עברית How the Michaelic Yoga leads to the Meeting with Michael and how Michael and Christ meet in the human heart for the first time after their separation on the Sun 2500 years ago
The Meeting of Michael and Christ in the Human Heart
How the Michaelic Yoga leads to the Meeting with Michael and how Michael and Christ meet in the human heart for the first time after their separation on the Sun 2500 years ago
The Three Meetings
Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia
Excerpts from chapter 5: The Meeting with Michael
Now, in the etheric human heart, Michael finds his dwelling place, and unites in the human heart with the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ. Heavenly-earthly fulfilment and joy are experienced when this meeting commences, to use rather trivial earthly words, because Michael and Christ were separated from each other after the Christ left the sun before the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ has lived on earth since Golgotha and Michael remained in the sun until the end of the nineteenth century, when he began his descent to earth to fulfil his role in his new age. When human beings meet the etheric Christ and receive the ‘I’ of Christ into their hearts through the light of the modern Grail, spiritual science, they invite Michael to dwell in the sun forces of their hearts as well, and the two cosmic sun beings meet again—on earth—for the first time since their separation.
In the more advanced stages of the Michaelic Yoga, described in Cognitive Yoga, we discover that when we breathe spiritually, cognitively, rhythmically, in this manner, through the essence exchange between spiritualized thinking and imaginative perception, we factually breathe with Michael. What is more, we discover that it is Michael himself who breathes in and through us, and that the entire human experience of this etheric breathing is an expression of a single, individualized, pulse and beat of his infinite cosmic breathing and heartbeat. Indeed, one begins to experience Michael as the spirit that carries Christ’s etheric breathing through the cosmos, as an expression of his own spiritual breathing; one feels that Michael’s life—and light-radiating sun body, the source of his spiritual breathing, is the macrocosmic source and activity that breathes and pulses through our microcosmic etheric breathing in the Michaelic Yoga. The Michaelic Yoga, given by Rudolf Steiner in 1919-20, comes here to full expression. Rudolf Steiner’s fiery Michaelic exclamation, ‘We must develop this new yoga will!’, now takes on a wholly new and concrete meaning...
We realize, furthermore, that the substance and rhythm of Michael’s etheric breathing activity originate in a continuous ethe- ric essence exchange with the cosmic life of the etheric Christ; what was described above as the etheric breathing between the imaginative perception of the etheric Christ and our spiritualized thinking, appears here in its macrocosmic light and significance. It appears as Michael’s cosmic etheric breathing and pulsating heartbeat, that demonstrates, as a messenger of Christ, how he pours down his majestic cosmic Imaginations to humanity on the earth. We discover that it is Michael’s cosmic yoga will that pulses through his breathing that flows through us, and lets us actualize in our etheric body, the essence exchange between the human ethe- ric body and the etheric body of the Christ and between Christ’s ‘I’ and the human ‘I’. Then we realize that without being aware of this fact, from the first moment in which we began to spiritualize the intuitive thinking of the Philosophy of Freedom as a foundation of the Michaelic Yoga and knowledge drama, Michael was actively involved in each and every turn and phase of this process; but we couldn’t yet sense and see his cosmic presence and activity, work- ing through our activity, enlivening and animating it through and through...
Now we realize that the human actualization of the Michaelic Yoga is the microcosmic actualization of his cosmic yoga breathing, that our spiritual breathing is a drop or seed containing his radiating, rhythmically pulsating, life-giving sunlight. This becomes a real experience. It becomes the heartfelt source of cosmic-human intimacy, where a sacred meeting place between a god and the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ is consecrated.
From the beginning of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, we used Michael’s forces and did not perceive their real cosmic source. But the more the reception and individuation of Christ’s ‘I’ progresses, the more this source lights up in imaginative conscious- ness, and we feel obliged to say to ourselves: Now we consciously partake in Michael’s cosmic will of yoga, in his spiritual activity and consciousness, because he is the being that, in truth, incorpo- rates and embodies himself in all our spiritualized thinking, per- ceiving, feeling and will, carefully stirring and shaping his spiritual breathing rhythms into our etheric breathing, and pulsing with his cosmic heartbeat through the human heartbeat, when we actualize his will of cosmic yoga.
We experience the intimate connection that human beings can form in our time with Michael if they spiritualize their soul forces, through the spiritualization of thinking. ‘Michael is the active Being, the Being who, as it were, pulses through our breath, our veins, our nerves, to the end that we may actively develop all that belongs to our full humanity in connection with the Cosmos.’ This ‘pulsing through our breath, veins and nerves’ is no metaphor but spiritual reality in the etheric world and body. We participate in Michael’s own pulsing and breathing when we experience it inside our spiritualized breathing, nerves, and veins. Now the true spiritual reality that animates and inspires the practice of Michaelic Yoga through the Philosophy of Freedom, comes to light. ‘What stands before us as a challenge of Michael is that we become active in our very thoughts, working out our view of the world through our own inner activity.’...
In this way we make it possible for Michael to fulfil his cosmic mission as intermediary between humanity, Christ, cosmic Sophia, and the Hierarchies, which he considers as his main task in his present age. We feel his stark, affirmative fulfilment pulsing through the etheric forces of our thinking and perceiving, breathing and blood circulation. In doing so, we consciously unite with the sense of fulfilment that he has in carrying out his mission, because ‘if Michael is to bring back the right message to the world of the Gods, he must speak to this effect: During my Age, men have raised to the Supersensible what they developed in the way of thinking purely in terms of Space; and we can therefore accept men again, for they have united their thought with ours.’ This intimate meeting with Michael became possible at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty- first century. ‘Before that time man could only feel how thoughts formed themselves in his own being; from the time indicated he is able to raise himself above his own being; he can turn his mind to the Spiritual; he there meets Michael, who proves his ancient kinship with everything connected with thought.’...
Since the end of the twentieth century, and increasingly with each year and decade in the twenty-first century, ‘this battle, more than any other, is laid in the human heart’. What Rudolf Steiner said about the end of the nineteenth century and hoped for in the twentieth century, must be rephrased, and updated a century later. ‘There, within the hearts of men, this battle has been waged since the last third of the twentieth century. Decisive indeed is what human hearts have done with this Michael Impulse in the etheric world in the twentieth century’, while on the earth the worst eventuality took place. ‘After the end of the twentieth century, when the first century after the end of Kali Yuga has elapsed, and humanity fell into the grave of all civilization’—this fact has been well established in current spiritual investigations—‘the souls that par- ticipated in this battle in the etheric world during the twentieth century, will work on the earth for the resurrection of humanity from this grave of all civilization’. Only then would Rudolf Steiner ’s hopes be fulfilled, in the totally changed conditions after the apocalyptic twilight of humanity, namely, that ‘at the beginning of that Age [in the twenty-first century] when in the souls of men who in their hearts ally Intelligence with Spirituality, Michael’s battle will be fought out to victory’.
Now, in the etheric human heart, in the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ, Michael finds his dwelling place, and his cosmic Mother, Sophia, is present through his presence; and the indwelling being of Michael unites in our heart with the indwelling being of Christ. Heavenly- earthly fulfilment and joy are experienced when this meeting com- mences, to use rather trivial earthly words, because Michael and Christ were separated from each other after the Christ left the sun before the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ has lived on earth since Golgotha and Michael remained in the sun until the end of the nineteenth century, when he began his descent to earth to fulfil his role in his new age. When human beings meet the etheric Christ and receive the ‘I’ of Christ into their hearts through the light of the modern Grail, spiritual science, they invite Michael to dwell in the sun forces of their hearts as well, and the two cosmic sun beings meet again—on earth—for the first time since their separation.
Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia