Friedrich Rittelmeyer in his "Meditation" instructs us in the following:
"When the man of ancient times spoke of water, he did not think only of bathing or of sailing in a boat. He felt water to be religious. Water's power of purification was to him divine and worthy of veneration.
"In baptism still lives a remembrance of how man can dip into a purifying, revelation-bringing element. All laws and regulations about washing and purification are connected with this fundamental feeling. Man had above him a higher world which, through the water which it sent down from the heavens, received him again and again into its purifying forces.
"Instead of bathing, ancient man thought of religious purification, instead of sailing, he thought of crossing the stream after death or in initiation. The latter, the crossing of the stream, was the esoteric of ancient religions, the former, the purification, its exoteric. And so the old religious feeling lived with water. And when we notice the miserable remains of these feelings, that are still alive in men today, when they rejoice in water because of bathing and sailing, then we can perceive with our eyes what changes there have been."
"All earlier religion was water."
- Rittelmeyer
All initiates from the beginning of the Fifth Root-Race had taken over their traditions from the time of the Atlantean Race, when there was as yet no wine. The Indian, Persian and Egyptian initiates had no need of wine. What played a part in the sacred rituals was exclusively water.
-Rudolf Steiner
Nothing is weaker than water,
ReplyDeleteBut when it attacks something hard
Or resistant, then nothing withstands it,
And nothing will alter its way.
Everyone knows this, that weakness prevails
Over strength and that gentleness conquers
The adamant hindrance of men, but that
Nobody demonstrates how it is so.
Because of this the Wise Man says
That only one who bears the nations shame
Is fit to be its hallowed lord;
That only one who takes upon himself
The evils of the world may be its king.
This is paradox.
-Lao Tzu
Water is the servant of life.
ReplyDeleteWalk through a landscape thinking only of water, act as though everything else is a gap. See streams running into rivers, rivers running to the sea/ocean- undercurrents. Rain coming down, trees taking water, rising in the tree as sap, water in the animal etc.