4 bodies

There are many places where the fourfold human being is explained from different angles, I will use the following sketches, which are not a representation of the reality but an artistic rendition of it, to il.lustrate some points of the teachings found in the eleven lectures: "From Jesus to Christ":

Physical Body, which contains the Human Form and also the mineral world. At death the mineral world goes back to the earth, but the Human Form is kept. It is a thin line of Form because after the Fall, it has lost strenght, and thus it does not connect with the etheric body as previously did.

Etheric Body, or life body, which more or less interpenetrates and surpasses the Physical Body. The boundaries were much more loose in the Lemurain times, when the spiritual worlds were thus apprehended naturally. one of the tasks of the initiate is to loosen up the etheric at such points as to enter again into the spiritual realm now consciously.



Astral Body, which after the Fall has become under the influence of Lucifer. It is strongly working with the etheric and at death when something has been worked enough between them, the etheric attaches with the astral body and withdraws from the physical body.



Ego, or I consciousnes, which has been possible only after the Fall and brings the possibility of freedom. It is the different quality with all the other worlds, mineral, vegetal and animal. It is also the connection with conscious spiritualizing of matter, if the relationship with the Christ being is effective.



Spirit Self, the spiritualized astral body. One example of this is when our feelings and passions no longer direct us, when we are purified.

Life Spirit, the spiritualized etheric body. One example of this would be when our temperaments, memories work under our conscious will, capacity of being invisible, control of pulse, etc....

Spirit Man, the spiritualized physical body, which corresponds to the initial Human Form or Phantom, previous to the Fall, and it is available to all humanity because of the deed of Christ, in the Mystery of Golgotha. Examples of that would be the uncorruptibilty of the human body, the victory of life over death.



Maria Magdalena

As I was reading the following chapters of the book " The Karma of Untruthfulness", some of the old customs and traditions of conceiving have come again to mind.

The usual way of conceiving a child was during the full moon after spring equinox, thus resulting in babies born around Christmas or Winter Solstice. This was in accordance to the atavistic consciousness of these old inhabitants, and yet I have to say that it is also something that is happening nowadays, though maybe not just out of atavistic conditions. Observing the cycles and soul stirrings, one can behold the fact that (at least for the last 8 years) women around us or even ourselves have experienced a stronger force around that time leading up to Easter, to call upon our will the conception of children. Yet it is mistakenly a fact too, that many times the conception does not occur if our will is not completely surrendered to the force, as to remind us constantly of the saying: "Thy will be done, not mine"

I recognize in my etheric body a part that has almost a form of a Moebius string, and when the upper part of the Moebius is working, the external works of the etheric are functioning, the memory, the capacity to organize the external world, housekeeping, and building up externally. Yet when the down part is at work, is the inner works of the etheric, maintaining a child in the womb. Thus it is explained while gravid women have less memory, less capacity of organizing, even mental thoughts, they need more sleep in order to refresh, etc.. and also the fact that just previous delivery, suddenly the etheric is released from the inner works and can put the outside world in order (cleaning the house predelivery syndrome). A note must be said that until three years old, children are also linked with the etheric of the mother, thus creating a surplus of work for the Moebius string which is now linked to the children as an umbilical cord.

All these facts come to mind and serve as further exploration of the spiritual world, just as how to consciously use our etheric forces, for one purpose or another during the course of the year and yielded or not to Divine laws.

Maria Magdalena's festivity is on July 22nd, and I am reminded too of the place the Mother as homemaker has, like a priestess, and especially also as a homeschooler. There is a passage of the book the "Peddlar's Progress" that again stresses the importance of that fact of being a teacher:

"Alcott is not unduly modest in the claims he makes for his newfound profession. the teacher, he repeatedly asserts, is a far more important man in the community than the preacher can never hope to be, for the reason that he works as it were from ground up, and while there is yet time. He is practical, shaping the molds of conduct, whereas the preacher is ordinarily a bookish theorist. The task of the teacher is holier than that of the minister because it deals with souls new-come, unstained, and still "trailing clouds of glory"....Upon the whole, then, a teacher's task is the greatest task to which any man can devote his life"

Why Homeschooling

This is a question many times forgotten, and we all have probably different reasons or motives for homeschooling our children.


I just have been reading a book that exemplifies in the firsts chapters one of my main answers to the question in the title. I will just quote from the book itself: "Peddlar's Progress"  by Odell Shepard.


"...Then and there they may have decided what they afterwards firmly knew and taught, that a formal schooling, even when good, is not the only means of securing an education. Against the American worship of the school, so stupid in itself and so stultifying in its effects upon real intellectual life, one would be glad to think that they set their young faces, even then, like flint. To Bronson in particular there may have come some vague premonition of his future knowledge that the school, at its best, is only a substitute for the family and the home, that it is a miscrocosmos of society, a place in which one learns by doing, and as Thomas Carlyle was to say: "a collection of books".

.....The family, the home, one's mother-there was the best school of all...Was not his mother a far wiser, kinder, gentler, and in every way better person than the schoolmistress? And what could that mean, unless there are more important things in the world than reading, writing, and exact knowledge of the length of the Zambezi river? His mother knew things too, although one never found them set down in books, and even she seldom tried to say them in words. She said them in the way she acted, in the touch of her hand, in the smile of her eyes; and often she seemed to be saying them when sitting quietly beside him, paring apples or mending a hole in his homespun coat"

All these special figures that surround the life of children when they grow up are of utmost importance. The Mother role is central in the first three years of life, and then slowly it passes the torch to the world by the hand of the Father figure. You could observe that many times discipline problems or quarreling among siblings stems from the lack of loving co-operation between spouses: The more the wife submits her own selfish wishes to the wealth of the family, which is guided by the father's natural authority, the better the children learn. In like manner, the more the husband loves his family by turning down his own selfish desires and yielding to the overall wealth and family's needs, the better the children respond.


It is strange though that in this post about why homeschooling I am announcing an experiment that will start this year: to homeschool out of the home:


Now that my younger child is 4 years and a half, we decided to rent a room near our home, and to make it a place for the main schooling hours of the morning.


The room is shared with two other initiatives, one concerning the care of the dead when passing the threshold, and the other is an anthroposophical group. There was a name hinted up for all three of the groups, Threefold Center, but I rather called it The Upper Room. Besides being a room on the 2nd floor of the building, hence the upper adjective, it simbolizes for me the tasks at hand for this epoch: the two streams that have to come together, and the finding of Christ in the etheric.

Besides the homeschooling hours Monday through Thursday, there is:
- a program for familes and children on Fridays,
-probably some after school care hours for the children that go to school,
-Wednesdays study group
-and a puppetry group.

Summer Conferences in Viroqua

There are two things already scheduled this summer in Viroqua, the town we live in. If people from abroad would be interested in coming, we would be able to accomodate them in homes. Let me know or contact any of the organizers so we could also plan things around in that case ( eurythmy, nurturing art classes...).

July 13th Wednesday 19:00pm : Homeschooling talk with Donna Simmons at the Old Main Building.

We do not know Donna's plans for the coming year, but there are chances that she would be going abroad. This is again a special opportunity to meet her and learn from her in person!! Organizer: Rice Spann arroz@frontiernet.net

July 29th&30th Friday night and Saturday all day: Sacred Agriculture conference with Dennis Klocek at the Old Main Building.