עברית The Formation of the Heart Chalice of the Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
Anthroposophical Ideas are Vessels Fashioned by Love
The Formation of the Heart Chalice of the Centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference
Lecture in the Global School of Spiritual Science
9 December 2023
Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon
And the Words,
expressing anthroposophical truths,
are not like words spoken elsewhere today,
Words are expressed
that are all truly prayers.
Each word of Anthroposophy
is in its essence,
If it is spoken rightly,
A prayer, a reverent prayer,
that the spirit may descend to men.
The Time is at Hand!
Thank you dear friends for the words that you spoke that expressed the essence and meaning of our work, through which we could already sense some of the tidings from the coming Christmas centenary event in Stuttgart, blessing us with future intimations of important tasks. We worked indeed intensively to prepare this moment- and the coming ones- in the last seven years, and in the 10 years before. And in these years, we also experienced some creative developments and adventures, going through obstacles, overcoming our weaknesses and learning a great deal about how to become conscious mortals, that strive honestly, humbly, and courageously, to the spirit of our time. Becoming more and more human, was and is and will always be, our main goal, worthy of harboring and cultivating, in our common etheric heart, the newborn ‘human being Anthroposophia’.
Anthroposophia, the daughter of Michael, and granddaughter of cosmic Sophia (I described her birth and becoming in The Three Meetings), is both our teacher as our progeny, mother and child; at the same time, we mother her as she mothers us, and this is why we feel such great responsibility to her becoming, which is our becoming, and to her becoming through the becoming of humanity in the present age of Michael. Learning from our failures, not denying and suppressing our little egos, with their petty ‘human all too human’ things, not hiding them under an alluringly glittering anthroposophical carpet, but rather placing them on the central table of our attention, has become our well established path to the spirit; learning a great deal about ourselves, accepting and respecting also our fallen humanness, giving due credits to our failures, the generous mother soil of all true human learning and development, we could increase, gradually, but authentically, the humble, courageous, devotion to truth and knowledge, devotion to the truth of self-knowledge, and above all, devotion to the holistic being, appearance and deeds of our sisters and brothers in the Michaelic movement and school.
You know, the gods have endowed human nature with original gifts and qualities, as a foundation, to grow and develop to maturity on earth. Human courage, enthusiasm, passion, joy, fellow feeling and human love were implanted in all human souls, as a divine gift, to sustain and nourish us on our earthly path. Then the gods closed the ancient mysteries and left humans for some time alone, that they find their earthly path by themselves, to gain their freedom. After some 2000 years, when freedom was consolidated and the development of the new Consciousness Soul attained its first stage, the gates of heaven were opened again by Michael, the Sun spirit, the herald of freedom and loved filled thinking. Rudolf Steiner was his colleague of earth, and a flood of new spiritual knowledge and creative human deeds of love could stream into humanity, from the beginning of the Age of Michael in 1879 until Rudolf Steiner’s death in 30 March 1925. It could only be received by a smallest part of humanity, and this smallest part could only grasp it as far as the intellect is concerned. To the heart and active will forces, it was not yet taken, as Michael hoped for. Therefore, the 20th century became the Ragnarök and graveyard of humanity, as we often described, and we found ourselves sinking ever deeper into the grave of civilization, and the corpse of old anthroposophy, that remained behind on earth after the death of Rudolf Steiner, fell into this grave as well.
In the last century, it was not yet possible to connect the God-given original forces of human nature, with the abundant stream of new spiritual knowledge and life. The stream of Michaelic ideas and knowledge, creative deeds and loving sacrifices, was killed in human heads, habits and conventions, reversed into its opposite in so many ways. Humans couldn’t not yet receive it into their etheric heads, hearts and limbs, and kindle it with the fire and passion of brotherhood and creative love and responsibility for each other. Without the new spiritual impulse, the God give forces of original human nature, deteriorated fast in the deepening non-human abyss. Human nature, disconnected so long from the gods, refusing, out of freedom, to grasp and actualize the new opportunity to reconnect with the spiritual worlds, became an easy prey to Lucifer and Ahriman and the new forces of radical evil.
