredity. In order to make this bridge between Freud and Steiner visible I will illuminate Holderlin’s premature awakening to Oedipal issues before Steiner or Freud. Holderlin’s incarnation and madness has been a subject of study by Jungians, Freudians and Rudolf Steiner in his Karma lectures. I will sketch through Holderlin some of the pre-existence choices Holderlin made for his incarnation and what the path of Karmic investigation can teach us.

2002 marks the thirty-year anniversary of the publication of “Anti-Oedipus” by French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. The French authors expanded thoughts magnified into the social economic structure allows Oedipus and the killing of his father, marrying his mother to become part of our cultural motivations behind working for “the Man.” A working cycle has developed unconsciously in society that engages our love/hate relationship to our jobs and bosses. Over 25% of all human unhappiness is

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related to how we view our bosses. Not only our co-dependency but also early Freudian and Oedipal issues arise in order for us to remain economically alive in the market place. Sucking at the teat of our corporate mothers, we pray that the down turn doesn’t allow our paychecks to dry up. If the “man” that threatens us is Uncle Sam or our daily dimming consciousness within the corporate life style it is still our blood and our money that make us brood over the sphinx like riddles in our lives. Our jobs, we’ve discovered, can become merely an extended neurosis projected out from our own family upbringing and carried over into the workplace. Human Resource counselor’s supply us with ‘professional codes of behavior’ modeled from the military, C.I.A. and Catholic school systems.

What would we do to keep our jobs? Pretend we were blind like Oedipus and refuse to see our own Enron? Our corporate mothers maybe whores who sleep with any bastard who can pay, bribe or cut the best deal. The Holy Mother Church, which has produced the latest crop of hell spawn, has spread the infection of incest and molestation throughout society all in the name of faith in our ultimate Father and our ultimate Mother. Oedipus arises again in us, in the religious crisis currently impacting the Catholic Church. Here church Fathers have actively molested innocent children and then cut them loose in the world and left them marked with guilt, like Oedipus. Most victims would rather put out their own eyes then pass on their family issues of molestation and addiction back into society. Slowly as the wheel of time turns round they come back to the destructive core of their issues and end up slaying the Faith they had in the Church. Some would say the Oedipus cycle continues to coil itself beyond the sanctuary of the soul, beyond the work place and into a never-ending spiral of societal dysfunctions.

The hot button word here is ‘dysfunctions’. Comedy and comedians have become for us a kind of collective form of societal therapy. Self-laughing at self awakens stiff and sleeping souls to our shared societal dysfunctions, immaturity, fundamental conservativeness and stiffness of heart and mind. Jeff Foxworthy has made a lucrative career for himself by opening up the sealed chamber of the soul life of millions. Jeff Foxworthy merely placed a mirror up to the human heart and mind and said, how many of you have encountered, inbreeding, incest, conservative fundamentalism, crass stupidity of heart and total ignorance, or found yourself living in denial about your own daddy? How do you know you’re a human being? Well you just might be a human being if you have thought of or encountered any of these dysfunctions in your soul.

“In a footnote added to the 1920 edition of Three Essays on Sexuality, [Freud] he made it clear that the Oedipus complex is the immovable foundation stone on which the whole edifice of psychoanalysis is based: ‘It has justly been said that the Oedipus complex is the nuclear complex of the neuroses, and constitutes the essential part of their content. It represents the peak of infantile sexuality, which, through its after-effects, exercises a decisive influence on the sexuality of adults. Every new arrival on this planet is faced with the task of mastering the Oedipus complex; anyone who fails to do so falls a victim to neurosis. With the progress of psycho-analytic studies the importance of the Oedipus complex has become more

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and more clearly evident; its recognition has become the shibboleth that distinguishes the adherents of psycho-analysis from its opponents’”

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/human/chap5.htmlOr on the other hand:

“…two French psychoanalysts named Deleuze and Guattari wrote a famous book in the late 1960s called Anti-Oedipus, in which they blasted psychoanalysis, weirdly enough, as an instrument of control that doctors and professionals use to make people conform to the repressive rules of modern society. In psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex (it has to do with sexual urges a child feels for his or her parents) is supposed to be the foundation for almost everything human beings go through. Deleuze and Guattari, however, say the Oedipus complex is a basically just a weird fiction that Freud and his followers have inflicted on the world with the attitude “you’ll say mommy-daddy-me when I tell you to” (D & G's words). The Oedipus complex, Deleuze & Guattari say, is a fake norm that’s been used to socialize and control countless people the world over – and to proclaim “sick” anyone who doesn’t play by its weird rules.”

http://www.lehigh.edu/~snd3/BHnotes.html

We have made great strides in introspection due to Jungian therapy and pappy Freud’s revelation concerning Oedipus. Today there is a greater collaboration in solving the enigmas and riddles hidden in the complexities of the human soul. These unsolved riddles and enigmas tend to hinder and block the birth of the human soul into a self conscious, responsible I AM vision.

In all of us, there is an Oedipal Threshold, which Freud encountered, but misinterpreted. The Oedipal Threshold of recognition as to who our intimate Karmic partners were and are reveals a whole new layer of Oedipal meaning. When we have passed through the Freudian etheric review of seeing how heredity and family life have unfolded and influenced us; when we have passed through the archetypes and Jungian or Joseph Campbell thinking that leads our astral body to the universal foundations of the soul and its symbols; we finally arrive at the unique vision of the spirit and the revelation of our individual relation to the whole Community of I Am ness.

Freud early etheric development

Jung general astral/soul development

Steiner Spiritual-I AM-development

Here our partners, our lovers, our brothers and family, all our intimate friendships become illuminated by the I AM. Here the revelation of each other and our roles as eternal beings, whom we have loved, respected, changed, murdered, raped and anointed, become our Karmic lessons. It is at this Oedipus Threshold where the knowledge of our

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Mothers, our Fathers and our Lovers become merged with the mystery of the I AM. In the psychological EYE of the I AM and within the Karmic laws of mankind Men and Woman suddenly see each other “Face to Face” and they emerge from out of the shadow of the dark mirror of Oedipal dysfunctions.

In order to contribute to a new basis of psychology and meet Freud half way, Freud is going to have to meet Spiritual Science halfway. Before Freud came onto the scene Holderlin had translated much of Oedipus and Antigone from Greek to German. Now it turns out Freud also found his first meeting with Oedipus through working out an initial translation of Oedipus when he was a young man at school.

“Freud's own family constellation was multi-generationally confused. His father as twenty years older than his mother and already a grandfather by a grown son from his first marriage when Freud was born. That son and another were at least as old as the new bride. Freud was the eldest son of his family but the youngest child in the broader family group. The other young children were, respectively, a year older and the same age but his nephew and niece. A brother once said to him that he was of the third generation, not the second, with respect to his father (Rudnytsky, 1987, p. 15). (I’m reminded of a novelty song on the Hit Parade when I was a boy, which told of family relations so complicated that the singer could truthfully claim, ‘I’m my own grandpa’.) It is no wonder that when Freud was reflecting on finishing secondary school, the one bit of study he singled out for mention was ‘Oedipus Rex’ and that he came first in his class on the basis of a translation from the Greek of the opening speech of the priest, beseeching Oedipus to deliver the Thebans from a complex and bewildering pestilence which was caused by the breaking of the inter-generational incest taboo (pp. 11-12).

