Christ's Appearance Between 'I' and 'Thou'

Christ's Appearance Between 'I' and 'Thou'

From the New Edition of the New Experience of the Supersensible

Chapter 7

 When we experience consciously, qualitatively, the cosmic spaces and times, in which the lemniscate path of the earth crosses the path of the sun, and the Christ in us and in the earthly-human Sun unites with the imprint of His Spirit Man, we celebrate the cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity, as shown above. In these festivals, we form the heart organ of the earthly-human sun, through the meetings of etheric human hearts, united together in true love in the new Michael community. Right there, in the heart of the mutually crossing and turning inside-out and outside-in of the new Earth and Heaven—the center and periphery of the new earthly-human Sun—we also experience the deepest and most difficult, threshold and abyss that must be consciously bridged before a full realization of the second coming and a firm grounding of the Michael age will be possible. This abyss cuts its way of life’s annihilation, soul death and spirit forgetfulness, between every two human beings that—the rational content of their daily consciousness notwithstanding—confront each other in modern social life. As the history of the Anthroposophical Society shows, this abyss opens most clearly when a community strives to ground its spiritual life in the true existential situation of the Consciousness Soul. And this could not have been otherwise, for it is where the social-planetary wound of the last century burns strongly. It becomes, imaginatively speaking, a virtual dark sunspot that emerges from the circulating rhythmical social heart and lung sphere of the earthly-human Sun, at the most sensitive and vulnerable crossing and inversing of the new Heaven and Earth. This is the reason, therefore, for the absolute necessity of a radically new social life in our time. The etheric suffocation, crucifixion, resurrection, teaching and initiatory acts of the etheric Christ are nowhere more readily perceived—and, because of that, also fiercely opposed and ignored—than here. The more crucial it becomes for our evolution the more we turn away from its painful and redeeming reality. But as long as we do so, we can acquire the conscious imaginative consciousness and no healing power which humanity must develop in the present age of Michael, in order to make the new earthly-human Sun a truly productive and life-giving cosmic being.

 Imaginatively observed, one can speak quite concretely about three adversary appearances that strive unceasingly to obscure and destroy the Christ-permeated light and life of the new earthly-human Sun. First, we can observe the astral cloud formations that darken and disperse—also twist and caricature—the astral light atmosphere of the earthly-human Sun. Here are gathered all the evil Luciferic forces that emanate from the distorted cultural and social life on the Earth. Second, there are real Sunspots or black holes that, as Ahrimanic parasites, attack the life-giving etheric ring of the new earthly-human Sun. These sucking, annihilating beings grow and develop through the evil deeds of human beings in social life on the Earth, especially when Ahrimanic thinking and action is practiced on a mass scale. These two—the cloud and spot formations—emerge from the middle social heart of the new earthy-human Sun and prevent the conscious and harmonious and rhythmical mutual penetration, in human hearts and mind, of the new Earth below, radiating with the spiritualized fire of Chris’s will in the depths, and of the new Heaven above, formed through spiritualized thinking and sense perception, in the heights.

 The third force attacks the will-being—the Christ given Phantom seed—directly in the earthly depths. From there it controls the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman and uses them to achieve its goals. This is the destructive force of evil whose influence in our century is described in my book the Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century and in detail in chapter 5 above.[1] According to precise astral climatic and weather rules, such evil masses must, after reaching a certain stage of accumulated tension, explode in astral-elemental storms that create the human and natural catastrophes of the last and present centuries. Such 'astral synoptic maps' have always existed and are made use of in occult connections in order to direct and control, for good or ill, the social and geopolitical evolution of humanity. [2] In an interview with the French journalist Jules Sauerwein in 1917, Rudolf Steiner described the war as 'an explosion of forces that were pressed together in a wrong way ... It is a healing process brought about through violent means by the spiritual organism of our planet. As the physical organism reacts through fever ... to unbearable poisonings, as the fire that shoulders under the Earth comes suddenly to volcanic eruption, so the unhealthy and abnormal use of energy leads to wars. Under a pressure they cannot understand, governments and nations then lose their reason.' [3]

 Wrong social and human relationships create, in our time, powerfully destructive planetary forces, whose influence is experience not only in the fast deteriorating ecological conditions of the earth, but even more acutely when used as a means of occult attack on the embryonic earthly-human Sun. [4] From this perspective we can understand why the future impulse of the Threefold Social Order, will have to become and expression of a and active and creative social formative forces, streaming from the Christ-permeated formation of the threefold new earthly-human Sun, described in the previous chapter. Only this power- if such human souls will be found, that can actualize it- will hold the opposing forces within controllable limits and create the new Michaelic community.

 Therefore, the transformation of social life into Christ-permeated daily reality is the most serious responsibility that human beings who have experienced the true nature of the Second Coming can take on themselves today. The modern Christ experience, described in Chapter 4 and individualized in chapter 5, is also the hidden archetype of the new human meeting. The three stages of the meeting with the etheric Christ are—on a different level- the same stages discovered in every spiritually awakened human meeting. In the field of the powerful spiritual tension of morally active cognition, and cognition radiating morality, surrounded, and penetrated by the new Earth and Heaven of the earthly-human Sun, the awakened human meeting can acquire a potency and depth hitherto unknown in human history. In such a meeting every person that I meet is for me my initiator, bearing and suffering my cross, awakening me from my death of soul, profoundly teaching me my mysteries of evil, and gracefully blessing me with the mutual penetration and creative Umstülpung of karmic responsibility. But I can do the same for the other person. I can be his cross-bearer as well as his crucifier; I am his initiator as well as his pupil, for good or ill. As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, this was and is the fundamental, basic rule of occultists; it must become the life habit of all those human beings who experience concretely and consciously the weaving and pulsating of the living Christ between members of the social community. 'It is a fundamental maxim of occultists to see the other person as the revelation of one's own Higher Self, because he knows then he must find the other in himself.^{' [5]}

 Free spiritual relationships between human beings, steeped in true human love and based on communal research of spiritual science, create in the soul and spirit of the participators in an enhanced measure the organs for perception and experience of the higher spiritual worlds. [6] And when we bear in mind that today the highest spiritual world is already here, embodied in the earthly-human Sun, and further that a growing number of people will be able to work consciously with one another on the development of this earthly-Sun process, then we can realize quite new perspectives and goals for social life on the Earth, that must begin in the near future, if humanity is not to fall into irreversible decline. 'What will be achieved through this advance of humanity is that the two poles ... the intellectual and moral poles, will become increasingly one, will merge into oneness ... You will be more and more penetrated, also in the day, by the direct influence of the Good from the spiritual world ... the moral fire [that] streams out of this Christ figure ... And so man transforms the Earth if he can feel that morality belongs to the Earth ... Then will come that time to the Earth ... when this moral atmosphere will be strengthened to a high degree ... when the Earth will be penetrated by a moral-ether sphere.' [7] But only through the new Christ impulse, to the extent that it is brought to full consciously, can this moral atmosphere by created. For this, 'the human being must become much more [for his fellow human being] than he has been hitherto. He must become his awakener. Human beings must approach one another more closely than they have done until recently: every man must become an awakening being to everyone he meets. For modern human beings have accumulated so much karma that they cannot but feel themselves karmically connected with everyone they meet in life. When man goes back to earlier times, souls were younger and had fewer karmic relationships. Now it becomes necessary that man is awakened not only through nature but through human beings who are karmically connected with him.' [8]

 In the light of the Philosophy of Freedom, on which the knowledge and creative drama of the Second Coming is based, it must be emphasized, that the heart organ of the earthly-human Sun is the true sphere of human freedom in social life, based on true human love. 'Man shall be free when the relation between soul and soul is such that one soul can follow the other with ever greater and greater understanding and ever greater love ... [through] the forming of that gentle union that develops itself from soul to soul ... Because only in this way can souls be free, and only souls can be free.' [9]

[1] On the interior of the Earth as the stronghold of evil and black magic, see lecture of 4 September 1905, (GA 95) and lecture of 21 April 1906 (GA 97).

[2] About these astral cloud formations over Europe, see lecture of 15 July 1923 (GA 225).

[3] In: C. Lindenberg, Rudolf Steiner, eine Chronik (Verlag Freies Geistesleben, 1988, p.381.)

[4] On the metamorphosis of the rights—middle—sphere of social life into the future formative forces of natural, climatic, and atmospheric planetary forces, see lecture of 4 September 1920 (GA 199).

[5] Lecture of 7 December 1905 (GA 54).

[6] Lecture of 9 October 1905 (GA 93a).

[7] Lecture of 1 October 1911. (GA 130).

[8] Lecture of 3 March 1923. (GA 257). About the concrete moral-social experiences that man will have to develop in the future in meeting his fellow human beings through the modern Christ experience, see lecture of 26 October 1918 (GA 185), and further below.

[9] Brotherhood is the economic, and equality the spiritual social aspect from this perspective, described in lecture of 2 October 1916 (GA 171).