עברית This is the age of consciousness soul, the age of Michael, the second coming, and the new age of light. It is the time that this mystery must become the conscious deed of mortals, that raise themselves higher and higher to meet the gods.
The Task of the Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
An extract from a lecture in the Global School of Spiritual Science
17 June 2023
This is the age of consciousness soul, the age of Michael, the second coming, and the new age of light. It is the time that this mystery must become the conscious deed of mortals, that raise themselves higher and higher to meet the gods.
When we say we lift something up and it is accepted by the gods, what does it mean really? Well, it means that my soul, my thinking, my feeling, my impulses of will that were in me, in you, in us before, had been raised up by us, upwards, about 50 cm or so above our heads to begin with. We don’t have to measure it physically of course, this is only an illustration. And you feel it, because part of you is living now inside the common unity of the plurality of the gods. Part of you is living with them and we should feel: oh, I was inside myself before, but now after the offering and transubstantiation, I feel part of me is up there, is taken by the gods to the higher world, and I commune with them there. So I feel a great expansion of my being. I feel that I am becoming one with an infinitely larger stream of life. I feel that everything I gave has been transformed, is now part of the divine stream of life and I can experience a communion with this divine love, life and light. As we said: creating the new gospel in the physical world- our diligent, devoted work on earth, creates the common spiritual substance that we lift up in offering, transubstantiation and communion, and then we receive the blessings of the gods, as an expression of their satisfaction and joy with the offer of our loving nectar and ambrosia.
Then comes a great moment, it doesn’t have to happen in the same moment or meeting. It can happen during the night, during our sleep. It can happen at another time altogether. The goal, the ideal of the future is that it will also happen in real time, but of course, this requires a lot of practice, perseverance and patience, and as we often pointed out, this should happen increasingly from the 30’ onwards, towards the middle of the century. But already now, if we practice it in this spirit and feel the subtle weaving of the etheric world in and around us, it is a reality, a very subtle, very gentle reality, but it is beginning to happen.
And when you feel this communion in real time, you will also feel: now the gods are returning something back to us. You begin to feel inspired by higher forces, and this is after all the most important thing, isn’t it? Think about it, the whole practice of anthroposophy, the whole spiritual training, the meditative path, the reversed cultus, what is it really for? The only true goal of anthroposophy is to build up the forces required to communicate with the spiritual world here and now. But you may ask: to communicate for what? Why should we communicate with the gods? Well, we want to know what they think, what they feel, what they do, what they prepare for the next step of human evolution right here and now, not what they could only share with Rudolf Steiner until 1925! For God’s sake, dear friends, I say it repeatedly now for more than 30 years, but no one cares to listen: since 1925, humanity has been disconnected from the school of Michael and the Christ impulse. It is a devastatingly long period of time, a whole crucial century has passed, the first century in the so short age of Michael. That’s what we must know and do, in the second century of Michael, to change this miserable state of affairs.
We have to work so sincerely, enthusiastically, from our entire human being, and lift the fruits of our community’s labor to the spiritual world, to be inspired by the gods, in order to know what the gods are thinking, feeling and doing now at this moment. Not what they were thinking and doing a hundred years ago when Rudolf Steiner communicated with them, but what he did with them since his death and what he does with them right now! We have to use what they gave him a hundred years ago in such a way, that it will bring us to what they wish to give us today. And this is what we try to do in such a way that the reversed cultus and spiritual communion of humanity will connect us with what they are doing now, to allow us to be able to gain some insights, some inspiration, from what they are doing now. This is the only goal of true anthroposophy.
Nothing good can happen through the widespread mystic channeling or visionary clairvoyance, not through any psychedelics, physical or psychic, that millions of people are doing, to communicate with spirits and have astral visions. That is not our path. Our task is different, and it is the justified Michaelic path. It is based on fully conscious soul and spirit activity, bringing the whole school community into communication with the beings of Michael in the etheric world. The whole active group must finally cross the threshold and meet Michael and his hosts, gathered around the new revelation of the etheric Christ. The whole community of Michael on earth will be thus inspired and know how and when it is inspired. We have felt it, at a certain time, we know what it means.
On the one hand, it is absolutely true, if in such moments, we feel, sense, touch, smell, the subtle weaving of the etheric world in our etheric hearts and in the etheric body and heart of the community. It must indeed become spiritual substantial, sensorial-spiritual, so to say, when we lift ourselves to this level. This is fully justified- provided it is experience not in the dense physical body, as materialization of the spirit, but as spiritualization of the physical sensations and perceptions of the body itself. Many people revers the spiritual and materialize it, and believe that their visions and sensations are true spiritual experiences. This is one of the important temptations and tests that we have to undergo: to differentiate between the materialization of the spiritual and its expression in astral visions and manifestations, and the subtle, pure, sensations and feelings, that which we experience through the etheric bodies, when we lift up our offer to the gods.
If you are really inspired, it must be demonstrated as a matter of fact, because you must become a different person. You would know it as clearly as you know that this is the sun, and this is the moon. You will experience: now I am not thinking, the gods are thinking through me! And then perhaps our friend in the school who usually keeps very quiet, she doesn’t speak so much in the school, she doesn’t speak perhaps so much at all, stands up, and she speaks in such a way, that you say to yourself: Oh my god, these are true thoughts, these are inspired thoughts, and she will feel it, you will feel it, and the spirit will begin to move around and speak through the community, and the Holy Spirit will have returned! A true Pentecostal atmosphere will engulf the ascending community, the gods will reciprocate the gifts of the reversed cultus, have communion with us, and the first result of this will be the new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as the prophet Joel said: in this time- our time was meant- every boy and girl, slave and free, will prophecy!
If you consider the whole company of the angels, they are also called summarily the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when the angels are communing with you, the Holy Spirit begins to flow through your inspired thoughts, and you feel: I am inspired. But you will also know: I am inspired because the community is inspired. I am just the present voice through which the spirit speaks, next it will be you, and tomorrow someone else. You feel this inspiration as real, crystal clear, spiritual substance. There is no trace of nebulous mystical clairvoyance involved. Pure thinking, feeling and will, alone provide the stage of this inspiration. This is not mere feelings and sensations of being sentimental, sensual, and cozy with the gods. This is how new ideas are coming in come in, new knowledge is revealed, and true facts come to light.
The gods ardently wish to tell us something new about what they think, feel and do, what is going on now in the etheric and higher worlds. They want to share with us what is going on in the evolution of humanity that we should know if we are to help humanity in this crucial time of probation.
So, the first thing that will express the communion of the mortals and immortals is that you feel inspired in your thinking. You know for certain that these are not your thoughts- that you would have never be able to think like that with your humble earthly forces. Your thinking becomes magnified, it becomes streaming, storming, weaving and undulating; you feel that the angels are thinking through you, and you know the reversed cultus has brought this about. We lifted our spiritual work and human love and brotherhood up, and now we receive it back as a transformed, spiritualized, inspiring gift. Mind you, on earth, you received the graceful gift of physical anthroposophy already, that changed your life, but this happened a long time ago. Now you are transformed again, because through an inspired stream of cosmic thoughts, you begin to experience the true being of Anthroposophia. You realized that what you could experience of her in your earthly thinking, feeling and will, was only her wonderfully marked, strong, shadow or corpse; now she resurrected and you are with her. Because we proved our loyalty to her old dying earthly being, followed her to the desert in the last century, she blesses us- through the angles- with her youthful, rejuvenation inspirations. This must happen today and in the coming future for human evolution to progress at all in the right direction.
Now also in our feelings we can be inspired, not only in our thoughts. How are the gods inspiring us through our feelings? They inspire us to actualize real deeds and not indulge in our personal sensations and feelings, through which we only sense ourselves. Now it is about the feeling deeds, where I feel the impulse to do something to one of my brothers and sisters in the community. Not from my head, not from my ideal, or as a moral commandment, no I feel inspired through my moral feelings to listen to her, to take her into my heart, to understand her much better than I did before. And then I can ask her, what does she need, what can I do for her! And in this way, in the communion brought about by the reversed cultus a totally new feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood will develop.
Think about it, dear friends, what do we actually do in our school meditation? You probably ask yourself: where did this meditation come from? Well, now I just described to you from where and how it was conceived. It can serve as a concrete example of the above described inspiration, coming as an answer from the gods to support our work on earth. This is the way that they would have liked us to carry each other in our hearts and souls, because they say: only if human beings will start to carry each other in this way, as we- the gods- do with each other, will humanity be saved in the 21st century. After all the knowledge of anthroposophy has been acquired in the 20th century, in the 21st it is becoming a powerful moral substance, power and inspiration. The first part of The Philosophy of Freedom, if you will, become the second part, and Moral Intuition, Imagination and Technique are realized. After ordinary thinking was spiritualized and has become ‘love in its spiritual form’, it descends to the etheric heart; in the etheric heart it becomes ‘the thinking of the heart’ which is so often misunderstood, because it is grasped by ordinary thinking. In other words: Spiritual cognition, developed by the spiritualization of the physical corpse of anthroposophy from the 20th century, becomes the creative moral impulse, that can do the good directly out of the spiritual world, as Rudolf Steiner hoped for, and as Bernard Lievegoed was striving for. Then- and then only- Anthroposophia will be born through you and appear before you, as I tried to show in The Three Meetings, as the lovely being of Philosophia appeared to Dante and the teachers of Chartres. You can amass so many anthroposophical concepts, and ‘know’ so much as to write another book of interpretation of what Rudolf Steiner could give up to 1925, and then another, and talk about through the third millennium, but you will only continue to trade with her dead corpse, and will never experience her true being. But if you develop your heart forces in the company of your brothers and sisters in the community of Michael, then this most intimate yet very objective, truthful, unsentimental inspiration will stream forth, transforming your thinking and feeling and leading you eventually to accomplish newly inspired deeds on earth.