The significance of all this was driven home when Freud's disciples presented him with a medallion on his fiftieth birthday. On one side was Freud's portrait in profile, and on the other a design of Oedipus answering the Sphinx, with this line from the closing passage of the play: 'Who knew the famous riddles and was a man most mighty'. When Freud read it he became pale and agitated, because as a student he had strolled around the arcade of the University of Vienna, inspecting the busts of the famous professors. He had imagined his bust there in the future with that exact inscription. His identification with Oedipus could not have been more complete (pp. 4-5; Anzieu, 1986, ch. 3). Even Freud was shaken by feelings of Oedipal triumph. In the light of this life-long preoccupation, it is all the more striking that he never wrote a systematic exposition of his mature views on the Oedipus [us complex - the centerpiece of his theory.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/human/chap5.html

Now long before Freud, Holderlin was translating Oedipus and his karmic motives can be compared to Freud’s. Holderlin also had a complex family situation. His mother had seen several husbands die. Holderlin’s father had died and the mother of Holderlin kept whatever money or inheritance should have been allotted to the eldest son for herself.

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The mother of Holderlin disapproved of her son’s detour into what she considered radical poetic idealism. . Holderlin’s mother would have preferred Holderlin to take the path of least resistance. Holderlin merely had to step into the prepared ministerial office that he was trained for and become a solid preacher with his own congregation. Holderlin could have easily become someone a mother would have been proud of, if only he hadn’t had such a poetic hair up his butt. (Later in the essay I will review the missing Karmic and spiritual pieces that brought Holderlin to relinquishing his consciousness and the long bout he had with madness) Holderlin had brothers and sisters from his mother’s different marriages so he also had a disjointed family like Freud.

The real difference between Freud and Holderlin was that Holderlin didn’t whine about his family life. He didn’t stop at the composition of his blood connections and his hereditary family unit. Holderlin didn’t declare as Freud did,’ here is where my individuality has its origins and roots.’ Holderlin would not have agreed with Freud and would not have declared as Freud did, that our physical bodies are the sole origin and extension of our psychic structures.

Freud really did not have the scope of vision or balance that Holderlin achieved as a poet. Freud was really only a hairs breadth above the rest of the conservative, lack luster thinkers of his age. Holderlin strove for independence of spirit and, as a rich mythologist; soared above the micro image of his origins as baby Holderlin, as momma’s little boy. His mythic and poetic insights, back than, soared above Freud’s and had already penetrated beyond most Jungians. Holderlin didn’t blame his mom or feel guilty about his life path; rather he gained a larger vision that connected him to the Logos and the I AM. Holderlin chose an incarnation path with emphasis on certain specific soul encounters and soul ripening. Steiner concludes, in his Karma Lectures, that Holderlin made a leap and had entered his Holderlin incarnation with a high enthusiasm for something. It was a risk that had the potential of failure in it, but what was the ‘something’ Holderlin dared risk? This something makes all the difference, as we shall see, between the Oedipus of Freud and the Oedipus of Steiner.

Holderlin trained to be minister and graduated from Tubingen with his Karmic bro’s Hegel and Schelling. They had a saying, an intimate fraternity code, which revealed the bond of spiritual destiny between them. Holderlin had the phrase of his true karmic brothers written in large Greek letters on the wall above his desk, the pantheistic One and All (Hen kai pan) had been their university battle cry. In this early unity with Schelling,

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and Hegel, Holderlin found two spirits whom he had known before his incarnation as Holderlin. This life bond is not always known consciously but when we reach for our true identity above familial relations, it arises from those who can see our spirits. Hegel, Schelling and Holderlin were destined to make an impact on German culture and human history and this was partly the constellation that Holderlin reached for when he sought his incarnation as Holderlin.

Holderlin had a highly tuned idealistic capacity for spiritual intuition. It arose most clearly when thought, poetry and word were brought together and focused. Our highest spiritual values and identity are connected with what we think, who we are and our poetry. This amazing connection between the poetic, and the psychological have been verified in the most profound ways since Holderlin’s time. Freud and Holderlin crossed paths again in the brilliant essay “The Psychological in the Neighborhood of Thought and Poetry” by Michael P. Sipiora. Here is a fragment of this stunning, still-life meditation around the most advanced concepts of psychology and therapy.

“…I will begin by laying out Boss' understanding of the psyche in terms of its inherent relation to Heidegger's conception of Ereignis. Psychotherapy will then be identified as a site in which the logos of the psyche, a logos which responds to the appropriative Saying of Ereignis, is spoken. Second, the site of psychotherapy will be located in the neighborhood of thought and poetry. The uncanny logos of the psyche will be articulated as belonging with but different from that of both poetry and thinking.”

“What if, and this is on what the proposed alternative understanding of psychology hinges, while agreeing with Boss' contention that the reification of the psyche is a misinterpretation of the phenomena, we re-cognize the logos of the psyche in psychotherapy as the site of the discipline of psychology? What if we sight the logos -- the gathering and presenting -- of the psyche in the therapeutic situation? “

“Boss' understanding of the psychological places us quite near both thought and poetry. Heidegger tells us that it is the Event of Appropriation which is the "Saying" that draws poetry and thought into the neighborhood of their essential being. "Saying" (with a capital "S") names the grant of language logos, as spoken by Heraclitus: "Listen not to me but to the Logos." "Language," according to Heidegger (1971d), "is the house of Being because language, as Saying, is the mode of appropriation" (p. 135). All human "saying" is in answer to this "Saying" of being. All human words, all verbal or gestural or otherwise human articulations of meaning and sense, are understood as responses to being's granting of beings as inherently intelligible.”

“Poetry and thinking belong together in their devotion to the relation which is silent in all our speech. They belong together as primordial responses to the same appeal of Being, responses which issue from a listening to the Saying appropriating of being. Poetry and thinking do not themselves, by virtue of their

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respective characteristics, generate a similarity between them. The nearness of the two human sayings, poetry and thought, is the gift of the neighborhood from which they hail. This neighborhood, which comes of the grant of being's appropriative Saying, draws thought and poetry into essential relation and simultaneously shelters their difference.”

http://www.janushead.org/3-1/msipiora.cfm

What this sensitive research reveals is that the Logos of the world is speaking through each human I and that our silences, utterances or intuitive touching in the realm of thought brings the Human soul or the psychologist in touch with the Logos of the world. Jung in his Synchronicity; Freud in sensing the proximity of soul life and therapist found something “uncanny”; Holderlin in his poetic intuition found himself overwhelmed with awe and shame as he neared the threshold of I AM cognition.

Georg Kuhlewind in his, THE LOGOS STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD writes, "If nature still speaks to human beings, its speaking must come from beings who are themselves I-beings or who represent I-beings ...in the world the gods have created, the human is the only being through whom ideality, word, and concept as such can emerge and flourish. The Logos-world attains its first reality in the only Logos-being of this world."

Holderlin was already experiencing a great deal of what Heidegger only later came to understand through his contemplations on Holderlin. Holderlin knew that what he was touching and searching for was near to the Logos and the new and unexplored concept of the divine Christ Being. Holderlin knew very clearly that this was not what the parishioners really wanted to hear about. Holderlin intuited the higher mystery of the Christ and connected it to the living reality of how the Greeks had understood their gods

Holderlin felt strongly the now universal experience of hypocrisy and Fundamentalism livin’ large in the German folk soul. Like today’s Fundamentalists, the stiff conservative German Folk of Holderlin’s time would balk at hearing anything outside the status quo or anything above and beyond the tale of the simple goodness of the man ‘Jesus’. Holderlin saw that their stiff-necked collective prejudice and conservative fundamentalism would grow to monster proportions; and he was right. It did.

This prophetic aspect can be linked to the peculiar madness that overtook Holderlin. The narrowing, cheapening and watering down of the mystery of the Logos and the Christ Being will have dire consequences as a world historical fact no matter in what country such rigid adherence to dogma appears. Here we can refer to the prophetic text of “The Handmaids Tale” by Margaret Atwood. However it should be clear that just because Holderlin was attracted to the Oedipal question did not automatically mean that he had an abnormal fixation on his mother.

It has been argued that Holderlin’s fame, as a poet, would probably have been diminished if his mother had handed his inheritance over to him when he was struggling to survive.

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But Mother retained her hold on the purse strings forcing Holderlin to do what Hegel, Schelling and Fichte had been forced to do as well, tutor. All of these great individuals had to privately tutor as guests in various dysfunctional family situations in order to survive.

Holderlin experienced some strange situations while a guest in various houses. One of his students was a chronic masturbator, which ticked Holderlin off a great deal because he had to baby-sit the boy and also attempt to teach him. Getting out of their families house and intermingling with other family units further matured and isolated the individualities of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Holderlin. Hegel found a supportive family situation to work from as a tutor, from which, he was able to build up his mighty and extensive philosophic vision. Hegel was able to mount his great philosophic foundations because Holderlin had suggested Hegel as tutor in a stable family household.

Holderlin got into difficult emotional straits at the Gontard house where he was hired as a tutor. The wife of Herr Gontard and Holderlin began a Platonic love dialogue. Their conversations together allowed Holderlin to uncover deeper and deeper intuitive issues hidden in his soul. His connection to Plato and the Greeks was re-awakened because Susette Gontard warmed the intuitions latent in his poetic spirit.

It could easily be stated from a Freudian or Jungian point of view that Holderlin’s overblown hubris subconsciously made him feel that he should be ruler of the house because of his poetic genius. From the same perspective we could say that in every house Holderlin was a stranger. He was the eldest son and could have, should have, had his own house, life and love life with someone as special as Suzette. We could easily argue that Holderlin’s sudden discovery of a heart like his own awoke longings of comfort and happiness that he would certainly not attain to in his self-imposed Poetic isolation.

It could be argued that Holderlin simply seduced the poor little plain housewife, Susette Gontard. But at that time and from what we know of both Holderlin and Susette, nothing overtly sexual ever happened, but the romance and the Romantic Poets star shone brightly over Susette and Holderlin and brought their two hearts together. There would be no betrayal; no seedy romance but there was plenty of jealousy and ridicule hurled at the young tutor by Herr Gontard. Gontard felt justifiably that his young wife was far more interested in this no account would be poet, a mere tutor to his children, and that she loved him. In some odd innocent way Gontard saw love between Susette and Holderlin and this pissed him off royally. The difference between traditional love and profound kinship between idealists, hearts that carried the same tone from the spiritual world, was that men and woman in Gontard’s circle were still shackled to traditional behaviors.

Was it the type of love that was ideal, sexual, or both? Was it a force of future recognition and karmic potential that was not to be allowed in the Holderlin, poet incarnation? Herr Gontard was a rich and powerful banker. Holderlin was at the bottom of the food chain as an insignificant but ambitious poet. Like his karmic fellows, Holderlin was forced to scrape out a meager existence in order to follow the extreme idealistic path of the poet. Holderlin accepted in a noble sort of way his chosen fate.

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However he could not mistake the fact that an objective spirit of ideal love had hovered over Susette and himself.

It is this kind of strange unique love between men and men, between women and women and between men and women that bring out the most heroic, tragic and deepest karmic bonds. These awakenings hovered over all the Romantics, which Holderlin was, all unwittingly, a card-carrying member. All over the globe the entrance of an army of Platonic Romantic poets landed in many different countries and each shared similar awakenings to the objective spirit of love in the world.

The Romantics had participated in an event that had to do with the destiny of “Magical Idealism” and the future call of the Michael School. Before the host of Romantics incarnated there was a joyous communion celebrated in the spiritual world at the new revelation of heart thinking. In Holderlin’s situation, his destiny and Angel presented him with a narrow window of opportunity to gain the ground of high poetic intuition, which he could use for his future incarnations. Holderlin risked a failure incarnation to encounter the very Being who had met the I AM “Face to Face” and was destined to be the heart and soul of the Romantics. The Transcendalists and Romantics had journeyed together in the world of the stars before their destiny paths led them to incarnations. It was there literary spiritual agreement before incarnating to serve the great rising Logos and supply a bridge for humanity from the cold intellect of materialism to the warmed intelligence of the heart. This entailed meeting the Spirit of Love in the universe and in their earthly destinies in entirely new ways.

From his conversations with Susette and his Karmic meetings with Hegel, Schelling, Schiller and Goethe, Holderlin began to unfold a new vision of the Greek spirit. Holderlin translated Oedipus and his translations are used to this very day. He did not have any peculiar fantasies about his mother. He probably didn’t even realize that by sharing wild fantastic ideas about the gods and thoughts on ideal love with Susette Gontard that he was seducing this 18th century soccer mom into his own web. When, as any Jungian or Freudian would say, he was probably competing with Herr Gontard for his Mother’s lost affection, which he had spurned to become a lone gun poet.

However considering all this does not mean that Holderlin’s research into Oedipus and his thinking about the Greek Gods did not create the future basis, the very antidote he needed, for grasping the mystery of Karma and Reincarnation. By having achieved his poetic intuitions in one incarnation, all based as we can see on his failure to be understood and his failure to be as rich and successful as Herr Gontard, Holderlin’s intuitions allowed him the possibility of grasping karmic relationships and thinking in the sphere of the heart. His noble intuition climbed into a world permeated by the etheric forces of the mighty god of love. After all, Holderlin was a member of an exclusive club, the Romantics. It was this new perception, intuition and artistic experience of love, shared by poets, musicians, and philosophers alike that re awoke in the souls of the Romantics.

