The True Nature of the Word

'What is the true nature of the word?'

This was the question the old man put to the velvet skies clotted with stars one cool autumn evening when again he could not fall asleep.

He remembered the words of Rudolf Steiner.

'The stars once spoke to human beings..
It is world destiny that they are silent now
To become aware of this silence can be pain for earth humanity
But in the deepening silence
There grows and ripens what human beings speak to the stars
To become aware of this speaking
Can become strength for Spirit Man.'

In silence he allowed his eyes to linger, not upon the stars themselves, but upon what lived between them. Here his open eyes gazed at the glowing weaving movement between the stars, the flames of warmth that glowed from this star to that and from that star to this. This warm flame he felt even in his own old heart.

'There speaks the spirit!' he said to himself. 'It speaks forth from star to star and I feel it, it speaks to me but not in words and so I do not understand it! I feel this speech in my heart, ringing its tones and notes that are silent, moving my blood and I allow it to live there resounding! This speech is love and I feel it comes from the Seraphim, the gods of love, who bestow upon my blood the quickening power of love, the fire of the spirit that enables me to say 'I'! When I step out into the world full of love for all there is and I unite my 'I' selflessly with the world, this is true feeling. It is a listening of the words of the Gods! '

He looked again and observed how this glow, like the glow of a flame, must have a source, a light, and he searched for it and he found this light in each individual star. Each star had a light that created the glow of love he could see moving and weaving from star to star. He could see how the light impulse came from the centre of each star and moved outwards in loving conversation and he smiled.

'Ah! There think the souls of the stars!' He marvelled, 'The stars think and then they speak to each other their intelligences! I can read the wisdom of the stars as one can read words! Each star gives and takes the loving thoughts of the other into itself in complete harmony creating spiritual letters that must combine harmoniously to make words!

The old man reasoned, 'Thinking in the spiritual worlds is pure harmony, and this harmony is formed from the forces of the Cherubim. In my own soul there lives a pale shadow of this thinking in language which has helped me to know I am different from the world outside me, but for this reason it is not in harmony with the truth, because I only think about what I see of the physical world. The truth only comes from cultivating the light that can add the spirit counterpart to the physical world. This is 'reality'. True thinking is a light that shines from inside out just like the light of the stars and it finds harmony when it connects with the thoughts of the Gods which have built the world! Only then, when I add seeing the words to listening to the sounds can I understand what the stars are trying to say to me.'

'But how can I speak to you when I live in a physical body? What is the answer that I must give to you, dear stars?' He looked at the great galaxies full of fixed and wandering stars, and he knew that they were sustained in the heavens by some unseen power.

'You, dear stars, do not only have a spirit and a soul, but you must also have a body! The body is what gives you the strength to exist in the heavens and yet it is the most hidden of all! Unlike the human being whose body is more visible than the soul and spirit, the body of the stars is elusive. And yet!' he thought. 'My body may be visible to others but its workings are elusive to me! I am not conscious of the workings of my body. What works in the body of the stars and in my body is life. What is life in spiritual terms if not consciousness! I see now! There lives your sustaining power in the dark, hidden aspect of each star! The aspect that is not seen but only remembered in what I see! It is what lives behind the seen world, on the other side of the veil live the spiritual beings that sustain the loving thoughts and speech I can observe and understand. The consciousness that lives behind the stars is aeons old, full of wisdom and this wisdom lives in me because of the thrones who have brought life into the will in my

limbs! In my limbs I embody the wisdom, the memory of the stars and that is why my physical body is the most perfect part of me! I can say I, because of this perfection!'

The old man was warmed through and through and enlivened and quickened by these contemplations despite the night growing colder and colder about him.

'I understand you, dear stars!' He said to jewels above. 'You are always speaking to me...but I did not see or hear or understand you! Now I have become conscious of what you need from me! You need me to do loving deeds out of conscious freedom. Conscious love freely given is something new, it is a new kind speech!

'I realise now that it is through me that you can know the true nature of speech! Since Christ left the spiritual world to make it possible for me to say 'I', this has been your question to humanity!' The old man marvelled. 'For what do you stars see when you look down from the heavens?' He laughed with joy and gratitude. 'You see stars! You feel the warmth of our speech as a glow of spirit, you see the light of our spiritual thoughts and you are sustained by observing our conscious loving deeds, the movements we make as we mark a path across your night sky because something lives within us - a higher consciousness that you wish to know again!'

'My question to you was therefore really my answer. 'The true nature of the word lives in me! It is I - the Christ which lives in me that I body forth into the world! The strength of the Spirit in Man!'

Full of love he took himself to bed.

That night he slept well.