Reading for Those Who Have Died 2021
At the end of each year the group that participates regularly in the Reading for Those Who Have Died on the last Saturday of each month discusses the format of these readings for the next year. For two years this group has been using a compilation of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in a book called Staying Connected: How to Continue Your Relationship with Those who Have Died as the source for a contemplation on how to stay connected with those who have crossed the threshold. Many questions arise from these lectures. For 2021 the group has decided to contemplate some of these questions with the aim of having a short discussion each month. Each month, therefore, one person will prepare by reading from one of the lectures from this book and present a concept which the group will contemplate for the month to discuss at the next reading. The preparation is therefore not to provide a synopsis of a lecture, or to elucidate the content of the lecture, but rather to find a single concept worth contemplating. This means that the person presenting the concept will do so in preparation for the coming month and will then start the conversation at the reading in the next month by reminding the group of the concept and possibly adding the results of their own contemplation over the course of the month. Thereafter a sharing of about 20 minutes will aim to further deepen the understanding of this concept from the inner work of each member of the group.
Saturday 30 January 2021
The Reading for Those Who Have Died in January 2021 will happen at 17h00 on Saturday 30 January and the contemplation will be led by Michael Krösche to understand what is meant by “thinking outside of our head”. Rudolf Steiner says in his lecture given in Paris on 26 May 1914:
If you practice attentiveness-concentration and meditation you will learn to understand the meaning of the statements, I experience myself as a soul-spiritual being. I am active in myself without using my senses or my limbs. I have experiences independent of my body. Progress will be evident when you can perceive your own body with all its physical attributes as separate and independent of our soul and spirit, just as you see a table or a chair in physical life.
This is how one begins to separate the soul’s ability to think and form ideas from its physical tools, namely, the nervous system and the brain. We learn to live in thinking and the forming of ideas, fully aware that we are outside the nervous system and the brain, the physical instruments we normally use for these processes.
To put it more concretely, let me add that our first experience in this self-development is the realisation that in thinking we live as though outside our head. We live in our weaving thoughts just as we do when we use our brain, but we know with certainty that these thoughts are outside our head. The experience of immersing ourselves again in the brain and the nervous system after having been outside the head for some time remains indelibly with us. We feel the resistance of the substance of brain and nervous system in such a way that the soul-spiritual that emerged from those physical organs needs to use force to re-enter them. This is an unforgettable moment.
In January, Karin von Schilling will prepare for the February contemplation and this will be on the concept of how we can interact with those on the other side of the threshold in that Rudolf Steiner says we can become aware of them by feeling their willing and willing their feeling.
The monthly Reading for Those Who Have Died is open to everyone in the congregation and we would dearly welcome more participants.
If you practice attentiveness-concentration and meditation you will learn to understand the meaning of the statements, I experience myself as a soul-spiritual being. I am active in myself without using my senses or my limbs. I have experiences independent of my body. Progress will be evident when you can perceive your own body with all its physical attributes as separate and independent of our soul and spirit, just as you see a table or a chair in physical life.
This is how one begins to separate the soul’s ability to think and form ideas from its physical tools, namely, the nervous system and the brain. We learn to live in thinking and the forming of ideas, fully aware that we are outside the nervous system and the brain, the physical instruments we normally use for these processes.
To put it more concretely, let me add that our first experience in this self-development is the realisation that in thinking we live as though outside our head. We live in our weaving thoughts just as we do when we use our brain, but we know with certainty that these thoughts are outside our head. The experience of immersing ourselves again in the brain and the nervous system after having been outside the head for some time remains indelibly with us. We feel the resistance of the substance of brain and nervous system in such a way that the soul-spiritual that emerged from those physical organs needs to use force to re-enter them. This is an unforgettable moment.
In January, Karin von Schilling will prepare for the February contemplation and this will be on the concept of how we can interact with those on the other side of the threshold in that Rudolf Steiner says we can become aware of them by feeling their willing and willing their feeling.
The monthly Reading for Those Who Have Died is open to everyone in the congregation and we would dearly welcome more participants.