עברית The Occult Significance of the 12 years 1933-45 in the Light of Spiritual Science
"At the end of the twentieth century we are already after the 'appearance of the Sun' that has to take place in etheric Imagination for earthly life. The Christ will appear for the Earth when almost everyone has abandoned Him; when all that mankind knows of Him is His name".
- Helmuth von Moltke through Rudolf Steiner, 27 March 1919
Introduction
This short study of the Imagination of the twentieth century's central spiritual Event is the outcome of lectures I gave on the subject to members of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany and Great Britain in the years 1992-93. The subject of the Imagination was intended as the last chapter of my book The New Experience of the Supersensible (Temple Lodge, 1995-2008). After describing in detail the modern Christ experience and its anthroposophical deepening, this work should have ended with an imaginative ‘time picture' of the twentieth century as a whole and its supersensible culmination at the end of the century. This culmination, whose light increasingly illuminates the whole last third of the twentieth century and reaches a dramatic climax at its end and at the beginning of the next, also contains the seed for the Michaelic task of the twenty-first century. It was in the course of researching the time picture of the twentieth century as a whole that my attention was increasingly led to concentrate on the beginning of the second third of this century, especially on the 12 years 1933-45.
However, when writing the above-mentioned book, I was not yet able to describe this period of time in concrete detail. The Imagination itself had been, indeed, quite clearly present before my inner eye for some years, but only by speaking on this theme to anthroposophical audiences did I find the words and the mental pictures needed to portray it adequately. The lecture tours in Germany and Great Britain were especially significant for me in this respect. During these lectures I could strongly feel how the guiding hand of the Time Spirit, Michael, was active in the listeners, enabling us to grasp with exact thinking the supersensible mysteries of the aforementioned 12 years. I increasingly perceived how, the more I entered deeper into these mysteries and gained in courage, the more the listeners them- selves were active and creative in offering the required thought-forms out of their own anthroposophical experience of this subject. And the more this mutual spiritual dialogue and co-operation with the audience developed, the clearer and surer was the guiding hand of the Time Spirit felt.
In this way a united group effort revealed itself in which the speaker becomes the organ for expressing the specific supersensible circumstance that wishes to manifest at the present time. He becomes the hearer who listens most attentively to the unheard Word spiritually spoken when people come together in the spirit of true freedom and love. He then transforms his listening being so that he is able to express what is living and weaving in the hearts of the audience. There takes place a mutually quickening and awakening dialogue that raises and enhances the faculties of the speaker (the real listener) and listeners (through whom the Word resounds) at the same time. Through this experience, man gains the conviction that the Michaelic mysteries of our age can only articulate themselves through a suitable community language which is created in such a united communal process.
True, the spiritual researches can experience the supersensible events by means of his own forces, without reliance on physical circumstances. But this changes when he wishes to find the words by means of which to communicate his experiences in the physical world. For this, a mutual human and spiritual awakening in a real community must take place, when we wish to find the power needed to speak about the deepest riddles of the twentieth century and beyond. Only a true anthroposophical community spirit can help us, for alone we can achieve very little in this respect. This is an absolute necessity when we wish to raise the Imagination of the century's Event to full consciousness.
In and through this Event the deepest human and Michaelic forces of our time are working, continuously shaping our destiny. They spring from the very heart center of our Time Spirit. The self-consciously formed vessel of true community is the only means to bring them down to the earth, make them comprehensible and then actually realize them in the social life of humanity at the end of this century and the beginning of the next.
Jesaiah Ben-Aharon,
Harduf, Israel, Easter Eve, 1993