Welcome to the School of Spiritual Psychology
 

 

The Spiritual Psychology of the Gospel of St. John:
Reflection on the Prologue to the Gospel

Introduction

  1. Making a Clearing: A spiritual/psychological approach to the Gospel.
    1. We must be clear about the way we will be approaching the Gospel of St. John. We will not work with this gospel from the viewpoint of the discipline of theology. Nor will we work with it from the viewpoint of a particular religion. Nor will we utilize the gospel as a kind of teaching of morality. We do have to be aware of being influenced by all of these viewpoints insofar that they have all entered into the culture, and it is thus necessary to deliberately, methodically, put them aside as they come up within us. They will indeed come up, quite automatically, and perhaps with some force, so a careful effort is required to put them aside. We do not intend to put these views into question, only to say that another approach is possible. A certain understanding of Christ pervades the culture and also each of us, whether we are Christian or not. This understanding comes from what we have been taught by one religion or another, and it comes from belonging to Western Culture and its history. For some of us, these teachings have the conviction of belief. Since we are not approaching the Gospel from the viewpoint of belief, it is important to avoid setting what we are doing in comparison with your system of belief. There are others, who are not Christian, who may feel that working with a document that is central to Christianity puts them into an uncomfortable relation with a viewpoint that they do not agree with or hold. Again, however, it is important to avoid falling into approaching the text of St. John from the viewpoint of a belief system. One final matter to clear. We will not be engaged in a textual analysis or textual interpretation of this gospel.
    2. The viewpoint we will be taking toward the Gospel of St. John is quite simple and direct. The Gospel proves to be a treasure-house of soul and spiritual insight. We are guided by the very first words of the Gospel: "IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD." This is the utterance we want to investigate from the viewpoint of spiritual psychology. What is this WORD, what is the LOGOS? Further, and most important, TO BECOME AWARE OF THE LOGOS IS TO BECOME AWARE OF THE LOGOS IN ONESELF. What is the Logos in oneself? How do we become aware of the Logos? What difference does it make? How is it possible to become more conscious of the working of the Word in the soul, and thus in one's life?
    3. Spiritual Psychology concerns the development of embodied, conscious soul life that is open and receptive to the spiritual worlds. The Gospel of St. John is a basic training manual for developing these capacities. We are not concerned here with the humanity of Jesus, or even the mystical aspects of Christ, but rather with the centrality of developing the capacities of a new ego consciousness as the primary and central tool for experiencing the openness of the soul to spiritual realities. The Logos lives within us as this new capacity. This is a new kind of thinking, thinking as a spiritual force, thinking as the only way in which to consciously come into connection with the spiritual worlds, in the body, through the soul, in the world.
    4. Our working with the Gospel has precedent. The most important of these precedents are the work of Rudolf Steiner in two important books: The Gospel of St. John and The Gospel of St. John and its Relation to the Other Gospels. Perhaps equally important is the work of Georg Kuhlewind, particularly his book, Becoming Aware of the Logos. Then, there is also the important work of Valentine Tomberg, The New Testament and Covenant of the Heart. At the same time, this seminar is not a study of Steiner or of Kuhlewind or Tomberg. We shall do our own work with the Gospel, recognizing and drawing on the important contribution of these individuals.
  2. Reading of the Text It is of great importance that we spend time during this course hearing at least some the text of the Gospel of St. John. This listening is not only to get us into connection with the content of the Gospel, but also, and perhaps even more important, to experience the feeling of the whole of the work, with its rhythm, force, depth, the way that it impresses itself upon the soul, how it works to open the soul by being a spiritual symphony. The writing is far more than a communication; these words are a kind of communion. But, the text must be approached on the plane on which it is written. You have to try to be aware, not only of the what that is being said, but also the way of what is being said.
  3. Descriptions and Reflections of the Experience of the Text as a Whole
    A further note on method. We are also not interested in explaining this Gospel, nor in an interpretation of the text, line by line. The question we wish to investigate is how the reality spoken of in this text lives within our soul and how we can go about becoming more conscious of that reality. So, this is not a course on textual interpretation. The text helps us come into connection with the reality that already lives within the soul of every human being. But then, we must go on to speak from what lives within the soul; this is most important.