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A new vision of Love was on the rise and opening up the world. It was clear that this new, magical love, was not part of Herr Gontard’s job description. Holderlin diligently worked his way beyond the ‘Oedipal Threshold’ through his translations and his sense of magical idealism behind the new inspiration of Love that awoke in him. He glimmered ahead of many others but in tune with his fellow Romantics around the world that there was something wonderful about to happen and souls of Holderlin’s make-up knew this before they incarnated. Holderlin took a risk on his life’s account to follow and locate the active Logos I AM working in humanity. He wished to be a part of this noble company and was willing to pay with his sanity for it. Rudolf Steiner deals with the Karma of Holderlin in Steiner’s magnificent Karma Lectures delivered at the end of his life in 1924. Steiner’s Karma lectures are the most advanced psychological evaluations ever achieved by any human being to date. Here the Super Ego or the higher I AM holds the psychology of an individual and what he/she carries into incarnation as dynamic abilities and future potentials.

Steiner beat Freud and Jung to the punch and way overshot the mark into the future maturity of the psychology of individual I Am development. Steiner’s research was not for the short term but the long run of intellectual and metaphysical development into the future foundations of the human I. In other words, through monumental slumber of the soul brought on by Darwinist materialism and mankind emerging from the dark ages into the age of light, the future toolbox of the soul and spirit had to be crafted for humanity. Even if what Steiner gave was running ahead of the pace of releasing ourselves societally step by step from our collective dysfunctions, so be it! Steiner faced consciously the type of WW testing that would quickly approach humanity and test it with concepts, archetypes and Beings well beyond our current relative range of understanding. Yet in time, as we have witnessed, the Jungians have caught up and kept pace with the unfolding soul forces leading to the I AM.

The embryology of the human spirit out of the stars, the genetic and hereditary forces that influence and allow the human spirit to reconnect to physical incarnation and earth destiny are profoundly outlined in many works by Rudolf Steiner. The rhythms of the child and its journey to the gray haired ancient at 80 or 90 years old can be followed in a startling blueprint of biography. This blueprint of growth and development and the unfolding biography on good ole Terra Firma is the most solid proof of Steiner’s profound ability. His research was not theoretical in terms of graphing the development from embryo to grave. It was new and it clearly pre-dates all other psychological models of the human being.

In facing himself Freud found a key to the riddle of Self in Oedipus and the Sphinx. Freud, Jung and the rest of current psychology delve into sexual attractions and fixations surrounding the buried memories of childhood. The warm memory of mother’s breasts, suppressed sexual fantasies and the need to destroy the father in order to get closer to the mother are different chess pieces on the psychic chessboard.

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Woody Allen and much of the New York community live and die by such insights. Domineering mothers and seemingly slick equations that keep all our little family photos and memories alive are accepted in whatever pathological and dysfunctional family setting they may manifest. People flock in droves to therapists and shrinks because they think that the daddy and mommy of the chessboard and the rules of the game can be grasped, buried and forgotten. Once having passed through this costly phase, having paid a high financial price, they then give themselves permission to continue with their mediocre beliefs. Now at least, “Sex and the City” is a game they can play without having to be burdened with all the extra guilt. But the key question of this entire essay is; what is the difference between the thumb-sucking child, and the psychically mature human being? Oedipus thought he knew. It was a riddle that the Sphinx put to him. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening, and whose speed is least when on the most legs?" Psychology has placed very little weight on the unfolding human being in the Goethean sense that Steiner presented. Psychology has placed very little merit on the statement of St. Paul either. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And so faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." The pivotal question of the Sphinx and the statement by St. Paul requires us to face the crucial question that all humanity must face. What is the true nature of the I AM? Did the Logos actually live in the physical, etheric and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth?

Freud’s legacy continues to placate and confuse the child with the mature human being. Freud, unlike Steiner, could not see the progressive growth of humanity in terms of massive phases of psychological and cultural strides. How humanity behaved in the Greek period of culture was merely brought forward and placed like a coffin lid onto our own modern consciousness. The psychic construction of consciousness has radically changed through the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Renaissance periods. Our modern psychic state is not the same state of consciousness that Oedipus and the Greeks had. Yet it is easy to say we all had families. We try to find our flaws and dysfunctions through reviewing our family relationships but what about our gifts and contributions that have changed the thinking or soul world of humanity? Must we seek for those gifts in blind luck or did our families genetically transport them to us? Individuality and the human spirit shine through and transcend the laws of flesh and blood.

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Changes in the consciousness of humanity or the individual for that matter are hazy and blurry in the current schools of history and psychology compared to Steiner’s clear demarcations and developmental phases. (See Tom Mellett ECSTATIC AMERICAN COSMOGONY AND THE MYSTICAL ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE at: http://www.steiner98.org/Archives/cosmogony.html ) Oedipus answered the riddle of the Sphinx and so did Paul. Freudian psychology allows humanity to over simplify the complexity of each human development. This suits the sentimental mental tone of our common psychological chess game by adhering to Mommy, Daddy, Sister and Brother because these are the obvious binding connections that form the core of our body’s history.

Freud’s method doesn’t take the Spirit as the pre-existent factor, prior to birth, into consideration. One could blame Freud’s point of view on the time in which he lived. But Steiner lived in the same time yet he indicated and revealed the opposite direction from that indicated by materialistic psychology since Freud.. Steiner saw the seed form of each individual as pre-existent and developed before the organic body crops up. For Steiner the Spirit unites with heredity and from this union a new Virgin identity arises on the Earth. This individual has had an ancient past, but in the current formation and destiny, unique conditions have been given it to pursue the further course of its ancient spiritual/bodily evolution.

In the Goethean sense, each human being passes through seven-year periods reflected in their earthly biographies. Certainly understanding the powerful imagination of crawling, standing and speaking at the impressionable age of two or three does not allow us to say that our journey to manhood, our intelligence and our inspiration are rooted merely in murky fixations while we sucked at our mothers breasts and fondled our newly minted sexual identity. But by tracing all human behavioral dysfunctions to these early years we have put a padlock on the enormous mystery of the human being. This consensus based padlock of immature psychology also allows humanity to cling to their dysfunctions, nurse them and hold them as inherited, ‘safe’ truths against crossing the true Oedipal Threshold and advancing to the greater mystery of the I AM..

While I have no complaints with what progressive psychology has made from its transition to Jungian psychology from Freud’s initial revelation of Oedipus, it is still laced with a materialistic take on the origin of the human in our midst. . Because of the progress in our ability to question the psyche and the structure of memory and soul experience, great strides have been made into the vast complexities of soul and spirit. Yet I do not believe that we can justifiably call St. Paul a lunatic just because we speculate that, his Father, while Saul was growing up, may have sorely abused little Saully. This, we permit ourselves to conclude, caused Saul to become a fixated megalomaniac who changed his name to Paul because he had hallucinations that finally led to his overweening god complex.

We could say the same thing about Hitler by saying that Paul was a King without a country; Hitler was a King who was fixated on destroying his mother. Hitler’s mother was the ‘Mother Tongue to Freud, Holderlin, Nietzsche and the millions of Jews he

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http://www.steiner98.org/Archives/cosmogony.html


murdered. How deeply twisted was Hitler’s Oedipal complex? Certainly, without examining the gassing and disease that Hitler experienced in the trenches, we cannot say for certain that an etheric distortion and an etheric possession, a total eclipse of Hitler’s personality was not accomplished by forces we cannot yet name. Yet history adds Nietzsche’s historic testimony to the collision of the mighty Spiritual Beings of Michael and Ahriman in a global contest that used conscious and unconscious earthly personalities for their work. I would just as soon speculate that the complex pathologies in the Hitler personality were intensified and magnified by his already twisted childhood. Could both micro and macro conceptions of psychology and history be correct? Were both Freud and Steiner true heralds of the I AM?

We cannot say as with Nietzsche or Holderlin that they were only allowed to live once and were never given another opportunity to take their insights to another level. Such materialistic thinking removes not only the Goethean idea of the seed of the immortal I AM, but imprisons mankind in graceless, miracle less evolution. We remain blocked in our vision by placing the divine potential of the soul in the cross hairs of our own limited range of consciousness.

In our modern minds we would have to put away everyone who ever lived in the ancient developing web of human consciousness and declare them all psychos according to our current beliefs. To grasp the human being evolving with the evolution of consciousness and codes from different time periods in human history we must see an evolving human identity. We cannot even entertain the dysfunctional view that the human being lives only once. Otherwise we judge our own past by our present limited views. This fundamental code of thinking freezes the immortal and even demands of heaven that we achieve once and once only our little SAT grade for Earth evolution branded forever on our souls before the eyes of Angels and of men. All those who are imperfect, as Hitler and Nietzsche proclaimed, must be the dregs and useless cannon fodder; the waste products of both Heaven and Earth.

To unriddle the actual rhythms of life according to how the etheric body enters the embryo at around 7 weeks; the astral body of the child enters the embryo at around 7 months and the Higher I Am, the Spirit Germ of the human individuality arrives between 7 and 9 months is to connect both the earthly heredity and the true spiritual identity to term.

To follow the birth of the growing child through adolescence and manhood onto old age, is truly to have answered the Oedipus riddle. This is what Steiner accomplished before anyone really required such an observation from him. But Steiner went further, without being asked, he placed the St. Paul experience of, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Steiner supplied the missing puzzle of the I AM that maintains and grows its identity and spiritual maturity through rhythms of earthly life, birth and death, to rhythms absorbed into the mighty invisible worlds of the Cosmic Logos.

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Steiner, after solid years of research envisioning the universe so that the I AM could be conceived in it, finally offered his Karma lectures in 1924. Steiner had good reason to bring the Karma lectures to the attention of mankind. Steiner felt that the entire body of the work of Spiritual Science was only a preparation for the Karma lectures. Steiner felt that his one mission, his task and his capacity as a scientist, was to bring the understanding of Reincarnation and Karma to the attention of mankind. In order to do this he had to reach further and cover the ground of the immortal I AM identity way ahead of Freud, Jung and Campbell. Steiner landed the largest cohesive research vision of the Body, Soul and Spirit that has ever been offered by a modern university. He offered all of this during the great global conflict of WWI and at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Once we emerge from the fleshy foundations of Freud and expand our wings to the Archetypes of Jung and Joseph Campbell we have grown and outgrown certain childish patterns of thinking. Now it is unfortunate that most souls have not grown this far. Everywhere in the world we have people impacting people. Presently most souls are fixated on their mommies and daddies, the color of different skins and whether or not ‘they’ talk like I talk. But mostly the world is fixated in various forms of Fundamentalism or on our own unexamined dysfunctions.

Some would defend a family member who commits murder or they may require a family member to act against his conscience because there is an unexamined, unconscious bond of blood. Maturity to understand human motives and graduate to a comprehension of human beings outside our family arises from the healthy intellect arriving at the Family of Humanity and the ability to hold fast to our own conscience.

But there is a very real Oedipal Threshold that very few dare cross. Incest, abuse, addiction to chemicals, sex, or gutsy power games remains a constant shadow in our Oedipal mirror. When your family views you as the black sheep, the different one, the stray, even if you are adopted, you begin a journey towards the new Family of humanity. Sometimes that journey begins as a destructive down hill slide without the former safety net of parental approvals. Finding our own conscience on the higher ground of the I AM requires a dramatic shift.

Once one has arrived at the beauty in the soul, the bright clarity of intellect that radiates from each individual we begin to graduate to the ability to grasp the Spirit in each person. Of course we can learn a great deal about a person by seeing and getting to know her/his family, but as consciousness matures toward Manhood, we become our own identity. We have no need to carry around the husk of our family’s opinion of us; we have no need to pull out snapshots of our family and bind who we are to what they thought we were.

Each human being is an individual. That we might have solid families we may love is a godsend and a joy, but that does not automatically create for the individual the profound leap past the Oedipal Threshold. Very few, 2% of humanity can grasp the beauty of human spirits in different races, languages, colors, shapes and sizes without prejudice.

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Very few can embrace the cosmopolitan global family with all its different religions and beliefs, with all its different laws and geographic regions as members of their own intimate family.

Of course the above is a grand generalization but when we arrive at Karmic circles of souls that have maximum influence on us and love us because they see our individual I Am and know it “Face to Face” we begin to claim a new family. This family may appear as mother, father, sister wife, lover, brother or friend in future times and in the past the roles and sexes may have been 180 degrees reversed. So how would you cross the Oedipal Threshold if your former mother were now your wife? How would you deal with the idea that your current boss was once your husband? How would you face the concept that your son was once your wife? These mighty Oedipal ideas are also part of gaining Pauline Karmic maturity.

We know we have come past the Oedipal Threshold when we understand that the Hindu, Chinese, African, Eskimo, South American, Russian all carry for us that profound gift of individuality and the blueprint of the human form. When we no longer see racial prejudice but rather see the beauty in all the colors of the skin and the glint of the eye and we can hear the thinking of this or that human as their unique flavor, color and spice, even to the way Joseph Campbell unfolded the deeply held beliefs of so many different countries and portrayed them in their depth, so now we can grasp Reincarnation and Karma. But as you see by this wonderfully air-headed, new age balloon I have floated, very few are able to love humanity and people that deeply and discern with equal love intimate strangers enough so that they might love others the way they love their own flesh and blood.

