How Does the Etheric Christ Enter into Anthroposophy?

How Does the Etheric Christ Enter into Anthroposophy?

Forthcoming: The Three Meetings

Christ, Michael and Anthroposophia

Prelude to the new edition of the New Experience of the Supersensible.

Excerpts from Preface and Chapter 3: Platonic-Aristotelian Essence Exchange at the end of the 20^th Century

 As Rudolf Steiner said, the unsolved question with which Thomas von Aquinas died was ‘how does the Christ enter human thinking? How will human thinking be Christened?... This question stands in world history when Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. Up to this moment he could only advance to this question, which stands there with all heartfelt inwardness in European spiritual culture. (Lecture of 23 May 1920 (GA 74).

 The same question, ‘with all heartfelt inwardness’ also confronted a century earlier Alanus ab Insulis, the leading Platonic of Chartres, as can be seen from his book, Rhythmus über die lnkarnation Christi. (Translated from the Latin with commentary by Wilhelm Rath, Die Drei, 1951/3).

 The unresolved question of Thomas and Alanus was answered by Rudolf Steiner in the Philosophy of Freedom in 1894, on which anthroposophy is based. A century later, at the end of the 20^th century, the question resounded strongly again. It was a question anthroposophy could not answer at the beginning of the 20^th century: ‘How does the etheric Christ enters spiritual science? This question stands there in world history when Rudolf Steiner died in 1925. Up to this moment anthroposophy could only advance to this question, which stands there with all heartfelt inwardness in humanity’s spiritual culture’.

 I found myself facing this question at the beginning of my 20’, after the Christ experience, when I began to study anthroposophy. This question became my intensive concern: how does the etheric Christ enters anthroposophy? The new Damascus event, about which Rudolf Steiner spoke, was a fact of experience. But how can this be integrated with anthroposophy? The Christ experience without spiritual science, remains a personal experience. Anthroposophy without the Christ impulse remains lifeless body of knowledge. Both need each other. Therefore, I dedicate the first part of my spiritual life, unite wed them together. The preparations of this sacred marriage took some 15 years and were consummated at the beginning of the 90’, and the spirit the Philosophy of Freedom, celebrating its centenary in 1994, officiated in the ceremony. And their common child was born as the New Experience of the Supersensible, published in 1995, 20 years after the original Christ experience.  

 As I described also in other places, after I read the Philosophy of Freedom for the first time, I said to myself: it lets me breathe spiritually and bring together the Christ experience and anthroposophy. The same spiritual light illuminated the Christ experience and Anthroposophy. The pure thinking activity of the Philosophy of Freedom enlivened spiritual science and lifted the Christ experience to clear and exact perception. It became a source of light and life breathing, pulsating in perpetual rhymical flow, by means of which- as we shall see below- the etheric Christ can be perceived and investigated consciously. I said to myself: with the light and life-giving thinking of the Philosophy of Freedom, I can work towards the goal of wedding anthroposophy with the etheric Christ: the etheric Christ would enter through it into anthroposophy! With great youthful enthusiasm I started this work, but naturally at this stage, I could not know how long and difficult this path would become. I soon realized, that as the Philosophy of Freedom, prepares the marriage of Christ and Sophia, two mighty godfathers- and mothers figures stand by her side: Plato and Aristotle. In the bridge building work, that led to the sacred wedding, the three worked together. Some aspects of what it took to bring them together, are described below in chapter 3: The Platonic-Aristotelian Essence Exchange at the end of the 20^th Century.

From Chapter 3

Platonic-Aristotelian Essence Exchange at the end of the 20^th Century

 In the 80’ and 90’ of last century, my spiritual work was dedicated to creating what I called ‘the bridge of spiritual memory and continuation of consciousness’, in the sense of Goethe’s Fairy Tale. I had the strong passion and enthusiasm, to wed together anthroposophy and the new revelation of the Etheric Christ.

The first form that the bridge took was the Philosophy of Freedom. It became its first foundation and layer, on top of which the spiritual layers could be constructed.

 When I read the Philosophy of Freedom for the first time in Easter 1976, exactly a year after the original Christ experience, I realized, even in the first reading, that I produce the same spiritual light  given as gift in the Christ experience. I experienced immediately- though of course it took many years to actualize this in practical detail- that the given light of Christ and the light of pure thinking, originate from the same spiritual source. I was immensely relived, because I found a free place in my soul in which the two sides of my existence were connected. But the two sides of the bridge were not equal. I could form in from the etheric side, because pure thinking is also a spiritual process, taking place in the etheric body and world.

  Therefore, I started to build the bridge from the etheric to the physical. Pure thinking and the etheric perception enhanced each other, in full consciousness. And this experience led me, in the first years of my 20’, to form the idea and ideal of the ‘bridge’, in its initial form.

  After I worked intensively to develop the etheric part of the bride, by means of spiritualized thinking in my 20’, I came to the point in which I could say to myself: regarding the development of pure thinking, based on Goethe’s World Conception, Truth and Science, Philosophy of Freedom and Riddles of Philosophy, I have made some progress. Towards the end of my 20^’, I noticed that it caused two related changes in my thinking and imaginative faculties. Thinking became more akin to imagination, and imagination was wholly transformed by thinking. On the one hand, I could penetrate and enhance at will my imaginative perception and imbue it with the light of pure thinking. This enabled me to unite the cognitive ‘concept’ and experienced supersensible ‘percept’ in greater clarity. On the one hand, imaginative perception spiritualized thinking and lifted it to the level of imagination. Spiritualized thinking gave consistency and clarity to imaginative perception, imaginative perception transformed spiritualized thinking to imaginative perception. As I reached the end of my 20’ I could feel this as a significant progress, that spiritualized thinking transformed my imaginative cognition into more robust, clearer, and formed cognitive faculty, and spiritualized thinking itself became imaginative faculty. The essence exchange between spiritualized thinking and imagination became one stream, with two closely related functions, and I could use it as a mature cognitive capacity.

  Furthermore, now I could stand within the etheric world of the living supersensible ‘percept’, and from the etheric world ‘look back’ and grasp the changes caused by this spiritualized thinking in the etheric body. I could perceive the livingly engraved footsteps of spiritualized thinking in higher part of the etheric body, that borders on the limits of ordinary cognition. From the other, earthly side, in the etheric counterpart created by spiritualized thinking, my spiritual being and activity in the etheric world was reflected, and the Christ experience could be brought to ever clearer imaginative contours and forms. The new force of spiritual light, which came from the spiritualized thinking of the Philosophy of Freedom, allowed me now to perceive in this part of the etheric body the reflected results of my imaginative investigations in the etheric world. It was as if this spiritualized thinking transformed part of the etheric body into an etheric mirror, that could reflect the imaginative experiences, as the physical brain reflects ordinary sense perceptions and concepts. I could in this way begin to ‘re-member my etheric-imaginative experiences and investigations in the etheric world, and carry them consciously from ‘over there’ to the spiritualized part of my ordinary consciousness ‘down here",  and identify them as two sides of the same knowledge process and cosmos; I could for the first time achieve a continuation of consciousness from the etheric to spiritualized thinking that I can voluntarily actualized in the physical world. This side of the bridge extended now from imaginative consciousness to spiritualized thinking; I could also feel that the supersensible self-consciousness, that in the given Christ experience was a given gift, could connect with my ordinary ‘I’, to the extent that the ‘I’ was the source of spiritualized thinking. The moment of the meeting of my two ‘Is’ was a great event, described also in the first lecture of the Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. My spiritual existence and the activity of my ‘I’ became one continuous stream, in both worlds, because the imaginative perceptions and experiences, were reflected in the mirror created by spiritualized thinking in the etheric body, and I could experience them as belonging to the same 'l'.

 This new faculty was clearly the result of the spiritualization of thinking by means of the given etheric forces of the etheric Christ. The essence exchange between imaginative cognition and spiritualized thinking, spiritualized both activities in continuous breathing cycles and rhythms of intensification. It untied both in a higher synthesis and created the first side of the bridge of the continuation of consciousness.  

 However, I was fully conscious that the bridge was built only from above downward and reach down only the upper side of the etheric body. My ordinary cognitive life in the physical world, that run their course in sense perceptions and the forming of mental images, was below this etheric mirror, and was not directly accessible to my higher forces of cognition. 

  To this stage the bridge work could advance until the end of my 20^th. I could bridge my consciousness and myself from above downward, to the upper layers of the etheric body, where spiritualized thinking united with imaginative perception. Indeed, the etheric mirror created by means of spiritualized thinking, allowed me also to remember and conceptualize, to some extent, in ordinary consciousness, a trace and echo of our imaginative experiences. This was a source of great satisfaction, but also, on the other hand, it sharpened the experience that my consciousness is still divided, and the forces of spiritual knowledge cannot penetrate the physical body and world. There was always a barrier and veil that separated the light of my imaginative perception and cognition from the light of this world. I felt I am not fully incarnated as other people are. And I intensified my search for the cognitive forces, from which such strong forces may come, that will allow me to extend the bridge from the etheric to the physical world.

 In my ordinary consciousness, I could very well imagine the goal of the bridge work ahead, in its anthroposophical ideal form. It was clearly grasped by my ordinary consciousness. I could feel as I approached my 30’ that now a crucial probation of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming begins. Ideally, I knew what is required to acomplihsed the second part of the bridge: the death forces in the physical brain, body and world must be confronted, in the Pauline sense: ‘And now, when Paul understood this, he realized for the first time the truth of esoteric Christianity. The assimilation of death into life: this is the secret of Golgotha’. (Lecture of 2 April 1922, GA 211). This secret must become- so I said to myself at this time of my life- the guiding inspiration. This is the only way that can lead to the mysterious connection between the forces of death and the formative forces physical and imaginative cognition, and the mystery of spiritual of self-consciousness. This is the key to the riddle of how to transform and recapitulate the given Christ experience into the fully conscious Christ experience, by means of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.  But in the coming years, as I begun to work on this task, and was striving to create the soul forces needed to overcome the death forces of ordinary consciousness, I encountered great obstacles on this path...