עברית From the first Lecture: Amfortas-Parsifal Duality and its Healing
The New Spiritual Conversation Between Generations
From the first Lecture: Amfortas-Parsifal Duality and its Healing
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement Since the Death of Rudolf Steiner
Because the above described meaning of biography is important, I believe, not only to the understanding of my biography, but also to the understanding of human biography in general in our time, I would like to expand on it a little more.
Let me relate some of my family experiences, from both sides, from my experiences with my father’s and grandson’s life, in connection with the above described biographical path. My father started a whole new life when he was 85, a year after mother died, and died two months before he completed his hundredth year. And he remarried in his fifth moon node when he was 93! I always experienced with greatest wonder and awe his whole-human development and I could see how he kept growing more holistically human from one decade to the next. Naturally, the grandchildren especially received this last phase in the purest way, since they had not known him in the earlier phases! This is part of the mystery of the karmic connection between grandparents and grandchildren—that both sides receive the most precious gifts from each other, when the (hopefully blessed) end of life meets life’s blessed beginning. When the very similar yet two opposite times of earthly life meet, from both sides of life’s journey, a great light shines forth and gives blessing to the world. The grandchildren receive the most mature, and hence also the youngest, forces of older people, who have struggled to make true their humanity through all the labors and sufferings and probations of full and rich, active and creative earthly life. And the grandparents, if they have a sense for it, receive the purest, yet uncorrupted, gifts of the spiritual world, brought down to the earth right now by their grandchildren. The older people bring the mature and youngest fruits of the whole earthly life, and offer them to the grandchildren, giving them the true hope for growing up in our time; and the grandchildren bring the latest news from the spiritual world; and what can transpire in this meeting between the first and third generations is a creative wonder and grace that the world has never seen before! The parents, who stand between, in the middle of their life, will be triply blessed, if they have a sense for it. It is one of the most beautiful and sacred events that one can experience during life in the present age.
I was also especially blessed because my karma was to be born to older parents, and so I could experience a little bit of a grandchild experience together with being a very late and unexpected second child. I was son and grandson in one, to a certain extent. I could observe very well how my father gradually developed from his 70’ on, but especially from 80 to 100, the spiritual power of a wide, open heart and a tolerant and compassionate view of life (this was also true of my mother, though in a less intense way, because she died at 76). His very being and presence was becoming a blessing to his surroundings. His mature wisdom of life, love and graceful power of blessing was felt in his very presence in the room. People who were sensitive, especially children and youngsters, immediately felt this and responded in kind. Wild astral passions could truly be stilled and pacified by his presence. For me it was an unforgettable life lesson, because I could compare his becoming in the last third of his life with my memories of him in the middle of his life, and could see his remarkable transformation, that my mother could no longer experience physically. My brother, who was born 20 years before me, took on himself the whole burden of the immature version of my parents, as all firstborn children do. And this made it naturally more difficult for him to experience with an open heart the miracle of their latter transformation.
I could actually watch my father crossing the abyss of his life’s duality and reach this crowning achievement in old age. He died so inwardly young, carrying with him to the spiritual worlds such a rich harvest of life, that encompassed the whole twentieth century, after participating in its great and dramatic apocalyptic battles.
This is the most hopeful spiritual gift that we can offer our children, grandchildren and our communities, the hope of the positive, creative growing older, by becoming younger, instead of the prevalent inertia of old age today. In the midst of it, though it may take various forms in different biographies, there’s this secret, mentioned above, the secret of the threshold and of healing, the modern Grail mystery. It is a secret and mystery which is, let me say again, grounded in the active quest for world- and self-knowledge, the always renewed search to experience deeper, in a more personal way, the wonders, riddles and mysteries of the universe and of the human being. This quest can also lead you to that place of creative helplessness, that alone can allow you to become humble, compassionate and human. Here you can turn around and ask for real help, from humans, from gods, from the nature spirits, from all sides, because you will become so humble that you may begin to experience that you are not really so arrogantly all alone in the world, after all!
Then true help does come, and you will become more receptive to experience and grasp the help from the spiritual world, from people, from nature and cosmos, the real concrete help, which is offered so generously to people who work honestly and loyally in the service of truth all their lives. Not to people who say, ‘I won’t do anything, I will just continue to brood in myself, but still I demand that you give me that help.’ The only real helplessness comes out of the most intensive, continuous quest for true self- and world-knowledge, and only this is the way to the real Christ experience in our time. Then Christ’s love and light and life will be there with you, resurrecting you from the empty grave of helplessness, and will generously address your concrete pains, worries and questions, because you have done the real, active, creative work of self- and world-knowledge, and you have come to your present limits. Oh, those blessed limits! Only by crashing repeatedly into the limits and barriers of our mortal cognition and morality, do we learn to know ourselves in the age of the Consciousness Soul!
In this way, becoming older offers us the bitter-sweet, substantial experience of real hope. This is such a great gift of grace for people in our time, who can have this sweetest taste of bitter truth in the mouth when they say to themselves, ‘I can become wiser and younger as I become older. What a joy that I can give myself the chance to experience this grace of becoming older. Because being still such a wretch until now, I can hope to become a better person when I grow older. What a joy!’ I believe that for people who aspire, people who have remained spiritually loyal to their true self and its connections to the spiritual mysteries of life, nature and humanity, who develop real honest self-knowledge over years, this is the most beautiful feeling of growing up: ‘I am working hard and bounce back repeatedly at my limits, but I know I can hope to grow over time and if I don’t give up my active quest, I will hopefully become more mature and human. If I can carry this feeling of active, searching waiting and expectancy, not in an idle way, but striding forward and deeper into the mysteries of life all the way to my death, if I can die like that, what a blessed sweetness of death this must be.’
There are still only very few old people like this today. Many of the people today don’t really have much creative spiritual energy to bring to their old age and dying processes when they grow old. But a person growing younger, even if he doesn’t know it in his conscious mind, is still maturing in the depth of his and her real being. If you follow him with your loving, interested heart forces after his physical death, you would certainly feel this: He or she is born again in spirit and you know that he will be the most healthy, powerful, kicking spirit baby in the spiritual world after death, because he already started to become this strong graceful baby, the older he became. In the spiritual world he will grow younger much faster and will come back to new incarnation as such a creative, wakeful, bright baby. Those old folks, who died as young and creative souls, on coming back, become those children who are so awake, not intellectually speaking, but awake with their whole soul. These children are so unbelievably aware, awake, open, creative and moral in their whole being, you can see through them how they died so fresh, creative and young in their last death. You can meet them everywhere today. To the extent that they died open, aware, creative and energetic as old people, they will be reborn as such babies in the new earthly life. ‘Only if you become again like little children, can you enter the spiritual worlds’, Jesus told his comrades, and the same must be said today to people of all ages, while physical life is becoming ever longer: ‘if you become spiritually younger the older you become physically, you will enter the spiritual world already in the course of life, reaching a climax and culmination in the last phase of your earthly life’. Human life will become a real continuous, hopeful, graceful, process of spiritual healing, transformation and resurrection, a marvelous creative adventure, uniting generations with each other, creating a new spiritual bloodline and shared multigenerational inheritance over the whole Earth.
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement Since the Death of Rudolf Steiner