The new spiritual knowledge and deeds, given so abundantly by Michael through Rudolf Steiner, inspired by the Christ, were frozen to death in our intellectualized minds, blocked from entry by our closed hearts, caricatured in our institutions, and human nature was savaged by infernal forces. And this is the great challenge of the present century: to unite the two streams, from above and below, in the middle of human nature, in the almost totally free etheric heart of free people; to bring together the immerse creative spiritual revelations flowing from the spiritual world, from Michael and his hosts, with the purified, spiritualized, elementary, youthful forces of our souls and bodies, our elementary will power, passion, enthusiasm, courage and devotion; head, heart and limbs must be penetrated by the new stream of living spiritual forces, because the path of Michael must lead from the head to the heart, from the heart to the limbs and back to the heart and head, creating an organic cycle and flow, pulsating and breathing through our entire constitution, and rhythmically, actively, creatively, transform our whole being. The Michaelic ideas will be experienced as love in action, creating naturally- as naturally as we eat and breath and move our bodies around- true brotherhood, and what was called Anthroposophy in the last century, will be resurrected from the grave and become a source of brotherly, sisterly love, the foundation stone of the new creative community, that carries the will of Michael and the love of Christ to humanity at large.
Obviously this cannot be done in the physical body alone. The physical body must kill the spirit to protect us from its infinite abondance. No offense against our precious body is mean, of course! The good gods allowed Lucifer and Ahriman to transform it, to allow us an evolutionary moment and space of freedom, away from our divine home, to develop our free humanity out of our own independently created resources, not through the direct influence of the loving and caring father and mother gods. The transformed physical body must turn things upside down, it is the body of reversal, until it will be resurrected and returned to its true hevenly statute. This process of individuation, is a wonderfully good thing, even if it is connected so often to excruciating pains of growth. Don’t blame the physical body for this, as all nature around us, it has sacrificed itself for our sake, in the expectation for redemption through free love of mature humans, sooner than later; it was formed by an immense sacrifices of the beings of all the hierarchies, that formed it out of their living substance, to shape it as foundation stone for our earthly freedom.
Therefore, if we take Anthroposophy into the physical brain as has been done in the last 100 years, it must be killed and reversed to its opposite, exactly as the fresh, life giving air that we breath in must be transformed into poisonous carbon dioxide that we breath out, into the increasingly dioxided, carbonized, dying external world. For a century now, we read the holiest and most sublime thoughts and ideas about the spirit and imbibe the most wonderful spiritual revelations, freely given to mortals for their free consumption, but we engrave it in the grave of the physical brain and reverse its meaning in our egotistical emotions and desires, to consume the next book, lecture and institution. While we do this we are filled with increasing antipathy and adversity to ourselves and our coworkers, and we begin to terribly dislike ourselves and them; we fight with them fiercely, using as our weapons the most sacred knowledge that Michael gave us from the love source of Christ. And then, of course, also the Christmas foundation conference must go kaput! And no trace of brotherly and sisterly love, no new harmony of hearts, no new Michaelic community, but their grim opposites alone prevail.
Some of you would know the story about that lazy guy, who asked Rabbi Hillel: Tell me the whole Thora on one foot! And Hillel who was known for his infinite compassion, tolerance and patient to humans, stood on one foot, and said: The extract and essence of the whole Thora in one sentence is: love thy neighbor as thyself! And you know from Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the fifth gospel, how deeply Jesus felt connected to Hillel’s school and saw in him the last representative of the fast disappearing legacy of the Hebrew prophets. Thus, the original, primordial, natural forces of God-given love, carried in the blood through the generations through the ancient Hebrew people, was eventually spiritualized and universalized, taken out of the Folk-and blood connection, flowering in Jesus’s life and loving sacrificial devotion to humanity, that allowed him to give up his self and let the cosmic Christ become human in the chalice of his bodies. 2000 years later, humanity has come of age, and this has become the task of ordinary mortals; but we are still lagging behind schedule, we are not doing that well right now…
So, dear friends, what can we do in the 21st century to create this community, to form this chalice of mutual love and empowerment, to embody the Foundation Stoner of love, the human being Anthroposophia, in our communal etheric body and united etheric hearts? We have seen how Rudolf Steiner individualized the deed of Christ, as the first initiate of the Consciousness Soul epoch, and opened this way to all mortals. Are we going to individualize his individuation of Christ’s deed? If we do this, we can resurrect Anthroposophia from the grave of civilization, and develop the new spiritual forces of brotherhood, in a fully modern, wide awake spiritual perception and cognition. True Anthroposophy will begin to live and weave, from one etheric heart to the next, until a communal etheric body is formed, as her chalice. Then finally, a whole century too late, the age of Michael would begin- because it has not yet begun, as far as humanity is concerned- and this must take place in the absolutely crucial second, middle century of the three and half so short centuries of his present age. If humanity also misses this lifeline, as it did miss it in the last century, it will not be possible to prevent its wholesale deterioration in the 22ed century, and this means- we spoke often about it- that when the dark saturnian Oriphiel takes over the torch of leadership from the hands of Michael, Michael will have to give him a torch whose fire has never really kindled in human hearts. If this will happen, the Oriphiel age of darkness will be dark indeed!
If we can make a smallest change in this down spiraling modern tragedy, and take the step not yet taken, it will become the seed of what Rudolf Steiner hoped for in 1924, but never realized until now: a direct inspiration will be received, from the spiritual world, from the school of Michael, the countenance of the etheric Christ, grasped consciously and embodied as a living power in the heart-forces of ordinary, inspired, mortals. And then we shall experience how Anthroposophy is opening the portal to the source of true love, speaking the language of wisdom filled love, and we will enthusiastically return to our starting point, becoming again younger growing children of the spirit, and rejoice in being humble beginners, putting aside the old garments of arrogance and fear, and contemplate again the very first pages of Knowledge of the higher worlds, about the necessity to develop devotion, reverence, veneration, and love for truth and knowledge in everything we see and meet. And suddenly it will dawn on us, as highest revelation: Only now we begin to understand and experience the true nature of ‘the human being Anthroposophia’, as our innermost living being. She becomesthe highway, the only true portal of the heart to the spirit, without which no true spiritual training and development can be accomplished. We begin to experience and actualize, what Rudolf Steiner wrote some 125 years ago: Just as the sun’s rays vivify everything living so does reference in the heart of the students vivify all feelings of the soul.
I believe we really tried to practice this in the first 10 years of our work, and learned infinitely much from our repeated failures! Yes, of course, you can read about it often, study it, interpret it, talk about it, give seminars and lectures about it, write many anthroposophical books and add more and more interpretations to it. Certainly, this will make you feel very clever and ‘knowledgeable’ about it, and your anthroposophical ego will expand tremendously. But the moment you begin to make a real effort to practice it in your life, you will stop all this, you will feel deeply ashamed, when you consider your knowledgeable interpretations. You will come back to your ordinary self and in a moment of devotion to the truth of self-knowledge, you will face the truth you have been avoiding all along. It was sweet in your mouth, of course, as long it was just another item of anthroposophical consumption in your head! But now you have seriously tried to practice it in your real life, to embody it in your body and actions, and you feel how in your stomach, it has become exceedingly bitter. In thinking and interpreting, reflecting and analyzing, explaining and speculating, it was so sweet, but it was Lucifer- so you realize now- that was sweetening it for you, and you gave him the fruits of your enjoyments, so both of you were so happy with each other, and an unholy cycle and feedback loop was established between both of you, that continued to grow and expand with time. And now, when you actually try to do it, the truth confronts you, and it is bitter, because you must confront your mortal self, and all its shortcomings come to light in overwhelming illumination.
And you try again and again, to practice what Rudolf Steiner repeats three times in those pages: Every moment in life in which I can transform an unloving soul, unloving feeling to someone else into love and respect and veneration to his essence, to his being, every such moment brings me forward on the spiritual path. He insists that without it you will never become a true pupil of true spiritual science. Naturally, you can use the mediative exercises that Rudolf Steiner gave, by path devotion to truth, and attain, that much faster, as a matter of fact, certain supersensible experiences, but because you didn’t enter the spiritual world through the main portal of truthful devotion and love, such experiences will lead you to unite with spiritual beings that oppose the true evolution of humanity.
This is how the pupil starts again, enthusiastically, as a child that just discovered a new flower or insect, to experience the most elementary elements of the spiritual path, as if he never saw and experienced them before. He starts from the beginning, through the first elementary pages of the most elementary book, marveling all the time, did I ever read this book before? And he searches now more honestly and conscientiously for the lifeblood of Anthroposophy, and tries to discover her most living sources. If this has become his ardent desire and he joined a community of like-hearted people, who not only know the difference between theory and practice, but actually try to bridge this abyss, he may also find the path to the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference. He will join the true school of Michael, where the formation and laying of the foundation stone of love is taken earnestly, festively, with outmost devotion and holy enthusiasm, and also with greatest creative joy, because this joy is the hallmark of real spiritual development. This must experienced in real life, you cannot argue about it with people who never experienced it.
Now, if the new Michaelic community has progressed thus far, its colleagues will be able to are face each other with the expertise that only seriously flawed mortals can attain, taking the first steps in the Michaelic ‘school of love’ of the future; they are now ready to face also all the antipathies, aggressions and fears, that make up our karmic inclinations, one-sidedness, and shortcomings, that we decided in our spiritual wisdom to bring with us, to meet our karmically connected comrades. And only then the real Michaelic task can begin in earnest: to heal our shared karma, that has become chaotic in recent historical time of individuation, when we had to be disconnected from the spiritual world, thanks to the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman. Michael wishes above all to restore the truth of karma, in the service of Christ in his new role as the new lord of karma. As I show in the fourth volume of the forthcoming book, The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, the forces created in the sacred healing of karma, has another sacred task. We gain world transforming and redeeming forces in this way. We form the heart of the earthly-human Sun when we heal our karmic chaos and restore the truth of our original relationships, guided by Christ’s life in our midst. Then for the first time the Foundation Stone of Love, in its new form, will find human hearts united in living community, in which it can be planted, grow and prosper. All these obstacles must be resolved to create a tightly woven, robust, chalice of love, knitting the karmic holes, a chalice that can withstand the powerful inner and external storms of our time, a new vessel that can receive the new wine of the new spirit of the Michaelic movement and school.
To accomplish the task of healing our shared karma, however, something else in required: the active and creative, will of love: the will power of Michaelic.
You would also recall our efforts to kindle and actualize this Michaelic will-power, the courage and world encompassing enthusiasm, and we focused- among many other virtues- also on the following four virtues of Michael. It is remarkable to realize in which context Rudolf Steiner mentioned the four. He did it in the very last lecture of the karma lecture cycle, that he gave, as the crowing gift and testament, in the absolutely incredible creative year 1924, that ended with the last address in Michaelmas, September 28th. A week before, in September 23rd, he spoke about the previous earthly lives of his venerable teacher and friend, Karl-Julius Schröer. This high individuality was none other than Plato, the teacher of Aristotle in Athens in the the 5thcentury BC. In the 10th century he reincarnated as a catholic nun, Hroswitha von Gandersheim (c. 935–973), and developed an intense inner mystical life, of great depth and beauty (As Hella Krause -Zimmer showed in her fine monograph). But then, when he reincarnated again in the 19th century (1825-1900), he adamantly refused to confront the newly arising scientific materialism and intellectualism, and recommended his young pupil and friend, Rudolf Steiner, to edit and explicate Goethe’s natural scientific writings in the Kürschner edition. In this respect Rudolf Steiner took on himself also that part of the confrontation with Ahriman- which was surely his main karmic task- that Schröer did not fulfil. (In my little book, The Three Meetings, written as introduction to the new edition of The New Experience of the Supersensible, I refer to this also in the context of the karma between the Aristotelian and the Platonic streams at the end of the 20th century). Indeed, Rudolf Steiner complains about his old teacher, saying that one part of his soul longed to continue also in the present life the inner mystical life of the nun Hroswitha, and did not want to confron the stark Ahrimanic forces of modern natural science and philosophy. He abhorred intellectualism and materialism, cherished idealism, and let Rudolf Steiner deal with it. So Rudolf Steiner also took on himself something that Schröer should have done, but left undone.
The renewed meeting of Plato and Aristoteles as the end of the 19th century, was a recapitulation, on a higher level, of their meeting in the 5th century BC. Then it took place in the descending phase of the evolutionary cycle. At that time the transition from platonic spirituality to Aristotelian earthly and logical thinking was the right step downward, because the cosmic intelligence, ruled by Michael, was destined to flow increasingly to human heads on earth, and Aristoteles had the karmic task of leading this process. Cosmic thinking was flowing down to earth, because human souls must grasp it, to become free individuals. Plato’s world of ideas was still suffused by the last light rays of the ancient Mysteries of Eleusis, Egypt and Persia. Aristoteles individualized it, humanized it, intellectualized and killed it. Now, in the 19th century, it was Rudolf Steiner’s task, shouldering the karmic debt of Aristotle, to spiritualize thinking and bring it back to Michael. In the 5th century BC Plato had transmitted the old spirituality to his young pupil, that he may bring it to earth and give it the new form of individual human thinking. At the end of the 19th century, this fallen Michaelic intelligence, that was to great extent already conquered by Ahriman, had to be redeemed and returned to Michael. Well, Schröer refused to do his part and Rudolf Steiner did it alone. How did he do it? He accomplished this, as you know, in his book, The Philosophy of Freedom. He did it with the new forces of Michael: with strength, energy, perseverance and holy enthusiasm, those four Michaelic virtues, about which he speaks in the lecture about the karma of Schröer. He accomplished it from the first to the last moment of his past earthly life, and expected from his pupils to do the same. He said, these four virtues are necessary to transform modern intellectualism into spiritual scientific spirituality, which is thoroughly penetrated by the clarity and exactness of free thinking and motivated by true love:
We must understand that strength and energy, perseverance and a holy enthusiasm are necessary in order to transform into spirituality the intellectualism which after all belongs to the present age.
