The Philosophy of Freedom and the Etheric Christ

Let us look more closely at a certain pregnant passage taken from the first introduction to my book, The New Experience of the Supersensible.It gives in a nutshell the essence of the foundation not only of the whole book, but of all my subsequent work. Also today, I warm-and start up my work with this intensive spiritual activity, when I wish to enter into higher states of consciousness and cognition. It is also used now as the foundation of the new formation of the school of spiritual science and the global event college that guides it.

 The passage as a whole is as follows:

"What otherwise is possible only by means of the Philosophy of Freedom, in the activity of intuitive thinking: the self-transforming self-meeting through self-perception, in the self-actualization process of the simultaneous inner creation and perceiving of pure ideas- is experienced in an objective-supersensible way, in the consciousness soul's participation in the appearance of the etheric Christ... Now the method of investigating the etheric appearance of the Christ can be described. We must transform the highest intensity of thought and knowledge experienced in the practice of The Philosophy of Freedom into the form of a living inner archetype of this method. What is freely created in the intuitive act of knowledge can become a living, knowledge-creating organ, through which the creative activity of intuitive thinking spiritualizes the spiritual-scientific knowledge-process, on the one hand, and condenses the naturally given imaginative perception on the other, and thus brings about a mutually transforming perception and knowledge of the etheric world through thinking and thinking through the etheric world...".

 Let us take it now one part- and issue at a time.

"What otherwise is possible only by means of the Philosophy of Freedom”- well, yes, indeed, that’s the most central anthroposophical question presently, which is about the activity of the Philosophy of Freedomand its task in the 21^stcentury. But what is the real activity of intuitive thinking? Let us read this slowly.

 First, it is written above that this implies “the self-transforming self-meeting through self-perception”. This means, that during the activity of pure or intuitive thinking, we meet our-self through direct perception. But this self isn’t our ordinary self. It is a new self, that we actually perceive for the first time only in and through this activity of thinking. Therefore, it is really the first meeting with our real, spiritual, of higher self.  But it contains many secrets and mysteries, we wouldn’t expect this to be otherwise, naturally! - It is said clearly that it is “self-transforming” self-meeting. What, or who, is thus transformed? It is our ordinary self, now thinking and producing pure, intuitive thoughts. Our ordinary self is transformed when it meets- its own higher self, that always lives and weaves above us, in us, and around us. But what happens when our ordinary self, becoming extraordinary, that is, creating pure, intuitive thoughts, meets the higher self? A new self is born! From now on, we will be able to distinguish not on our ordinary, or lower self, and also not only two selves, lower and higher selves, but three selves: our ordinary lower self, our higher self- in so far we experience it in this self-transforming meeting- and a third middle self, which is now becoming our truly and in all actuality our individual-spiritual  self. It is actual because it only come to life when it is actualized in this spiritual activity of pure thinking. And this self-actualizing self, that alone connects in full self-consciousness our lower and higher selves with each other. It is the very foundation of the continuation of consciousness between the physical world and the spiritual world. Which is the specifically and absolutely new contribution of the modern spiritual path of spiritual science to human evolution in the age of the consciousness soul. It is the strong and wide spiritual bridge between the sensible and supersensible, whose’ formation is the goal of The New Experience of the Supersensibleand Cognitive Yoga. 

 Naturally, we cannot perceive this self in our ordinary consciousness. But for that matter, nor will someone perceive it if he or she, let’s assume it hypothetically, would be magically transposed to the higher self and try to locate it by looking down on it from outside. He or she will only perceive the lower, earth-and body bound lower self. Because the real, actual self, exists only when it is actively actualized. As I showed in Cognitive Yoga, it is the formation process of the Spirit Self, which is the actualization of the actual spiritual substance in and through the real “I”, that Aristotle called the Entelechy, that Rudolf Steiner could fully actualize in the age of the consciousness soul, because his whole life embodied and actualized for the first time the archetypal “biography of freedom”.

 Now, when this self is self-actualized, the activity of pure, intuitive thinking, becomes its eye, which is our first spiritual eye opened by means of the spiritual activity of the Philosophy of Freedom. And then a most intimate and sacred event takes place through this “self-transforming self-meeting through self-perception”, that is, the birth of our middle or truly actual spirit self. Now let us continue to the second part of the sentence.

