עברית Since 2017, 2018 and 2019, in Israel, Germany and Sweden, respectively, we began to experience the threefold etheric heartbeat of Michael in our communal etheric body. Now we can venture to cross the Atlantic Ocean in August 2020 to experience its next stage of formation through the subterranean forces of the western, North American land of death.
Ganganda Greida: The Circulating Communion and the New Global Etheric Body
An Extract Form the Fifth Lecture: The Etheric Form is Alive
Let it be fired from the East,
What through the West is formed;
Speaking thus:
In Christo morimur.
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement since the Death of Rudolf Steiner.
This is the most important anthroposophical task since the end of last century: to connect these three etheric streams and forces together on the earth. The etheric forces streaming from the Middle of the Earth and the Mystery of Golgotha, the etheric forces flowing so purely from the Northern Spirit, the future life forces of Vidar and his Asgardian family; and the etheric forces burning in Middle Europe, wounded through humanity’s wound and transformed in the etheric world into the future forces that must be about humanity’s healing. This is only possible through the etheric forces of the etheric Second Coming. If we succeed in merging the spiritualized essences of these three etheric streams, and connect them with the North American stream, we will be repeating, by means of our conscious, earthly human deeds, what was and is suffered and accomplished in the etheric world in the spiritual School of Michael during 1933-45, up till today and on into the far future, and prepare its next major incarnation of the Earth.
Since 2017, 2018 and 2019, in Israel, Germany and now in Sweden, respectively, we began to experience the threefold etheric heartbeat of Michael in our communal etheric body. Now we can venture to cross the Atlantic Ocean in August 2020 to experience its next stage of formation through the subterranean forces of the western, North American land of death. This is a step that we must take in order to round up the basic formation of our communal etheric body and make it whole, because the experience of the death mysteries of North America belongs to the global task of the stream of Michael in the twenty-first century. Now we can take with us in our etheric hearts over the Atlantic the forces of resurrected Anthroposophy, after it came to life in the Israeli-Germanic-Nordic stream of new life forces, to test and steel it in the North American inferno. If you travel to North America with empty etheric heads, hearts, hands and feet, you make your empty etheric body into Ahriman’s best tool. But if you come armed with the youngest etheric forces extracted from the so-called ‘old’ world and bring them to the so-called ‘new’ world, you will experience the inversion of the common meaning of these terms. Then the ‘old world’—starting from Israel as the ‘oldest land of all’—will become the fountain of resurrected, new, eternal life, and the ‘new world’ will let it go through the core of the modern forces of death, that one can only access, in this form and intensity, in North America.
This is also the reason why Cognitive Yoga had to be written in North America, though it was prepared beforehand in Israel: because the creation of the new etheric body and individuality had to take place through the forces of death of North America. The polarity between Israel and North America is placed along the East-West line, as Israel-Germany-Scandinavia is placed along the South-North line. In this way we integrate also the East-West dimension into our work, and the threefold etheric heartbeat of Michael will be able to enliven and animate from now on the fourfold etheric planetary life cycle. We must feel this as an actual spiritual event, as it is said in the second part of the Foundation Stone Meditation:
For the will of Christ reigns in the earthly sphere
Granting grace to souls in cosmic rhythms:
[...]
Let it be fired from the East,
What through the West is formed;
Speaking thus:
In Christo Morimur.
We must feel deeply this western dying in Christ, when we kindle the living flame of the etheric Christ impulse in our etheric hearts in Israel, and make it ever younger in our travels via Middle and Northern Europe; then we let it die in North America, in order to come to life again in a more robust and mature form as it flows back through Scandinavia, Germany and Israel. This eternal fire of the Christ spirit, kindled in our etheric hearts in Israel, could receive the present wound of humanity in Germany, because we could experience the redemptive Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century; it then became young again and found the future fountain of new life in Scandinavia; and now it is ready to die in the death forces of the West. Then the spiritual planetary stream of Christ’s Will, flowing from East to West, North and South, will be able to unite through us with the threefold etheric heartbeat of Michael, humanity and the earth.