The Mission of Oedipus was to finally dislodge the Greek, Hebrew, Fourth cultural epoch strangle hold on family and blood ties. Aristocracy, Kings, Queens, blue bloods, down they tumble and the silver spoon and dynasty of the great houses have not made for a better human being then Gandhi, who came from the lowest of the caste system, the untouchables, to carry his soul to the highest level of human moral development. Now we see each other “Face to Face” even as our Karmic companions see us. Even as the Angelic Being, one stage above man, saw in spirit the substance of our I Am and helped to connect the karmic strands of our spirits to the hereditary and historical time frame we sought for our earthly incarnation.

The Oedipal hurdle that so drags on our cultural and spiritual life is the fact that we were not always the same sex in the past. Our current Mothers were not always our mothers but may have been Roman soldiers that we loved dearly. Who could live with the shock

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once you view the fact that Love moves the karmic wheel of intimate strangers? You begin to see friendships outside of the family that have deeply moved you, men or women who saved your life in ancient wars; people who have died in place of you; a baby brother… a grand parent. All these human forms still come to us as family and friends and we learn to recognize ancient heart felt bonds. Many of the strongest bonds we make are not with our family members. So the reasoning and the deep meeting and impressions we get from our encounters reveal new secrets. Intimate secrets arise from intimate strangers. But in order to progress to the intimate secrets of the world we have to overcome our Oedipal limitations.

Part II

Karma Studies

And

Esoteric Oedipus

When Holderlin sought his incarnation as Holderlin he considered four primary issues.

Develop thinking with the heart (“Magical Idealism”) Meet with the individuality that was once John the Baptist Encounter the Greek Phidias Prepare for participation in the “Michael School” in a future incarnation.

First amongst those issues was the destiny that John the Baptist had led and the significant opportunity that Holderlin would encounter in his incarnation as Holderlin, the John the Baptist individuality. This Holderlin accomplished by meeting the individuality of Novalis. Novalis was the inspiration for what later would become the School of Spiritual Science.

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It was Novalis’ “Magical Idealism” that inspired Holderlin to risk his incarnation timing, and his sanity for a shot at grasping “Magical Idealism” through grasping the poetic. Novalis had carried his union with the Christ Being into the seed thoughts of his poetry. Holderlin knew, prior to his incarnation, that an Angelic Being, one stage higher than man, had infused the soul and spirit of John the Baptist. The significant resonating forces that had united in the Baptist were awakened also in the soul of Raphael, the painter. Poetic “Magical Idealism” was an angelically recommended path for humans who wished to grow into the Angelic community and assist Christ in lifting the human spirit upwards.

Freud would have had field day if he considered for one moment the individuality that existed as Novalis and traced this individuality back through significant historical contributions as the individuality Raphael, who painted the “School of Athens”; and his further incarnation as John the Baptist, the playmate to Jesus. What type of Oedipal experiences can we imagine if Elizabeth and Mary both breast-fed their little darlings John and Jesus? Considering Raphael’s paintings of the Madonna and Child, we see a manifestation of a cosmic Oedipal complex in the mighty artistic contemplations of Raphael. In fact we see a continued Oedipal dilemma in many religious paintings. They reveal the distorted Freudian view that our longing for mother and the bosom of the church are foundationally Oedipal based and not Christian.

Holderlin sought a meeting with Novalis because Novalis was the front running spirit of the Christ School. In the painting of “The School of Athens” the new Christ School or “Michael School” was elaborated in the Spiritual World before the incarnations of a mighty group of philosophers, poets, scientists, and artists. Not only was Novalis the same individuality as John the Baptist, but also there was a meeting planned between the great sculpture Phidias and the great Painter Raphael.

These two startling individuals, founders, ground breakers in cultural history, one having announced the Christ, had also painted the Christ as Raphael; now brought his poetry and science towards the Christ as Novalis; the other spiritual personality having shaped imaginatively the entire Panhellenic collection of Greek deities in sculpted stone for Athens as Phidias; was now bursting with a rich etheric life as the grand poet, Goethe. Novalis bore the delicate imprint of the astral world of Angels, through color and light and Goethe brought the etheric plastic forces of matter and plant formative forces through his thick etheric frame.

Together, in the unspoken delicacy of their hearts, these two individuals would conceive the kernel of what later would become the Earthly representation of the mighty Michael

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School, The Goetheanum at Dornach, Switzerland. Such meetings, such Intimate encounters with Strangers pass us by unconsciously daily. Neither Goethe nor Novalis understood completely what was transpiring because the conscious tools of karmic thinking had not been elaborated yet. What they shared was an echo of that high love and dedication they had understood in the spiritual world before they incarnated.

Phidias was the artist who had created the great-sculpted reliefs for the School of Athens and helped Pericles in lifting the Greek Spirit to its monumental heights. It was Raphael, in his painting of “The School of Athens,” that drew the lines of connection between Christ and the meeting of souls who represented the living substance of Platonism and Aristotelianism. The meeting between Goethe and Novalis took place under the profound emotional awe of Sophie von Kuhn’s passing over the threshold of death. In this earnest mutual moment of profound pain, tragedy, and heart rending loss of a loved one, Goethe and Novalis were overshadowed by the mood and intimate fate that had brought them together from the spiritual world before birth to this solemn moment.

Novalis had suffered a tragic blow to his Romantic soul through the death of his beloved, Sophie von Kuhn. Novalis died before he was thirty but Goethe managed to meet him and share in the most intimate tragedy and hospitalization of Novalis’ beloved Sophie. Out of this intimate tragedy, which Goethe witnessed at close range, a fairy tale filtered through the lens of Goethe’s reflective heart and pierced through our world. It was the tale of “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” Steiner used its motifs as the foundation for the new Michael School named after Goethe.

In it was a crystallization of the mood surrounding the events and meeting between Goethe and Novalis; Between Phidias and John the Baptist; between the ancient Greek culture and new Christianity; a secret bridge from Athens to the new Christed sciences of the Goetheanum. “The Green Snake and Beautiful Lily” was a glimmering that Steiner perceived between the meeting of Novalis and Goethe. The Goetheanum was the result of what their meeting meant to the spiritual world and the future potentials of mankind.

“Novalis' best known works are the Hymns to the Night (1799) and Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1800). He wrote both works while already suffering from consumption, the disease from which he died in March 1801. This was almost four years to the day after the death of Sophie, the idealized and doomed love of his life. He died believing that once his soul had escaped this body he would meet her again face to face.

“His mysticism and piety sought to integrate heart and soul, and a longing after a "new" form of Christianity which greatly appealed to MacDonald. Novalis' Spiritual Songs were revelations of the new religion, of the deification of the universe and his yearning love for eternity. He argued that classical religions encouraged a deep fear of death. Christianity, however, had reconciled the world to the idea of death, through Christ's resurrection from the dead. In MacDonald's imagination this was transmuted into a belief that death was merely a higher form of life.”

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http://www.ev90481.dial.pipex.com/novalis.htm

In Goethe lived the ancient sculpture, Phidias. Something was quietly taking place on Earth, there is always something unique taking place around us, but in this instance neither Goethe nor Novalis fully understood the depth and delicacy of their meeting. We have not exercised our capacity for conscious interest and recognition in who we meet and who we encounter enough to have an active, ongoing karmic awareness. Jung has advanced a perception that leads to this insight in his Synchronicity researches. This is what our dynamic interest and the sixth sense of awe should be about. This is why Steiner developed Karma research and Karmic exercises. It is clear that magnificent mathematical and harmonic convergences are in operation around our destinies at all times. In this sense the title of Goethe’s novel, “Elective Affinities” has come down to us as a groundbreaking insight into self-realization.

Holderlin plopped himself right in the middle of these delicate historical events. Holderlin was the young ‘wanna be’ compared to the well established Goethe and Schiller. Holderlin managed to not only be connected to Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Goethe, Novalis but he also hovered with his idealistic enthusiasm around the first inklings of the great Michael School potential. Novalis and Goethe had a scientific thread to their poetic intuitions. Goethe not only produced the great poetic work of “Faust” but he also had a burning interest in the high ground of science. Novalis was a geologist and loved geology as well as poetry and fairy tales. The unconscious realm of the vast spiritual world and our memories from there, appear for us in dreams, fairy-tales and myths. The merging of poetic intuition with the scientific in a disciplined manner are the hallmarks of the Michael School. Many Jungians share this type of soul-intuition as well.

Holderlin was only able to complete one part of the equation, poetic/mythic intuition but did not unfold the scientific in the way that Novalis and Goethe had. Novalis’ sudden death around 1801 marked the point when Holderlin encountered the beginning of his own slipping mental equilibrium. In terms of Goethe’s “Faust” and Holderlin’s “Empedocles” we find a unique bridge into the intuition that both had focused on prior to their incarnations.

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In Goethe’s “Faust” and the various Faust legends the individuality and Spirit of Empedocles was said to be active. Somehow the union of the human Spirit with the unconscious and dark forces of his nature and the historical action of Empedocles throwing himself into an active Volcano to merge with the elements of fire, air, water and earth are considered extensions of the personality that was both Faust and Empedocles. While Holderlin was young and filled with fiery fervor he made little impression on the grand Goethe. Holderlin had not made the full karmic preparation for such an impression to be made. However Holderlin focused on his “Empedocles” and Goethe focused on his “Faust” and somehow they were looking at the same individuality.

In the researches of Holderlin, Goethe, Novalis, Schiller and countless others we find the echo on earth of awakening to that which is carried in the I AM. Steiner draws attention to this by stating:

“If a man of the modern age were to encounter a figure such as Orpheus, he would simply say: he is the son of such and such a father and such a and such a mother and science might possibly look for inherited characteristics. There is, for example, a bulky tome in which all the hereditary characteristics of Goethe’s families are set forth in an endeavor to present him as the sum total of those characteristics. “

“…Hence a Greek would have said to himself: When Orpheus is before me, the fact that he descends from a father and a mother need hardly be taken into account; what is of importance is that his soul-qualities, which have made him what he is, stem from the supersensible, from a supersensible reality which has never hitherto had anything to do with the physical plane; a physical material element has here been able to unite with the supersensible reality in his personality. – And because the Greeks regarded a purely supersensible quality as the hallmark of Orpheus, they said he was the offspring of a Muse, the son of Calliope, not of the physical mother but of a supersensible reality which had never had any previous connection with the physical material.” Steiner “Background of the Gospel of St. Mark. Pg. 107

Now many of the Romantics and Transcendentalists were searching and preparing themselves for the mature psychological aspect of the I AM in relation to physical, hereditary and spiritual unions. Holderlin’s researches, before his madness, had already anticipated and intuited such high mythic and historical insights. His poetry and translations, as well as his “Hyperion” already point to profound riddles of the soul.

“When speaking today of heredity in successive generations we seem to believe that all a man’s faculties can be traced back in a direct line through his immediate ancestors. But it is the concept of Reincarnation and Karma alone that will make it possible for clarity to replace the present confusion in this field of thought… a great deal in human nature as we know it today is entirely unconnected with the influence of the sexes; nevertheless a confused science still teaches that

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everything in the human being originates at the time of conception, through the union of male and female.

“We must therefore distinguish in man’s nature one part that originates from the union of the sexes and another part that is received by way of the mother directly from the Macrocosm. There can be no clarity in these matters until a definite and precise distinction is made between the individual members of man’s nature, whereas today everything is mingled together in confusion. The physical body is not a self-contained, isolated entity; it is formed through combined workings of the etheric body, the astral body and the ‘I’; and again we must distinguish between the forces that are due to the direct influence of the macrocosm and others that are to be ascribed to the union of the sexes.” Steiner “Background of the Gospel of St. Mark. Pg. 159-160

As a great cohesive endeavor to regain human cosmic intelligence was under way, many, many individuals leaped into incarnation to assist, be a part and share in this bold and heroic quest for human synthesis. The Oedipal question remains a genetic and social riddle to be faced by everyone. It is only through the step-by-step growth, maturity, tragedy and holiness of humanities efforts that we reach a stage higher in our psychological grasp of the human spirit.

It was Steiner’s endeavor to build up the severed connection between the Spiritual World and the unique expressions we carry as incarnating human beings. To even fathom the powerful implosion of the I AM that took effect at the Baptism and on the hill of Golgotha Steiner had to elaborate history and consciousness from hundreds of different sides. But one thing remains intact. It is only each individual I AM, speaking, thinking, bringing new forces to birth that will allow the growth of either psychology or society. The Oedipal mysteries were once and for all resolved on Golgotha for the ongoing development of the human being. Yet it requires each human I to allow themselves the vision to approach it.

One of the mysteries Steiner unveiled was how the mythic issue of Oedipus was resolved in the circle of the disciples. Here we encounter one of the buried gems of insight around the karmic destiny of individuals gathered around the Christ Being.

“There is a saga - it doesn't stand in the Gospels, but it is for that reason no less a Christian saga, and also a Christian truth, and it goes this way:

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There lived a married couple. This couple had no son for a long time. Then it was revealed to the mother in a dream (pay close attention to this) that she would have a son---but that this son would first kill the father, and then have a union with the mother, and he would bring a terrible calamity down upon his whole family.

Once again you have a dream, as the oracle does with Oedipus; this means that here we have a remnant of the ancient clairvoyance. It was revealed in the ancient way to the mother, what was to happen. Was what was revealed to her sufficient, so as to see through the relationships of the world, so as to hinder the calamity? Let's ask the saga. It further tells us:

Under the impression of this wisdom, which flowed to her from the dream, the mother took the child that was born to her, to the island of Kariot; there it was exposed to the mercy of the elements, but it was found by a neighboring queen. She took in the child and brought it up herself because they were childless. Later on this couple had a child of their own, and the foundling who had been taken in, soon felt neglected, and as a consequence of his passionate temperament, he killed the son of the royal couple. So now he could not stay there; he had to flee---and he came to the farm of the country gentleman, Pilate. There he soon became a foreman in the household. But then, one time, he got into a dispute with his neighbor, knowing only that it was his neighbor; in a fight he slew him---and did not know that it was his own father. And afterwards he married the neighbor's wife, his mother!

This foundling was Judas Iscariot. And when he became aware of his horrible situation, he then fled again. And then, solely and alone he found mercy in the situation he was in, by him who had mercy for all who came near him--who not only sat at the same table with tax collectors and sinners, but also despite his deeply penetrating insight, took up this great sinner as well, for it was his task to work not merely for good men but for all human beings, and to lead them from sin into salvation. Thus Judas of Iscariot came into the vicinity of the Christ Jesus. And now he brought the calamity that was expressed in advance and had to work out, into the circle of Jesus Christ---in accordance with Schiller's saying, "That is just the curse of the evil deed, that, self-generating, it must bring evil to birth." He became the betrayer of Jesus Christ; fundamentally, what was to be fulfilled with the murder of his father and the marriage of his mother. But he stayed on, so to speak, as a tool, because he was to be a tool, the evil tool that was to bring about the good---and with that deed, so to speak, to carry out a deed beyond the fulfillment.

He who is presented to us in Oedipus, as the consequence of the calamity that he brought about---from the moment on when he perceives this calamity-loses his eyesight. He, however, who has the same destiny through his connection to the remnants of the ancient heritage of original wisdom, he does not go blind; but he is predestined to carry out the destiny and to do what brings about the Mystery of Golgotha, which results in the physical death of him who is the "light of the

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World," and who brings the light of the world into effect at the healing of the man born blind. Oedipus had to lose his eyesight; Christ gave eyesight to the man born blind,---but he died because of him who had the character of Oedipus---all of which is to show us how the ancient wisdom becomes exhausted within humanity, how it is no longer sufficient to bring healing, peace, and love to men.

For this the Christ impulse, with the event of Golgotha, was necessary. For this it was necessary that first of all that had to happen which appears to us as an external reflection in the wedding at Cana in Galilee, of the relationship of the Jesus Christ ego to his mother. Also for this, it was further necessary that something else happened, which the writer of John's Gospel thus describes:

Down below the Cross-stood the mother, down below stood the disciple "whom the Lord loved", Lazarus-John, whom He had Himself initiated, and through whom. the wisdom of Christianity was to come down to posterity; he who was so to influence the astral body of human beings that the Christ principle could live in them. There, within the human astral body, the Christ principle was to come to life, and John was to be the one to pour it in! But for this, the Christ principle coming down from the cross, had to be united with the etheric principle, with the mother. Therefore Christ calls down from the cross the words, "From this hour on, this is-your mother---and this is your son." This means he binds together his wisdom, with the motherly principle!

Thus we see how deep are not only the Gospels, but how deep all connections are in the being of the mysteries. Indeed, the ancient sagas stand in the same connection to the proclamations and Gospels of modern times, as prophecy to fulfillment. The ancient sagas show us one thing clearly in relation to the Oedipus saga and the Judas story: "Once upon a time there was an ancient divine wisdom. But it exhausted itself! And a new wisdom must come." And this new wisdom will bring human beings to the point, to which the ancient wisdom could no longer have brought them. What would have had to come about, without the Christ impulse-that the Oedipus saga tells us;, what the opposition to Christ was, the inflexible holding fast to the ancient wisdom-that the Judas saga tells us. But that, about which the ancient sagas and myths tell us, that it is not sufficient-this, the "new proclamation", the Gospel, tells us in a new light. The Gospel gives us answers to what the ancient sagas have expressed as pictures from the ancient wisdom. They have said: there can no longer come from the ancient wisdom what humanity needs for the future. But as the new wisdom, the Gospel tells us: I proclaim to you what humanity needs---but which would have never been able to come without the influence of the Christ principle, without the event of Golgotha.” The Gospel of St. John, Jul. 4th, 1909, Kassel ~ Rudolf Steiner

All that individuals achieve in the wonders that strengthen the foundations of the soul and spirit in their contributions to culture and humanity are carried by the progressive development of Spiritual Beings who have earned the right to claim their personal Identity. We look around us at Intimate Strangers, each a riddle and a revelation. We

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understand that hallucinations, flaws and stumbles will occur because we are still perfecting ourselves. The Bible itself was translated and edited by many hands before we received the text we have now. Our revelation and relation to immortality hinges on our being able to come closer and closer to refined spiritual thinking and through this thinking we attain clearer and clearer vision of our own Oedipal Threshold.

In the early 1950’s Michael Hamburger, commentator and translator of Holderlin’s poetry, assisted in the verification of a lost poem of Holderlin’s called "Celebration of Peace". Commentators have summed up Holderlin’s beliefs in the following;

“The crowd, Holderlin said, likes what is dished up in the market place. The divine believe. Those who believe in the divine are not merely believers "on faith" who might otherwise not believe. They are individuals who recognize the kinship between mortal and divine. Holderlin said that we can believe in the divine because we ourselves are divine. Those who believe in the divine are themselves divine because they also believe in themselves. Thus Holderlin made belief in the divine a condition of being per se. Holderlin made nature, too, a manifestation of the divine, and Christianity a historical moment of the divine. In "Celebration of Peace" the prince of peace is not Christ, but another of unknown identity. Mankind must work toward an understanding of itself and its deepest motivations, to the very limits that we commonly deem mortal.”

http://www.geocities.com/~n4bz/gsr10/gsr1004.htm

When Holderlin was only seventeen years old he already had an intuition of his life journey. It is fitting that I end this contemplation with Holderlin’s poem “My Resolution.”

“My Resolution”

O friends, my friends, who love me so loyally,What can so dim, so trouble my lonely gaze?What makes my wretched heart seek refugeHere in this gloomy and deathly stillness?

I flee the tender clasp of your hands, avoidThe soulful, happy touch of a brothers lips.Oh, don’t be angry, friends, forgive me!Look at my innermost self, then judge me!

Is it hot thirst for manly perfection, then?A craving, hushed, for fame and a hecatomb?A feeble urge to Pindar’s flight? Or

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Strenuous striving for Klopstock’s greatness?

Ah, friends, where can I hide, to what corner ofThis earth escape, and wrapped in perpetual night,Weep there? For never shall I know the Flight of those men round the world, in no time.

And yet I will, I’ll climb the most glorious path!Climb on, climb on in ardent and reckless dreamsOf joining them; I will, though, dying,Faintly I mutter, forget me, children!

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The Oedipal Threshold file · Web viewIn order to make this bridge between Freud and Steiner...

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Transcript of The Oedipal Threshold file · Web viewIn order to make this bridge between Freud and Steiner...