Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart E-Book

Florin Lowndes

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 222

Beschreibung

The seer and teacher Rudolf Steiner advised that specific 'accompanying' or 'fundamental' spiritual exercises should always be carried out in conjunction with meditation. While meditation is the foundation of any spiritual path of development, it can pose dangers to normal consciousness. These exercises offer a protection, by helping to develop inner certainty and strength. This is achieved, for example, through the first exercise by concentrating and intensifying the powers of thinking, through the second by developing the control of the will, through the third by mastering the outer expressions of the life of feeling, and so on. Florin Lowndes describes the fundamental exercises in thorough detail, giving suggestions as to how they may be carried out. He also relates an important and hidden aspect - that the exercises embody the means for developing and strengthening organic and 'living' thinking, which is intimately related to the enlivening of a new organ of perception: the heart chakra or lotus. Lowndes casts new light on many aspects of this question, and offers encouragement and stimulus to those seeking a modern path of spiritual development. FLORIN LOWNDES was born in Romania in 1938 and had an international career in architectural art and design. In 1970 he emigrated to the United States, where he taught at college level and in Steiner Waldorf schools. Since 1971 he has been engaged in the study of anthroposophy, and has written many articles for journals on related questions. He co-authored The Human Life, and founded the Center of Heart-Thinking in Boston. At present he leads training seminars in the United States and throughout Europe.

Leseprobe

Enlivening the Chakra of the Heart

The Fundamental Spiritual Exercises ofRudolf Steiner

Florin Lowndes

SOPHIA BOOKSRudolf Steiner Press

Translated by Matthew Barton

Sophia BooksRudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, East SussexRH18 5ES

First Published by Sophia Books 2012(Sophia Books is an imprint of Rudolf Steiner Press)

Originally published in German under the titleDie Belebung des Herzchakra, Ein Leitfaden zu den Nebenn Rudolf Steinersby Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart in 1996

© Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1996This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 1998

The moral right of the author has been assertedunder the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

AU rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted, in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, without the prior permission of thepublishers

A catalogue record for this book is available fromthe British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 274 8

Cover by Andrew MorganTypeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

Preface

PART ONE: THE CHAKRAS

1.  The Method

2.  The Traditional Chakra Teaching

3.  Rudolf Steiner's Chakra Teaching

4.  The Heart Chakra

5.  The Exercises for the Heart Chakra: ‘Subsidiary’ and Basic Exercises

PART TWO: THE SIX EXERCISES

1.  Structure

2.  The First Exercise: Control of Thinking

3.  The Second Exercise: Control of Will

4.  The Third Exercise: Control of Feeling

5.  The Fourth Exercise: The Fulfilment of Thinking in Feeling

6.  The Fifth Exercise: The Fulfilment of Thinking in the Will

7.  The Sixth Exercise: The Fulfilment of Thinking in Thinking

8.  The Etheric Streams

9.  The Exercise Plan

PART THREE: THE HEART EXERCISE

1.  Overview

2.  The Six Positions

3.  The Six Gestures

4.  The Heart Exercise

PART FOUR: THE NEW HEART-THINKING

1.  Rudolf Steiner's Heart-Thinking

2.  Rudolf Steiner's Two Paths of Esotericism

3.  Special Aspects of Spiritual Schooling

Bridge Building

Notes

Illustration of chakras

Preface to the English Edition

For some time now, the nature and beneficial uses of the chakras—for instance, awakening them through meditation or utilizing them for healing—have been the subject of widespread interest outside the New Age movement. Most, if not all, of this work has revived age-old methods of practice from the eastern esoteric tradition, especially those of yoga. However, a crucial, though perhaps not immediately apparent, question regarding these practices arises: do traditional methods, even though certainly appropriate and effective in the past, really meet the actual spiritual goals and the truly modern consciousness of the present?

Today any serious spiritual seeker interested in chakra work must ask this question in spite of the widespread acceptance of these traditional methods—or rather just because of it.

As first-hand experience demonstrates, traditional yoga practices can claim certain benefits; however, experience also shows that such older forms, even when ‘modernized’, are not fully consistent with a truly modern consciousness and subsequently are not, so to speak, at the cutting edge of the New Age. We can find an authentic modern way of working on the chakras in the exercises created by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who, on the basis of a new kind of thinking process, recast certain yoga exercises in a form consistent with the modern and even future stages of (spiritual) development. In this way, he fulfilled a small and little known branch of yoga meditative practice, the Gayatri-Sadhana, the goal of which was prophetic, for it was focused on the reversed Kundalini (awakening the energy of all seven chakras from top down instead of the usual upward method) in a way that had become possible only at this much later historical time.

