“The Path from ‘Heaven to Earth’ to ‘Earth to Heaven’”, a talk by Rev. Reingard Knausenberger on Palm Sunday as an introduction to Holy Week

reported by John-Peter Gernaat
 
Each year as we progress through the liturgical year the festivals provide a place that we can explore and then move on and return to in the next year with a new perspective to look at them each again. We make a decision as to the intensity with which we enter into each festival. We let go of everything in life so as not to be overwhelmed, and then after the festival we pick our life up where we left off.
 
Ours is the only church that presents a black altar to the congregation for four weeks. We may ask what this means and where it takes us to face this colour for this period of time. By the time we reach Good Friday we can explore what the endings are all about and how a new beginning is possible from these endings.
 
There are important numbers in festivals of the Christ, in the first half of the liturgical year:

• 12 Holy Nights of Christmas
• 7 days of Holy Week
• 10 days of Ascension
• 3 days of Whitsun

 
During the first seven years of a human life the child rebuilds the physical organisation entirely on the blueprint it inherited from its parents. Even the bones are rebuilt as we see with the new teeth that replace the first set. After these seven years the physical organisation is ready to fully ‘land’ on the earth. Then we start building our sensitive bodies so as to develop organs of the soul.
 
Creation is described as a seven-step process.

1. “Let there be light”; a separation of light and dark is created.
2. A separation of waters is created.
3. There is a gathering of waters and vegetation is created on the land.
4. The lights of the Sun and Moon (and the stars) are created.
5. The animals that dwell in the water and in the air are created.
6. The land animals and the human being are created.

 
The elements that are described in this process are:

1. From chaos to form.
2. Order according to measure.
3. One with and apart from.
4. Karma – birth and death become reality.
5. Renewal.
6. Making whole.
7. A seed for the future (“Creation is Good”).

 
This creation is not the very beginning. Something must have been before this. It is like our own first memory. It takes us back to somewhere between the ages of three and five, but there is memory before this, even through we do not remember it. This memory is carried by the parents. Creation is a beginning, but there was a before. It was a development such as the child developing in the womb where we were warmed and moved into existence.
 
In the story in Genesis the human being arises at the end of a process of sorting things until the idea behind all of this, is what appears. That is why it takes time for each of us to ‘land’ in life. The intention was to create a being that carries consciousness of self – “like ourselves” say the hierarchies. The hierarchies will meet someone who is like themselves and yet different. We are in a process that began before Genesis, at which point we landed on the earth and then began the journey through the Old Testament. This journey is the journey of each one of us.
 
When we die the angelic world picks us up and carries us in their ‘womb’ helping us use what we have brought from the incarnation that has ended to prepare us to use it for the future. This journey from the past is what we meet in another human being and what has been invested into each of our destinies.
 
The Old Testament is the development of the human constitution to be able to say “I am”. Moses is clearly told this from the Burning Bush: “I am the I am”, this is who guides this whole journey of development. Christianity has the purpose of developing that power in a human waking condition. It requires resistance to achieve this. The renewed sacraments of the Movement for Religious Renewal give us the map for each phase and condition in life. Through the sacraments we can think and feel; we can feel, think and do. These are the processes that we enter into.
 
In Genesis the blueprint appears and on the seventh day there is a gap between one unfolding and the possibility to rebirth. Every night when we go to sleep we are bathed in these powers that renew us. In the ‘gap’ something new can enter in to renew the impulse. Paul says: “I am, yet not I” providing a space. Paul is there in the fullness of possibility but gives a space for another “I” to be present. The power that renews needs a space; it is what happens in between.
 
The epistle that is heard at the beginning and end of the Act of Consecration of Man at Passiontide is unique. We hear: “My soul lies lamenting on the ground”. We can experience ourselves as being here on earth, on the ground. But we are permitted to be present for God to meet and we can connect with this power that raises us up. We can use our memory of past experiences as a reservoir that we tap into to help lift us up again. These memories do not fade with use but become stronger. We can take charge of this process.
 
One experience of Palm Sunday is of the Christ arriving on an ass. One thread we can identify is that of the archetypal “I”; the recognition that here is a being like us but a completely new version of this being. We are brought into a process that is not of us but of the Elohim and the other Hierarchies, the “I am the I am”. This process leads to the “I am the I am” able to exist in the human constitution. When we read the Gospel of Luke we read that the angels are jubilant, because the vessel had come into reality that can bear the “I am”.
 
At the age of twelve the body receives the qualities that are necessary for the individual “I” to be received.
 

• Me: - my daily personality.
• Myself: - where my ideals are held that are aligned with my higher self.
• I: - the source to which we are connected, which entered into the human constitution at the Baptism in the Jordan.

 
The content of my “I am” is unique, yet we all have “I am”. When a Being says: “I am the I am” the contents of that Being is all of us. Christ holds that creative space and nourishes it. Christianity is taking us into a new experience, it is not a belief.
 
We can look at Christ entering into his creation. At twelve the higher self can enter the physical constitution. At 30, on the path to the Baptism, when the Heavens open the power of the “I am” can land. Christ is the power of the “I am” in this physical organisation, landed as a consciousness in the human being. This is what the people who shout “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday see.
 
When we look at the elongated U on the chasuble of the priest we see events in the life of Jesus that mark the descent to the lowest point. These are the Baptism, the Transfiguration, the Feeding of the Five Thousand. These mark places where the “I am” lands in the organisation that is Jesus. Good Friday marks the lowest point.
 
After Easter these points are mirrored on the upward journey. The Baptism which is followed by the meeting of the spirit of contraction that would tempt him to take short cuts. This is mirrored by Whitsun where the “I am” lands in us. Ascension mirrors the Transfiguration when the Risen One now carried the whole of creation. The Last Supper mirrors the Feeding of the Five Thousand in which Christ gives out the bread that nourishes and multiplies. The transubstantiation of Christ becomes the meal at down on the shores of the sea with the disciples. This is why the transubstantiation is always a meal of the rising run.
 
The festivals take us through these significant archetypes.
 
The “I am” is carried to the brink of death and then there is a pause – the Sabbath, Holy Saturday. What is then born is the idea made real, the reality of a new human being, a spiritual-physical body. The entire organisation of the human being held together. This is seeded as an ideal in each human being. The Archetype has seeded itself. We will take the seed of this Earth to the next. The event of Golgotha is the seed for the Jupiter Development of Earth incarnation. Holy week is the week of building the spiritual organs for the Jupiter Development.