Therefore, devotion to truth and knowledge must be practiced with the power of the four virtues-and many others as well- strength and energy, perseverance and a holy enthusiasm. Modern Ahriman intellectualism is a toughest obstacle, it overpowered without much effort the old anthroposophical movement from the beginning, because it is simply the spirit of the present age. Intellectualize or mystify spiritual science, both are as easy, but to find and actualize the true middle path is so difficult, and the more you try to do it in real practice, the more you realize how difficult it is. But when you succeed, what a creative wonder it is, what a graceful blessing is experienced, knowing that you can contribute to the resurrection of Anthroposophia from the grave of civilization, which is our own brain grave, and celebrate her reunion with her youngest cosmic being, through the forces of Michael and Christ. When this begins to happen, she become alive in your free etheric heart, and suddenly new hope arises: it may perhaps still be possible, in the second, middled and most decisive century of the age of Michael, to let her incarnate and remain on earth longer than 9 months!
If this will actually happen, then the true nature of ‘the human being Anthroposophia’ will be revealed, as a being of true human love, as a bringer of true human love, but only if we accomplish the new Michaelic path with all our strength, energy, perseverance and a holy enthusiasm, and actualize in this way the devotion to truth and the transformation of intellectualism. Then we would also be able to experience the life giving, heart filled truth of these words of Rudolf Steiner, that I want to read to you now, to conclude our talk tonight, because for me they express everything that I would like to bring with me, that we shall bring together with us, as we gather together to celebrate the earnest, sacred and festive centenary of the Christmas foundation conference of 1923 in Christmas 2023.
It was on the 23rd of January 1923, after the burning of the first Goetheanum, that Rudolf Steiner came to a meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart, because he wanted to share with the members what Anthroposophy really is. He tried once more to open their hearts to ‘the human being Anthroposophia’ that knocks on the tightly closed door of our hearts, as he said at the end of the year, in November, in Holland, beseeching us: ‘Let me in, I am your true self! I am your true being!’ (The formation of the text is taken from Rudolf Grosse’s book, Die Weihnachtstagung als Zeitenwende):
Anthroposophical ideas are vessels fashioned by love
Into which the spiritual being of man
is carried from the spiritual world.
Enveloped by thoughts fashioned by love
Anthroposophy radiates the light of true humanness.
Knowledge is only the form,
through which man can gather
into his heart the true spirit from the wide world,
and from his heart enlighten human thoughts.
Since true Anthroposophy
can only be grasped by the power of love,
it creates love when human beings take it in, in a way true to its nature.
This is why a place where love reigns could be built in Dornach
in the very midst of the raging hatred of the war.
And the Words,
expressing anthroposophical truths,
are not like words spoken elsewhere today,
Words are expressed
that are all truly prayers.
Each word of Anthroposophy
is in its essence,
If it is spoken rightly,
A prayer, a reverent prayer,
that the spirit may descend to men.
Original German Version
Ideen sind für Anthroposophie
die aus Liebe gezimmerten Gefäße,
in welche hereingeholt wird aus geistigen Welten
auf geistige Art das menschliche Wesen.
Von liebevoll geprägten Gedanken umhüllt
soll leuchten durch Anthroposophie
das Licht wahren Menschentums.
Und Erkenntnis ist nur die Form,
wie durch den Menschen
die Möglichkeit gegeben werden soll,
daß der wahre Geist aus Weltenweiten
in menschlichen Herzen sich sammle,
damit er von Menschenherzen aus
die menschlichen Gedanken durchleuchten könne.
Und weil wirklich Anthroposophie
nur von der Liebe erfaßt werden kann,
deshalb ist sie liebeschaffend,
wenn sie in ihrer wahren Art von Menschen ergriffen wird.
Deshalb konnte inmitten des wütenden Hasses
eine Stätte der Liebe in Dornach gebaut werden.
Und Worte,
sie werden auf anthroposophischem Gebiet
nicht so geprägt,
wie sonst in der Gegenwart Worte geprägt werden,
Worte werden geprägt,
indem sie alle eigentlich Bitten sind.
Jedes Wort in der Anthroposophie
ist im Grunde genommen,
wenn es in richtigem Sinne gesprochen wird,
eine Bitte, eine andächtige Bitte:
die Bitte,
daß der Geist zu den Menschen herabkommen möge.
I wanted to end our last meeting before Christmas with these words, that they will illuminate our path to Forum-3 with love filled light and warm our hearts when we meet together, to create this chalice of love, made of love, for the being of love, from our hearts united together in harmony and brotherhood, to receive the spirit of our time and share it with humanity .
Bis bald, liebe Freunde – Wir kommen gleich!