עברית How does the etheric Christ enter spiritual science? This question stands there in world history since Rudolf Steiner died in 1925. Up to that moment anthroposophy could only advance as far as this question, which stands there with all heartfelt inwardness in humanity’s spiritual culture.
The Three Meetings
Christ, Michael and Anthroposophia
Prelude to the New Edition of the New Experience of the Suprasensible
(Temple Lodge, Ereignis Verlag, Spring 2022)
From the Preface
The unsolvable question with which Thomas von Aquinas died, was ‘how does the Christ enter human thinking? How will human thinking be Christened?... This question stands in world history when Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. Up to this moment he could only advance to this question, which stands there with all heartfelt inwardness in European spiritual culture’.[1] A century earlier the same question, ‘with all heartfelt inwardness’ confronted Alanus ab Insulis, the leading Platonist of Chartres, as can be seen from his book, Rhymes on the Incarnation of Christ. [2] The unresolved question of Thomas and Alanus was answered by Rudolf Steiner in the Philosophy of Freedom in 1894, the fountainhead of modern spiritual science. At the end of the 20th century, the question resounded strongly again, in this form: ‘How does the etheric Christ enter spiritual science? This question stands there in world history since Rudolf Steiner died in 1925. Up to that moment anthroposophy could only advance as far as this question, which stands there with all heartfelt inwardness in humanity’s spiritual culture’.
In my early 20s, the new Damascus event, which Rudolf Steiner predicted, was a given supersensible fact. So was also the physical form of anthroposophy. It was clear to me that without the light of spiritual science, the meeting with the etheric Christ only remains a personal experience. And without the new life forces streaming from the etheric Christ, anthroposophy remains a physical body of knowledge. Both need each other. The new Christ event must be investigated by spiritual science to become known to humanity, and anthroposophy requires His life forces to be born again. I confronted this question with the greatest intensity: how does the etheric Christ enter spiritual science? To gain spiritual scientific knowledge of the etheric Christ and bring about a resurrection of anthroposophy became my daily spiritual work. But a path had first to be created, to bring about the reciprocal relations between them.
The first glimpse of an answer to this question was found when I read the Philosophy of Freedom for the first time. I felt that it let me breathe freely with the Christ experience and anthroposophy and allowed me to bring them increasingly together. The activity of thinking stimulated by the Philosophy of Freedom produced a spiritual light that illuminated the Christ experience and resurrected anthroposophy and established an initial bridge between them. With the living light of the Philosophy of Freedom, I felt that I could work towards the goal of wedding anthroposophy with the etheric Christ, and it proved to be the beginning of the path, that in the coming years and decades would increasingly let the forces of the etheric Christ enter into spiritual science.
The question was also formulated by Rudolf Steiner in 1917 in this way: ‘How can we prepare our souls to draw near to the Christ whose presence will be experienced in the etheric world in the present century? What steps must we take, especially in our present age, to draw near to Him?’ [3] Today, it must rephrased accordingly: ‘How can our souls unite with the etheric Christ, experienced in the etheric world, since the end of last century? What steps must we take, in the second century of the age of Michael, to unite with Him?’. In the first edition of the New Experience of the Supersensible, published in 1995, I called the path developed to answer this question, ‘the knowledge drama of the Second Coming’.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Ur-Phenomena of the Modern Christ Experience
Paul’s Christ Experience and the Birth of Christian Platonism
Chapter 2
Michaelic Yoga
Chapter 3
The Platonic-Aristotelian Essence Exchange at the end of the 20th Century
Chapter 4
The Meeting with the Etheric Christ
Chapter 5
The Abyss and the Event of the Threshold
Chapter 6
The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
Chapter 7
The Meeting with Michael
Chapter 8
The Meeting with Anthroposophia
Christ, Michael and Anthroposophia
Prelude to the New Edition of the New Experience of the Supersensible
[1] Lecture of 23 May 1920 (GA 74).
[2] Rhythmus über die lnkarnation Christi, translated from the Latin Rhythmus de incarnatione Christi by Wilhelm Rath, (Die Drei, 1951/3).
[3] Lecture of 17 April 1917 (GA 175).