עברית During the course of 2023 I will share in my blog some of the guidelines given in the global school of spiritual science, as preparations from the centennial celebration of the Christmas Foundation Conference.
From the Preparations for the Centennial of the Christmas Foundation Conference
During the course of 2023 I will share in my blog some of the guidelines given in the global school of spiritual science, as preparations from the centennial celebration of the Christmas Foundation Conference. To fully understand this preparations, it is necessary to study my book, The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity: The history of the Michaelic movement since the death of Rudolf Steiner. This is the foundation on which the preparations for the coming centenary in Christmas are based.
Preface: What is true Spiritual Science?
Our approach to centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference must be clearly distinguished from the usual repetition and interpretation of what Rudolf Steiner did and said in 1923-4. Any past event can be taken in two diametrically opposite ways. The memory of what happened 100 years ago can become either an occasion to conserve the finished past, ritualize and dogmatize it, as done in all previous religious and spiritual streams. Or it can serve as a springing board to perceive the supersensible continuation of this event in the spiritual world and grasp its living activity today. This fundamental distinction decides if spiritual science becomes intellectual showbiz and frozen dogma that block our connection to the spiritual worlds or spiritual awakening and creative participation in the most important spiritual events of the present time.
Therefore, in the work in the school of spiritual science, the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference is not celebrated as another memorial event, that aims to commemorate the conserved and dead past. For true spiritual science, memory is but the starting point for creative spiritual activity and perception, that investigates how this impulse developed in the spiritual world during the 100 years that passed between 1923-4 and 2023-4.
This brings us naturally to the most misunderstood and misappropriated basic question: What is spiritual science as Rudolf Steiner practiced it, and hoped that his students will also do? What indeed is true spiritual science?
Spiritual science begins with ordinary consciousness and the perception of the physical world, and progresses, step by step, to higher stage of spiritual perception and knowledge. When the spiritual scientist wants to investigate the spiritual forces behind any object or process in the physical world, he begins with ordinary consciousness. He first of all uses his ordinary perception and thinking, and naturally also his memory, to observe and study the object and process, as any serious natural scientist would do. And then he proceeds to the specific spiritual scientific activity, that aims to spiritualize what was attained by ordinary perception and thinking. And how he does this? What is the magical power that transmutes ordinary consciousness into spiritual consciousness?
The spiritualization of ordinary perception, thinking, memory, feeling and will takes place in meditation. Mediation is the name of the magical alchemical lab and process of transmutation and spiritualization of all earthly soul forces and contents of ordinary consciousness into their supersensible archetypes. The practice of meditation transforms the forces of ordinary consciousness into organs and faculties of supersensible perception. These faculties are used to investigate the spiritual forces active behind the physical world. Then we offer the spiritualized contents of our perception, thoughts, memoirs, feelings and will, harvested in the physical world, to the beings of the spiritual world. Meditation becomes our contribution to the new cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity and the formation of the sun becoming earth. Our spiritual companions breath it in as their nourishment, spiritualize it further, and return it to us in this spiritualized form. In this way- as we showed in detail in Cognitive Yoga: How a book is Born- the spiritual scientist creates a dialogue and conversation with the higher beings, based on living mutual fertilization, that enhances the forces of both sides.
Man nourishes and communes with the gods, and the gods find again humanity and earth and stream down their inspirations and blessings. We receive their inspirations and use them to fire our holy enthusiasm, creative joy, and community building, to enhance the reversed cultus, and reciprocate their grace. And in this way, a mutual, reciprocal breathing and pulsation, between the new Earth and Heaven takes place: the new earth rises through our community spirit and its fruits are offered to the gods, and the new Heaven descends with the outpouring grace of our companions. And where the new Earth and Heaven meet and fertilize each other, the etheric Christ is revealed, and modern humans become creative power in the life of society and earth.
In other words, spiritual science starts from observation and study of the physical world, and this includes the physical books of spiritual science. There is no principle difference if I observe and study a plant or the Christmas Foundation Conference. In both cases, I transform in meditation the given physical perception and intellectual knowledge acquired in the physical world and develop the spiritual organs of perception, to discover the spiritual forces active behind it. The physical documents that describe the laying of the foundation stone and the text of the foundation stone meditation, are the raw materials of the meditative practice, given by Rudolf Steiner in his basic books. We actualize this meditative practice with the contents of the documents and testimonies about the Christmas Foundation Conference and await the answers of the spiritual world.
After starting from the study of the given materials and interpretations, we continued to the meditative practice and spiritual research, described in the books, The New Experience of the Supersensible and Cognitive Yoga. This led to certain spiritual observations, through which we investigated the supersensible movement and school of Michael, and the presently active, greatly metamorphosed, spiritual being of the Christmas Foundation Conference, described in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity.