“The spirit child within my soul
I feel freed of enchantment.
In heart-high gladness has
The holy cosmic Word engendered
The heavenly fruit of hope,
Which grows rejoicing into worlds afar
Out of my being’s godly roots. ”
~ Rudolf Steiner’s Verse 38 for 4th Advent Sunday from the Calendar of the Soul (trans. Ruth and Hans Pusch)
Last year, we sat in a circle at our Auditorium, and Vincent Roppolo read the first of three Pfeiffer’s heart lectures on the 4th Advent Sunday afternoon. This year, we are offering this same lecture as an audio recording, and invite you to listen, read, and contemplate.
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer (1899-1961) gave “Lecture I” of the Heart Lectures series on December 17, 1950, at the Threefold Farm in Spring Valley, NY. The booklet with his three lectures (Mercury Press, 1982) is available at our bookstore.
Click here or on the image to listen to the lecture, as read by Vincent Roppolo.
“The human heart is an organ where a bridge is being built between the physical body and spiritual entity,” said Dr. Pfeiffer. “You have in you a creative sun that radiates light and warmth.”
At the end of the lecture, Pfeiffer mentions the drawing of the etheric heart that he made: in its systole and diastole mode. These two images are published with commentary by Dr. Paul W. Scharff (1930-2014) in The Path of a Rosicrucian Meditant” (Mercury Press, 2017), also available at our bookstore.
“This path of meditation, from the sun of the heavens to the sun of the earth, is also called a heart meditative path. This is a picture of the meditating soul and experiences of the heart that is, of course, no usual anatomic drawing. But there is the effort here, heading towards an exact fantasy of the etheric heart, sometimes called the fifth chamber. This is the heart in systole. You will see the dove above; you will see the hands below.
Here you see an eye in the middle of the yellow and two hands. These are the hands of God, as it were, but it is also an expression of experiencing one’s own hands as etheric existences. That is when the heart enters the hands. I recall the hand-heart meditation, the heart in systole and diastole. You will see the hand and you will see the eye of God above and you will see the birds, like the dove, the holy spirit being present in this. One can say, this is the path of the heart. It is very typical of the Rosicrucian.
Dr. Pfeiffer was a Rosicrucian, also in the sense that Rosicrucians don’t go around selling themselves. He is well-known world over by people but for a man to be as productive as he was and as unknown as he was, I would say is typical of a real Rosicrucian striver.” ~ Dr. Scharff
“Next is the heart in diastole where, as it where, God has been taken in and you see the dove is close to the heart. The heart is enlarged. The heart is taking in the world, like the hands that really are of an etheric nature taking in the world. For those that want to help people, that is what one needs, the heart and the hands. It is an extension of our physical heart but you can see our healing hands. You see the dove in contraction and relaxation or in the breathing of the heart. The symbol of the bird, of course, means that the search is for the spirit that is active in a meditative state. You can say this is the path of the heart.” ~ Dr. Scharff
To read more about Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, click here.
To read more about Paul Scharff, click here.
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