This book is concerned primarily with the group of exercises Rudolf Steiner created for enlivening the chakra of the heart, generally known as the ‘subsidiary’, ‘supplementary’ or ‘accompanying’ exercises. In it appear the contents of workshops on enlivening the heart chakra that I gave in the United States and Germany. I started off in these workshops with just a couple of handouts for the participants. These handout sheets gradually became more and more detailed and their number kept increasing, until they were eventually incorporated in a slim handout volume on the method I had developed for carrying out these exercises. Then I was encouraged by my publisher, well aware that a systematic approach to these was not available, to prepare an edition suitable for general publication. So, to the best of my ability, I refashioned and expanded the material from the living oral form it took in my workshops into its present written form. But this is not easily done, since any method of practice, being intended for individual practitioners, must invariably take on the very specific character best suited to the individual who applies it. Yet any method, when it is put into written form for a wide readership, inevitably assumes a more general and theoretical character and consequently may be perceived as a composition of rigid and dogmatic directives.

I always tried in my workshops to open myself to the questions and specific needs of individual participants, and thus to allow the workshop to emerge accordingly.

Therefore, I ask my readers to view these descriptions mainly as suggestions and stimuli, and to relate them to their own particular circumstances and actual capacities. The method described here will be of no use if it is applied in an abstract, lifeless, or dogmatic way. I conceived the present volume as a ‘do it yourself’ kind of book for those who actually will do the exercises, rather than for those merely interested in piling up knowledge about them—for, as the saying goes, ‘if you don’t do what you know, you don’t know it.’ Nothing would bring me greater satisfaction than if this book would help its readers to develop their own individual techniques.

What I have been able to share in the seminars is the result of decades of involvement both with the exercises themselves and with the spiritual principles underlying them, as well as with the laws at work in the way they are carried out. From the beginning of my work, I have been fortunate to have followed the clear and decisive direction pointed out to me by George O’Neil (1906-88). In following this path, I have recognized that these exercises had been created by means of a new kind of thinking, one which ultimately offers us the only means of enlivening the heart chakra in a way thoroughly consistent with its essential function for our times. Rudolf Steiner designed these exercises for the enlivening of the heart chakra in such a way that, in doing them accordingly, we will gain access to the creative power of a truly modern thinking process, namely, ‘thinking with the heart’ or heart-thinking. With this phrase, I do not mean the kind of feeling way of thinking that might first come to mind, but I use it rather as a technical term (hence the hyphenated spelling), the meaning of which will be explained and justified in the last part of this book. Suffice it to say, this is the kind of thinking that we desperately need to develop today, and by enlivening the heart chakra we will actually develop its proper physical organ. For the true organ for heart-thinking is indeed the heart (not the heart muscle per se but the rhythmical flow of blood regulated by it), just as its supersensible organ is the heart chakra.

This book was originally intended as the second of two about heart-thinking, the first of which was to describe its nature and outline and appropriate methodology. However, this book, the second of the series, now appears before the first, which will be published in Germany this year (1998). And yet this sequence, as it turns out, is appropriate: since these exercises are better known to many readers than the kind of thinking which underlies them, this book can serve as good preparation for the more ‘basic’ one. It has been an important concern of mine to place the exercises described here into the context of today’s widespread interest in the chakras, and thereby to show that Rudolf Steiner’s approach is truly modern and it can speak to a broad range of people. I hope, therefore, that this book can be of real value to those who are currently pursuing such meditative exercises from all sorts of different traditions, especially because it seeks to reveal the fundamentally new kind of thinking on which all truly modern spiritual work must be based today in order to become truly fruitful.

PART ONE:THE CHAKRAS

1

The Method

I would like to begin by describing a few aspects of what underlies and constitutes this path for developing the heart chakra. Any reader who is interested only in carrying out the exercises themselves can skip to the second part of the book without more ado; whoever would prefer to understand their organic, living complexity, and their effects, should read these introductory chapters. Let me also suggest here that putting aside any preconceived notions about the whole subject under discussion will make it easier to grasp properly some of the perhaps unusual or unfamiliar aspects involved.

Wherever feasible I have given my observations in a schematic or tabular form, rather than as description, for it seems to me that this would leave the reader freer to expand it into a form suited to his or her own inclinations and experience.

Viewpoints

The exercises will be examined according to the following viewpoints:

1.  as exercises for enlivening the heart chakra (chakra exercises);

2.  as a renewal, for our times, of an esoteric path of self-development;

3.  as a field of activity of soul-forces and adversarial forces;

4.  as self-sufficient, dynamic meditation (the complete exercise);

5.  as expression of the organic-living thinking developed by Rudolf Steiner;

6.  as examples of the lack of clear definition in spiritual experience.

1.  The chakras are organs of the invisible, spiritual bodies, or energy-bodies, of the human being. They developed throughout human evolution, firstly by natural means, secondly through conscious, focused esoteric training. Such training can speed up the development of these organs, so that they forge a path upon which natural evolution can follow. Rudolf Steiner mentions an esoteric training for developing the chakras in some of his early writings and lectures; in his book How to Know Higher Worlds, and at other places, he speaks about the special evolution of the heart chakra, which he regards as being the chakra of greatest significance for our time.

2.  In our present times we can, if we look to their original sources, find two esoteric paths of development: one has emerged from the traditional, ancient, though renewed path; the other is a truly new path. The first began with the Kali Yuga epoch (its first phase was yoga) and is nowadays in decline; for thousands of years this schooling took place in secret, select esoteric circles, but now its traditions have crumbled away and dispersed into common knowledge so that it has become more and more exoteric. The second path, began at the end of Kali Yuga, is by nature not a secret, occult path, but only remains hidden—that is, esoteric—because most people seeking a modern path of self-development have not yet found it (see the sketch). This path of training is really an ‘open secret’ in Goethe's sense, a secret revelation. It is simultaneously eso-and exo-teric, and accords with the Age of Light, the Satya Yuga.

The so-called ‘esoteric path’ of Rudolf Steiner—first described in How to Know Higher Worlds—has, since the new possibilities for self-development have arisen, become a round-about route which no longer leads directly to the goal. The second path is the direct one for our times, but therefore also a steep and arduous one. The exercises described in this book really belong to the renewed first path. But as a consequence of his experiences with the new path, Rudolf Steiner formed the exercises in such a way that they create a bridge which can lead us over from the renewed to the really new path. In the chapter ‘Rudolf Steiner's Two Paths of Esotericism’, I will attempt to substantiate this point of view.

3.  The exercises in this book relate to the human soul-forces as they are viewed in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy: thinking, feeling and will. They relate also to the sevenfold nature1 of the human being, and to the effect of the trinity of adversarial forces—Lucifer, Ahriman and the Asuras.

4.  In their relationship to one another and in the context of the interconnections described here, the exercises are seen firstly as six separate exercises, then as a complete exercise-organism. This organism is seen as a single self-contained exercise, as a dynamic meditation for enlivening the heart chakra—not, in other words, as a ‘subsidiary’ exercise.

5.  The organism of six exercises is developed on the underlying foundation of organic-living thinking, heart-thinking—the thinking carried out with the heart chakra. This kind of thinking, which goes beyond the scope of normal, logical thinking, was first developed consciously by Rudolf Steiner and first introduced to the world in his Die Philosophie der Freiheit2 published in English under the following titles: The Philosophy of Freedom; The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity; and Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path—A Philosophy of Freedom. The exercises have therefore been developed through the application of such thinking, but they are at the same time a means for developing it in oneself.

6.  In the course of the book there may be much that strikes the reader as uncertain or unclear, especially where the effects of certain spiritual beings are described. But we must remember that the exercises, when properly carried out, bring us either consciously or unconsciously to the threshold of the supersensible, and even beyond it into the world of spirit. Experiences which we have within the familiar world of the senses can rightly be assessed by means of the concepts and principles of normal, logical thinking— this is the realm in which we can have absolute certainty in exploring suppositions and actual effects. But such thinking and its attendant methods cannot be applied to the experiences which we have at or beyond the threshold of the world of spirit, in the supersensible realm. The processes and elements of this world—to which the chakras and their activity belong—cannot be determined or measured with such precision, cannot be grasped and described with such exactness. The phenomena Rudolf Steiner described in his scientific research of the supersensible world should also be viewed according to the ‘uncertainty principle’ formulated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. For in observing the realm of the chakras, we find a similarity to the realm of particle physics to which this principle applies. In fact the two realms only differ from each other by a slight degree of the finer materiality still pertaining to those realms. The ‘uncertainty principle’ states that both the location and the energy of a particle cannot be determined within accurate limits at the same time. Rudolf Steiner was also concerned with the limits of exactitude in observing phenomena in the supersensible world, when he spoke of the impossibility of observing and thus determining precise boundaries of those phenomena.3 This important proviso, intrinsic to the method of Steiner's science of the spirit, was mentioned by him in a lecture about human life-stages, in connection with the seven-year phases—a realm, in other words, in which the supersensible manifests within the sense world without, however, revealing its essential nature.

*

The method used here has its foundation in Rudolf Steiner’s organic-living thinking. Inasmuch as this kind of thinking is based not on the brain and the nervous system but on the physiology of the heart/lung system, it is a heart-thinking. Rudolf Steiner spoke of the laws of such thinking only rarely and in an oblique way; they were then thoroughly explored by George O'Neil, and put together in a detailed and systematic way by myself.

Organic-living thinking is connected with the inner constitution of the human being, as described in Theosophy (in the chapter titled ‘The Being of Man’). For this book, only the sevenfold structure of the sheaths of the human being will be referred to, consisting of: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego-organization or ‘I’4 as core of the soul, spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man.

This structure manifests a regular, symmetric and rhythmic form on four levels: physical, etheric, astral and spiritual or ego-level. The organism of the six exercises is built up on this basis, in harmony with the basic laws of living organisms—rhythm, polarity, intensification and inversion (turning inside-out).

The elements on the right-hand side arise through the ego-organization transforming those on the left. On the three lower levels there are always two aspects in a polarity to each other, and simultaneously in a relationship to one another of inner/outer or outer/inner:

outer/inner—the three bodily sheaths as expression of the inner spirit sheaths;

inner/outer—the three bodily sheaths as inwardly concentrated core (personality), and the three spirit sheaths as outer cosmic beings (individuality, entelechy).

The three soul-forces of the ego-organization—thinking, will and feeling—show their effects on the three levels in the following way: thinking in the physical body, feeling in the astral body, and will in the etheric body. Of the three adversarial forces, Lucifer works at the astral level, Ahriman at the etheric and the Asuras at the physical level. (These interconnections will become clearer in the course of the book, especially in the chapter ‘Structure’ and in Part Four.)

From a methodological point of view, the question about a teacher appears to be important, especially when one considers the warnings which Rudolf Steiner gives in How to Know Higher Worlds (in the chapter on the effects of initiation, and in the Postscript). Should people who are working at developing the chakras, and who do not as yet have any faculties of higher perception, entrust themselves to a teacher who has these capacities? Such a question will rightly occur to the readers of this book, but I would like to underline the fact that I do not see myself in any such role—I am simply speaking of my own experience. In the final chapter, though, I will try to answer this legitimate question and justify the method I describe.

The bodies of the human being—two approaches

Of the above-mentioned sheaths constituting the human being, only the physical body can be perceived by our normal sense organs; it is therefore seen as belonging to the sense world, while the other sheaths, perceptible only to higher, supersensible organs, belong to the supersensible or spiritual world. These supersensible sheaths can therefore only be seen by a clairvoyant, someone who possesses such organs of perception. As well as the physical body, anthroposophy also calls the two next sheaths ‘bodies’—etheric body and astral body—for they have a direct influence on the physical body’s organs and functions. As such, they operate within the realms of space and time and partake of materiality, even though in a highly rarefied form, rather like a high potency in homoeopathy. One can also speak of an ego body,or‘I'-body, which is likewise formed within spatial conditions, but in this case can be experienced as negative space, as vacuum devoid of matter. The sheaths above these are of purely supersensible or spiritual nature; they can no longer be thought of as bodies but as soul or pure spirit sheaths.

The three spiritual bodies appear to clairvoyant vision as increasingly spreading out beyond the physical body. (The following is only a brief summary, sufficient for the purposes of this book. For a more thorough and detailed description, see Theosophy and How to Know Higher Worlds.) The etheric body is perceived as a light-form, composed of continually vibrating, oscillating, interpenetrating streams of energy. It is similar to the form of the physical body, but somewhat larger, spreading a few centimetres (about one inch) beyond the surface of the skin. The astral body appears to the clairvoyant as a cloudlike form of light and colour, roughly in the shape of an egg, about twice as high and broad as the physical body which is at its centre. The ego body does not occupy a particular form as such, but manifests as negative space, vacuum, a hole, rather like a ‘sun-space’ as Rudolf Steiner terms it, or also as a glittering, shining, constantly self-recreating, pure light that radiates out beyond the astral body (see Fig. 1).

Although only a clairvoyant can perceive these supersensible bodies, everyone can on occasion have some experience of them. This can happen in extreme situations, in which our life-forces or emotions or sense of self are threatened (at times of severe illness, for example, or in states of emotional or existential crisis). It is a common experience during illness that our life-forces are not sufficient to ‘fill’ the whole body, and at such times we can feel ourselves smaller—the physical body seems to shrink. The opposite happens when we feel good—after a particularly refreshing holiday perhaps, or after invigorating physical exercise when we can feel ‘bursting’ with energy, even to the extent of sensing this energy as a real tingling spreading out from us through our skin. At times of sorrow or soul-pain many people can sense their astral body as a dark, thick cloud, usually in the upper part of the body, in the chest and head regions. When, in contrast, we are full of joy, we can experience a bright, radiant kind of feeling, as though the upper part of our body is permeated by beautiful colours and light.

In a similar way we can have a sense or inkling of our own ego body—for example when we wish to express our conviction about something, or want to say sorry, and accompany our words by touching or tapping a particular point of the body. Then we can sense the centre of our own being as a particular point deep inside us in the heart region (see Fig. 2).

Perceiving the supersensible bodies can therefore happen in either one of two directions: from within outward or from outside in. In the first case we begin from the physical body, from its centre as though from a point, and perceive the other bodies encircling and enveloping this point. In the second case we sense the supersensible bodies as increasingly diminishing, until we arrive at the central point, the ego body. These two directions of perception, in line with the ‘uncertainty principle’, correspond with the reality of these bodies, for they can simultaneously be found both within and outside of the physical body. The totality of the supersensible bodies is known as the ‘aura’, which takes account of the clairvoyant's point of view, point → periphery, whereas an ordinary person's experience of differing degrees of well-being are expressed in the direction of periphery → point. The exercises described in this book can only properly be grasped when we understand the nature of this polarity between inner/outer and point/ periphery.

Fig. 1: Aura of the three bodies

Fig. 2: The three bodies within

2

The Traditional Chakra Teaching

This chapter aims to give a brief but, for the purposes of this book, sufficient overview of the chakras, in order to place what I have to say into a broader context. Throughout I will use the term ‘chakra’, except in quotes from other sources which use different expressions.

There is now a wealth of literature available on the chakras, which has arisen through the searching of ever greater numbers of people for supersensible experience. This literature originates almost exclusively from the chakra teaching of oriental tradition. The work I wish to describe, though, points in a different direction.

Rudolf Steiner’s science of the spirit, or anthroposophy, points us towards the future, yet he nevertheless makes some mention of this traditional chakra teaching. He referred to it at the beginning of the twentieth century, above all in the context of his spiritual-scientific activity within the German section, which he founded, of the Theosophical Society. In 1904/5, in his periodical Luzifer-Gnosis, he published a series of essays, subsequently collected together in book form (1909) as How to Know Higher Worlds. The main thrust of this book is concerned with certain exercises for developing the chakras, so as to gain knowledge of higher worlds in a way suited to our present stage of human evolution.

Rudolf Steiner’s chakra teaching differs considerably in this respect from other approaches current nowadays. These actually only lead back to a recapitulation of ancient knowledge and have only limited value—relevant especially to the area of spiritual healing. Rudolf Steiner based his chakra teaching on the foundations of his previously developed new thinking, while the eastern traditions perpetuated in the West are rooted in the habitual forms of thinking. (This theme will be dealt with at more length in Part Four of this book, ‘The New Heart-Thinking’.)This is the significant difference. Rudolf Steiner only related the outer form of his chakra teaching to tradition, while actually basing it on quite new foundations dictated by the needs of the future. If we know how to recognize this difference, then a chakra teaching is also indispensable for anthroposophy—but it must be one that is grasped in a quite different way from ancient tradition. (The reason, perhaps, that most people who become involved in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy show no interest in the chakras is that the subject has not yet been properly explored.)

In the decades since How to Know Higher Worlds was published (the last edition overseen by Steiner himself appeared in 1922), real progress has been made in investigating the chakras and their role. This is due to the fact that many people in the West explored the subject—either through their own direct experience or, in small numbers, by applying modern principles of science to this area of supersensible experience. In particular, the work of Valerie Hunt, an American, should be mentioned. In the 1970s and 1980s she carried out research at the University of California, and was the first to use exact scientific measurements to prove the physical and energy effects of purely spiritual processes to be identical with the chakra-perceptions of clairvoyants.1

In this section I have taken account of various works in this field—especially Hands of Light by Barbara Ann Brennan2—because they seemed to me to demonstrate a balanced approach underpinned by scientific method. I have also referred to The Chakras by Charles Leadbeater, because it was influential at the time How to Know Higher Worlds appeared, and because Rudolf Steiner himself made reference to Leadbeater’s clairvoyant drawings.

What are the chakras?