Incarnation through Spiritual Fire

Incarnation through Spiritual Fire

Forthcoming in 2024: The Second Edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible

The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming

From Volume 3: The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, Part II: The Construction of the Third Spiritual-Physical Layer of the Bridge

From the Introduction

 In reporting about the given meeting with the etheric Christ, in chapter 4 of the first volume, we described how in the meeting the Christ planted three golden spirit seeds in man’s spirit, soul, and bodies. The task of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming is to use all the available resources of modern spiritual science, to nourish, cultivate and foster these seeds, and apply their potent forces to spiritualize the threefold human constitution.

 In the first part of the knowledge drama, described in the second volume, we demonstrated the creation of the first two layers of the bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness. The first two stages of the given meeting with the Christ, served as the spiritual archetype for this creation.

 The formation of the first etheric-cognitive layer was inspired by the example of Christ’s imaginative appearance in the first stage of the meeting, through which he showed how ordinary cognition is spiritualized into imaginative cognition. The formation of the second astral-soul layer of the bridge was inspired by his healing of the fragmented forces of the soul, by the power of his living words. In the same way, the third stage of the meeting offers the inspiration for the formation of the third spiritual-physical layer of the bridge. In this stage the highest aspect of the Christ, descending through man’s spirit and soul, penetrated, and transformed also the formative spiritual forces of the physical body.

 Therefore, to complete the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, we must find, awaken, and activate the third golden spirit seed given by the etheric Christ, planted in the physical body. Then we use its forces to create the third spiritual-physical layer and add it to the previous two layers of the bridge. This will enable us complete the three layers the bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness, also in the depths of the physical body.

 Combined together, the forces of the threefold bridge create the strongest and most resilient spiritual pathway that allows modern spiritual self-consciousness, active in unbroken, continuous, earthly and spiritual cognition, to enter the spiritual worlds and return to the physical body in a conscious and healthy manner. The final, permanent consolidation of the bridge must become, as Goethe said, so stable and spacious, that 'Horses and carriage and travelers of all sorts would travel on it at the same time back and forth'. But for this purpose, the bridge must be grounded and anchored very deeply and strongly in the spiritual foundation of the physical body and world.

 When we return to the physical body from the spiritual, astral and etheric worlds, in which we constructed the second astral-soul layer of the bridge, we are confronted with severs tests, that become more difficult, the deeper we descend into the metabolic-limb and reproductive systems. In the course of this descend and confrontation, we realize, that the construction of the third spiritual-physical layer must face the fierce opposition of the forces of evil rooted in the physical body since the entry of the two apocalyptic Beasts into human evolution in 1933-1998. We must experience these forces of illness, death, and destruction, that assail the physical body, and confront the new, third category of the beings of evil, the Asuras, that attack the human soul and Ego from their stronghold in the sexual forces of modern humanity. This confrontation enables us to develop the required forces to spiritualize the physical body, heale the illness and wound of Amfortas at its deepest source, resurrect it from the forces of death, and redeemed it from the forces of evil. A new, immortal ‘Second Adam’ is born, embodied in a resurrection body, the Phantom, rising from the grave of modern civilization.

Incarnation through Spiritual Fire

 The portal that leads the true ‘I’, in the transition from the experiences in the etheric body and world back to the physical body and world, is constituted from the forces of spiritual, soul and etheric fire, experienced first in the spiritualized etherized stream of the blood. And this warmth can fully merge with, and spiritualize, through the warmth ether, also the physical element of warmth. The only element that makes the physical body a welcoming and hospitable home for the returning, reincarnation Ego, is this element of spiritualized fire, or warmth, that envelops the whole body with a mantle of delicate fire, penetrates it from all directions, and weaves and circulates through the warmth of the blood in the whole body. We experience the mystery of warmth each time we exit and return to the physical and etheric bodies, either on falling sleep and waking, or during supersensible investigation. In both directions, we path through the inner forces of warmth in the blood and the enveloping warmth mantle, and only through this warmth the Ego feels wholly in its primordial, original, spiritual element in the body and outside the body. The Ego is constituted from a spark of divine fire, given by the sacrifice of the Elohim, the Spirit of Form, in Lemuria, and its deeper spiritual essence is constituted by the forces of active and creative divine will, that express themselves first through inner fire and warmth. As the true ‘I’ is searching for a safe home coming, it must find this path, in descending into the physical body, from head to toe;  the true ‘I’ must ‘feel at home’ in the spiritual forces of fire, that sustain and nourish the physical body, and only through these forces it can work creatively inside and outside the body.

 This experience was also a significant part of the prior Rosicrucian teaching, so intimately shared by Rudolf Steiner in the Christmas Foundation Conference, in the lecture dedicated the first Goetheanum, on New Year’s Eve of 1923. There he livingly reads from the cosmic memory and transmitted the content of a conversation between a Rosicrucian teacher and his pupil. Because of its central significance for the whole knowledge drama of the Second Coming, and especially also for entering and transforming the physical body in the third stage of the bridge construction, we cite the passage as a whole:

When the pupil had received this instruction in sufficient measure... it was plain to him that he is an inhabitant of Earth purely and solely on account of the element of warmth that he bears within him. In this way the Rosicrucian pupil came to the perception that the warmth, the physical warmth he has within him, is what makes him ‘man on earth.’ And he learned increasingly to feel how closely related warmth of soul and warmth of spirit are to physical warmth...The Rosicrucian pupil knew... that what made him earthly was... the element of warmth. The moment the pupil of the Rosicrucian teacher perceived this secret of the connection of the element of warmth with his life on earth as earthly man, in that moment he knew how to link the human in him on to the spiritual. ^[1]

 The forces of spiritualized, astralized and etherized blood, used in the first part of the knowledge drama to spiritualize thinking and perception, feeling and will, to separate and reunite the three soul forces, and form the lotus flowers, are turned now around, and sent downward into the depths of the body. Since burning of the first Goetheanum in Sylvester 1922, the pupil of spiritual science always passes through the physical, destructive, and spiritualized, creative fire of the first Goetheanum, when he exits and returns to his body in full consciousness. It exists as a mantle of fire around the earth, and if we are truly connected to spiritual science, its spiritualized fire forces will warm-and light up the portal and path before us, when we return to the body. It must therefore be mentioned at this stage, even though we cannot describe this aspect further in greater detail:

Even so let us look back upon the terrible flames of fire that filled us with such unutterable sadness but let us at the same time feel how to-day, as we dedicate ourselves with solemn vow to the highest divine forces that are within us, a spiritual flame lights up in our hearts. Yea, and the flame in our hearts shall shed new light and warmth on all that was purposed and willed in the Goetheanum, on all that we are now resolved to carry forward on the advancing wave of human evolution. ^[2]

 To the extent that we kindled the ‘spiritual flame that lights up in our hearts’ on earth, it guides us also back to the body. From afar, its light radiates towards us through the Golden Star of Heavenly Jerusalem, shining in the bluish-purple Aura of the eastern part of the Earth above Jerusalem. ^[3] And when we pass through the golden light of this star, and descend towards to body, the spiritualized flames of the first Goetheanum appear, and we experience through them- in the spiritualized forces of the human heart- the pregnant seed of Heavenly Jerusalem, the Foundation of Stone of Love, that Rudolf Steiner formed and planted in the earth in the Christmas foundation Conference of 1923-4. ^[4] These flames greet us, burning on the altar of the human heart, and we feel that we return to the physical body and the physical earth as to a welcoming and familiar home…

 Foornotes

[1]  Lecture of 31 December 1923 (GA 233).

[2] Ibid. My italics.

[3] Lecture of 1 April 1918 (GA 181). The Golden Star of  Heavenly Jerusalem is also our guide to the mysteries of the creation of the earth Star, the earthly-human Sun, described in the fourth volume.

[4] The connection between the seed of Heavenly Jerusalem and the human body,  is described, from another point of view, in Cognitive Yoga; How a Book is Born. Heavenly Jerusalem and the Mysteries of the Human Body. (Temple Lodge 2017). This is described below, in the construction of the third spiritual-physical part of the bridge, in the final stages of the spiritualization of the physical body.

Forthcoming in 2024: The Second Edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible 

The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming