עברית ‘Looking up to Christ, let there always stand in our soul: Christ is the archetype of the “I”; let my “I” strive to become a copy of this archetype’.
From the First to the Second Meeting with the Etheric Christ through the knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
The Three Meetings: Christ, Michael, and Anthroposophia
Introduction
When the true nature of the first and second, given and voluntary, meetings with the Christ is fully grasped, we can say with Rudolf Steiner, that in truth ‘it is the Christ that gives me my humanity’. This means that in our age, through the etheric Second Coming, it becomes possible for more and more people to prepare themselves to receive the Ego-copy of the Christ, and say, ‘looking up to Christ, let there always stand in our soul: Christ is the archetype of the “I”; let my “I” strive to become a copy of this archetype’.
At the center of the evolution of humanity and the earth stands the Mystery of Golgotha, through which the Christ impulse entered the earth. Rudolf Steiner pointed out that anthroposophy was given at the beginning of the last century to prepare for the second major Christ event in human evolution, the etheric Second Coming that began in 1933. As a result of the history of the twentieth century, described in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, the Second Coming was reversed into its evil opposite on earth. After the death of Rudolf Steiner in 1925, anthroposophy was disconnected from the new revelation of the Christ and the developing stream of Michael, and this separation continued until the end of the century. The meetings with the etheric Christ, Michael and Anthroposophia, described in this book, as a Prelude to the second edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, are possible because of the Second Coming. It is the portal that leads to the mighty and transformative events that are taking place in the etheric world right now in the present age.
We must distinguish between two aspects of the meeting with the etheric Christ in the modern Christ experience. The first is that the meeting with the etheric Christ in the etheric world is a gift of grace. It is initiated and given to man by the Christ. Rudolf Steiner emphasized that there is a ‘tremendous difference’ between this meeting and the way an initiate perceives the Christ voluntarily in the spiritual world:
There is a tremendous difference between what trained clairvoyants experience and what is described here as something that will come about in the natural course of events. Since time immemorial the trained clairvoyant experienced the Christ by means of certain exercises. On the physical plane, if I meet a man, he is there is front of me; with clairvoyant vision I can perceive him in quite different places, and we do not actually meet. It has always been possible to see the Christ clairvoyantly. But to meet Him, now that He stands in a different relationship to humanity, in other words, that He helps us from out of the etheric world, is something which is independent of our clairvoyant development. From the twentieth century onwards, in the next three thousand years, certain people will be able to meet Him, meet Him objectively as an etheric form. That is very different from experiencing a vision of Him through inner development.
This meeting is an expression of the fact that today the Christ ‘stands in a different relationship to humanity’, and ‘He helps us from out of the etheric world’. In other words, in this meeting we meet the Christ as ‘if I meet a man’, and therefore the Christ ‘is there in front of me’. This is therefore a meeting face to face, like the way we meet another person in the physical world face to face. In such meetings, we perceive and experience the being of the Christ directly, and its impression encompasses all levels and aspects of our human constitution and existence.
This is the first aspect of the meeting, which is experienced as a given gift of grace, that does not require previous spiritual knowledge. But it can become a starting point of spiritual-scientific development, that leads to a second meeting gained in a voluntary way. In this case, as in Parsifal’s path to the Grail, we must distinguish between the first meeting, which is given as a gift of grace, and the second meeting, that was gained through conscious spiritual development. The New Experience of the Supersensible, Chapter 4, describes the given meeting, and Chapter 5 describes the second meeting gained through voluntary spiritual development.
The second, voluntary, meeting with the Christ was described by Rudolf Steiner in the following way:
If souls allow spiritual science to kindle understanding of such secrets, they become fit to recognize in that Holy Chalice the Mystery of the Christ-‘I,’ the eternal ‘I’ which every human ‘I’ can become. The secret is a reality—only human beings must allow themselves to be summoned through spiritual science to understand this, in order that as they contemplate the Holy Grail, the Christ-‘I’ may be received into their being... when human beings are better prepared to receive the Christ Ego, then it will pour in greater and greater fullness into their souls. They will then evolve to the level of Christ Jesus, their great Example. Then for the first time they will learn to understand the sense in which Christ Jesus is the Great Example for humanity.
In another lecture Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the timely nature of this process:
Yes, these imprinted copies of the Christ Jesus individuality are waiting to be taken in by human souls—they are waiting!
The path from the first, given meeting with the Christ to the second meeting, in which we actualize a conscious reception of His ‘I’, is the path of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming. Its aim is to transform the gift of the given meeting into a fully conscious reception and individualization of His ‘I’ copy. But the more we develop the path that leads to the voluntary second meeting and the reception of Christ’s ‘I’, we realize that its spiritual seed was implicit in the first, given, meeting. When the given meeting is transformed into the voluntary meeting, we realize that the copy of Christ’s ‘I’, that we receive and individualize consciously, was contained in the being of the Christ that we experienced in the first meeting.
The knowledge drama of the Second Coming leads us to ‘contemplate the Holy Grail’ in order that ‘the Christ-“I” may be received into the human being’. Then we discover, in the light of spiritual knowledge, radiating from the Holy Grail, that the Christ Himself is the source of the copies of His ‘I’. We ‘recognize in that Holy Chalice the Mystery of the Christ-“I,” the eternal “I” which every human “I” can become’, and through the knowledge drama, we actively participate in this becoming.
For this reason, the gracefully given meeting with the etheric Christ must be understood not as a finished single event, but as the planting of a fiery spiritual seed of His ‘I’ in the human spirit, soul, and body. Modern spiritual science offers the required spiritual knowledge and practice, to fully receive and individualize the given seed of the Christ-‘I’. This event is only the start of a lifelong, indeed, eternal process of spiritual becoming. In the words cited above, Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the gradual nature of this process. ‘The Christ-“I”... will imbue the souls of human beings to an ever-increasing degree so that they can strive upward to approach the position where their great model Christ Jesus used to be’. We should add to the image of ‘the “I” copy’ used by Rudolf Steiner, also the image of the seed. What happens to this seed after its graceful giving depends entirely on our free spiritual activity. The gradual process of spiritual growth and development that began in a singular event of grace, is a seed planted in the fertile spiritual soil of human hearts and through the sunlight of modern spiritual knowledge it can develop and bear much fruit.
When the true nature of the first and second, given and voluntary, meetings with the Christ is fully grasped, we can say with Rudolf Steiner, that in truth ‘it is the Christ that gives me my humanity’. This means that in our age, through the etheric Second Coming, it becomes possible for more and more people to prepare themselves to receive the Ego-copy of the Christ, and say, ‘looking up to Christ, let there always stand in our soul: Christ is the archetype of the “I”; let my “I” strive to become a copy of this archetype’.