A. P. SHEPHERD - ''THE TRINITY IN MAN AND NATURE''

A. P. Shepherd  

THE TRINITY IN MAN AND NATURE

 (Originally given as a lecture at the members' conference of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, Ripon, 1959)

In this article I am attempting to expound a concept of the nature of Being and Reality that has been in my mind for the past eighteen years. I shall be covering ground that many have explored and written about, but for the most part I shall make little reference to other points of view. To present a subject such as this in one article must involve omissions and tentative statements, but I hope I shall succeed in making plain the general theme of my argument.

 As every student of Anthroposophy knows. Dr Steiner revealed the presence of Man and Nature of many trinities or threefold relationships. Man is spirit, soul and body: in his earthly life he functions through three sheaths, the astral, the etheric and the physical; he expresses himself in thinking, feeling and willing. In his physical manifestation he is head-man, heart-man, and limbs and metabolic-man; in his path to Higher Knowledge he experiences three higher levels of consciousness and being. Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. In Nature again there are three levels of consciousness and being—In the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom.

 In this article I do not intend to dwell on the workings of these trinities in Man and Nature, but rather upon the concept of Trinity itself, in its relation to Man and Nature; the concept of Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity, which in this form of expression is familiar to us in the Christian definition of the Godhead, as set out in the Athanasian Creed. There the two sides of the seeming paradox are stated in the most precise terms, with no attempt to explain or reconcile them, but simply as a fundamental dogma of faith. What I seek to maintain is that this apparent paradox of Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is not a mere theological deduction from divine revelation, but is—as we might have expected it to be, if we really believe it to be the nature of the Godhead—a revelation of the true nature of all being and reality. 

                                                                    *

In setting out this thesis, I propose to start from the level of universal sense-experience and of scientific thinking, from the age long perplexity of modem thought as to the nature of Man's perception through his senses of the world around him. In the naive view of the ordinary man, his visual sense-perception gives him a direct, objective awareness of objects outside himself, and he regards what is given in his sense-perception—colour, form, etc. as the properties of the object perceived collecting and balancing the evidence of his eyes by that of his other senses. 

The scientific thinker, tracing the physical process of visual perception—as far as he can trace it—holds that we perceive only an inner picture, created by the brain, which bears no direct revelation of the nature of the object " perceived although it is adequate as a practical means of relating ourselves to it. 

I do not intend in this article to investigate the process of sense perception, intensely important though it is. Rudolf Steiner spoke a great deal about it, and I believe that the point of view I am trying to establish would throw great light upon it. But all that. I am concerned with now is the fact of sense-experience.

This image that we perceive, whatever be the process by which we perceive it, is rooted in both the perceiver and the perceived. It is a relation to each other in which they stand. The picture which I have of a rose depends upon the presence of a rose within the visual range of my eyes. If the rose is taken away, or if I turn my back upon it, the image disappears. Neither I nor the rose can claim the image for itself, for it does not exist except as a relation ship between us. 

This would seem to challenge the assertion that the image is " created " by the brain. At best, the image is an interpretation of received impressions. The brain cannot create any other sort of picture from those sense-impressions than the one it arrives at, and it continually tests and corrects this picture by reference to the received impressions, and those of other senses. Visual sense experience, therefore, is a relationship between the perceiver and the perceived. 

Here I want to make a most important point. This relationship is vital to both perceiver and perceived, not only as a useful process of knowledge, a means of communication, but vital also to their being, their existence. The image of the rose—the fact that I see the rose as red—is part of what I am. The fact that the rose, in that relation to me, appears as red is part of what the rose is. 

Let us develop this a little further, beginning with my claim that my perceived image of the rose is part of what I am, of my very being. Man's self does not consist merely of his immediate momentary physical existence, but of his continuous inner experience. When I say " I" in the deepest sense, I do not refer to the former but to the latter, my inner experience, which is preserved and is, in a measure, recoverable in memory, and is more deeply and completely preserved in my etheric body, or, in terms of psychology, my "Unconscious". If the whole of my senses experience of the outer world of Nature and Man is taken away from this inner self of continuous experience, what is left? Quite obviously this relationship between myself and the outer world which expresses itself in my being. Of course there are other relationships between myself and &e world about me, some of them physical and obvious, others of which I am unconscious. But the fact remains that the visual images which I have in perception, and all the impressions I receive through my senses, are, in a very real sense, part of my being. 

It is perhaps less obvious and not so easy to demonstrate that this relationship is also part of the being of the perceived object. For it has been the aim of the philosophy and science of the last four centuries to seek in the object perceived for the " thing-in itself", behind and independent of its appearance to the observer. The qualities which arise in sense-perception as a relationship between the observer and the thing. observed were defined as secondary qualities, and were disregarded as relevant only to the observer and no part of the reality of the object observed. Investigation was concentrated on the so-called primary qualities, which were held to be independently inherent in the object itself, such as weight, size, etc. But these qualities are no less a relation ship than the discarded " secondary qualities ". If any object were the only object in the world, no conclusion could be arrived at about its weight or size, for  these can be conceived and expressed only in comparison with other objects. It is a relationship to these objects. 

The discoveries of nuclear science show that atomic structure the foundation of matter—does not reveal a material "thing-in-itself ", but only a rigidly controlled relationship of electron, proton and neutron, themselves only focal points in fields of force, to a recent article in the Sunday Times on " The Elementary Particles within the Atom", Professor Salam says: "Each one of these particles exists in interaction with certain others". Indeed, it has been one of the discoveries of nuclear science that at a certain stage the observer himself cannot be detached from the object under consideration; the very fact that he is "observing" has a direct effect upon the object under observation. The basis of matter itself is relationship. 

Furthermore, to disregard the "secondary qualities" manifest in sense-perception is to disregard the fundamental relationships in which the object stands to the observer, relationships far more essential to its particular manifested being than are the nuclear relationships which underlie it. For example, if a rose is reduced to its material elements or to its atomic structure—in which there is neither colour, scent, nor form, as manifested in sense-experience —then the rose, as a rose, is no longer there; just as the dissection of an Old Master into classified particles of canvas and paint is no longer a picture, and its whole raison d'etre has been destroyed.. As George Macdonald wrote; "The show, the appearance of things, is that for which God cares most. It is through their show, not through their analysis that we enter into the deepest relationship to them." 

In  point of fact, do we not build up the reality of any object by discovering more and more of the relationships in which it stands, to ourselves, to other objects, or within its own manifested being? All, these we build up by thought working upon our sense-impressions for none of these relationships is directly manifest in bare sense impressions. First, we discover, by thought, the relationships of colour and form in which the visual sense-impressions present themselves, and verify or elaborate them by other sense-impressions, of sound or touch, etc. Then we go on, by thought, to further relationships not directly given in the sense-impressions. These relationships we build into the reality of the object so completely that, having become familiar with it, we come to think of this whole complex of relationships almost as directly given in the sense impressions. But the fact remains that the reality of the object consists entirely of relationships discovered by thought. 

Indeed, it is interesting to see how, even to the thinker, the wider reality, which includes discovered relationships not apparent in the sense-impressions themselves appears to manifest itself directly to sense-perception. This can be seen in such a programme on television as "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral", if one watches the face of, let us say. Sir Mortimer Wheeler as he takes into his hands some article or even fragment of pottery. He receives from it the same sense-impressions as would be given to anyone else, but as one watches in his eyes the intense thought with which he scrutinises the object, it would almost appear as though the manifold relationships of place and date and probable form and use, derived from thought and stored-up in his memory, have become directly manifest to his sense-experience, as composing the reality of that a t which he is looking. 

It should be noted that the claim that the relationship given in sense-perception is part of toe reality of both observer and observed is not invalidated by toe fact that to a colour-blind person the object appears in what we should call "the wrong colour". For this fact, that toe rose appears in this colour to the colour-blind person, is still part of the rose's reality, as it is also part of the reality of the colour-blind observer. 

Thus we see, not only that the reality of any object consists in its relationships discovered by observation and thought, but that there is no part of toe being of toe object that is not a relationship, either to entities outside itself, or to entities discoverable within itself. This also seems to be supported by toe latest discoveries of nuclear science, to the article by Professor Salam already referred to he says of toe "neutron" that it can exist only in relationship to another particle. " When left free, a neutron decays in about ten minutes into a proton, an electron and a neutrino." He concludes with a startling statement. "The elusive neutrino, a massless. electrical neutralised particle is perhaps the most perfect instance of a disembodied spirit"! He might have said, " of a pure relationship 

Hence we must say that entities consist of relationships, are built up out of relationships. Relationships are the substance of existence and being. This applies equally to conscious entities, such as animals, and self-conscious entities, such as men or spirit-beings. Between self-conscious beings, of course, consciousness itself enters into the relationships, and lifts them to a new level, producing also a new level of being. Yet the fact remains that the relationships constitute the reality of the beings. 

