עברית While The Philosophy of Freedom opens the way of Cognition to the Etheric Christ, the way through the transformation of feeling opens the etheric heart to His living presence in our midst.
In the present century Anthroposophy must be embodied through the transformation of the whole life of thinking, feeling and will, because in this century, all spiritual knowledge must be embodied in the free etheric heart and later in the whole etheric body, as is shown in my book Cognitive Yoga. This can be accomplished if we cultivate our feelings in all the members and forces of the body, soul and spirt. We can do this in the following ninefold manner: we strive to embody love, hope and faith in our etheric, physical and astral bodies, reverence to truth, beauty and goodness in our sentient, mind and consciousness souls, and gratitude, becoming one with our fate, and wonder, in the seeds of our spirit self, life spirit and spirit man.
The Nine-Fold Spiritualization of Feeling, in Body, Soul and Spirit
Lecture given in the Global School of Spiritual Science in Scandinavia, 23. 9. 2018
As Rudolf Steiner said, the etheric body, which is already separated from the physical head, is rapidly separating itself also from the physical heart. In 2100 this process will be complete. This has good and bad aspects to it. The good is that the spiritualization of the cognitive forces of soul and body, of feeling and later also of the will, can be intensified today as never before. But this requires that we develop truly active and creative forces of thinking, feeling and will. In this case, the released etheric forces from the head down to the heart will allow us to expand and deepen our relations to each other and to the real spiritual worlds in a way that was never before possible in human evolution. The intimacy of our anthroposophical work and relations with each other, and our ability to raise our community to the higher worlds and cooperate with the guiding beings of the Michaelic school and movement, will be graced by a previously unattainable vitality, light and love. On the other hand, as we see everywhere, when the free etheric heart is left empty, it is used by Lucifer and Ahriman to achieve their technological singularity and immortality, that are becoming easy, fast and efficient.
This must also be understood on the background of the development of the Michaelic movement during the present age of Michael as a whole. This age of Michael extends over 3 full centuries, from 1879 until 2300, and the present 21. century is therefore its second, middle, century.
When it was realized in the spiritual world that the hoped-for culmination of Anthroposophy at the end of the 20th century will not be realized as planned, the Michaelic strategy for the present Michaelic age has changed. To understand the meaning of this change, we have to understand what the original plan was. The original plan was based on the hope that humanity will be able to embody anthroposophy in creative thinking, feeling and will, and that around the turn of the Millennium, thousands of humans will be walking among us, who are able to embody it as whole human beings.
Therefore, the Michaelic plan has to be adapted to this factual situation. The same goal must still be accomplished, but now not in one century, but more realistically in the course of the 21. and 22. Michaelic centuries. The spiritual world is trying to turn our attention to the fact that the etheric body is almost totally freed also from the heart. If this is properly experienced, new forces of thinking, feeling and will can be developed, in far more intense and creative ways than in the 20. century.
This means that in the present century anthroposophy must be embodied in the whole human being, in body, soul and spirit simultaneously. To achieve this we practice the cultivation of feelings as intensively as we strengthen our thinking, actively developing the forces of love, hope and faith in the three bodies, reverence to truth, beauty and goodness in our three soul forces and members, and gratitude, acceptance of fate and wonder in the three future potential members of our spirit.