עברית I could find in the North what makes spiritual science younger and future oriented, because both in Israel and Germany, the shadows of the past still loom large over the spiritual horizon. You cannot otherwise reach the German folk spirit, that stands aloof in the higher spiritual worlds in all loneliness, if you don’t bring towards it, from the earth below, the Christ forces from Israel’s spiritual aura and the Vidar’s forces from the North.
My Path to Vidar and the Youthful Becoming of Humanity
Some excerpts from the fifth lecture: The Etheric Form is Alive
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement Since the Death of Rudolf Steiner.
Temple Lodge 2020
I could find in the North what makes spiritual science younger and future oriented, because both in Israel and Germany, the shadows of the past still loom large over the spiritual horizon. You cannot otherwise reach the German folk spirit, that stands aloof in the higher spiritual worlds in all loneliness, if you don’t bring towards it, from the earth below, the Christ forces from Israel’s spiritual aura and the Vidar’s forces from the North. Then Middle Europe can come to life again, but in no other way.
In concluding the last lecture after these truly blessed days in the North, I would like to return to my spiritual biography, and connect it to the above described tasks of the present Michaelic movement. When did I come to Sweden for the first time? It was for the Northern Conference at the turn of the millennium. That was also my first visit to Scandinavia. It is now 20 years ago. It was the first time I could begin to experience the Nordic spirit also from the physical point of view. Before this, my connection to the North was only spiritual. I was always aware, already in the 80s of the last century, that in some mysterious way, the Nordic spirit plays an essential role in the complex subject of the etheric appearance of the Christ. This was clear to me and yet it was very difficult to get hold of it, grasp and name it. As I said above, of course I used everything Rudolf Steiner said about the mission of the North. But this proved to begin with to have only a minor effect. In the course of the last 20 years it has gradually become more substantial and comprehensible, thanks to my repeated visits to Sweden and later also to Norway. With each visit, I felt that I could bring together a little more closely the physical and spiritual aspects of my experience of the North. It was a long and gradual process and it remained so until 2008, 2009, 2010. This slippery Nordic spirit remained a mystery to me for many years. It felt like trying to grasp and hold a constantly swirling vortex of water or air or catch a fast jumping salmon in the act! You think you could grab it by the tail, but it disappears as fast as a lightning and comes to haunt you from behind. You cannot grasp and hold it for a long enough time to be able to create an imag- inative impression, let alone a picture or concept of its real being.
This contrasted very markedly with my spiritual experience in Israel. Here I was fully at home from the very start, because through the early Christ experience, the spiritual and physical sides of Israel merged together naturally. And Germany was somewhat in the middle between the two. So, you can say: For me, in Israel the Christ impulse and Anthro- posophy were fully embodied and recognized, as one spiritual-soul and physical reality. In the North it was for many years a rather nebulous experience. In Germany I felt most at home in the German spirit and soul, from the beginning of my acquaintance with Anthroposophy. The physical connection with Germany was not necessary to grasp clearly its spirit. I felt inwardly completely at home in German thinking, German philosophy and art, fully from within, and needed no physical support for this. In Germany, my spiritual world, or the spiritual world that I was most intimately connected to, was experienced intimately and inwardly as my own spiritual world, embodied and recognized in my soul, without a need for a physical foundation for this experience. In Israel, all three worlds were fully embodied. In the North, what I could experience spiritually, I could not even translate properly to my inner soul life and soul language. From the East, from Israel, I looked up to Middle Europe and to the North and could feel that this is one essential Michaelic stream that flows from East to West, from South to North and back. But I experienced the Nordic stream behind and above the German side of the stream, as far more ethereal in comparison with the down-to-earth, solid Israeli experience and the fully ensouled and inwardly experienced German spirit. I said to myself: this Northern spirituality is something that belongs to the future, something that I will have first to prepare myself to grasp and therefore I must wait much longer until it ripens in my soul, before I will be able to make it fully concrete and real in my spiritual perception.... (280)
Many more years of intensive spiritual scientific work were necessary to penetrate much deeper into those dead and unconscious places in the bodies and soul in which the wound of Amfortas festers, where you first have to face fearful ahrimanic-luciferic death and evil forces in yourself. The dragon that is rooted so deeply there pushes away all your efforts to penetrate and discover the precious treasures of pure life that he is guarding. But if you can demon- strate to him that you can use the Christ impulse in the above described way, to overcome and redeem death and evil, you can assuage him and put him to blessed, redemptive, sleep, and he will open to you the way to the sources of eternal youth-giving life. Then you cross this thresh- old consciously and you find that the dragon is guarding the fountain of eternal and youthful life, the sleeping beauty, the childhood of humanity. And this fountain, so you experience now, is the rightful domain of Vidar. Here he can truly be found, at last! And when you search for him there, you begin to comprehend many things that you experienced before for decades as mighty and unfathomable riddles. Now the childhood forces begin to speak about themselves and you begin to understand their language. This treasure is in reality the life-giving fountain of eternal youth, that flows from the remotest spiritual corners of Paradise preserved in the North through Vidar, nourished by the pristine forces of the originally preserved forces of humanity’s childhood, protected in our deepest unconsciousness, lest we uncover them too soon and misuse them to fulfil our egotistical desires.
I could, therefore, find in the North what makes spiritual science younger and future oriented, because both in Israel and Germany, the shadows of the past still loom large over the spiritual horizon. You cannot otherwise reach the German folk spirit, that stands aloof in the higher spiritual worlds in all loneliness, if you don’t bring towards it, from the earth below, the Christ forces from Israel’s spiritual aura and the Vidar’s forces from the North. Then Middle Europe can come to life again, but in no other way. Therefore, I could feel, after some 20 years of search and research, that the following three main elements of Vidar are becoming a fully conscious part of my spiritual work, allowing me to bring down to the earth the threefold etheric heartbeat of Michael, described above. ...
When I felt that I could weave these three elements and combine them together, to form one etheric whole, I felt that I succeeded in making the etheric threefold heartbeat of Michael into a reality in my own free ethe- ric body. And it is along this path, the present Michaelic-Christ path of spiritual science, that we are led to the etheric world in which the etheric Christ appears, which is also the paradisiacal land of Vidar. From this world, he gathered the purest etheric forces and shapes them to that ‘living etheric form’ in which the etheric Christ appears. But you cannot find this land, not to say enter it, through your arbitrary volition and intention, desires and ambitions. You must prove to yourself, in prolonged spiri- tual work and toil, that you can spiritualize earthly cognition, overcome death, retrieve from Ahriman the cosmic intelligence that he captured, because Michael gave it freely to humanity, and return it in your etheric heart to Michael. Because it is Michael alone, who ‘liberates thought from the sphere of the head; he clears the way for it to the heart; he enkindles enthusiasm in the feelings, so that the human mind can be filled with devotion for all that can be experienced in the light of thought’. Then for you, indeed, ‘The Age of Michael has dawned.’ You can experience, not in dead thoughts, but with your full etheric heart: ‘Hearts are beginning to have thoughts... To understand this means to receive Michael into the heart. Thoughts which at the present time strive to grasp the Spiri- tual must originate in hearts which beat for Michael as the fiery Prince of Thought in the Universe.’ (286) And this reciprocal activity between the human soul and spirit and Michael, opens the way to the etheric Christ in our time, and with Him, also to the youthful forces of Vidar.
All this was as it were compressed in the third major transformation and culmination of the Michaelic stream in the twentieth century, the totally ignored culmination of Anthroposophy at the end of last century, about which we spoke yesterday; but this event can no longer be sup- pressed; with the waves of the powerful tides of the new Michaelic revelation, it is becoming the living foundation of the new stream of Michael in this century...
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement Since the Death of Rudolf Steiner.
Temple Lodge 2020