We have already considered how this truth applies to unconscious objects, but there is more to be said in regard to this. So intricate and yet ordered is the pattern of relationships in the object, so integrated with our own conscious thinking, that one is driven to the conclusion that the objects are the expression of conscious beings behind the phenomenon, with whom the relationship and its consequent reality may well be an even more vivid experience that it is to us. One is reminded of the satirical question and answer of the late Monsignor Ronald Knox: 

The Question.  "There once was a man who said: 'God 

                         Must think it exceedingly odd 

                               That the sycamore tree 

                                  Continues to be 

                        When there's no-one about in the Quad.'" 

The Answer.  "Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd: 

                        I am always about in the quad. 

                        And that's why the tree 

                        Continues to be. 

Since observed by Yours faithfully, God." 

As St. Paul put it. "God is not far from any one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being." 

But the fact that the relationship is a constituent in the being of both entities which it relates has a profound effect on the nature of the relationship itself, and of the trinity of which it forms a part. The relationship itself can never be regarded as 'abstract' because it is the constituent of the entities which it relates, and therefore itself partakes of the nature of their " being ". Moreover, inasmuch as this quality of "being" expressed in the relationship is shared by each of its participants, the subject, the object and the actualised relationship, and also cannot be possessed by any of them alone-;- for its existence presupposes all three—we have here a trinity, in which each is itself an entity, and yet all three are united in a unity of being. This I call Trinitarian Reality and Being.

 * 

But we have not yet exhausted the nature and significance of these relationships which our thinking discovers. Not only do they constitute the very being of the objects which they link together and in that measure themselves partake of "being", but the relationships themselves can become entities independent of that relationship, a new point of being from which fresh relationships establish themselves in ever-widening creativity. 

The rose-colour, which manifests itself as a relationship between the rose and myself, becomes itself an entity of colour, establishing a new range of related entities of colour, independent of that particular relationship. Relationships are therefore seen, not only as constituents of being, but as the creative source of new entities. 

This is manifest in perhaps the greatest achievement of human thinking, the science of mathematics. This is a science entirely of relationships. Objects are necessary as focal points of relationship, but they are undefined, and presented symbolically as x or y. This science of relationships, carried to more and more complicated and abstruse heights, beyond the range of the ordinary mind, has manifested the creative quality of relationships, in that mathematics has been the key to many of the deepest secrets of science and the instrument of its greatest discoveries and of its ventures into new fields of knowledge and achievement. 

Thus, what appears at first sight in our sense-experience as a duality of subject and object, or object and object, each of whose being is explained by abstract relationships with the other, becomes a trinity of subject, object and relationship, in which relationship, contributing to and partaking of the reality of both subject and object, has itself become an entity, and, in so doing, ever creatively extends this Trinitarian Reality.

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All this points to the doctrine of the Trinity with which we started, but we have not yet exhausted the analogy. For this doctrine is not only of a Trinity of Persons, whose being and consciousness share in the identity of their mutual relationships.  This Trinity of Being is also a Unity of Being which includes the whole, and is thus shared in and experienced as a whole by each and all of the Persons of the Trinity.

Now is there any human experience which bears analogy to this all-inclusive experience of Unity and Trinity? It must be an experience which includes consciousness of the self as a focal point of relationships, yet feels itself expanded into a consciousness of wider being, which includes itself and all the beings to which it is related, and also the relationships between them. 

There is, in the first place, the mystical experience to which many mystics have borne witness: a sense of expansion of being, until it appears to be all-inclusive—and yet, with all these, an experience of being far more intense than personal, individual self- consciousness. There is a similar pattern of experience quite frequently in Christian conversion, a sense of expansion in a new found love of the world.

It is expressed in the words Saul Kane, the suddenly converted drunken boxer in Masefield's Everlasting Mercy:

 " I knew that Christ had given me birth 

To brother all the souls on earth, 

And every bird and every beast

 Should share the crumbs broke at the feast." 

So, too, in Intuition, the last stage of Higher Knowledge, as Rudolf Steiner describes it, there is the experience of mutual interpenetration of being, each experiencing himself in the other and the other in himself, passing on to the experience of sharing in all-inclusive reality, with intensified consciousness of self. 

To conceive of this profound Trinitarian Reality in concepts is almost impossible. Perhaps, we may try to form an Imagination of it, conscious that such a picture must fall far short of the reality. 

Let us picture a vast transparent sphere filled with an endless network of criss-crossing threads of relationship. Wherever they meet is an object. Where many threads meet, is a focal point of being. At the centre and pervading the whole is the Godhead, the perfect mutual relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, out of whose personified creativity all these myriad relationships have come, and keep coming into being.

From our perception of the working of Trinitarian reality at the level of our physical consciousness, we are able to realise more clearly the significance of the Triune Godhead. Relationship being the essence of true being, we see the eternal necessity of at least a dual personal consciousness within the Godhead itself— The Father, the Ground and Source of all Being, and the Son "begotten before the worlds", weaving and creating out of the Divine Substance; the "eternal Word, through whom all things were made " .

 In this relationship they are not two separate Persons, each • experiencing the other, but the relationship and experience are always "two-way"—"I in the Father and the Father in Me". What the Son is to the Father is part of the being of the Father; it is also part of the being of the Son. What the Father is to the Son is part of the being of the Son; it is also part of the being of the Father. "I and the Father are one." And this pulse of being between the Father and the Son, which is Divine Live, constituting as it does the essence of their being, is Itself personal, the Eternal Spirit "proceeding from the Father and the Son", providing the threads of true relationship by which the Son creates.

In this tri-Personal Unity of Being the Godhead consists, and, out of the joy and blessedness of its own being, seeks to bring self-consciousness and conscious relation to itself to those focal points of relationship which have in them the potentiality of self-conscious being. To achieve this end, these immature beings must first be withdrawn from their consciousness of existing wholly in this totality of Trinitarian Being. They must be brought into a condition of " separated " consciousness. In this lowered experience they gradually become aware of themselves as focal points of being, which more and more appear to be completely self-contained and separate from other focal points of being, any relationships discovered between themselves and other entities appearing impersonal and abstract, except in so far as they affect their physical being. Moreover, the relationships perceived extend to a very limited range, of which they themselves seem to be the centre. This is the sphere of physical consciousness.

 But when, as by death, these physical beings are released from the controlled time-experience of their "separated" consciousness, they discover that their relationships no longer appear abstract, but as the very constituent elements in their being. Moreover, they perceive that these relationships extend ever more widely and deeply through the universal network of being and relationship, and in this experience their own being, now conscious of existing in its relationships, seems to expand so as to include the whole sphere of being. Finally, they experience the relationships which unite them to the Godhead itself and so reach consciously the level of Trinitarian being, at which level they and other beings experience themselves and one another in interpenetration of universal being. 

Thus we see that in this Trinitarian relationship, which is implicit even in our physical sense-experience, there are involved, not only higher levels of Consciousness, but higher levels of Being. 

* 

What I have tried to show so far is that the doctrine of the divine this totality of Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is not a mere theological concept—as some believe—but that it is a revelation of the real nature of all being; indeed, of all reality. Also that indications of this are given in the universal experience of sense-perception and knowledge, and, to a still greater degree, in mystic and super-sensory experience. What I would now attempt to show is how this conception permeates and is implicit in Dr Steiner s teaching.

Let us begin with that which was the earliest element m his teaching, the nature of man's knowledge of the world through sense-perception as it is set out in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. We have already considered man's sense-experience m containing fundamental elements of Trinitarian Reality but this is all the more evident as we consider the light which Dr Steiner threw on this subject . 

He revealed, in a quite new way, the fundamental place of thought in sense-perception, and pointed out how rarely the thinking man —and still less the ordinary man —"thinks about thinking". He pointed out that man's awareness of the reality about him had been "split asunder': part was given to man in sense-impressions, but man has himself to bring to bear upon these his own activity of thinking, and only in this way conscious relationships with reality. Thus thinking is a spiritual activity, an activity of man as spirit. 

When we apply to this the concept of Trinitarian Reality, we see that what man seeks in thinking is to discover relationships between his diverse sense-impressions, and between the so-perceived separate objects of sense-experience. Some time ago I heard Sir Julian Huxley say. in a television broadcast, that what he would most like to know of things not yet known was. "What is thinking?" 1 would venture to suggest the answer: " Thinking is the search tor and application of relationships implicit in and between objects or sense-experience." 

Moreover, man thinks, not only because relationships complete knowledge, and provide means of contact, but because they complete his being. In order that he may acquire self-awareness, man fids himself, not only with a divided knowledge, but with a divided being. Sense-impressions give him an awareness of entities outside his separated, self-contained physical self. They can be made real only by establishing relationships between them and one another and himself. Moreover, he can only complete his own reality as a spirit being by establishing these relationships with the world impinging on him. Thinking then is the pathway to spirit-being. Man thinks because he needs relationships in order to live, and in a "separated" existence he must look for them. His spirit would starve if it could not establish relationships between itself and other entities.

But the relationships found in this way are not "compelling " as they are in the spiritual world. They appear, to the ordinary man. as abstract thoughts, revealing the nature of separated objects outside himself. They leave him free to accept or reject, to use or misuse them. But if man would rise to his full  heritage, he must discover in full consciousness the Trinitarian reality of subject and object in living relationship, as constituting the true reality and being, both of himself, and of each and all of the "separated" objects.

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We find indications of the concept of Trinitarian reality also in Dr Steiner's exposition of how the three stages of Higher Know ledge. Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are reached. The first stage. "Imagination", is reached by directing concentrated meditation upon a spiritual reality of whose existence we are aware, but which is not manifest to our sense-experience, as. for example, the growth-forces of a plant. If the meditation is successful, the spiritual reality makes an impression on us. through our developed soul-organs of perception, in form and colour. This is an "Imagination ". It is. as it were, a spiritual sense-impression giving an awareness of a spirit-object impressing this pattern of form and colour upon us. But as yet we do not know the nature of that object itself, but only its effect upon ourselves. For us to know it. it must establish  a direct relationship with us, which will reveal its own being. 

We have, therefore, to dismiss from our attention the "Imagination"—that is. the effect which the object made upon ourselves from without—and wait until we receive from the spirit-reality a communication of the relationship which links it to ourselves. We wait in pure thought-meditation, directing our relationship-discovering faculty of thought towards the object, until, as Spinoza put it. "spirit comes to meet us". This is the stage of "Inspiration". the stage of the discovery of spirit-reality itself in revealed relationships, and the discovery that in those relationships not only the spirit-reality, but we ourselves, consist. 

Then, when relationship is fully taken up into being, we reach the final stage of "Intuition". where living in relationship passes into a mutual interpenetration of being, an experience of oneself in the other, and the other in oneself. Subject. Object and Relationship have been taken up into Trinitarian Being. 

                                                                * 

These three stages of Higher Knowledge are. of course, only an anticipation, by the path of spiritual self-development, of the actual ascent of the human spirit after death, first through the etheric realm of picture-consciousness or spirit-awareness, then to the astral realm of living in the moral discovery of the ontological significance of relationships: and finally to the pure spirit-realm of Trinitarian being. This repeated ascent and descent of the stairway of being between spiritual and earthly consciousness, leading from earth-life to earth-life, is not only the pathway of individual spirit-evolution. but through the reincarnation of great spirits it provides the impulse for the gradual spiritual evolution on earth of man kind—from unconscious Trinitarian being, through separated being, to full separated self-consciousness, and finally, by rediscovery of the reality of spirit, to fully-conscious Trinitarian being. 

In a very illuminating way Dr Steiner shows how this spiritual evolution of mankind has worked out in human history. For he shows that the key to the understanding of human history is not to ^ be found primarily in man's gradual discovery and mastery of the physical world, but in the evolution of human consciousness in that process. In this we find the clearest indication of the presence and working of Trinitarian reality. 

Descending from an unself-conscious Trinitarian existence m universal being, in his earliest contact with the physical world man still felt deeply the unity between his own being and the other beings and entities, spiritual and physical, about him. He lived in vivid consciousness of vital relationships between himself and them, in the light of which he interpreted their being. He was as yet hardly aware of his or their separate existence.

 Gradually this original experience began to fade into a more 'separated' consciousness. in which man looked  for the guidance to the leaders of the Mystery-centres, who still retained spiritual vision and understanding. It was an age of ever-expanding experience and development of physical existence, but one in which man still felt himself linked with the spirit-world, his fellow-men, and the world about him. It was the age of the Sentient Soul. 

With the rise of Greek civilisation man entered into a new stage of "separated" existence. He became more and conscious of his own being at one end of his experience  - that is of himself as Subject, able not only to experience but to initiate and control relationships with external entities, and as having moral responsibility in doing so. It was the age of  the Intellectual Soul Subject-conscious Soul; and the 'I'  as subject, became increasingly interested in itself and its possibilities. Nevertheless for centuries man still retained a consciousness of being linked with the world about him.

Four centuries ago, with the dawn of the scientific age, man became supremely interested in that which relation- his experience, the Object, disregarding his own personal relationship to it, and  considering it wholly in its relationship to other objects. Relationships still remain, but they no longer deeply affect him, nor for the most part, hold any moral content for him. They are simply abstract laws, a method of gaining knowledge and control of objects.

It is the age of of the Consciousness-Soul, the Object -consciousness Soul. Nature is utterly devoid of spirit and is regarded merely as an object of exploitation for which man has no sense of responsibility. In this concentration upon Object-consciousness man has included himself  as an object equally with other material objects, a phenomenon of the physical world, governed by abstract laws. The trustworthiness of man, in his subject-activity is questioned, even his right as an ordinary individual to exercise such a function at all.

Finally, in this twentieth century the emphasis has gradually   shifted from Object -consciousness to Relationship-consciousness, We have already referred to higher mathematics as the science of abstract relationships and to the discoveries as the science of abstract relationships and to the discoveries in  nuclear science of relationships as the basis of matter. The significance of Subject and Object, of man and the world he lives in, seems lost in the incomprehensible abstract mathematical relationships by which the high-priests of the Science Mysteries explain them. moreover, these supposedly abstract relationships have been able to release and to create forces which threaten, not only in pure science that the worship of relationships in themselves has been set up. Political and social ideologies, economic world-schemes and industrial setups, wholesale educational, have become dominant relationships, in which the individual subject or object are mere pawns and their significance almost irrelevant.

It is the opposite process to that of Higher Knowledge, The wheel has gone full circle from three all embracing Trinitarian Unity of the Spirit-world, Subject and object and one object and another object are seen as separate entities, and the former living relationships between them have become either properties of the objects or merely abstract laws, or impersonal fields of force that threaten the existence of both subject and object, Man is left wondering if there is any vital relation at all between subject and object, between himself and the world.  

                                                                         +

There are, however, indications of a reaction against mere despair. Science, as we have seen, is beginning to realise that relationships cannot be treated as abstractions, but are a concrete factor in reality, even relationships between observer and observed. So, too, there is a growing conviction that political ideologists must not be allowed to function in disregard of the wellbeing of individuals and their way of life; that uninhibited economic competition cuts its own throat: that the disregard of the natural aspirations and needs of undeveloped peoples must breed wars; and, finally, that only in          co-operation with the laws of Nature's own being can man depend on her sustenance. 

But these experience-bought readjustments of human living cannot of themselves solve the problem. Man must return from his "separated" consciousness to an awareness of Trinitarian reality. In order that he might do so in full consciousness, it was necessary for him first to acquire his separated awareness of the three elements in that inclusive reality. Subject, Object and Relationship, even as in the Godhead itself the triple personal consciousness is necessary for the experience of the Triune Unity. 

Although he is unconscious of it, man is a microcosm of the macrocosm of the Godhead. But he can only.be a real, self-conscious centre of spirit-being, a spirit-self, by a mutual subject-object and object-subject relationship between himself and God, and between himself and the created world, which is the expression, though the hierarchies, of the Divine Word. To obtain Trinitarian being, this relationship must be reciprocal, as it is between the Persons in the Godhead. Man's great mistake has been to regard his relationships as only one-way—from himself, both in regard to the created world and even towards his fellow men; to disregard the other man's point of view, and, in any case, not to recognise it as of any ontological significance to his own being. He must learn to allow his spirit to be "object" to the speaking of others and also to the speaking of the created world. Man cannot reach this all-inclusive unity of being out of a separated, materialistic outlook. devoid of spirit. He must press on, with the aid of Spiritual Science, to the actual discovery of spirit, if he is to attain the true nature of Trinitarian being. 

But it is in the work of Christ for mankind, on which Dr Steiner  gave some of his most illumining revelations, that the real working in heaven and earth of the Trinitarian Mystery is most apparent. In a quite unique series of books and lectures. Dr Steiner revealed the deed of Christ in Incarnation, in its divinely-planned relation ship to the whole spiritual evolution of mankind. 

The descent of Christ into the physical life of humanity took place at the moment when man was about to enter the final stage of the "separation" of his consciousness. The Intellectual or Subject-conscious soul was beginning to lose its instinctive sense of connection with the world about it, and in a few centuries, after a period of bewilderment, it would change into die complete " separated-ness" of the Consciousness-Soul, the Object-conscious Soul. 

Christ could not arrest this evolution of consciousness, because, until man had discovered himself in "separated-ness", he could not consciously enter into the true experience of his being in Trinitarian relationship. But what Christ was not yet able to do for man's Thinking, He was able to do for man's Feeling. Dr Steiner often speaks of Christ's earthly work as the redemption of man's Feeling, and of the present age as the opportunity to receive through Christ the redemption of man's Thinking. 

Christ Himself declared that the one new commandment He had brought to men was that they should love one another, as He had loved them, in giving His life for them. It was not the first time that men had been told to love each other. Love in the ancient world was not a mere emotion. It expressed the perfection of relationship between man and God, and between man and man.  When on Mount Sinai, Moses gave the Law, he transposed  true spiritual relationships, as he could see them in the  Spirit world, into a code of earthly relationships. He summed it up - as Christ Himself did—as perfect love towards God towards and towards man. Moreover, Moses revealed the fact that this 1ove , this relationship, - was not only a code of conduct, but the very substance of man s being, when he said, " Behold, I have set before you this day good and evil, life and death."

But in the crises of human history at the coming of Christ, man needed more than a commandment; be needed a Divine example. The love that the Death and Resurrection of Christ  awakened in men's hearts passed from feeling into devotion and became not only a redemption of feeling, but the beginning of the redemption of will. In the experience of it man reached a new level of consciousness and a new level of being.

We find this expressed again and again in St. Pauls Epistles, and especially in the first Epistle of St. John. St John offers men the eternal life which was with God and had been manifest men, the new life of relationship to the Father and the Son. through the Spirit of Love which filled them. "That ye may have fellowship ship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. It was a new life, a new experience of being, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." It was a new level of consciousness. "He that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him." 

But perhaps the mystery of Trinitarian being and relationship was most completely expressed by Christ Himself in his last great prayer. "I pray that they may all be one: even as thou. Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in lus . . . that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be brought to perfection into one; that the love where-with thou lovest me may be in them, and I in them."

 The method by which this should be achieved is described by Christ as the releasing of man's soul out of the prison of his "separated" experience, by restoring to it again Trinitarian consciousness. "How shall this happen to us," His disciple asked, "and not happen to the world?" "If a man love me," Christ replied, " he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him." 

Looking down the course of Christian history, it might appear that Christians have completely failed to achieve this Trinitarian Unity. But is it not rather that the conditions for its full realisation have not yet been attained? Christian feeling and devotion are limited by the fact that man's thinking cannot yet free itself from the Ahrimanic delusion of the ultimate nature of  "separated " physical existence. It is from this delusion that Christ would redeem man's thinking at the present time, by enabling his Christ-filled soul to acquire, through the self-development of Higher Knowledge, a direct experience of spirit-reality. When man's thinking can grasp the reality of spirit in man and nature, then it will reach that understanding of Trinitarian reality and being which will enable Christ's vision for man to be fulfilled.

But it will not be only man's relationship to God and Man that will be redeemed; with it there will be the long-awaited redemption of Nature of which St. Paul spoke. For man's soul being delivered by this Christ-given Trinitarian consciousness from the prison of his own astral experience, his Thinking will also be delivered, by the discovery of the reality of spirit, from the Ahrimanic delusion of the permanence of separated d physical reality. Then he will know Nature, not only as mirrored in his own sense-perception, or as the "other", to be mastered and exploited; but in her own soul-filled God-related, man-related being. Then the triple polarities of Man and Nature, God and Nature, Man and God will be resolved into the true Trinitarian reality of Nature, Man and God. Then once again Man will walk with God among the trees of the garden of Nature, because in his Christ-won Trinitarian consciousness he will no longer feel naked and ashamed.

                                                                END