עברית The Meeting with Anthroposophia
The Three Meetings: Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia
Extracts from chapter 8
'When we let Anthroposophy enter into our hearts, after she touched them, she will bring us, through what she is, true human love’.
The human-cosmic being of Anthroposophia incarnated for the first and very short time in the laying of the Foundation Stone of future humanity in the Christmas Foundation Conference in 1923-4. It was embodied until the death of Rudolf Steiner on 30 March 1925. In his soul and heart, she could become the ‘individually free human being within the reigning work of the gods in the cosmos, as a cosmic human being, an individual human being within the cosmic human being’. But what Rudolf Steiner did, as the initiate of our age, he did to help ordinary humans do, in their humbler way. Before and since his death, she continuously ‘knocks on the portal of our hearts and says: Let me in, because I am your true self; I am your true humanity!’ And this being, ‘that really knocks on our hearts in order to give us our true being, to give us ourselves... to bring into us what again can find the way out as true human love to the other person; because when we let Anthroposophy enter into our hearts, after she touched them, then Anthroposophy will bring us, through what she is, true human love’.
Yet even after a century and a half of the present Age of Michael has passed, human beings still forcefully harden their hearts and push this being—their true self—away; they stubbornly continue to close their hearts and prevent their true humanity from entering, and the descent of humanity into the abyss deepens with each day. After a whole century has passed, true spiritual science has one central task: to prepare enough human souls and hearts to receive and individualize the second incarnation of Anthroposophia in this century. This task must be fulfilled in the present Age of Michael, to build a human community, in which free human hearts unite in true human love, in living and growing brotherhood and sisterhood, in which Anthroposophia will be able to incarnate and live again, to try and remain longer on earth than was possible in her shortest previous incarnation. But this can only happen if she finds openand welcoming etheric hearts and deeds of true love, done by her fellow human beings, working and striving together in love and harmony:
‘And if you hear this resounding in your own hearts, my dear friends, then what you will establish here will be a true union of human beings on behalf of Anthroposophia and will carry the spirit which prevails in radiant thought-light around our dodecahedral stone of love out into the world, where it may shed light and warmth on the progress of human souls and the progress of the world.’
Once human beings will receive this seed into their etheric hearts in the twenty-first century, fructified by the new etheric impulses of Christ and Michael, they ‘will learn how profoundly what anthroposophy gives us is based in our whole being’, because they will truly experience that ‘we receive through anthroposophy our very own being... it is the essence of anthroposophy that its own being consists of the being of the human... we receive from anthroposophy what we ourselves are and what we must place before ourselves, because we must practice self-knowledge’. But this requires that ‘Anthroposophy itself is seen as a living, supersensible, invisible being who moves among us... as the invisible being of Anthroposophia... it requires a sense of alliance in every living moment with the invisible being of Anthroposophia’ What the knowledge drama of the Second Coming brings to full consciousness is ‘the fact that Anthroposophia is something that proceeds from us, shines forth from us, springs forth and blossoms out of our noblest forces. We need to draw attention to this quite explicitly. We cannot leave it unsaid.’
Above we described what is meant by ‘our noblest forces’, produced in the etheric essence exchange between the forces of the Christ, Michael, Sophia and Philosophia, actualized by the self-conscious spiritual ‘I’ in the Consciousness Soul. Then we experience, in all reality, that ‘Anthroposophy is a human being in herself. If she was not a human being, she couldn’t transform us. She makes us into another human being. She is a human being herself; I say this in serious sense. Anthroposophy is not a teaching, Anthroposophy is something real, she is a human being.’
We saw that the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ in the human ‘I’ makes us into self-conscious spiritual beings in the Age of Michael, in which spiritualized thinking, born out of the Philosophy of Freedom, spiritualizes the Consciousness Soul and transforms it into the Imaginative Soul, the burgeoning Spirit Self. And with this Imaginative Soul we perceive our innermost cosmic-human being also objectively in the etheric world, together with the beings of Christ and Michael. Then we feel that ‘our personality is wholly penetrated by her, and we experience Anthroposophy as a human being, that thinks, but also feels, senses, and has will impulses, when Anthroposophy thinks, feels and wills in us, when she really becomes a whole human being, then we can grasp her, then we have her. She works like a being, and she enters like a kind of being into the present civilization and culture.’ This imaginative vision becomes objective, as the innermost essence of the human soul is revealed in the etheric world through the imagination of Anthroposophia.
‘The human being Anthroposophia’ is, therefore, the sister of the divine-human child born of the marriage of Christ and Sophia, officiated by Michael, as the high priest of Christ, actualized through the deeds of freedom and love inspired by the Philosophy of Freedom. We participate in this marriage, because the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ, active in our spiritualized ‘I’, is the elder brother of Anthroposophia, and both live together creatively and joyfully in so far as we make freedom and love real in our physical life. As Rudolf Steiner said to W. J. Stein in The Hague in 1922, ‘Anthroposophia is a human being. She is that human being, created out of the deed of freedom.’
During the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, the etheric breathing with the Christ expands to include the etheric breathing of Michael, and a three-way etheric breathing comes about between Christ, man, and Michael. Michael’s activity in the etheric heart allows man to breathe in the gift of the ‘I’ of Christ, and breathe out our spiritual activity, that he gracefully takes into himself. In this way we gradually individualize the gift of Christ’s ‘I’ and let it dwell in the human ‘I’. The indwelling ‘I’ forms the foundation of the supersensible bridge of spiritual memory and continuation of consciousness. The more we actualize this mutual breathing, the more Michael himself becomes visible, as his previously hidden activity comes to light. Then, as he opens the way to the second meeting with the Christ, he also kindles the ‘indwelling insight’ in the etheric heart, the light of spiritual knowledge, and reveals the presence of his cosmic mother, the Sophia of Christ, through his indwelling spiritual being and activity.
As Michael becomes visible and joins the Christ in the human heart, something else happens, that remained in the background all along. It lights up in supersensible cognition, when the etheric breathing and weavings of Michael through the human soul are experienced consciously. Until this point, the spiritual light that illu- minated the first and second meetings with Christ, remained unilluminated, and is the last to be revealed. Only through the meeting with Michael, when Michael joins the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ in the etheric heart, is this light transformed into self-conscious spirit light as well. In complete selflessness, it poured itself to illuminate and bring to imaginative cognition the entire development of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, being the living fabric of this supersensible knowledge process. But when Michael unites in our heart with the etheric Christ, and the light of cosmic Sophia radiates through this union, this light of spiritual knowledge is also individualized; it is born and revealed as an independent spiritual being. She becomes the second child of the sacred marriage of Christ and Sophia through Michael and takes her place in the human heart beside her elder brother, the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ.
With the etheric heart organ formed in Michaelic Yoga, we perceive how Michael’s and Christ’s enhanced life through each other, reveal the secret of their being and becoming in the indwelling ‘I’; we perceive how the etheric breathing of the Christ in and through Michael, and the etheric breathing of Michael in and through the Christ, give birth to the being of universal humanity, Anthroposophia.
And the living being of Anthroposophia illuminates and enhances, with Sophia’s light of spirit knowledge, the reciprocal etheric weaving of Christ and Michael in the etheric hearts of men and in the etheric earthly-human sun. Through this triple essence exchange through the indwelling ‘I’, we unveil the veiled secret of the new Isis: the etheric reality of world-man in the man-created, Christ-permeated world. In the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ, the Conscious- ness Soul’s child of Michael, the human being Anthropos-Sophia is born, bearing and nourishing the future Earthly-Human Sun in her heart. This unveiled being is the ‘open secret’ of the modern mystery of the resurrected Isis, the spiritual being of Anthropos-Sophia.
Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia