עברית More about the Preparations for the Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
Will this community be formed in our lifetime?
More about the Preparations for the Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
Lecture in the Global School of Spiritual Science
16 April 2023
'We will feel as if we wake up from the deepest sleep, in which our previous anthroposophical work was shrouded and submerged. Then and there, for the first time, the true mystery of the event of the Christmas Foundation Conference will begin to dawn in our souls. The first ray of a great wonder will be experienced, that we still only feel and sense, in the twilight of this awakening, but that in the future- if we continue to cultivate this germinating seed- may become radiant sunlight of new comprehension and new life.'
Thank you, dear friends, for the fine contributions from the guiding college team and from our members. It shows again that the community work gathers depths and energy, and the right Stimmung grows and develops in the right way.
In our last talks we spoke how to meditate in general and then applied it to the Foundation Stone meditation. Our perennial question is, naturally, what is meditation? The moment we stop asking this question, it is a sure sign that our progress has stopped and we arrived at a dead end. Meditation is the inner fire that drives and enlivens spiritual science, and spiritual science is alive only to the extent that we meditate. But it is not enough to believe that we ‘meditate’, because we have naturally many illusionary beliefs about ourselves. We must be able to experience that the meditation bears real spiritual fruits. Therefore, we must not cease exploring and inquiring if what we do is the right thing. If we do so, it will keep our work alive. If not, it is dead and gone, and we better look for easier entertainments!
As we emphasized repeatedly, the first and foremost question is: How to prepare the soil of the soul and of the heart to meditate properly, individually and in the work of the school? And we said that this preparation is the first crucial question, because if the mood is right the meditation has a chance to develop. If not, we may toil hard for decades and end in frustration, not realizing that we have missed the first fundamental condition. So why wait for the end of our life to realize this, if we can do it here and now? Of course, after the preparation, we will still have to do the meditation, but without creating in our souls the right mood the meditation will never even have a chance to develop properly. So, to begin with, it is all about creating the right mood of soul and in the school meetings in which we are gathered.
You can say this preparation is the proper soul dynamic cultivation of the soil of the heart, in which we want to plant and develop the Foundation Stone of Love. But please consider this: how can we plant the seed of a work of love in loveless hearts? For a century now people meditate this, and of course they believe that they do the right thing, but they totally fail in fulfilling the very first fundamental condition. They don’t really love each other- and they continue to meditate the foundation stone of love for decades on end! Of course, if you are honest, you will see the results of this untruthful, unfruitful, practice. But how many people dare to admit, that for a very long and critical century, since the death of Rudolf Steiner in 1925, no true connection with the spiritual world was established, and no real and concrete, supersensible communication with the Michaelic guidance of the school of Michael was attained?
As long as our soul’s breath is suffocated and our spiritual heartbeat is suppressed because of our antipathies, envies, angers and incriminations to the people sitting around us, we would better not presume to serve Michael! It’s much better we choose another occupation because this pretense, based on such untruths, will backfire not only for each one of us personally, but will continue to ruin the evolution of humanity.
If in our school meetings the dedication to Michael is not mere phrase, convention and routine, but living actual practice, our human souls must breath peacefully and healthily with each other, enthusiastically and joyfully join with each other, when we lift the fruits of our work to the higher worlds to receive their blessing and grace.
Therefore, we have to prove ourselves worthy to receive the seeds of love into our loving hearts. Each meditation must begin only after this cultivation took place, which means, the soil of the soul and the ground of the heart must be thoroughly ploughed, opened up to receive fresh life forces, the rays of the spiritual sun must pour into it unhindered, and above all, relationships with our sisters and brothers in the school must be strong, positive, empowering.
This must be done at the beginning of each meeting and we have to make sure that later on when we lose our soul breath, enthusiasm and joy- and we will lose it naturally sooner or later- we will not need so much time to discover that we have lost it. That we become more efficient and notice it before too long and say: Dear friends, I think we lost it, let’s open and refresh the soil of the heart and nourish it with devotion, reverence and mutual fellow feeling, because we fell out of the living present event, we are beginning to talk from the head, below which the antipathies and sympathies hold sway. Then we go back to the heart, to think from the heart, to work from the heart, to feel from the heart - really to do the whole meeting from the active, open, courageous, heart.
The thinking of the heart is precise, phenomenological, warmth and light giving; it lives and weaves in tune with the heartbeat of things, breathing with their breath, entering deeply into their being and becoming, living with the actual, presently active, spirit of the event in which we strive to participate. This is the only real place in which the Michaelic inspiration can be perceived in the present time; only there and then we are connected to the real spiritual world and the Michaelic beings, that wish to be able to join our work on earth.
When we grow efficient with practice, we will not need such a long time to notice the difference between working from the head and our veiled antipathies, and working from the open and active heart. And when we lose it we will soon become conscious of this, and say: Oh my god, we have lost it again, let’s go back to the true source. And rapidly and happily rekindle the dying fire in the altar of our hearts and restart the work from its living foundations.
Dear friends, this is after all the essence of the matter. This is the century long question, that has not been answered until now. Will humans hear it, understand it, act upon it? This is the main question in the lectures I gave in the German school in November, that will be published this summer in Ereignis Verlag, under the title Es ist an der Zeit!.
Will this community be formed in our lifetime? This community is formed through the cultus of the formation and laying of the foundation stone. But the foundation stone described the whole, human-cosmic, human being. This human being- our true being- is the being that forms the community in which it is going to grow and develop. So the community of the foundation stone must be a community in which we embody our true being, in which the process of the formation of the foundation stone- our self-formation and actualization- is happening all the time. But if we understand the significance of this event, we must be deeply moved, shocked, totally transformed. Do we really grasp what it means? It means that the centenary event is this co-operative, reciprocal, communal human formation, that each one of us is actualizing in herself and in the community together with each other.
In other words, what was demonstrated by Rudolf Steiner in the Christmas foundation conference, must become for us the mutual formation event of our true holistic humanity. When we contemplate it repeatedly and experience exactly what the Doctor is doing in each stage, in each step, we will feel this mystery dawning on us. We will feel as if we wake up from the deepest sleep, in which our previous anthroposophical work was shrouded and submerged. Then and there, for the first time, the true mystery of the event of the Christmas Foundation Conference will begin to dawn in our souls. The first ray of a great wonder will be experienced, that we still only feel and sense, in the twilight of this awakening, but that in the future- if we continue to cultivate this germinating seed- may become radiant sunlight of new comprehension and new life.
This is why we take our time to cultivate this self-and community formative event to see how it develops step by step through 2023. And I pointed out in our previous talks, that if this event becomes meditative praxis, the foundation stone meditation will become a real happening, an event, in itself. Thus the formation and laying of the foundation stone becomes meditation, the foundation stone meditation becomes an event, and the two fructify each other and exchange their essences with each other, until the above indicated awakening begins to happen, and the first veil over this mystery begins to fall. We will then feel: Now we draw a bit closer to the presently active forces of this mystery, and begin to participate in its active actualization, after a whole Michaelic century has passed.
When we contemplate what happened on December 25th, 1923, we will no longer relate to this event as something external, that the Doctor was doing a century ago, nor as verbal and mental repetition of what he did. From now on, when we grasp what is he doing now, what is he doing later, we become this doing, we become this event. It happens in us- it happens between us- it happens in the community as a whole. What happens really in those crucial moments in which he says: At this moment let us do this, and then he says: Now in this moment, let me do that: this becomes part of the essential becoming and formation of your true spirit, self, soul and body. When you experience what he is really doing in these moments, you experience it on yourself; you become the event of the formation and laying of the human-cosmic human being of love; this formation becomes your individual and communal self-formation and actualization, the foundation stone of the Michaelic community in 2023.
Thus the combined meditation on cultic event of Christmas 1923 and the foundation stone, becomes an active, real, spiritual formative process, the real beginning of the future cosmic cultus and the spiritual communion of humanity: The reversed cultus of the act of consecration of man and the founding of the new community of Michael. We have to celebrate this cultus and communion together through 2023, to arrive at the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference well prepared. If we really wake up to this mystery and enter into its innermost essence, its resurrection will take place and we will experience it, in our thoughts, feelings, active will, and with our whole soul.
As we intend, in the summer we will gather the fruits of this work, extract their living forces, and assess their true spiritual weight. If they provide us with vital formative substance, with forces of future creativity, we will be able to lift them up and connect them with the spiritual worlds. Then we shall see: does our cosmic cultus and spiritual communion rises up at all, or is stalled down below? Is it received above by our spiritual companions? Does the human-earthly Sun, cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity, unite with their spiritual cultus and communion? Do the two cultuses and communions become one cultus and communion, that breathes and pulses between the new Earth to the new Heaven of the earthly-human Sun?
The college will meet in August to digest and transform what we accomplished in the work since the beginning of the year to prepare the work in the school in the fall and winter. But of course, an earnest ‘IF’ question is hovering above us, the typical question mark of this age of Michael. It all depends on the free, active and creative, love filled will of human beings! Will they finally hear the call of Michael, which is the call that our true spirit is calling us. It all depends on how much real spiritual substance and energy will have been created and harvested from winter of 2022-3 until winter 2023-4, on how much living communal substance shall be available to spiritualize further and offer to the gods in the summer, fall and winter. This will decide what we can offer to our spiritual companions and to what extent our offer allows them to reciprocate it with their grace and blessings in the centenary event and in all the years and decades to come.
Es ist alles wirklich so spannungsvoll! Thank you, dear friends!