עברית The Three Meetings
Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia (forthcoming 2022).
The Ur-Phenomena of the Modern Christ Experience
Paul’s Christ Experience and the Birth of Christian Platonism
The Three Meetings
Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia (forthcoming 2022).
From Chapter 1
Rudolf Steiner's spiritual investigations have shown that Paul's experience at the gates of Damascus is an archetype of the experience of the etheric Christ in the Second Coming, that will become increasingly possible for more people from the 30s and 40s of last century and in the coming 3000 years. [1]
The unique nature of Paul's experience was that it combined 3 streams together, in a wholly new spiritual synthesis. First, Paul received the gift of the new spiritual faculties, that allowed him to experience the etheric Christ as a given event. For humanity, these faculties will begin to appear only since 1933. Second, Paul was thoroughly schooled in Greek and Roman thinking of his time. And third, he was also an 'initiate of the old Cabala' prior to this experience. [2] Therefore, it was his pioneering task to unite these three into one stream, spiritualized by the new Christ impulse. His mission was to form out of the three the new synthesis of the Christian path of initiation, which takes into full consideration the fact that, beginning with Plato and Aristotle, the cosmic sun intelligence is descending to the earth, following the incarnation of Christ, departing from hands of Michael. This synthesis was Paul’s original spiritual creation. That is, the Pauline, consciously investigated Christ experience is the first -and archetypal- example of the self-conscious and free, active reciprocal connection between the Christ experience, thinking, and the principle of initiation, which together make possible clear and precise knowledge of Christ. The same synthesis must be achieved also today, by means of our individual spiritual activity, through modern spiritual science.
The essence of Paul’s spiritual creation is the same today as it was 2000 years ago, because it is the etheric Christ that stands in the center of this creation. Our task is to bring all the forces of the Consciousness Soul, through spiritual science, to meet the etheric Christ, to investigate the modern Christ experience, as Paul did with the forces of the Mind Soul in the fourth post Atlantean age.
Rudolf Steiner characterized Paul’s unique creation, that he calls the ‘Pauline Method’, in this way:
'The first who could perceive the cosmic significance of the Christ was Paul, who could perceive how the power of Christ's being streamed into the aura of the Earth. That which was grasped by Paul as a specific point of the knowledge of Christ can, if we deepen the occultism of our time, be grasped by man in wider fields of Christ knowledge. If the vision of Paul ... be extended from what for Paul was almost only the perception of Jesus Christ, to the life of Jesus Christ as a whole, then the Pauline method will be extended from a single center over the total event of Jesus Christ's life. If today we can reach the position, by means of devoted occult research, making the Pauline method a general method of Christ knowledge, a real advance in the knowledge of the Christ will have occurred'. [3]
For those who strive today to form an individualized ‘Pauline method’ to investigate the modern Damascus event, this indication is of great importance, because it connects the Damascus event to the fundamental problems and tasks of gaining spiritual scientific knowledge, in the physical and spiritual worlds. This becomes immediately clear when Rudolf Steiner points out that the first problem encountered by Paul because of his Chris experience was the question about the true nature of human thinking:
'So Paul came to realize that an enemy attacked human evolution, and that this enemy is the source of error on the Earth ... Only in a world in which the human being could be influenced by the Ahrimanic forces-so Paul now felt-could the error occur that led to the death on the cross. And now, when he 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. Previously man knew life without death; now he learned to know death as part of life, as an experience that strengthens life ... Humanity must strengthen its life, if it wants to pass through death and yet live. And death means, in this connection ... the intellect ... the intellect makes us inwardly cold, makes us inwardly dead. The intellect paralyses us. Man must truly feel it, that man lives not when man thinks; that man wastes his life in dead mental pictures, and that man must have strong life in himself to feel creative life in the dead mental pictures ... This I tried to do in my Philosophy of Freedom. This Philosophy of Freedom is a moral conception that should be a preparation for the vitalization of dead thinking through moral impulse, to bring it to resurrection.' [4]
And further:
'What Paul meant by the resurrected Christ was that the Christ experienced death, but that he overcame death, that he as spiritual-living triumphant being came forth out of death in the resurrection and that He lives since then with humanity, that without Christ man would have had only dead thinking ... Whereas before, in former times, thinking still carried its living essence into earthly life, since the third and fourth centuries ... the earthly human soul can awaken its thinking through the direct beholding of the Mystery of Golgotha'. [5]
Naturally, when Rudolf Steiner speaks about the Philosophy of Freedom in connection with the ‘Pauline Method’, ‘epistemology’ or ‘theory of knowledge’, he doesn’t use these terms in the ordinary philosophical sense. Rudolf Seiner and Paul are spiritual scientists, not mere thinkers, and therefore, both consider the spiritualization of thinking as the first stage of real supersensible empirical experience. The Philosophy of Freedom is not an ordinary philosophic book as it is often taken to be. It is as empirical and scientific as any other anthroposophical book or lecture of Rudolf Steiner, and if we experience it as such, we will experience through thinking that we participate in a living spiritual reality, and we will be able not only to understand the communications from the higher worlds, but to experience the reality of such communications, because we already experienced real spiritual life through pure and intuitive thinking.
‘The secret of esoteric Christianity: the assimilation of death into life’, which was Paul’s most significant discovery 2000 years ago, is also the fundamental discovery made in the present etheric Christ experience. Overcoming the death forces inherent in our modern Ahrimanic intellect is indeed the starting point for the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, presented in chapter 5 of the New Experience of the Supersensible, outlined below. And the source of the forces of resurrection that make the overcoming of death possible, is found in the appearance, words, and deeds of the etheric Christ. Therefore, this is also the source of our search for a ‘Pauline method’ to bring the present Christ event into spiritual science. For this purpose, we must direct our observation, as Paul did, to the being of Christ Himself...
Footnotes
[1] Most of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures about the etheric Second Coming are collected in GA 118 and GA 130.
[2] Lecture of 31 May 1909 (GA 109/111).
[3] Lecture of 27 May 1914 (GA 152). My italics. This is the meaning of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.
[4] Lecture of 2 April 1922 (GA 211). My italics. In the nineteenth century the death process of thinking had reached a further, mighty acceleration: 'The Fall into sin ... influenced at last the intellect as well. The intellect felt itself [in the nineteenth century] at the limits of knowledge. And if the theologians speak about sin, or Du Bois-Reymond speaks about the limits of knowledge of nature, it is the same, only in somewhat different form.' (GA 220, lecture of 21 January 1923.) The second Mystery of Golgotha (which is studied in Chapters 4 and 5) has its roots in this intellectual second Fall of man.
[5] Lecture of 2 April 1922 (GA 211).