In my book Cognitive Yoga, I described how the individualized etheric body and spiritual individuality are formed through the spiritual activity of pure thinking and sense perception. They were born in Christ’s new spiritual fire in the East and travelled to the West, to take concrete form in North America. This book is from cover to cover a creation of the Consciousness Soul, because it is created out of the etherized thinking of The Philosophy of Freedom and the etherized extracts of sense-perceptions. It is a fully conscious spiritualization of the Consciousness Soul, transforming it to the spiritual and imaginative souls in which the seed of Spirit Self can begin to grow. This creation also planted on the earth the seed of the ‘I’ child of Anthroposophia, that was born during the Christmas Foundation Conference and was taken immediately to the etheric world. As we said in our previous lectures, it is now ready to be received by human beings and become the foundation of the etheric body of the Michaelic movement in the earthly-human sun. If we follow the destiny of this newborn spirit ‘I’ of humanity in the etheric world after the short-lived Christmas Foundation Conference and Rudolf Steiner’s death, we experience that it was burned to ashes and resurrected out of the infernal fires of the forces of death and evil during the 12 years 1933-45. We must learn, now on the earth, to individualize and communalize what we experienced in the etheric world during these years before we came down to the earth to our present incarnation. And for this we need to let this spirit ‘I’ child be baptized and be reborn—as Dionysus was—in the death fires of the West.
This means that together with our experience of the mysteries of evil and its redemption in Germany, we must seek and find the death forces at their western source, with open etheric hearts and minds and courageous will forces. This is necessary because we must learn how to let our communal etheric body and newborn spirit ‘I’ be spiritually steeled in this core of death and rebirth. In Germany we learn to experience the mysteries of modern evil and place it in the centre of our etheric hearts. To North America we must turn to face Ahriman in his most powerful global stronghold. (246)
As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, ‘We do not gain a sight of the real “I” before we can observe... this death process, the process of inner decomposition. And the one who has grasped that the “I” is a tireless fighter against this death process has grasped that the “I” is a being that, as such, has nothing to do with death...Man enters a realm where death has no significance... So we come to the “I” when we study death,’247 And a month later: ‘This “I”, how is it created? Because the human being can delve into the chaos of destruction, this “I” can be shaped and build itself. This “I” must be steeled and condensed in that world that exists in man as a world of destructive forces,’ (248) This means that death must be most intimately ‘befriended’, if we strive to actualize Rudolf Steiner’s words, spoken two weeks before his last address: ‘To develop in oneself the forces of eternal soul awakening means: To experience death next to you as a good friend and constant companion.’ (249)
This is the real reason why we must travel now together, as a living community, to North America. In the last 20 years I travelled to North America repeatedly, and schooled myself systematically in its death mysteries. An echo of this process you can find in the two lectures about the ‘High Tor Legend’, that you can read in the book Spiritual Science in the 21st Century, (250) and also, from another point of view, in America’s Global Responsibility. (251) Now it can become part of our community building. Our newly born etheric body and individuality must be steeled in this death process, because they must in the future serve as a strong individual and communal etheric body and spiritual individuality, to form the robust Grail community chalice that totally fell apart after the Christmas Foundation Conference in 1923-4. By 2023-4, at least its seed essence must be ready to allow the Foundation Stone of Love, planted in our etheric hearts in the Christmas Foundation Conference, which is in reality our cosmic-earthly human being, the conscious builder on the earth of the cosmic earthly-human sun, to begin to live and work on the earth for the first time in human evolution.
The Christmas Foundation Conference 2.0 will only happen if we can ground it in real life, not in endlessly repeating and interpreting the Foundation Stone meditation; it must be done, not merely spoken and written about; it must become the living substance that nourishes the real community building process, as we do in the global school community and in the Global Event College. This alone can activate the youthful and enthusiastic will forces, let them stream into the freed etheric heart and kindle there the flame of true love and brotherhood, to illuminate our head with the light of the purest cosmic thoughts. But these forces can only be activated in the real human meeting, face to face, soul to soul and heart to heart. What was not yet accomplished in anthroposophical life and work on the earth, must be accomplished, the sooner the better, and it can only take place in the real event of the most intimate human meeting, experiencing the wonder and grandeur of each human soul; it requires actual, real, practical, doing together of the reversed cultus, producing daily the gospel of the physical world and cultivating, harvesting and sharing the daily bread and wine of the new spiritual communion, that can become real only through the mutually awakening, empowering, creative human meeting.
The true Grail mysteries only reveal their secrets to those who dare to actively, courageously, youthfully and enthusiastically, ask the real question today: How can we build this communal etheric body? How can the wound caused by the forces of our death and evil become the source of new life and healing? How can the Michaelic Christ impulse be found, through the Nordic forces of Vidar, that alone can make us so young again, that it will become the living substance and power of this etheric body?
When we travel to North America together, this new communal etheric body must also undergo the modern process of death and resurrection in the ahrimanic core of death. The infinitely seductive and all-conquering power of this death force streams from North America, and since the end of the last century, it has dominated all human consciousness, culture, politics, and economy on the entire earth. Ahriman’s astral dome—which in reality is a whole closed sphere, because it extends as deep into the earth below as high into the atmosphere above—covers today tightly the whole earth and separates it entirely from the spiritual worlds inside and outside. Without experiencing this firsthand, the threefold etheric stream of Michael cannot become whole, nor will it be able to develop the necessary intensity to enlarge the tiny hole in this ahrimanic dome and reconnect humanity again with the real spiritual world. (252)
This is an important secret of the new etheric mysteries of the Michaelic age. Then we can return Northward with new and firsthand practical knowledge of the forces of death and illness, life and healing, which is necessary for developing the future planetary, global, forces of new life. As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, in the past the initiates in the mysteries of Hibernia made repeated expeditions to America, to study the ahrimanic forces of illness and death and their healing. (253) We must do the same today through the resurrected forces of spiritual science.
Thus we will fulfil the esoteric task required in the above-mentioned sense, that ‘cultures go westward to die, and eastward to be reborn’, if we learn how to be constantly in movement, inwardly and outwardly, livingly circulate, as an etheric community, back and forth, between East and West, South and North; becoming the pulsating seed of the new planetary rhythmic system, transforming Christ’s earthly-human sun into global cognitive etheric breathing.
In this way we will complete our first communal Ur-cycle from Israel, via Europe and Scandinavia, to North America-and circulate with it in all directions in the coming years. We will have completed the first whole planetary movement in our wandering communal Grail quest, and we will be able to embody the new etheric stream of Michael on the earth. Then one would be able to say: The Age of Michael can finally really begin on the earth among ordinary mortals! As it began in the heavens in 1879 and was realized on the earth for a short time by Rudolf Steiner up till 1925, it can begin now to take place through us—through ordinary human beings! (254) And we will be able to begin to build, in full consciousness, by means of the reversed cultus, the etheric, astral and spiritual bodies for the possible second incarnation of the being of Anthroposophia...
Notes
246 Ahriman rules the world from his stronghold in North America, and from
there he arranged his unlawful marriage with Lucifer, summoned from the east, to prepare Germany for the ‘emerging of the Beast from the abyss in 1933’, which took place in the middle, ‘I’ centre, of modern humanity.
247 GA 206, 20.8.1921.
248 GA 207, 23.9.1921.
249 GA 346, 9.9.1924.
250 Spiritual Science in the 21st Century: Transforming evil, meeting the other, and
awakening to the global initiation of humanity, Temple Lodge, 2017.
251America’s Global Responsibility: Individuation, Initiation and Threefolding,
Lindisfarne books, 2004.
252 This Ahrimanic dome, in which the two apocalyptic Beasts rule with iron fists, was completed in 1933-1998. It gave the whole twentieth century its particular evil closure and signature. Thanks to the grace of karma given by the new etheric Christ impulse, a Michaelic hole could be punched through it at the end of the twentieth century. That hole must today be enlarged and expanded by the new Michaelic community. In greater detail this is described in my Utrecht lecture from 1997, The Working of the Christ in the Apocalyptic Spiritual Conditions of the 20th and 21st Centuries, included in the book, Spiritual Science in the 21st Century.
253 GA 178, 16.11.1917.
254 We are reminded here that in October 1922 Rudolf Steiner still spoke about
the beginning of the Age of Michael in future terms, in the lecture cycle to
the younger generation. (GA 217, 15.10.1922)
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The History of the Michaelic Movement since the Death of Rudolf Steiner.