עברית From ‘the General Philistine Aristotle’ to the ‘Sun Rays’ of the new Platonic Mysteries
The Joy of Community Building, First Part
From ‘the General Philistine Aristotle’ to the ‘Sun Rays’ of the new Platonic Mysteries
In the karma lecture dedicated to the school of Chartres (13 July 1924, GA 237), Rudolf Steiner says that when the Platonic teachers from Chartres returned to the spiritual world at the end of the twelfth century and the Aristotelian teachers descended to replace them in the leadership of humanity at the beginning of the thirteen century,
The principle of the Mysteries had ascended to the heavens and sent down its Sun-rays thence upon all that was working on the earth.
I showed in many of my writings that since the end of last century, this principle of the mysteries lives on the sun becoming earth and sends its sun rays upon all that is working on the earth. This center of this earthly-human sun rays is the reappearance of the Christ in the etheric world, grasped by the etheric human heart, and illuminated by the sun light of the new spiritual knowledge. This is also the source of the most creative forces of the human soul, that bring with them the greatest enthusiasm, joy and blessed feeling, that a positive future of the earth and humanity is still possible. And in no other place can this joy be experienced then in the building of the new Michaelic community.
The secret of this joy is found when the weight of the sorrow and pain of the world, has been individualized so deeply that it is carried inwardly, embodied in our hearts, until it does not paralyze the soul anymore. Not the Luciferic flight of escape of this heaviness or the Ahrimanic oppression under its weights, but carrying the weight upward, overcoming its paralyzing power, regaining the holy enthusiasm and creative joy of pure innocent beginning, becoming children again- on a higher level of maturity. I described this process in the section about The school of the new force of love, in the second lecture in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, the most ‘Dionysian’ part of the book.
This joy is the ripened and nourishing fruit arising thanks to all these sufferings, and it proves that all the tears and pains are never experienced in vein, that they provide the fertile soil for all future positive growth and development. And if you are resurrected, you will also perceive that alongside the downfall of the old earth and humanity, the new the etheric resurrection of the earth and humanity is taking place, and is becoming more visible and palpable with each day. And one is then free to resume the development of Platonism, that had to be stopped in the 12th century, and bring its power, to kindle anew on earth the sun rays of the new Mysteries and bring them to full expression in the first half of the 21st century.
It must be remembered that in my book, The Three Meetings, I described in some detail how I struggled with anthroposophical Aristotelianism to accomplish The Platonic-Aristotelian essence exchange at the end of last century. I did this to ground the new Platonism on the most stable spiritual scientific foundations, and give it the cognitive basis that it needs to blossom in the present century. My goal was to spiritualize the fallen anthroposophical Aristotelianism from the 20th century and consolidate the firm spiritual ground for the new anthroposophical Platonism. This was my main goal especially in the 80’ of last century, described also in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, and when The New Experience of the Supersensible was published in 1995, I could feel that the first part of this task was completed. Now I could turn my work to the question: How is the new Michael community and school to be formed, on this foundation?
Indeed, this is an essential part of the joy of renewing the Platonic sun rays of the new Mysteries on earth in the 21st century: you must go as thoroughly as you can through the school of
‘the general philistine Aristotle, [who] handed down to posterity a filtered Greek philosophy…. Who no longer had consciousness of the actual world of ideas, which no longer had Platonism in its body.
In the 12th century one had to give up the sun power of the ancient Mysteries, and let the bone-dry discipline of the scholastic pupils of this general philistine Aristotle, to take over the general- philistine!- education of humanity. Therefore, at the end of the 20th century, one had to suffer willingly and enthusiastically what the young Alexander had to go through the discipline of his master the Philistine Aristotle, feeling,
as though he were thrusting his head into cold water and thereby became estranged from himself’, crying out loud to his teacher, ‘You are pressing together all the bones of my head!'.
Oh, yes, we had to go through all this again at the end of last century, we had to experience what have the general philistine Aristotelians done to anthroposophy after Rudolf Steiner’s death! The sunrise of the new Mysteries of Michael through the new Platonism could only come about in this way. But finally, when the last centenary cycles of old anthroposophy are coming to close in 2023-5, we may be allowed to celebrate the end of the enslavement of anthroposophy to the ghosts of the philistine Aristotle, and let the school of Michael breath again for the first time since 1925, and kindle joyfully the new sun rays of its true Mysteries.
Rudolf Steiner described not without a touch of humor, what people experienced in the old days, as did Alexander, when the logic of ‘the general philistine’ was still experienced with the whole soul, not with the dead intellect as it is done today. The people that had to study the logic of Aristotle’s, with all their souls and feelings, not merely with their head. They had, Rudolf Steiner says, ‘learned what we find treated so ironically in Goethe's Faust:
The first was so, the second so.
Therefore the third and fourth are so:
Were not the first and second, then
The third and fourth had never been!
There will your mind be drilled and braced,
As if in Spanish boots ‘twere laced!’
Of course, you may believe that you can grow healthy spiritual plants and fruits without this Aristotelian compost, which is prepared from decaying residues of Platonism and ancient spirituality. If you want to avoid this messy intellectual stuff, you will buy ready-and easy made spiritual fertilizers, ignore the pain of developing clear and logical thinking, where ‘your mind be drilled and braced, As if in Spanish boots ‘twere laced!”’. But those who still have the taste buds to tase the quality of the spiritual fruits, will know that your fruits are not tasty, nourishing and life giving at all. Without the compost of Aristotelianism, modern spirituality is but a mere fantasy, speculation and illusion. But if it is nourished with this robust substance and hard won spiritualization of earthly intellectualism, its flowers and fruits are truly nourishing, and the new Platonism will become an expression of the living essence of real anthroposophy. And then, in turn, his Platonic resurrection of anthroposophy becomes the new soil, in which in the future, the new born anthroposophical Aristotelianism will be planted and cultivated, when finally the hoped for culmination of the synthesis between the two streams will be realized.
What is in reality this joy of community building? From the many aspects that come to mind, I will pick up only one, but this one is an important part of its living formative forces. To comprehend it, however, the reader is required to imagine that the location of this happening is the etheric world. This is the absolute precondition. As old anthroposophy, in its Aristotelian form, was rooted in the physical world, the ground of true anthroposophical Platonism is the etheric world. If we take this fact fully into account, the following can be pointed out. Naturally, the path leading from the physical to the etheric must first be traversed, as preparation for the spiritual situation and happening to come.
To be continued in the second part