The Christian Mystery V. ~ The Bearing of the Cross / the idea of the body in action.

The Bearing of the Cross

 

 

"The Bearing of the Cross refers, symbolically, to a virtue of the soul. This virtue which Consists in a sense of having 'the world on one's coscience' as Atlas bore the world on his shoulders, may be called a feeling or identification with the whole Earth, or in the words of oriental occultism the cessation of the feeling of separateness. In general, and above all in modern times, men identify themselves with the body. (In his Ethics, Spinoza says that the basic and fundamental idea of man is the idea of the body in action.) The disciple must cultivate the idea that in the sum-total of things, his body in itself is of no more importance than any other body, whether it be the body of an animal, a table or a piece of marble. The self is not bounded by the skin; it is united with the great organism of the universe as the hand is united with the rest of the body. The hand alone would be as dust and ashes.
What would the body of man be without the soil on which he rests, without the air he breathes? It would die, for it is but a tiny organ of the Earth and the air. That is why the disciple must sink himself in every other being and identify himself with the Spirit of the Earth.

Goethe has given a marvelous description of this stage at the beginning of Faust. The Spirit of the Earth to whom Faust aspires, appears before him and speaks these words:

"In the tides of life, in Action's storm,
A fluctuant wave,
A shuttle free,
Birth and the Grave,
An eternal sea,
A weaving, flowing
Life, all-glowings 

Thus at Time's humming loom 'tis my hand prepares
The garments of Life which the Divinity weaves."

To identify oneself with all beings does not mean that the body is to be despised. It must be borne as some exterior object, even as Christ bore His Cross. The Spirit must wield the body as the hand wields the hammer. At this stage the disciple is conscious of the occult powers lying latent in his body. In the course of his meditations, the stigmata may even appear on his skin. This is the sign that he is ripe for the fifth stage, where, in sudden illumintion, the Mystic Death revealed to him." ( Rudolf Steiner, An esoteric cosmology, VIII: The Christian Mystery, 37-38 )

 

"Így szemléli..." - , ismétli a Satipatthána szútra."( https://boatswain69.blogspot.com/2022/03/satipatthana-ott-magasztos-igy.html )