In the second part of the sentence we read that the above- “self-transforming self-meeting through self-perception”- occurs “in the self-actualization process of the simultaneous inner creation and perceiving of pure ideas...”. The transformed self, the self-transforming self, is producing pure ideas in the activity of pure thinking and perceived them simultaneously as it creates them. This is the self-actualization of the actual new middle self, which gives it what no other spiritual or occult training can give it: the absolute clarity and lucidity of the purest thoughts possible, and entry into the supersensible world which much more free and self-reliant as will become increasingly more evident in the future.

 Now in the third part our attention is directed to this mystery: what we described above, that is, “What otherwise is possible only by means of the Philosophy of Freedom”- namely, this the self-actualization and self-creating of the real new self- is precisely what we experience when we meet “in an objective-supersensible way, in the consciousness soul's participation in the appearance of the etheric Christ..”. 

In other words: the purely volitional, self-actualization processes of creating and perceiving pure, intuitive thinking, is experienced as exactly the same process what we experience- in the purely supersensible, etheric world- the meeting with the etheric Christ, but only if it truly takes place through the consciousness-soul.As an actual fruit of our spiritual activity of intuitive thinking we bring forth our self-actualizing self, as our new begotten self, as an offer to the etheric Christ; and from the etheric world, the Christ brings our new born real self to birth through Him, as an objective world event, described in The New Experience of the Supersensible and in the last chapter of Cognitive Yoga. But the great mystery of the present age, and indeed of all future ages in this respect, is precisely this: to realize that the two new selves, the one actualized in full self-consciousness voluntarily though pure thinking activity and the other through the Etheric Christ, are indeed one and the same self. Here we touch upon the very essence of the anthroposophical spiritual path and initiation, which must in the 21st become more real, actual and comprehensible to more and more people.

 In this light, the second part of the above quoted passage can now be better understood. It says:

“Now the method of investigating the etheric appearance of the Christ can be described. We must transform the highest intensity of thought and knowledge experienced in the practice of The Philosophy of Freedominto the form of a living inner archetype of this method”. To this we already referred above, it is now called by its name, the “archetype of the method” of creating the imaginative cognition, by means of which the appearance the etheric Christ can be studied by means of modern spiritual science. But now comes a new distinction, which we will not be able to study more closely now, because it leads to the real fine details of the supersensible research itself, that are described in the two introductions in greater detail. For now, let us just not that, “What is freely created in the intuitive act of knowledge can become a living, knowledge-creating organ...”. - Please note that now it has become an organ, not only an activity, and organ in the etheric body itself, reflecting and embodying he activity of intuitive thinking, “through which the creative activity of intuitive thinking spiritualizes the spiritual-scientific knowledge-process, on the one hand, and condenses the naturally given imaginative perception on the other...”. Well, too much spirit is also not a useful object of research! We must learn, that to the same extent that our ordinary cognition is far too less spiritual, the truly spiritual experience is to begin with far too spiritual. And the same activity, whose creative mother is the Philosophy of Freedom, the daughter of Anthroposophia and Michael, allows us at the same time to “bring about a mutually transforming perception and knowledge of the etheric world through thinking and thinking through the etheric world".

And if we grasp this in a living way, we can also experience in the right mood of soul the more imaginative expression of the same essence:

“Pictorially expressed, the answer to the question of method is: the given appearances of Anthroposophy and the Etheric Christ are transformed by means of the crossing and the mutual penetration of the two appearances by means of the growing knowledge of the essence of the other. The goal is to achieve a systematically increased intensification and acceleration of the rhythmic sway between the poles of their given appearances, so that an active and cognitive spiritual heart organ is formed through their mutually reversed breathing movement. In this dynamically cognizing heart organ, their enhanced life in each other reveals, through its inner conscious pulsation, the secret of their being and becoming in man: the living Christ in and through the Being of Anthroposophia, and the living Being of Anthroposophia in and through the Christ. Behind both appearances we have to unveil the veiled secret: the reality of world-man in the man-created, Christ-permeated world-man as the Christ-permeated, consciousness soul's child of Anthropos-Sophia, bearing and nourishing the future earthly-human Sun in his heart”. 

Continue reading in the first introduction of the book, The New Experience of the Supersensible http://www.ibecoming.co.il/eng/Books/583/The-New-Experience-of-the-Supersensible%3A-The-anthroposophical-knowledge-drama-of-our-time