Then the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Anthroposophia, can also work into the forces of the will, and fire them to deeds of true courage. Courageous deeds of mortals are now asked for, are required, must also be inspired. Deeds to do the good. You find ways to do the good in your community in your daily life, in your household, in your workplace and street. You will be inspired to do deeds that you would never have thought of being capable of, humble deeds perhaps, physically perceived, but great deeds, nevertheless, if you measure the moral weight of their moral substance. When you experience this, you know that this is the tried result of the reversed cultus, and ‘the human being Anthroposophia’ that has ‘human thoughts, feelings and will impulses… and therefore can change us’, is born among us, and grow to mature life; and as I showed in The Three Meetings, because you could perceive- in your etheric heart- that ‘at the door of the heart of every anthroposophist [she] knocks with the words: “Let me in, for I am yourself; I am your true human being”’, and you let her enter, you will know that the reversed cultus has reached a certain objective result.
This is what I wish to communicate in this talk, which is the last one we have before the summer break, that if the reversed cultus is done properly and is raised up and the offering, transubstantiation and communion are actually taking place as real ‘situation and event’, it doesn’t end there. It’s just a beginning. Now comes the answer, the threefold inspiration, and the birth event of Anthroposophia, crowns it all, and we feel how it streams through our thoughts, feelings, and will and inspires new thought-deeds, feelings-deed, and will-deeds, of love, compassion, healing and goodness, in the physical world. Then it begins to be real, and you see what the future cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity is all about, and your hearts are ablaze with holy Michaelic enthusiasm, because you begin to believe in what you see and know, that in the second century of the age of Michael, before it’s too late, the age of Michael might after all begin.
Then the Christmas foundation conference will become the chalice of the reversed cultus. We will lift it up. We lift up the foundation stone; the gods accept it, and say, finally, at last, some mortals have heard it! You have spiritualized the old even on the earth, redeem it from its frozen mummified intellectual and sentimental corpse, the hardened earthly traditions that encapsulate and imprison it, and give it up to the gods. And you let them transubstantiate it, and reciprocate the gift, and the miraculous birth and embodiment of Anthroposophia will follow this. Then they will tell you what the Christmas Foundation Impulse is doing now in the spiritual world.
This is what the anthroposophical society was supposed to become after the Christmas Foundation Conference. Rudolf Steiner said: from now on, we will only be talking about what is happening now in the spiritual world. No more talks and discussions about theoretical knowledge. Overcome your little egos, open the heart to your brothers and sisters, create the harmony of the minds, hearts and wills! Therefore, it is our task to try to do it with our humble forces a century later. If we continue this in the summer individually, in small groups, in bigger groups, then we will come together in the fall and winter, and we will be strengthened with newly inspired thoughts, feelings and will impulses, with the forces required to celebrate the centenary of the Christmas foundation as a reversed cultus: to raise it to the etheric world, and receive its updated formation, that only we, as mortals, can actualize on earth. And then the old man with the lamp will call: Es ist an der Zeit! And we shall move on to what’s coming from the future, as morals and gods will reciprocate and interchange and mutually fertilize each other in the newly arisen temple of the new Michaelic Mysteries, while Anthroposophia becomes the heart and soul of the Michaelic community.
We will work vigorously and enthusiastically on this formation of the reversed cultus because we would like to bring the work to the point in which we can first of all say: can we lift it up to such a degree that the meaning of the spiritual event of the 20th century will become revealed to us? Not only as an historical event in the past time only, but as it is happening now, because since the 12 years of 1933-45 it continued to evolve and is constantly evolving. What happened in the spiritual event in the 20th century as a continuously evolving event, about which we spoke in detail in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity? This is a totally new transformation of the future cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity. We want to lift and open up our souls to ask this question: can we perceive the spiritual event of the 21st century happening today, and what does it mean? In other words, more simply put: What is the Christ impulse doing today, grasped and embodied through Michael and Anthroposophia? What do the three meetings convey to the school of Michael on earth? How the three come to meet us- when we rise to meet them-from the etheric world? And what would they want to offer us, as a new inspiration?
What would the Christ tell us, share with us, show us, reveal to us today if we would be so kindly to open our hearts to him? And you know that before and after and through everything, the whole meaning of our work, the true mission of Michael and Anthroposophia, is really nothing else but to bring the new revelation of the etheric Christ to the knowledge of more and more people. That is the meaning of anthroposophy in our time, and this is the mission of our work. This is the true will of Michael. He goes before the Christ to reveal Christ to humanity. This is what it is all about, and we will have to find a way to embody this inspiration in the celebration of the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference in Christmas 2023-4.
Our task will be to transform the Christmas foundation conference into a process of reversed cultus, described in this and the previous lectures, that leads to the presently living, active, indwelling, etheric Christ. It must be coming from the appearance, words and deeds of the etheric Christ. A century ago, the will of Michael, the inspiration of Anthroposophia and the revelation of Christ were brought down by the initiate of our age, by Rudolf Steiner. He brought it down to the earth so that mortals may hear it and act upon it. Now it is up to us simple humble mortals, weak and sinful mortals that we are, to do this work in the name of humanity for the salvation of humanity and the earth.
Please contemplate this during the summer, dear friends, and I wish you all happy months of rejuvenation and recreation!