Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:33 pm by globalturbo
Symbol of love
On August 1, 2023 By Ridzerd
Assume, someone imagines he has two glasses in front of him, an empty glass and a glass partially filled with water. Now he pours the water from the filled glass into the empty glass and imagines that, as he pours the water from the filled glass into the empty glass, the filled glass does not, as happens in the outside world, get emptier and emptier, but fuller and fuller. This is a paradoxical idea at first, but this representation is a symbol and the fact that it is a symbol must live in the consciousness of the spiritual researcher. It must, as it were, symbolically characterise for our souls the nature and essence of human love.
With human love, and with everything in general that comes under the idea of love, it is certainly the case that this source of love is so infinitely deep and so infinitely rich that when we come into contact with the fact of love, we have to admit modestly every time: This mystery of love, in its true essence, is most certainly unfathomable to every soul. And the more we have this sense of unfathomability, the better it is for the content and intensity of our lives. But one characteristic we can know and emphasise with all clarity of true love: that is the characteristic symbolically represented to us by the image of which we have just spoken.
The person who gives love, acts of love, to other people, by what he does out of love, never becomes poorer, never emptier, but he becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer in his soul life. We have this quality of love illuminating before us, as it were, when we imagine the image of two glasses and the pouring of water from one glass into the other.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 62 – Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung – Berlin, 21 November 1912 (page 123-124)
Translated by DeepL
On August 1, 2023 By Ridzerd
Assume, someone imagines he has two glasses in front of him, an empty glass and a glass partially filled with water. Now he pours the water from the filled glass into the empty glass and imagines that, as he pours the water from the filled glass into the empty glass, the filled glass does not, as happens in the outside world, get emptier and emptier, but fuller and fuller. This is a paradoxical idea at first, but this representation is a symbol and the fact that it is a symbol must live in the consciousness of the spiritual researcher. It must, as it were, symbolically characterise for our souls the nature and essence of human love.
With human love, and with everything in general that comes under the idea of love, it is certainly the case that this source of love is so infinitely deep and so infinitely rich that when we come into contact with the fact of love, we have to admit modestly every time: This mystery of love, in its true essence, is most certainly unfathomable to every soul. And the more we have this sense of unfathomability, the better it is for the content and intensity of our lives. But one characteristic we can know and emphasise with all clarity of true love: that is the characteristic symbolically represented to us by the image of which we have just spoken.
The person who gives love, acts of love, to other people, by what he does out of love, never becomes poorer, never emptier, but he becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer in his soul life. We have this quality of love illuminating before us, as it were, when we imagine the image of two glasses and the pouring of water from one glass into the other.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 62 – Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung – Berlin, 21 November 1912 (page 123-124)
Translated by DeepL
THANKS TO: https://rudolfsteinerquotes.wordpress.com/2023/08/01/symbol-of-love/
