עברית As I give the last touches to the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, that will be called: The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, I feel the need to summarize its essence, from various points of view, and express it in more simple words.
The Meaning of The Modern Christ Experience
As I give the last touches to the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, that will be called: The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, I feel the need to summarize its essence, from various points of view, and express it in more simple words. True spiritual scientific research must investigate in detail the complex human constitution and its infinite connections to all the worlds, and the human heart can grasp its essence, if it doesn’t shy away from real, active, and creative thinking, feeling and willing.
The readers of The New Experience of the Supersensible, Cognitive Yoga and The Three Meetings, would know that in the given meeting with the etheric Christ, he demonstrates, through his living appearance, words and deeds, three major future potentials of human evolution. He shows that the human being in the present age can spiritualize the head, heart and metabolic-limb forces.
In the first stage of the meeting, he shows how the head forces are totally controlled by the death forces of Ahriman, so that human consciousness, and everything that man does with his intellectual mind, to understand and explain the world, is ahrimanic deception. And he shows the path that leads to the overcoming of this influence if we spiritualize our thinking and sense perception. After he completed his demonstration, he plants a ‘golden spirit seed’ of its essence in the spiritual forces of the head and indicate that we can activate and develop them in the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.
In the second stage, the Christ shows how the heart and soul forces of humans today, are torn and fragmented, and taken hold on by both the ahrimanic and luciferic forces. He demonstrates how his creative words bring healing to the soul and unite the soul forces. Then he plants a second golden spirit seed in the human heart, that contains the essence of his healing power, that man can develop further by means of his free spiritual activity in the knowledge drama.
In the third stage, the Christ takes us deep into the metabolic-limb and reproductive forces of the body. He shows us to what extent these forces are ruled today by his fiercest spiritual opponents, that strive to derail human evolution from its true cosmic goal. His demonstration in the depths of the body show us how we can penetrate into the metabolic and reproductive forces to face the strongest evil that emerges in the present age and redeem the physical body and the soul and spiritual forces bound to it. He then plants a golden seed of bodily resurrection in the body, that can be awakened and used independently in the third stage of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.
In this way, the meeting with the etheric Christ, becomes the blueprint of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming: the transformation and resurrection of the entire human being, in spirit, soul and body. And this spiritualized human being is the threefold bridge, that connects the physical and spiritual worlds in full consciousness. In its wholeness, it constitutes the Foundation Stone of Love, the individualized threefold essence of future humanity.
In the introduction to first volume of the new edition, the meaning of the meeting is also expressed in this way:
The Three Stages of the Meeting with the Christ
Rudolf Steiner describes the three stages of the meeting with the etheric Christ, as ‘Christ in three guises: once through himself, then through his garment, and thirdly through the deeds he accomplishes for human beings on earth’. In the first stage of the meeting, Christ, that ‘descends from the supersensible world, has a name written on him which he not only speaks solely for himself but which only he and he alone can understand; no one else can comprehend it’. Then the Christ unites His name, which represent His Ego, with our ‘I’, and becomes a source of spiritual light of knowledge in our own ‘I’. ‘When the being who understands this name becomes one with our own self, enters into our own self, then within us this being will understand the name and with him we shall understand it too, for then with him in us we shall always be conscious of “Christ in us”. He alone understands the things that are connected with his being, but it is in us that he understands them; and the light that streams out in us through his understanding—because in us, in our own being he becomes this light—this gives the insight of the Christ-Being in our own self. It becomes an indwelling insight, an insight that dwells within the human being’. Then in the second stage, the indwelling Ego of Christ reveals itself as the indwelling power of the creative word, the Logos in us, and in the third stage, it becomes the individualized power of creative love, working through the will. In the two volumes of the knowledge drama, it will be shown that the three stages occur in the entire threefold constitution of man, in spirit, soul and body, and in the three functional systems of the physical body, the nerves-senses, heart-lungs rhythmic system, and in the metabolic-limb system. And at the end of the knowledge drama, when the entire threefold human constitution is spiritualized, the formation of the Foundation Stone of Love is actualized, the future earthly-cosmic human being.
'Thus he becomes the threefoldness of all existence: universal love reigning in human love; universal Imagination reigning in the forms of the human organism; universal thoughts reigning mysteriously below the surface in human thoughts. He will grasp this threefoldness and he will recognize himself as an 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, working for the future of the universe as an individual human being within the cosmic human being. Out of the signs of the present time he will re-enliven the ancient words: ‘Know thou thyself!’ Then shall the Foundation Stone shine forth before the eyes of our soul'.