Review of the Artists’ Days in Naone
Outlook for 2024 – Part 9

The Artists’ Days brought all those present, a very useful perspective for the coming year. In addition to many creative suggestions for an integrative way to shape life, it was above all an opportunity to participate in the yearly forecasts, which brought a better basic feeling for the future. Most of those present were able to understand the effort spiritual vision requires before it is more or less plausible and can be communicated. It is not that the curtains could be pulled back for brief moments, in order to glimpse behind the phenomenon that the world produces, it is rather a painstaking and lengthy contemplation, which needs to be developed and then a form of increasingly clear and enhanced awareness, that must unfold for a vision of the future to emerge in a plausible way.

Although the work for a vision of the future was almost solely worked out by me, the participation of each individual is nevertheless desirable and leads to a particularly great enrichment, because every independently taken step in a kind of concentration on a topic supports the ability to relate. There is a big difference between whether someone has collaborated on a vision or whether they only read the words and want to understand them afterwards. The direct spiritual work of meditation and concentration, which is by no means a trivial matter, is becoming extremely important for the future for all spiritual aspirants.

It was interesting that over the Christmas and New Year period in particular many people came down with a cold or sometimes, as evidence suggested, a kind of coronavirus infection. However, very few people allowed themselves to be affected by these sickly phenomena and kept their attention centred on the topic each day. It would be impudent for a course that had between 50 and 100 participants over these days to be in peaceful bliss, while in many parts of the world the fiercest warfare is flaring up with fatefulness and, in addition to these obvious political events, many people are suffering from serious illnesses or existential hardships. Concentration on one topic and at the same time overcoming a few minor ailments even strengthened most people’s will forces and, through this, led to a better empathy with the world as a whole.

It seems important for the future that flawed views, false judgements and evaluations, and poorly chosen esoteric formulations are dissolved. One of the great evils that will plague the coming period, is a false form of belief and spiritual orientation.

The following example will clearly illuminate the situation.

Unreflected Esotericism Creates Illusions¹⁾ This section comes from a lecture held on 20th December 2023 as part of the Artists’ Days

The statement, “Humans already have everything within themselves” is an esoteric, poor formulation with serious consequences and with a character that affects the whole future. If the statement is looked at with some care, it can be seen to be simply wrong, in particular, it is wrong because it can be understood in the sense of comfortably avoiding the challenges of development. At the same time humans must not be equated with animals, because animals really do carry instinct totally naturally within them. Humans, however, must laboriously build up and learn all the feelings, subtle-feelings, all that they want to bring to development, for example, a feeling for language, mathematical fluency, life experience and even self-confidence.

The best way to see this reality is to look at people in terms of the soul radiance and the instruments of the soul, as these are not automatically inherent. Just take a look at the quickly interpreted and hastily adapted assessments of the “chakras”, the energy centres of the human being. On the path of tantra, in yoga and according to many esoteric trends, the statement is still held as true, that the chakras are all there and people just have to open them. Just as they can open a window of a house, they can apparently, according to the hypothesis, simply open the chakra with a technique. However, the mistake that people make with this statement is that the house is not even standing and, as a result, they are under an illusion when they think that chakras are already sufficiently present and that they can simply use them as they wish. If something is not in a reality, not in the so-called bhava, in essential availability, it is also not available in the being of the soul, that means, that the soul’s abilities, qualities, wisdom and dynamic potential are then not available.

Actually, there is a certain truth in the statement that everything is in the human being, because human beings already carry within themselves the predisposition, the archetypal prerequisites of the chakra. They already have, for example, from the first to the seventh chakra, all the germinal forces like pre-formed vessels. However, these vessels are really only like germs under the earth that are not visible in the perceptible sense for those who look clairvoyantly at a person. The chakra becomes visible from the moment it is developed through active soul exercises and it actually becomes subtly perceptible, even for those who are not clairvoyant. However, with the average person, one could say not a single chakra is really developed. People, therefore, cannot profess to have everything within them like a hidden treasure. On the other hand, it is important to differentiate between germinal and developed faculties. In a germinal way, people have vessels that are not only physical, but actually want to be fulfilled and developed for an approaching future. However, it is a very passive and easy formulation, that people already have all the wisdom, virtues and soul qualities in themselves. This assumption makes it impossible for people to step healthily into relationship with others and learn progressively. Unfortunately, people use the terms too hastily and create for themselves associative feelings that can block the whole of life and in this way, prevent the right insights into a spiritual world. They even fixate themselves back onto the body through the formulation, “everything is within a person”. The chakra must be developed through many activities of the soul, spiritual discipline and, above all, an infinitely arduous path of study. The human being unfolds forces of virtue through this arduous exploration and develops qualities of sensitivity for spiritual values, content and truths, so that the chakra are built up and radiate.

Although the human being has a physical heart that, depending on the character of the person, can, for example, be colder or warmer, referred to in everyday language as cold hearted or warm hearted, when someone develops their energy centre, their subtle metaphysical heart, they cannot be divided into the categories of colder or warmer, as this usually corresponds to the emotional currents of the character. When the chakra is unfolded, people have the ability to lead others into reconciliation and into a real spiritual connection with content. They reveal the capacity for peace and radiate reconciling creations into their surroundings with the subtlest thoughts and feelings, and this is not only in their close circles. A developed chakra sends peace out into the cosmos, which leads it back into the earth again via subtle paths.

It makes a big difference whether a chakra is developed or not, because if it is developed, people carry the treasure of wisdom and virtue in their own being and they could say of themselves that they have it within them. However, the qualities and virtues are not dependent on the constitution of the body and character, they are present in the soul which has become active. They possess a bhava and this bhava is a real existence.²⁾ The Sanskrit word bhava literally means “coming-into-being” and refers to the physical or soul state of existence that has become manifest. (see the article in wikipedia ​​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhava) It is active soul force constituted in a concrete and effective way. People will notice, if they have developed this cakra in the different phases of life, that they really carry it within themselves or with themselves, but they will be careful with the formulations, because they know only too well, that they will immediately lose the qualities again if they are not cultivated daily. Actually, if people are familiar with the soul, they should notice that they are all too quickly as if empty, and without clear effort have nothing at all with themselves or within themselves. Naturally, they have organs, cells, vessels and bones within themselves, but this is not what is meant with the statement that the whole spirit is already in the human being.

With this statement, used so lightly today, when people believe that everything is already in themselves, they forget the importance of dialogue, then furthermore the necessity, to constantly be in an awareness and an alert willingness to learn and ultimately they forget to set themselves the necessary discipline to direct attention to that which is still unknown and not yet experienced. With the statement, everything is within themselves, people close themselves off far too much into their own physicality. The tragedy of the statement that everything is already in the soul, however, is that a fatal self-illusion is created and this brings thought out of a free availability into a veiling shieldedness. To a great extent, this pseudo-openness and simultaneous closedness is often present in conversations of a profane, esoteric nature. One creates for oneself – how can it be expressed? – a tragic side step, a step into an illusionary outsider position and this creates illusions in relationships that do not yet have real, sustainable validity. The consequences of this statement should be realised. It is, therefore, very important for the coming year that rash esoteric and quickly adapted formulations are scrutinised very carefully for their truth content, the statements brought to a higher level, newly articulated, considered in a far more differentiated way and out of this they will ultimately even attain a correct vision with deeper insight into life’s principles.

The misfortune of many esoteric statements that are not understood and adopted too simply is that they are not only false, but also constitute a kind of suggestive effect for a comfortable self-exonerating life. They create an illusory spirituality and emotional connections or better said, even attachments between people, that cannot be used by the soul and therefore support an illusionary world.