עברית 'From now onward there is a new revelation of Christ; we will be ready to acknowledge it; we will belong to the few who will help it to become more powerful, to become lasting; we will base ourselves upon the inner strength of such a revelation, so that it may spread among mankind, for this knowledge will gradually be shared by all.'
The Modern Christ Experience
From the preface to the first volume of the 2nd edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, entitled: The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming.
The 4 Volumes:
1 The Modern Christ Experience
2 The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, Part I
3 The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, Part II
4 The Creation of the Earthly-Human Sun: The New Human Meeting and New Michaelic Community
From the Preface to the first Volume: The Modern Christ Experience
From now onward there is a new revelation of Christ; we will be ready to acknowledge it; we will belong to the few who will help it to become more powerful, to become lasting; we will base ourselves upon the inner strength of such a revelation, so that it may spread among mankind, for this knowledge will gradually be shared by all. This is what we call wisdom, and some may call folly. To stand firm we need only remind ourselves that this is the time of the second Michael revelation and remember what was said by one of the early Initiates at the time of the former Michael revelation: What often seems folly to man, is wisdom in the eyes of God.
Rudolf Steiner, lecture of 2 May 1913 (GA 152)
Rudolf Steiner repeatedly pointed out that the greatest spiritual event of our time that will begin in 1933 is the reappearance of the Christ in etheric form. The spiritual perception of his etheric appearance will be the result of the natural emergence of new, fully conscious, faculties of supersensible perception. The modern 'Damascus Experience' will be, as was the case of St Paul, a naturally given initiatory event. Those human beings who undergo this initiation ‘will not require documentary evidence to recognize Christ, but they will have direct knowledge as is today possessed only by the initiates’. This development is a result of the inner law that underlies the spiritual evolution of human consciousness. This law states that ‘all the faculties that today can be acquired only by means of initiation will in the future be universal faculties of humanity. This condition of soul, this experiencing of soul, is called in esotericism the “Second Coming of Christ”’.[1]
Until the 15th century, humanity was still in the epoch of the Mind or Intellectual soul, or in its after-effects, which continued until the end of the 19th century. In that age, the approach to the Christ was conditioned by this fact and was based mainly on the religions and mystical paths of the Middle Ages. The fully conscious capacity of independent thinking, which serves as the foundation for truly modern self-conscious supersensible research, was not yet possible before the beginning of the new age of Michael.
As Rudolf Steiner demonstrated in his entire spiritual scientific work, in the new age of Michael the forces of clear and exact thinking (and sense-perception), grounded in the Consciousness Soul, can be spiritualized, and transformed into the new forces of supersensible perception and cognition. These new forces can also grasp and investigate the etheric appearance, words, and deeds of the Christ. The Christ impulse, past, present, and future, the center and sense of all human evolution, can for the first time become the goal of fully individualized human experience and research. To this absolutely new stage of the evolution of human consciousness in our time, Rudolf Steiner referred, when he said that ‘every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognizing forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch’. [2] This is the essence of the modern Christ experience and the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, described in the present book.
The essence of modern spiritual science is this: the freely acquired human knowledge of a thoroughly Christ-permeated and transformed universe, nature, and human evolution and history. Precisely since humanity begins to attain this special connection to the etheric Christ, the need for spiritual science will only increase, because only spiritual science can illuminate, with its spiritual light of clear and precise knowledge, this special connection, and its consequences for human and earthly evolution.
The more the epoch of the Consciousness Soul develops during the age of Michael and the Second Coming, and the more it emerges out of the intellectual residues of the previous Mind Soul epoch, the Consciousness Soul will be experienced in its true nature - and only the new Michael-Christ impulse can bring this about- and fire and courage, love and devotion will become the hallmark of spiritual scientific activity and creativity. The true nature of the Consciousness Soul, transformed by the forces of Michael and Christ, is indeed already highly spiritual. As we showed from various points of view in Cognitive Yoga and The Three Meetings, the essence of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, described in volumes 2 and 3, is actualized through the fact that ‘Christ is a Being who proves Himself, who realizes Himself in us as we acquire spiritual knowledge’.[3] But the free spiritual activity of the Consciousness Soul is sovereign, creative and active, inwardly aflame with the fire of love and enthusiasm for the mysteries of the world and of man, and thoroughly irradiated and penetrated with the forces of clear, precise, and living thinking and Imagination. It experiences any passivity, givenness and obscurity only as the resistance on which it can unfold and strengthen its independent cognitive and moral forces. These characteristics of the Consciousness Soul, if they are truly developed, are those that enable it to come to grips with the new, naturally developing faculties of supersensible perception, which bring about the modern Christ experience as a natural initiation event, because it finds in this event an infinite source of future strengthening and spiritualizing of its innate spirit forces.
This truth must be grasped in all exactitude in the present age of Michael: Everything that is ‘given’ to us as part of the physical and spiritual worlds, simply exists. The cosmos and our human being, in body, soul and spirit, is a given result, the wonderful composition of generation of gods working in harmony for millions and millions of spiritual years. But in our soul, they have also planted potential seeds, future forces, that only we can develop, as free initiative. In the age of the Consciousness Soul, given spiritual experiences and forces, are only potentialities; man can, if he so chooses, actualize them- or not; what is given are the forces by means of which man can creates his individual spiritual tools, and perform his individual spiritual work. The appearance, words and deeds of the etheric Christ, described in chapter 4, is ‘given’ in this sense. We report what we experience through the revelation of his being and becoming. But man can simply gaze at it passively, as mere onlooker, and continue walking, as we do with anything we see. Or he can take this as a master class, and inspired by this creative demonstration mobilize all his creative forces and transform this inspiration, given as a gift of grace in the meeting, into free individual creation.
The Christ, therefore, is not doing our work instead of us, he makes the most fruitful spiritual forces available and accessible to each soul, but the soul alone can realize the ‘not I but the Christ in me’. The Christ is living in the unconscious depth of all souls, but if man uses his forces or not, depends solely on his free will. This freedom is the gift of the earth; we are free to activate, cultivate and actualize the spiritual gifts that are given in such abondance in this new age of light, or let them decay in our souls.
The task of spiritual science is to transform this given initiatory fact into modern initiation science, as it transforms the sense-perceptible appearance of any physical object into the spiritual scientific revelation of its spiritual being. To understand this fundamental relation of any given fact or experience, and spiritual scientific research, we must consider that from a spiritual-scientific point of view, every experience, be it sensible or supersensible, is a given and therefore, as such, an external fact. So long as it is not thoroughly penetrated and transformed by the active and independent thinking and imaginative forces of the Consciousness Soul, it remains a personal, subjective event that, notwithstanding its personal value, cannot become in this form a matter of scientific research. For spiritual science, therefore, such an experience must first become an object of anthroposophical research, as described in this book.
And this research discovers also, the reciprocal connection between the given Christ experience and the potential spiritual faculties in the human soul. The first thing that we discover is that the new faculties that perceive the etheric Christ in the meeting, are awakened in human souls by Him. Furthermore, when we develop these faculties further through the development of spiritual science, and create the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, we also discover that the light of spiritual knowledge, created in this way, is coming from the same source, described also in the book, written as prelude to the present book, The Three Meetings: Christ, Michael, and Anthroposophia (2021). This experience is a most significant moment in the evolution of the knowledge drama.
In the physical world, the real spiritual source of spiritual science is unknown, and is revealed for the first time when it is spiritualized by means of the new supersensible faculties. Then we realize that it springs from the same spiritual source, namely, from the unique connection between the beings of Christ and Michael. Each helps the human soul to develop its specific faculties and forces: the etheric Christ inspires the new supersensible faculties, and Michael stimulates the possibility to spiritualize modern clear thinking. Each is in turn enriched, deepened and strengthened by the other. We spiritualize the conscious activity of spiritual science through the spiritual faculties that the etheric Christ awakens in the soul.
The spiritual science that we get to know in the physical world is after all also a mere physical appearance. It must be spiritualized as any given physical fact, and the modern Christ experience awakens in the soul the faculties to do this. And when we spiritualize the given physical form of spiritual science, we use its spiritualized forces to investigate the Christ experience.
And what we discover then? Wonder of wonders, as Novalis would have said, we discover that, as Rudolf Steiner pointed out, ‘often, my dear friends, I am asked by our members: how do I bring myself into a connection with the Christ? This is a naive question, because everything towards which we can strive, every line that we read in our anthroposophical science, is a bringing of oneself into a relation with the Christ. We are actually doing nothing else but this. And the one who wishes to have a special connection [to the Christ] only shows, in a naive way, that he really would have liked to avoid the somewhat uncomfortable way of study and reading’.[4] Through the meeting with the etheric Christ and the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, ‘the somewhat uncomfortable way of study and reading’ of spiritual science becomes a fiery, enthusiastic, Michaelic impulse, in the human soul and heart. Reading and study of the results of the supersensible investigations of spiritual science become the most inspiring and joyful cosmic cultus and spiritual communion, for the souls that experience the real spiritual world.
In this way a spiritual life cycle comes about, a reciprocal, mutual essence exchange, between the given appearances of the etheric Christ and spiritual science. The modern Christ experience and the new spiritual faculties that it awakens allow us to spiritualize the earthly form of spiritual science, and the spiritualized forces of spiritual science, can be applied to investigate the modern Christ experience and develop further the given supersensible faculties. As our experience has shown, the two streams grow more and more intimately with each other, and lead us to their source in the spiritual world, in which it is revealed as the connection between the Christ, Michael and the third mysterious being, that we learn to know as Anthroposophia.
When we activate Christ’s given forces to spiritualize spiritual science on the earth, we do this with the same forces by means of which Rudolf Steiner created spiritual science for the first time at the beginning of last century. He did it as an initiate, the teacher of the present epoch, and expected his pupils to do the same, on the level of ordinary humans. This is the true meaning and mission of modern spiritual science, described in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. Thus, the modern Christ experience connects us to the source of the present stream of Michael and the real being of Anthroposophia because the Christ Himself is their spiritual source. He becomes the portal through which we meet Michael and Anthroposophia and experience their reciprocal relationships and create from their united forces the bridge of spiritual memory and continuation of consciousness in the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.
Our first task at the end of last century was to resurrect the old anthroposophy with the help of the modern Christ experience. This was done for two reasons: first, to actualize on earth the living continuation of the stream of Michael that continued to develop in the etheric world after the death of Rudolf Steiner in 1915 At the end of the century, this continuation had to be accomplished in the physical world. And second, when old anthroposophy was resurrected, it was transformed into the chalice to receive the new stream of Michael, the new anthroposophy of the 21st century. This stream flows directly from its presently active spiritual source. Only when the resurrected old anthroposcopy and the new stream of Michael become one earthly-spiritual stream, the work of Michael in the first half of the 21st century can be done.
Therefore, we can say that the mutual crossings, fertilizations and essence exchanges between the modern Christ experience and spiritual science, old and new, between earthly and supersensible anthroposophy, is the main subject of this book. At the middle, heart organ, through which the old Anthroposophia is resurrected and united with her spiritual, young self, is the modern Christ experience. Through the modern Christ experience, earthly Anthroposophia is constantly resurrected, renewed, and rejuvenated and unites with her spiritual being in the spiritual world, and at the same time, the Christ experience becomes ever more conscious and illuminated by the light her spiritual knowledge on the earth.
[1] Lecture of 18 April 1910 (GA 118).
[2] Lecture of 13 March 1915 (GA 159).
[3] Lecture of 12 April 1914 (GA 153).
[4] Lecture of 13 June 1916 (GA 169).
The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
First Volume
The Modern Christ Experience
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Mystery of Spiritual Remembrance
Chapter 2
Saul-Paul at the Gates of Damascus
Chapter 3
The Conditions of the Modern Christ Experience
The Evolution of Freedom
Chapter 4
The Modern Christ Experience: The Meeting with the New Initiator
Detailed Contents
Chapter 1
The Mystery of Spiritual Remembrance
How the disciples were transformed into apostles; Teaching of the resurrected Christ and the transformation of memory through the Mystery of Golgotha; Spiritualization of the etheric body and memory and the construction of the modern bridge to the etheric Christ.
Chapter 2
Saul-Paul at the Gates of Damascus
Paul’s meeting with the resurrected Christ is the archetype of the modern Christ experience and the knowledge drama of the Second Coming; Consolidation of the duality of human nature and the opening of the wound of Amfortas; Mystery of the giving of Christ’s ‘I’ and the individuation of Christ’s given keys of Death and Evil.
Chapter 3
The Conditions of the Modern Christ Experience - The Evolution of Freedom
The meeting with the etheric Christ is only possible in the age of the Consciousness Soul, when man has become free; Man’s severance from the spiritual worlds, caused by the dying out of the ancient clairvoyance, must precede and prepare this fully conscious meeting; Present release of the etheric body from the physical body causes a far-reaching transformation of the entire human constitution; Meeting with the Christ occurs at the climax of the crisis of individuation, in the moment of ‘the most significant disharmony in human feelings that ever existed in human evolution’.
Chapter 4
The Modern Christ Experience - The Meeting with the New Initiator
The three main stages in the meeting with the etheric Christ: Experience of the death and resurrection of cognition, experience of evil and the healing of the soul, and the experience of the future potential of the complete transformation of man; In the first stage, the etheric Christ demonstrates the spiritualization of ordinary cognition into imaginative cognition; In the second stage, His living words heal the discord and degradation of the separated soul forces; In the third stage, He shows how the physical body can be spiritualized; In the human spirit, soul and body, the Christ plants three golden spirit seeds, as potential for future development, which man can only develop further by means of his free spiritual activity; This development is the task of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.