The Reality of the Word
The whole is in the beginning and the beginning is in the whole

  1. The very first words of the Gospel say: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was the beginning with God. All things became through it, and without it not one thing has become that became. In it was life, and the life was the light of men"...It goes on to say: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father."
  2. How does the Word live in us? The Word concerns speech, human speaking, the capacity to speak. We may think that we speak and that speaking is a matter of development, of growing to a certain age, in an environment where others speak, and that this capacity emerges as part of the human condition and reality. But, there is far more to it. With the Word becoming flesh, there exists an ongoing and continual connection between us and the spiritual worlds, and the inauguration of a different level within our speaking. This connection with the spiritual worlds exists in our speaking. It does not exist in what we speak about, the content of our speaking. Certainly, people spoke long before Christ dwelt within the word. So, a new and different capacity of speaking is introduced. It is the capacity to be aware of the act of our speaking and not just the content of what we say. The very act of speaking is something that does not belong to us alone; it is a participation with the spiritual worlds, and at the same time a bridging between ourselves and the world. Both, simultaneously. To be present to the word is to be present to the bridging - the simultaneous vertical and horizontal bridging, the connection between the spiritual world and ourselves and the connection between ourselves and others. That is why we cannot be aware of this act from out of our ordinary consciousness. We can work toward being aware. This capacity is now with us, though we cannot be aware of it without undergoing a conscious and ongoing effort to be aware of it.
    • This would be one of the unique contributions of spiritual psychology - to help develop the capacity to become aware of the act of speaking, along with the content of what we speak about, and engender the beginnings of a sense of speaking as a level of clairvoyant consciousness that is fully embodied and fully a soul experience. All other forms of clairvoyance belong to the past. This form belongs to the future. (The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us).
    • Some exercises around this ...
      putting aside the nominalism within which we live; that is, the view that words, speech, have no inherent connection with the reality spoken of.
      being present within our speaking, full-bodied speaking that is rich in idea, not just chattering
      being aware of the gift quality of the act of speaking - that we do not self-generate the act of speaking; it comes as a gift, as grace ("And the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us as grace and truth") being aware of the act of speaking as "unhiddenness"; as revealing, as the act of truthing.
  3. Notice that it is possible to be aware of the act of speaking while speaking. However, when we try to describe this awareness, it is something that already belongs to the past and does not have to do with the present in which the act of speaking always occurs. The act is always the present. The content of what we say, of what we speak belongs to the past, even though we may be trying to speak of the present and in the present. But, we use words that have already been used before and we use concepts that have already been used before. And when we speak of an event that is occurring, our speaking can never coincide with the event itself; this is because the event is mirrored within the body and a time lapse is required for this mirroring process. We thus, in ordinary consciousness never live in the present and cannot. We always live in the past. Thus, in the content of our speaking, we are always removed from the present, no matter what we may be speaking of. Thus, by focusing on the content, it is not possible to experience the living Word. We always experience only the effects of the Word. The Gospel of St. John shows the way toward developing presence with the Word.
  4. The higher being of the Word does not dwell in the content of our speaking, but in that aspect of our speaking that is above ordinary consciousness, that is higher than ordinary consciousness, the more-than-conscious rather than the less than conscious, the un-conscious. Thus, we have to exert an effort to get a momentary glimpse of that consciousness rather than, as with the un-conscious, let go of effort all together and let the unconscious come pouring in.
  5. Thus, speaking, oriented toward experiencing the Word, asks us to become more conscious, to become aware and conscious of the "I am" in speaking. The "I am" is present in the very capacity to speak. We rely all the time on this capacity, at least when we attempt to really say something. We do not have to be saying something with profound content. We simply have to be one with our speaking. When you are one with your speaking, you can tell that something more is present than your ordinary sense of I. You feel more than yourself, and yet, fully yourself. - bring your speaking right into your body; speak from and out of a bodily sense of yourself; be present to the effort to speak as a unified being, to speak out of bodily presence, but also out of soul, from the level of soul. Notice how we ordinarily speak out of a kind of airy part of ourselves, from the head up, how we are not really fully connected with our words, or speech. Notice how we are not concerned with our speaking but mostly do it very automatically. Still, the "I am" is there in the act, but we are not in connection with that act. We identify speaking with the content of what we say.
  6. The Word goes beyond verbal word. The word includes gestures, and as well, the concept, the idea contained within the word. It is because we are not conscious of the generative possibility of concepts within words that our speaking becomes automatic, We rely on general and collective senses of the concepts within words, concepts we do not have to be consciously present to. The Word goes beyond the verbal word in another way. Word does not have to be verbal at all. If I do not know Russian and go to Russia, in order to speak with someone there who does not understand English, we communicate by gesture and expression. These too are Word. The word consists of the relation --- "I-you-that". Word(s) are not things used to point to other things; words, for example, are not verbal things used to point to things in the world. The word is the relation of speaker, other, and thing. The relation. In the act of speaking the relation acts. The fixedness of the speaker, of the other, and of the thing, dissolves in the speaking, and what is then present is pure spiritual act, acting in an embodied way, in the world. The Word is present as the act of relating. The word, the act of relating, is Christ's presence in the world.
  7. Presence to the word in the way described here takes place through intuition. Presence to the word cannot be known through our ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness requires the reflecting element of the physical body. Through the physical body, we are situated as "here" and the world and others are situated as "over there". We know things only insofar as they are reflected within our body. Through reflection, we become aware of our knowing, because it is mirrored in the body. But we are not aware of the act of the mirroring that makes the knowing possible. There is, thus, a knowing that is always present that makes possible the ordinary knowing that we are familiar with. This knowing that makes possible ordinary knowing is the Word.
  8. What has been said thus far may be difficult to grasp. In a way, it is something that can be felt, or intuited, but not quite grasped, or grasped only out of the corner of consciousness. But, we cannot know it in the way we know other things. At the same time, being able to dwell, to rest, in this intuition of the Word is the source of all healing. For example, when psychotherapy works, it does not work because of the theory being followed, or because of the material that is worked through, or the material remembered; it works because, in the relationship of therapist and patient, when it steps beyond what is already known and steps into the act of knowing, steps into the activity of the relationship, then the Word is intuited, and that is healing because it is a moment of connection with the spiritual worlds. In a moment, we can say something more concerning what makes the act of the Word healing.
  9. The Gospel of St. John can be read as an instruction manual concerning how to develop the capacities to dwell, in a conscious way, more and more, in the place of intuition, the place of the Word.
Developing the Capacity to be Present to and with the Word
The Passion

At the very end of the work, The Gospel of St. John and its Relation to the Other Gospels, Rudolf Steiner briefly goes through the kind of development necessary to come to dwell with the Word. Each of the steps of this development correspond to an image in the Gospel of St. John. While there is a certain risk in going into the process of this development here, it is necessary to do so in order to help make clear that something has to be done if we are to develop the capacity to be present to the Word. While the Word is given, is present and in the world, available to all, we can sleep through this presence, and will sleep through it unless we do something to wake up and keep awake. The risk is that the process that we will now describe will be understood in a religious sense, something for practicing Christians, rather than a process necessary for all human beings to go through. Then, there is another risk, too. We are going to describe this process(and suggest some exercises) from the viewpoint of spiritual psychology. This point of view will not be a reduction of the process, but rather a speaking of the process as it goes on within the soul and can be experienced. Thus, we are here going to take the process out of the purely spiritual realm and look at it from the spiritual/psychological point of view.

  1. John 13:1-17; The Washing of Feet - Read this passage.
  2. The spiritual/psychological sense of the washing of the feet is that an essential practice in coming to be able to experience the Word in more than a fleeting way is that we are required to care for the soul of others. As we walk through life, we pick up a lot of psychic dirt, just as in the time of Christ, walking on the dusty roads, the feet needed a lot of washing(remember, there was a lot of camel do-do around). Just as the feet need repeated cleansing, so does the soul. The feet are the most humble part of the body. The soul is found in the place of humility. If we have trouble with our feet, we cannot get around and do what needs to be done. If we have trouble with our soul, we cannot get spiritually around and do what needs to be done.
  3. How do we care for the soul of others? We do not have to be psychotherapists. It has to do with paying attention to the soul level of our relationship with others. When we relate with another person, it is almost always at the ego level of ordinary consciousness. To relate to the soul has to do with being conscious, in relation with the other person, of what we can do, how we might serve the soul of the person - not after the interaction with the other person is over, but right there in the middle of the interaction, in the moment that it is going on. It also has to do with speaking to the soul of the other person, which requires an inner level of silence, of stillness, that enables us to be present to the soul level. It also has to do with being present, in our relationships, to what is going on between us besides the content of our connection. This does not mean analyzing, looking for something behind what is going on, but rather, being aware of the pain, the hurt, the longing, the needing, the self-enclosedness--- without in any way being swept into that level, but noticing it, inwardly acknowledging it. Most important, giving care to the soul of others is a silent gesture that indicates to that soul that we owe our existence to this other person, to the soul of the other; it is a gesture of bending down and, in effect, saying to the person, without saying anything verbally, that their soul is extremely significant.
  4. What does care of the soul of others do? It humbles us, constantly. And, in so doing, we are moved to the domain of the soul. Without this humbling, we operate above our neighbor, often not knowing that we are doing so. And, if we are not ourselves in soul, we cannot be present to the activity of the Word.
  5. The significant new psychological direction given through this passage of the Gospel of St. John is that the primary spiritual/psychological act is that of attending the soul of others and that through soul attention to others we come into the being of our own soul.

Copyright © 2000 - 2001, The School of Spiritual Psychology, All Rights Reserved