עברית “Let it, ye Spirits, be fired from the East, What is formed by the West”
My book Jerusalem: The Role of the Hebrew People in the Spiritual Biography of Humanity, was written to draw attention to an unnoticed fact of our time: that the etheric Christ impulse streams today through Anthroposophy from the spiritual aura of the Middle of the Earth, that became the “place of last resort" after the devastation of Middle Europe in the 20th century.
"Ought we to expect- quite contrary to current beliefs- that the Christ power, still working unconsciously, will appear in a changed form and as Ex oriente lux, in the old phrase, will meet with that which has appeared as light in the West? Should one light be able to unite with the other light? But for that it will be necessary for us to be prepared... Let us make ourselves capable of so understanding Him that we shall not misunderstand what He will perhaps be able to say to us one day, when the time has come for His impulses to flow through other earthly creeds!"
-Rudolf Steiner: Christ and the Spiritual World: From the search for the Holy Grail, Lecture of 2.1. 1914, GA 149
Jerusalem: The Role of the Hebrew People in the Spiritual Biography of Humanity
"We see the full power of self-consciousness slowly permeating the Hebrew people in the account of the Bible. They were to be made fully conscious of the effect it would have upon man, to feel the ego within himself, to experience God's Name, “I am the I AM!” and its effect upon his innermost soul".
Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 16th November 1908, GA 107
"Judaism might be called the actual discovery of the moral impulse in the evolution of humanity. The characteristic feature of all ancient Jewish religion lies in the essential pulsing and weaving of the Jehovah Impulse into mankind in such a way that its weaving and coming into being bring the moral too into the development of mankind".
Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 11th January 1919, GA 188
Jerusalem
The Role of the Hebrew People in the Spiritual Biography of Humanity
Forward
Introduction
Lecture 1 The Evolution of Human Consciousness and the Stages of Individuation in the History of the Hebrew People
Lecture 2 The Death of the Earth and its Resurrection –
the Cosmic Picture
Lecture 3 Creative Evolution
Lecture 4 The Initiation of Isaac
Lecture 5 The Initiation of Moses
Lecture 6The Initiation of King David
Epilogue The Essence of Hebrew Initiation
From Lecture 2
The Death of the Earth and its Resurrection: The Cosmic Picture
Today I will speak about the spiritual-cosmic being we call Jerusalem. But first, everything that I will say today and in the coming lectures will be only a poor attempt to express and resurrect, in words taken from our everyday language, what lives in my heart, soul, and spirit, when I experience and immerse myself in all of the layers, sounds, and nuances which come together in the word ‘Jerusalem' and its meaning. When I try in my feelings and imagination to compare the happiest and most grace-filled moments I have spent in this immersion, with what would have awakened in the soul of a believer who knew the esoteric secrets hundreds and thousands of years ago in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, when this holy name was uttered, I feel true humility of spirit. Such was the power, and at the same time the depth of awe and sublimity, which this holy name aroused in their hearts- Jerusalem- `Yere- Shalem', which means literally ‘seeing the whole’, the visible manifestation and presence of wholeness, the centre of humanity, earth and the cosmos, because it embodied the cosmic-human being, created as the image of all the divine worlds. This is the place where the love of God and the true name of God became human, flesh, earth, and reality. All the creative spiritual worlds and their beings were incarnated, grew older, died, and experienced through humanity and the earth their future resurrection here: all of this happened for the first time in Jerusalem.
While speaking, I am well aware of the fact that as a modern person raised in his parents' house and on a socialist secular kibbutz, I was suckled on the best nourishment from the humanist-universal spirit the Hebrew people gave to humanity, the universal moral vision and the power of the prophets, combined with the love and dedication to the survival and revival of the Jewish people and Israel. Yet, I must make a tremendous effort to express this in our ordinary Hebrew words, in the Hebrew language at my disposal, even the faintest echo of that language which lived and surged, as a living being, in the hearts of our great ancestors: those who still suckled on the living ancient religious nourishment from the biblical, Talmudic, mystical, Kabbalist-esoteric and Hebrew and Jewish sources. Yes, paradoxically, the fact is that, according to my destiny, I was raised outside that tradition and its rich Hebrew language, which forced me to penetrate into the pure spiritual core of this ancient stream, not through its external envelopes, but as it is alive today. I am thankful that I am so poor an orphan, in other words! That I was raised entirely outside of the Jewish traditions, religious practice and the infinite richness of the Hebrew language, because this gave me the freedom to seek the living spirit of universal humanity as it lives today. I could use this freedom to penetrate into the real spiritual sources of the Hebrew and Jewish traditions, with no external or internal dependence on the old language or writings. It may sound indeed paradoxical, but it is that very freedom which enables me to experience some sparks of the real spirit from which the writings and traditions which I wish to interpret and resurrect were created.
Therefore, in the interests of proper disclosure, I would like to start by saying that I am very aware of the meagerness of my language, and that actually, as a modern person, I do not have at my disposal that Hebrew language which could serve me as a support for creating concepts, pictures and ideas which would be fitting in their shape and design for the subject they should contain. On no subject of any of my lectures and writings have I felt this truth more sharply than on the subject of Jerusalem and the mission of the Hebrew people. Here, all the more, I feel how my language, as part of the erosion and secularization of the Hebrew language that I speak, has become prosaic, grey, materialistic and shallow, rationalistic and dull! Overall, it is hard for a person of our times to grasp how far we have deteriorated in these directions. One must undergo intense spiritual and mental preparation, which today only modern spiritual science can provide, to penetrate first of all into the spiritual experiences themselves, which were experienced by the great teachers of humanity whose stories of initiation are described in the Bible, so that we can peruse the ancient writings and recreate even a tiny spark of that living spirit that animated the language which the ancients still had at their disposal when seeking, with reverence and devotion, to pour into words their religious and spiritual experiences. It requires a special effort to find the spirit that animated them when they sought to prepare their whole being in body, soul and spirit so that it would become a sacred, suitable chalice to receive and express the divine Word, to speak of spiritual revelations in general, and on the subject of the Bible and Jerusalem in particular.
Today I shall try, albeit in an elementary way, not only to put before you new concepts and images of Jerusalem but also, and this is my main goal, to try and awaken in your souls a faint echo of that same ancient fiery devotional and sacred feeling; to intimate and awaken something of that singular atmosphere and feeling which was able to deeply shake and transform the ancient souls who approached these mysteries full of awe, wonder and piety. Because when you read the words of the ancients that were passed on to us (and to reach the treasures hidden in them, you must be able to penetrate through many obscure wrappings of time, tradition, cul- ture and mentality), you are amazed to discover the wonderful spiritualized bodily dimensions of the ancient Hebrew language, which had nothing abstract or intellectual about it; you discover a rich tapestry and complexity of the combination of spiritualized scents and tastes, tones, hues and colours, lights and sounds. There arises in your soul something that modern thinking, speaking and language has lost entirely, namely, the fully embodied, sensual, soul experiences, expressing the most intimate spiritual feelings and sensations, encompassing the whole human existence, from the deepest levels of the body to the soul and upward to the most sublime revelations of the higher spiritual worlds. I want to awaken this feeling, this experience in us today: to what extent the entire human life, existence and experience was fully spiritualized in the past, in which everything bodily and material was spiritual and ensouled, and everything spiritual was embodied, creatively working and shaping the physical world, nature and universe; in order to awaken in us the living experience- not only in general and abstract theoretical thoughts and concepts- that we are now just beginning to resurrect this lost world in our modern way.
The Development of Humanity from the Beginning to the End of Earthly Evolution
What is Jerusalem in the sacred esoteric traditions? To begin to create a living imaginative concept of Jerusalem, which must be transformed on the way to a fully real, imaginative picture full of life, we must first greatly broaden our concept of our evolutionary time. The Bible introduces us to Jerusalem at the time when the Temple was built, the times of David (1040-970 BC) and Solomon (965- 936 BC), when it becomes the capital of the kingdom of Israel, and then the capital of Judea. About a thousand years passed between Abraham (2,000 BC) and the kingdoms of David and Solomon. In the fourth lecture, which deals with Isaac's initiation in the mystery centre of Melchizedek- on Mount Moriah- we shall discover that already at the time of the patriarchs this place was attributed with the highest religious and esoteric value. The Bible, in its unique way, spreads a veil of mystery around Melchizedek and his divine role and we will need to unveil it. Ancient Jerusalem was Melchizedek's kingdom because he was `The king of Shalem' (Shalem in Hebrew means `whole') and Abraham acknowledges his greatness as the priest of the highest God, `El Elion'. Abraham even gives Melchizedek a tenth of his spoils and receives from him the sacramental gift of bread and wine (Genesis 14: 18-20). Thus, long before the Temple was built, long before the revelation on Mount Sinai and the giving of the Torah, back in the time of the patriarchs- in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob- Jerusalem, which did not yet bear that name, was already mentioned as a central place of initiation. As we shall see later, not only Abraham, but also Isaac and Jacob, were initiated into the secret of Jerusalem. This means that at least 1000 years before it was officially founded Jerusalem was already a hidden, central, mystery school of humanity. When we study this perspective in the light of the spiritual research of Rudolf Steiner and Emil Bock, we arrive at the most significant riddles that pertain to the evolution of the earth and humanity as a whole.
Read the whole second chapter in the book