עברית The meaning of the expression, ‘Rudolf Steiner’s life as a whole’, or, in its precise esoteric meaning, ‘the mystery of the etheric body of Rudolf Steiner’.
From Chapter 3: The Universal Language of Michael and the Being of Rudolf Steiner
The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity
The Development of the Michaelic Movement since the death of Rudolf Steiner
The meaning of the expression, ‘Rudolf Steiner’s life as a whole’, or, in its precise esoteric meaning, ‘the mystery of the etheric body of Rudolf Steiner'.
If we strive honestly to become Rudolf Steiner’s loyal pupils, it is because we strive to become truly free and creative modern people in the age of the Consciousness Soul. And we know that true freedom, that leads to true love, can only be based on the freely offered devotion to the spiritual truth and practice that the great teacher of this new age, Rudolf Steiner, gave and continues to give also today, to humanity. In saying this, we must emphasize also the following, otherwise the above statement will remain a general idea. The law of spiritual brotherhood is absolutely real and practical, and it grounds the possibility of the continuation of the spiritual evolution of humanity in the true reality of the world. It maintains that no advance in any spiritual evolution is possible, if we don’t assimilate the previous discoveries of humanity’s teachers. What is originally discovered by an initiate like Rudolf Steiner, cannot be discovered again by someone else out of nothing. One must first of all learn it from him and only later will one be able also to experience it independently in the spiritual world. Rudolf Steiner formulated this law in this manner:
“Even a clairvoyant must get to know what has already been discovered, and then, after conscientious training, he can perceive the facts himself. It may be said that the divine beings fertilize a faculty of seership only once in a human soul and if this single, virginal fertilization has been achieved, then other human beings must pay attention to what this first soul has discovered in order to have the right to see it themselves. This law lays the foundations of an inner, universal brotherliness, a true brotherhood of men”.
Because our task in the first half of this century is to individualize and communalize Rudolf Steiner life’s work as a whole, I wish to add now another aspect, of a more esoteric nature, to the understanding of this task. It will shed a deeper light on the esoteric meaning of the expression, ‘Rudolf Steiner’s life as a whole’, or, in its precise esoteric meaning, ‘the mystery of the etheric body of Rudolf Steiner’.
The Mystery of the Etheric Body of Rudolf Steiner
We come now to a subject that must be handled with the greatest esoteric responsibility. It is an esoteric fact that today we are required to build a solid foundation for the Michaelic stream in this century. This stream must have a firm etheric body in which alone it can incarnate. Our work in the School of Spiritual Science has this task, to build this etheric body and later the higher bodies and spiritual faculties as well. This is the new task of the School of Michael on the Earth now and in the near future, about which we shall speak more in the next lectures as well. This requires a fundamental change of our perception and understanding of what Anthroposophy was for us until now; it must become something totally different than what it was previously, because from now on we would know that we serve a purpose that is directly connected to the goals of the real spiritual worlds. Then we will do Anthroposophy with wholly transformed feelings and sensations, because we will feel and will it—not only think about it, but deeply feel and will it—that its real being must from now on be able to live, breathe and weave among us when we come together in our meetings, because we would experience, not only in our heads, but in our etheric hearts and bodies, that we work with and for the real supersensible leadership of the real School of Michael. We will learn to feel, sense, embody, its true spiritual being among us. And this feeling must grow to such an intensity, that we will be able, in the coming years, to really build this etheric body as the chalice that will embody on the earth this supersensible school.
But the new communal etheric body that must be consciously built by the whole community of the School of Spiritual Science, must be first of all based on what we said above concerning the real being of Rudolf Steiner. What we said above was meant as a demonstration, not to add more theoretical anthroposophical knowledge to our heads; I wanted to indicate that the time has arrived that this being must be able to work with and through us in a fully conscious way. This being must be expe- rienced, sensed and felt, embodied, not only thought about; it must be experienced with the same intensity that we experience our own personal life, our embodied worries, concerns, joys and sorrows. If the being of Rudolf Steiner would be able to live with and through us—and he is the only being through whom Michael can work with us today—that ‘his life as a whole’, must not remain an abstraction, or an external story about his physical or spiritual biography. The eternal being of Rudolf Steiner can only work with us through his eternally preserved and growing life body as a whole. This living body, full of the most creative life of becoming and metamorphosis, must become a living part of our life body, it must become embodied in our own life body, embodied, felt and sensed here and now in our freed etheric hearts, as we gather together to build the new etheric body of the Michaelic stream. Then the real life forces streaming out of his etheric body will become a source of vibrant new creative life, and we will be able to sense and feel this source and flow of new creative life, and be inspired by its light and warmth, whenever we truly strive to walk the talk of real spiritual science.
This was my intention when I wrote about Rudolf Steiner ’s etheric body in the Foreword to the German translation (1995) and second English edition of the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century (1996). This etheric body is the supersensible foundation that made possible the investigation and communication of what took place in the etheric world in 1933-45, about which we spoke yesterday. And it is also the supersensible etheric foundation of the lectures that we give now. I added this Foreword to indicate how my research was made possible, for those who can courageously open their etheric hearts, ears and eyes, to grasp, hear and see the true Michaelic mysteries of our time.
The first meaning that this etheric body has for our work, was described in the following words of Prokofieff: ‘It is after all the most important task of the anthroposophists of the twentieth century, to give the etheric body of Rudolf Steiner—by means of their work dedicated loyally to the essential spiritual impulse of Anthroposophy—such a power, that this etheric body will enable his pupils, that will be enlightened by it, to experience the Christ in a direct way. Or in other words: that the Christ Himself will be able, from the end of the twentieth century on, to work through the etheric body of Rudolf Steiner among his pupils.’ Prokofieff’s precise words offer a general characterization of the idea of this body. But if this body becomes an object of real imaginative experience, it can be observed and studied closely as any other etheric being and process. Because this has been part of our esoteric work since the 80s and 90s of last century, it can now also become the basis of our communal work. In this work we will learn, more and more, to embody this body through a real communal practice that will be actualized in concrete, practical, esoteric detail.
Before we start the concrete investigation of this etheric body, it will be helpful, first, to understand better what is really meant by the above-mentioned ‘loyalty’ to Anthroposophy that strengthens the etheric body of Rudolf Steiner. Second, we will briefly compare Rudolf Steiner’s etheric body with the etheric body of Christian Rosenkreuz, that is also profoundly connected to the mysteries of the etheric appearance of the Christ in our time.
Continue reading in chapter 3: The Universal Language of Michael and the Being of Rudolf Steiner