The Christ Event in Art

The Christ Event in Art

From Chapter 4

The Event in Science, History, Philosophy & Art

‘Could it not be that a tremendously important Event is taking place in the world, taking place right now, of which our own contemporaries have no presentiment? This is indeed so. A highly important Event is taking place that is perceptible, however, only to spiritual vision.’

– Rudolf Steiner, 25 January, 1910

My research of the actualization process of the Christ Event in art, has found that there are seven elements, ‘becomings,’ or stages of metamorphosis that compose this Event:

1. Threshold identity, by means of which the personal identify of the artist must be completely transformed.
2. Initiation language, that must be formed, to express the crossing of the threshold as living event.
3. Sensation body, which is the main tool of the artist, formed in the Event as new body composed of the Christ permeated and transformed, elementary soul and bodily forces.
4. Vortex (Metamorphosis). This is the central stage of the entire process, in which the work of art and the being of the artist go through a thorough Umstülpung, of all dimensions.
5. Consciousness crystal, is the main organ of artistic perception and creation, created by the Christ Event in the human soul.
6. Memory and destiny (Guardian of the Threshold). Here the work of art becomes a revelation of destiny, a meeting with oneself, a shocking confrontation with the Guardian.
7. History (Resurrection), can only be achieved, if the sevenfold process becomes a creative habit, deeply ingrained in the soul and etheric bodies.

 ARTISTIC WORK STRIVES to become ‘worthy of the Christ event’ and of the challenges of the 21st century, just like our sciences, history, and philosophy. This becoming will be described in this chapter, bearing in mind that it will be a condensed introduction to rich fields of contemporary creativity. John Cage often experienced and described this new artistic experience: ‘My favorite music is the music I haven’t yet heard. I don’t hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I have [not] yet heard...A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is [becoming].’

 This is a most exact description of the Umstülpung and inversion inside out and outside in, of the physical and spiritual states and processes of consciousness, from which the new artistic becoming begins. It must be noted that Cage begins by saying what his favorite music is: the music he has not yet heard. This means nothing less than he is living in the midst of the process of becoming itself, and has already transformed his likes and dislikes, his pleasures, etc., into this new, future oriented, stream. Now this also makes it understandable why writing has a reversed significance for Cage. Writing is but a mirror that reflects becoming and consciously makes audible music that is not yet heard. The physical writing is for Cage only the means of becoming conscious of that, which, unconsciously (that is, beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness) is striving to become conscious. Therefore, such music, when performed and listened to, is capable of bringing the listener into contact with his own stream of becoming, because he must listen to such music not with his ordinary, physically hardened cognition, perceptions, and judgment, but with a truly ‘open minded’ cognition and heart.

This listening experience is described thus:

 ‘We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn’t speak or talk like a human being, that doesn’t know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expressed itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same”. (Cage, Anarchic Harmony).

Read the whole chapter, The Event in Art