עברית ‘Something that can otherwise be induced only by way of psycho-physiological development through fire: an inner fire expressing itself in the circulation of the blood’
‘Something that can otherwise be induced only by way of psycho-physiological development through fire: an inner fire expressing itself in the circulation of the blood’.
The Three Meetings: Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia
Prelude to the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible
From chapter 5: The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
‘Through the spirit that streams forth as the Christ impulse, something flows into the body, something that can otherwise be induced only by way of psycho-physiological development through fire: an inner fire expressing itself in the circulation of the blood... if a man opens his soul to the Christ impulse, this impulse acts in such a way that the experiences of the astral body flow over into the etheric body, and clairvoyance results’. (Lecture of 30 June 1909, GA 112).
In other words, this means that the conscious individuation of the ‘I’ of Christ is not a mystical event experienced only in the soul, but a chemical event, described in detail in the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible. Therefore, it is not a ‘mystical wedding’ but a ‘chemical wedding’, inaugurated in Christian Rosencreuz’s initiation, because the free spiritual activity of the ‘I’, working through thinking, feeling and will, spiritualizes and transubstantiates, not only the soul forces and members but also the three bodies, including the physical body.
As Rudolf Steiner showed, such an intensified spiritual activity, fired by the heart and will forces of the ‘I’, brings to consciousness the otherwise unconscious process of the etherization of the blood, and in this way the etheric Christ is perceived in modern imaginative cognition. ‘Spiritual science must... fire the streams [of Christ’s etherized blood] flowing from heart to brain...If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to comprehend the event that has its beginning in the twentieth century: the appearance of the etheric Christ’.
As demonstrated also in Cognitive Yoga, the same etherization process that creates the forces to perceive the etheric Christ, also opens the way to experience the whole etheric body, and in the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, we describe how the etherized blood is used to also spiritualize the physical body. ‘That which shall be given as the new Mystery schooling will reveal the Mystery of the living Christ in a new way, through the transfor- mation of the physical body’.
This must be emphasized especially in our time, in which ‘spiritual’ is often misconstrued as a merely psychological force and the spirituality of the body is ignored. But for true spiritual science, the very opposite holds true. The physical body, which is considered ‘the lowest’ body in our constitution, is the most evolved and per- fect, and was created by the highest spiritual beings. And the Christ penetrated, spiritualized, and resurrected the astral, etheric and physical bodies of Jesus, and spiritualized them into Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man, completing the divine archetype of human- ity, that is developing gradually from old Saturn to Vulcan. This power makes it possible to experience in our own body the first dawn of Christ’s resurrection body, the ‘Phantom’. But the magical power that awakens the golden seed of the Phantom, given by the Christ, must be, in the present age, the activity of spiritualized thinking, through which the ‘I’ penetrates to the spiritual foundations of the astral, etheric, and physical bodies. This is one of the deepest secrets of esoteric Christianity, of the Grail and the Rosicru- cian streams, and Rudolf Steiner hoped that future anthroposophywill realize it in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, through the spiritual activity stimulated by Michael, fired by the forces of the etheric Christ in the Second Coming.
As we show in the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, in the knowledge drama this activity becomes so intense, that when the ‘I’ spiritualizes the etheric warmth forces in the heart, it also spiritualizes the physical warmth, and as it gains increased strength, it can also spiritualize the forces of light ether in the air element, through which the spiritual- ized part of the astral body, the Spirit Self, works. And if the ‘I’ intensifies its activity further, it can spiritualize the etheric body that works through the chemical ether and the fluid element and use the forces of Life Spirit to also spiritualize the life ether that informs the physical body, in which Spirit Man is working. Then the four members and bodies, etheric forces and elements become pregnant and productive, fructified by the indwelling power of Christ’s ‘I’ in the human ‘I’.
In the past only initiated persons, like Jacob Boehme, could still experience a reminiscence of this mystery. ‘The earthly body is the mysterium, wherein the arcanum lies in great hiddenness... our old Adam and body is the origin of the new body, because it is the mother: out of the old substance arises the new body’. And the resurrected body, also called Phantom in spiritual science, is the body formed by and for the indwelling ‘I’, as the physical body is formed to reflect ordinary self-consciousness. It becomes the perfect spiritual mirror, that reflects the spiritual ‘I’ that creates it and lifts it to the light of full spiritual self-conscious. ‘The whole evolution of humanity was threatened with the danger that the Ego-consciousness would be lost...Everything that depends on perfect reflection from the physical body would have become increasingly worn out... [the Phantom] signifies literally the rescue of the human Ego’. In this way, the spiritual ‘I’ builds for itself, in self-conscious spiritual activity, three spiritualized bodies, that constitute the threefold bridge, through which it recapitulates the given Christ experience in a conscious way. And when during the knowledge drama the given meeting and ‘I’ giving by the Christ is recapitulated consciously; Christ’s indwelling ‘I’ becomes the Gate that leads to the meetings with Michael and Anthroposophia.
This is the goal of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, to ‘alchemically’ transform the three soul forces and members and the three bodies, to form the chalice that receives the ‘I’ of the Christ, contain, and nourish it, and reflect it in the light of clear spiritual knowledge. This enables us ‘to get to know the mystery of the Christ-Ego, the eternal ego into which any human ego can be transformed... as a given fact so that man can receive the Christ- Ego at the sight of the Holy Grail’.