עברית The Future Cosmic Cultus and Spiritual Communion of Humanity, and The Reversed Cultus and Communion with the Spiritual World.
The Goal of the Work in the Global School of Spiritual Science in 2023
Lecture of January 21, 2023
Below I post another part from the lecture delivered in the global school of spiritual science: 'The Future Cosmic Cultus and Spiritual Communion of Humanity' and The 'Reversed Cultus and Communion with the Spiritual World'.
The current work of the global school is dedicated to preparing the celebration of the three centennial events: The burning of the first Goetheanum, Sylvester 1922-2022, the Christmas foundation conferee 1923/4-2023/4, and the death of Rudolf Steiner, March 30 1925-2025. To understand the context in which this work is done, especially the following books should be studied: The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, Cognitive Yoga, and The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity.
The Seven Year Rhythm of our Work in 2017-2024
To deepen our work in 2023 and 2024 in the context of our work in recent years, I suggest that in our next school meetings we should try to figure out how the school impulse developed in the last six years, and how it will complete its seven year rhythm in the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference in Christmas 2023-4. Also in this case the question should be: How did this impulse develop as a whole? About this we already spoke in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. We described some of the main stages on the path starting from Israel in Easter 2017, moving to Germany in 2018, and to Sweden in February 2019 where the lectures were given about The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. Then we traveled to the founding of the school in ground zero the USA in the summer of 2020. Short half year later, via another meeting in Sweden in February 2021, we traveled back to Germany in April 2022. And then in Sylvester 2022 and the beginning of 2023 we met in Finland to commemorate the centenary of the burning of the first Goetheanum.
And now, through 2023, we are traveling to Forum 3 in Stuttgart to celebrate the centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference. In seven years this impulse traveled with us- or, better said, we traveled with it- from its conception in Jerusalem in Easter 2017 to its flowering in Germany in Christmas 2023-4. A remarkable journey it was and it is and it shall become ever more, if we intensify and deepen our love, devotion and reverence to this spiritual being.
Look at it as one whole process of incarnation, growth and flowering from Israel to Germany, we could feel it as an expression of what we called ‘the threefold heartbeat of Michael’, pulsing in seven year rhythm. We could find in this stream an inner organic structure of development from seed to flower, a rhythmic, organic flow, born in Israel, the middle of the Earth, in the south, gathering in the youthful forces of the north, and flowering in Germany, the middle of Europe and the evolution of humanity in the present age. And we should continue to raise this question: What did really happen in this metamorphosis from Israel 2017 until Inari 2022-3, and then what should happen when the 7 year cycle between Israel and Germany would be fulfilled in Christmas 2023-4?
To grasp this mystery, we must practice spirit remembering, minding, and seeing, to bring to consciousness the hidden spiritual aspects of what we experienced. It is not an intellectual affair, you know, not a conceptual framework to be reflected upon, analyzed, and recognized. It is a real spiritual situation and happening, a real event. What does it say, when we listen to Michael’s threefold heartbeat and read the signs of the times? What do we perceive, if we grasp the newly kindled Christ fire that blazes from the east and forms itself in the west? Recall also what we said about it in our lectures From Tragedy to Hope, how this impulse weaves so urgently, expectedly, calling human hearts to awaken, audible to spirit ears and visible to open spirit eyes. For decades now we could perceive it, speaking powerfully between East and West, North and South, through the spiritual heartbeat that unities the middle of the earth and Europe. It is speaking about what the Christ experienced through all the Holocausts of the twilight of humanity in the 20th century, revealed through His etheric resurrection in the 21st century. Only through the experience of the whole sevenfold rhythm, we can realize what happened in each single year through our global meetings, for example also, what happened recently in Finland.
And on this background, we can begin to prepare the coming important centenary years, 2023, 2024, 2025. To prepare rightly the centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference, it will be very helpful, to have this 7 year rhythm clearly in our consciousness. It will help us in forming the chalice to receive and actualize this event, and if we do so, it will become the future seed impulse for the coming creative developments from 2025 to 2045.
The Future Cosmic Cultus and Spiritual Communion of Humanity
You will remember, we spoke about the future cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity that Rudolf Steiner wanted to start to develop in Sylvester 1922, when the fire was already burning inside the Goetheanum. This cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity is the spiritual life blood of all anthroposophical and spiritual streams of all ages. It is nothing new, it has always been there. Humans always had their rituals of offering and sacrifices to their gods, all religions had it, in all epochs and cultures, it was always the center of all spiritual activity in the temples and holy shrines. And I said in my last lecture in Inari that if you look at the spiritually active human being, devotedly, reverentially, creatively thinking, feeling and acting, you see that she and he perform and embody this cultus, if the fire burns most warmly and the light shines most brightly on the altar of their heart. In this manner, as I showed, through the powerfully devoted soul forces, also the physical body is spiritualized. The human blood is etherizing, astralizing, spiritualizing, to such an extent, that we unite it with the stream of Christ’s etherized life’s blood that flows from Golgotha.
The two streams of spiritualized blood, the human and Christ’s, mingle and unite in the etheric heart, flow as one stream to the head, and become spiritual faculties of perception and cognition, through which the etheric Christ is perceived and the second coming becomes a living current event. This can happen in the mediation of a single person, in which case the community is the spiritual companionship of the angles and higher beings around him. And if man is celebrating this cultic deed of offering and transubstantiation in the earthly community, it becomes the living center of the cosmic cultus and spiritual communion, that unites humans and gods in strongest bonds of mutual love and sharing. Thus the entire community is spiritualizing itself and offering its spiritualized soul and bodily substance to our spiritual companions, that receive it, develop it further, and rain it back down on us as blessing and inspiration.
In our time we don’t sacrifice external objects, plants and animals, nor humans, as we did in our previous incarnations. Today we sacrifice our own substance, spiritualized through our active soul forces, thoughts, feelings, and will impulses. This happens when we intensify our devotion and enflame the spiritual fire in the heart so powerfully, that the spiritualized soul forces spiritualize the astral and etheric bodies, and the physical body also, first through the blood. What happens externally in the religious cultus- the offering, transubstantiation and communion- takes place in us as a reality, if the devotion is strong enough, if the fire is burning strong enough on the altar of the heart. This is the picture that you get when you look at any person that is doing her meditation or prayer in a truly devotional mood, in an intensity of inner fire. This is what you see. This applies to each individual in his and her spiritual activity. Religious, scientific, artistic, socially engaged man, in his acts of love and devotion, is a living and embodied cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity.
The Reversed Cultus and Communion with the Spiritual World
Now if a whole community develops this activity together as a community, in which each individual is practicing it and the whole community practices it, and the individuals and community come together in love and harmony of thinking, feeling and will, this cultus is performed together as a reversed cultus, which means that it rises from below upward, and then the gods answer its fruits with their gifts that descend from above downward. This is the difference between the old and the new cultuses. The old cultus came with the gods from above downward and humans received it as a gift and then offered their sacrifices in return to the source. In our age we have to become the initial source. We spiritualize and offer what we gather from the physical, soul and spiritual forces of the earth, from our experiences here on the earth and lift it upward as fresh offering to the gods.
As I also showed in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, when the whole community is doing it, we perform the reversed cultus together as community, to unite with the etheric Christ and the beings of the school of Michael in the etheric world. And when we offer the spiritual fruits of our individual and communal work to the gods, they joyfully receive it, and then they can sense and feel, see and reach us, approach nearer to us, descend down and unite with us, and stream into the chalice of our community their divine inspirations and blessings.
So this is the true meaning of the cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity, that Rudolf Steiner performed in the laying of the foundation stone in Christmas 1923-4. He did it as the messenger of the gods, Sophia, Michael and Christ, the leading initiate of the present age and as the firstborn representative of modern humanity, the 10th hierarchy of freedom and love. And he hoped that his pupils, the ordinary mortals, will take it from his hands, and do the same, on the purely human level. He intended that the next step will be that ordinary humans take up the torch from his hands that he received from the gods and light the fire on the altar of their free etheric hearts in the new community of Michael. He hoped, and waited- and he still hopes and waits- that ordinary humans will perform the reversed cultus through purely human forces. In doing this, we fulfil and complete the mission of the Christmas foundation conference from 1923-4 and it can begin a whole new cycle of development. What we create in our work- to the extent that we fire it up to such an intensity of devotion and offering- is our gift to the Christ, Michael and Anthroposophia, to all the gods and human souls that remain loyal to them, and this allows them to communicate with us. We have to bring the fruits of the earth from below upward to let them stream their grace and blessing from above downward to humanity. This is the reason why we do this work. This is the significance of the celebration of the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference.