The New Dialogue with the Spiritual World: A Co-Creative Venture

When you realize that what you experience is the result of a real spiritual co-production, a community effort, involving many beings beside yourself, and that your part is indeed infinitely humble when viewed and evaluated from the perspective of the higher worlds. Yet joyfully and gratefully you experience this fact, that the Michaelic beings could say “yes” to your so partial and incomplete effort, and have accepted, saturated and fulfilled it, because they experienced that what you have offered them is worthy of their consent, that they can breathe it in, assimilate and enhance it and breathe it out back to you as such infinitely transformed and spiritualized substance and form. 

In my book, Cognitive Yoga: How A Book Is Born, I tried to describe from various points of view what the human soul experiences in the real life and praxis of spiritual scientific research. One central aspect concerns the essence and meaning of anthroposophical research, and it must be emphasized repeatedly, because one cannot understand it theoretically, without applying it in real spiritual scientific praxis. The problem is caused by the following fact, which appears to be a real contradiction.

One central discovery related in my book confirms a fact often described by Rudolf Steiner, namely, that the modern soul stands in a wholly new, and independent, relation to the spiritual world, which was not yet possible in previous ages. This relation becomes a foundation for developing a creative dialogue, creative cooperation, with the spiritual world. You begin to experience something wholly new, that the fruits of your research are in fact the result of a joint creative spiritual venture.

What the true spiritual scientist communicates, the results of his spiritual research, are not simply given to him from above in finished, formed Imaginations, as was customary in the past, nor are they the projection of his personal desires, ambitions and specualtions. It is really a joint venture. This raises, however, justifiably, some important questions. 

On the one hand, the truly modern scientist of the spirit, is not a passive receiver of knowledge, be it sensible or supersensible. He is creative and independent spirit, basing everything he researches and communicates solely on his fully conscious and individualized work.  The assimilation, digestion, and production of knowledge is his most intimately known and familiar process. This may however lead to a one-sided emphasis on “freedom” which easily gives birth to swarms of unbridled anthroposophical speculations, visions and fantasies. On the other hand, there stand firm those hardened conservatives, that will not allow any deviation from their own interpretation of the master's written words. And so the war between the two vast camps, the more Luciferic freedom fighters and the more Ahrimanic conservatives, goes on and on. Through the tumult caused by this war the true middle path is covered, denied and neglected.

What many find hard to grasp, is this: that the most independent, self-reliant and free spiritual research is grounded, first and above all, in what is learnt and earned from your teacher. Real spiritual science is in this regard not different from what holds true for each and any branch of craft, art, science, athletics and any other truly creative human achievement. All really creative people, know and practice this secret through the ages: Freely offered loyalty to the father- and mother source of your craft, is the key to creative spiritual freedom. I call this also “radical conservatism”, if only just for the lovely sound and taste of this expression. As Rudolf Steiners say, it is "freedom not in the sense of licence, but freedom born of a free spirit and a firmly disciplined mind".

But what does your teacher really teach you? He teaches you the actual method of anthroposophical research; and it is naturally only up to you, out of your free choice- as I emphasised also in the preface- to teach yourself how to become radically conservative, freely loyal to your teacher’s method, from the first step to the very last stage you can presently climb. And this method you apply to whatever experience you chose to investigate. So, for example, in the book, Cognitive Yoga, Rudolf Steiner’s method is applied to the spiritualisation of ordinary thinking and sense perception. In the book, The New Experience of the Supersensible, it is applied to the supersensible experience of the etheric Christ. Whatever the experience is, I was always striving to remain as conservatively radical as possible to the phenomena and method I am investigating. And it is precisely this freely chosen and applied radical conservatism, that brings forth the fully individualzied spiritual results of spiritual investigation.

Now, however, if you are honest in your research, and have come thus far, you will experience its results as a new wonder each time.  When you inquire how the results have come about, you will find that your work is connected to its results as a seed is connected to the fully developed plant. Then your results will make you deeply humble, because you realise that what you experience is due to the fact that spiritual beings grafefully received, transformed and saturated the fruits of your work and returned them to you, in a wholy changed form. When you realize that what you experience is the result of a real spiritual co-production, a community effort, involving many beings beside yourself, and that your part is indeed infinitely humble when viewed and evaluated from the perspective of the higher worlds. Yet joyfully and gratefully you experience this fact, that the Michaelic beings could say “yes” to your so partial and incomplete effort, and have accepted, saturated and fulfilled it, because they experienced that what you have offered them is worthy of their consent, that they can breathe it in, assimilate and enhance it and breathe it out back to you as such infinitely transformed and spiritualized substance and form.