עברית The Time is at Hand!
World History in the light of the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael
Nine Lectures in Forum-3, Stuttgart, Christmas 2023-4
The Time is at Hand!
World History in the light of the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael
We stand today in the middle of the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael, described in the book, The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. In the light of this apocalypse, Dr Ben-Aharon will describe the founding impulses of world history, in the past, present and future, from the laying of the foundation stone of the earth and its evolution through world history, to the Christmas foundation Conference in 1923–4, its resurrection in the present, and the culmination of the apocalyptic battle of the age of Michael in the 21st century.
Lecture language: English with consecutive German translation
Sunday, 24 December 2023 until Monday, 1 January 2024
Duration each lecture 24.12. bis 31.12.2023: 7:30–9:30 pm
Duration lecture 01.01.2024: 11:00 am–1:00 pm
Forum 3 Gymnasiumstrasse 21 D-70173 Stuttgart
Telephon: +49 (0)711 4400749-66
Telefax: +49 (0)711 4400749-98
E-Mail: aktuelle-themen@ forum3.de
https://www.forum3.de/kurs/neun-vortraege/
The Time is at Hand!
Ahrimanic and Michaelic Immortality and the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael
Ereignis Verlag
To interpret the signs of the times, let us arrange our lives in accordance with these three mysteries of our time: the mystery of Michael, the mystery of Christ, and the mystery of Sorat.
(Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 12 September 1924, GA 346).
The most important goal of Michael in the 21st century is that the new revelation of the etheric Christ will be fully grasped because the resurrection of humanity from the grave of civilization depends on this. In the five lectures contained in this book, given in 2017 and 2022, Dr Ben-Aharon describes the work in the global school of spiritual science, that creates the path to the sunrise of the new Christ revelation and the new impulse of Michael. It offers hopeful and creative perspective, in the midst of the decisive Apocalypse of the present age of Michael.
From the Fifth Lecture, Überlingen, 5 November 2022
Dear friends, this is what I wanted to say in our last lecture, to prepare our hearts to actualize in the right mood the coming three centenaries of the burning of the first Goetheanum, the Christmas Foundation Conference, and the death of Rudolf Steiner. I also wanted to express my conviction that we can be very enthusiastic, serious and joyful, about the time in which we live today on earth. And we can continue our preparations and our work in the coming 3 years, with the 4 forces that Michael is looking for, as Rudolf Steiner pointed out: holy enthusiasm and energy, perseverance, and festivity, to intensify our growth and become productive inwardly and outwardly. And we may feel that as the work becomes livelier, we become younger and more creative. The sign of this growing younger will be that we become more hopeful, trusting, brother-and sisterly, and more joyful in our community building work. That is how we prepare the sacred marriage of the new Heaven and Earth, with feelings of gratitude and reverence, feeling this absolutely unique Stimmung of devotion to the significant historical time in which we live. And when we truly feel it, we would say: OK, because this festive mood is well prepared, I am allowed to be happy! Michaelic happiness is justified, is allowed, if one worked to attain it for many years and decades, actualizing in this creation all the forces of one’s heart and soul in daily life.
It is earnest, sacred work and it must culminate in a festive mood of celebration, the beginning of the cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity, about which Rudolf Steiner spoke in the almost completed first Goetheanum in Sylvester 1922, while the flames of fire were already burning between its mighty wooden walls. This cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity, spiritualized in the flames and rising as sacred sacrifice to the cosmos, returned as mighty new Michaelic inspiration, that Rudolf Steiner transformed at the end of 1923 into the Foundation Stone of Love in the Christmas Foundation Conference.
But only if we have taken into our hearts the mighty and shattering events that shook heaven and earth during the century that passed since 1923-4, described in my books, we will be able to celebrate this centenary in the right way.
Let us be worthy of this immense sacrifice offered to humanity, the earth, and the spiritual worlds 3x33 years ago and ever since, and let it be resurrected in our etheric hearts as the fiery flames of the new cosmic cultus and spiritual communion of humanity- the future festival in which the guiding Michaelic spiritual beings will actually work together with fully conscious humans on the earth, to complete the bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness and the brotherhood and sisterhood of the present age of Michaelic.
Then, indeed, we may say a third time: The time is at hand! But what exactly is this time, that is now at hand?
As soon as the words [of the Green Snake] resound in the temple: I want to sacrifice myself! The old man shouts: the time has come! The words of the old man, the time has come, point to… the time that the temple rises up above the river, that the whole humanity takes part in wisdom, in the initiation which was otherwise given to few people only in the temples, in the abysses. [1]
Our time, 3x33 years after the Christmas Foundation Conference, is the beginning of this future time, in which the first mortals answer the call of the gods, uninitiated humans construct the bridge of continuity of consciousness, and lay the foundation stone of the earthly-human Sun temple.
And this is the deeper meaning of our work in the coming 20’ and 30’, dear friends: to be ‘the prepares of the preparers’, as Rudolf Steiner said in the lectures about the apocalypse in Nüremberg in 1908. We must become the first mortals to construct the bridge and let the open temple of humanity, the new mysteries, burned in 1922-3-4, rise again in our hearts, graced by the new revelation of the etheric Christ and the new impulse of Michael. And if our response-ability is honest and creative, it will be taken up by Rudolf Steiner and presented to Michael, as the firstborn fruit of what humans accomplish with his forces in his present age, and Michael will be able to represent humanity in the council of the gods, telling them that ‘during my Age, men have raised their [spiritualized thinking] to the supersensible… and we can therefore accept men again, for they have united their thought with ours’. [2]
[1] Lecture of 16 February 1905 (GA 53).
[2] Lecture of 17 December 1922 (GA 219).