Michaelic Immortality

The Time is at Hand!

From the second lecture: Michaelic Immortality  

The third and fourth stages of Michaelic Immortality

The third basis of ahrimanic immortality is created in the subhuman, subnatural, etheric world. As we described yesterday, if the etheric body is nourished during the day with only purely ahrimanic forces, it will be replaced piece by piece during sleep with etheric ahrimanic forces. The Michaelic answer to this, is the conscious work of building the new etheric body described in Cognitive Yoga. Then, during wakeful day work and during sleep, it will be enhanced through the etheric forces active in the etheric aura of the earth, in which Christ weaves in the planetary etheric ring of the earthly-human Sun. The new individual etheric body on which the Michaelic immortality is based, is connected to the planetary etheric ring, the new world of life forces, that is forming in our midst, as the new Heaven and new Earth. This is the most basic Michaelic task we have to accomplish today and in the near future, if we want to create the shining etheric bridge over the abyss of the last and present centuries. For this, the free etheric heart must become the most robust etheric pillar. It must be kindled with intense flames of devotion and brotherly love, reverence and gratitude to each other, actualized in the human meetings that form the heart of the new Michaelic community. We must attain a century later, what Rudolf Steiner experienced in his free etheric heart, when he said in 1924, that, ‘Our heart has changed; we no longer bear the same heart in our chest. Our physical heart has grown harder, and our etheric heart, more mobile. We must find access to our supersensible hearts.’ (Lecture of 20 July 1924, GA 217a).

 This is an absolute requirement because these heart forces alone can unite with the highly spiritual, living, and creative forces of the etheric Christ and receive the inspirations from the supersensible school of Michael. All the Christ-given etheric forces, embodied in this way in our etheric hearts, are immortal life forces, and they don’t remain in the limits of the physical body, but stream out and connect with Christ’s etheric forces, building up the etheric earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. ‘Ever since that time,’ says Rudolf Steiner,

The human etheric body has held something that is not subject to death,

to the death forces of the earth. And this something which does not

die with the rest, and which people gradually achieve through the

 influence of the Christ impulse, now streams back again out into

cosmic space; and in proportion to its intensity in man it generates

 a certain force that flows out into cosmic space. And this force will

 in turn create a sphere around our earth that is in the process of

becoming a sun: a sort of spiritual sphere is forming around the earth,

composed of the etheric bodies that have come alive. The Christ

light radiates from the earth, and there is also a kind of reflection

of it that encircles the earth…Beginning with this event the

earth began to be creative, surrounding itself with a spiritual

ring which, in turn, will in the future develop into a sort of

planet circling the earth.’ (Lecture of 6 July 1909, GA 112).

 This is the foundation of our entire etheric work and the real substance of the Michaelic immortality and the bridge of continuity of consciousness between the physical and etheric worlds. Ahriman can be overcome in the twenty-first century only if such a creative community builds the bridge of continuity of consciousness together. The fourth and decisive element of ahrimanic immortality is that in the twentieth century, among a growing number of people, the ahrimanic Doppelgänger could fulfil its desire, to die with human souls and enter with them into the spiritual world after death. This being was able ‘to conquer death and die with man and in this way enter the spiritual worlds that man enters after death’. This binds already today millions of souls to the ahrimanic world and forces them to serve his abominable goals after death. The Michaelic answer to this challenge is that more and more people will learn—in the first half of the twenty-first century—to individualize the new revelation of the etheric Christ, as demonstrated in Cognitive Yoga, and build for themselves, based on the new immortal etheric body, the new ‘etheric individuality’ as well, a Christ permeated ‘I’; and that both the Christed etheric body and Christed ‘I’ that we create on earth, will remain with us as we pass through the gate of death. There we will continue to form the Michaelic community that we formed on earth and link the two communities together with strong bonds of love and reciprocal empowerment.

 This means that when Ahriman boasts of his great achievements on earth and in the nearest subterranean etheric world, forcefully commanding his quickly growing ghostly zombie army of depraved souls, we can confront him and demonstrate the immortally-linked community of creative Michaelic souls, fired by Christ’s creative fire, in direct living communication with Michael and his supersensible school. We must create, on a daily communal basis, such ‘spiritual science [that] works from below upwards, stretches out its hands...to grasp the hands of Michael stretching down from above. It is then that the bridge can be created between man and the Gods.’ (Lecture of 17 December 1922, GA 219).

But the bridge cannot be built from the ordinary soul substance of mere thoughts, feelings and wishful desires; only a direct connection to the source of the presently active etheric Christ can supply the forces and materials required to construct this bridge. ‘Christ offers himself as this material,’ says Rudolf Steiner, and only through the Christ the ‘material is given, out of which man can make a bridge’. (Esoteric lesson of 16 December 1911, GA 266).

This allows us to also counteract Ahriman’s replacement of Christ with his strong ahrimanic representative. Ahriman took over Christ’s natural sphere of influence in the twentieth century, and made it his own, with all the means described above, and now we can take it back, establishing Christ’s etheric kingdom on earth. This kingdom has nothing to do with Ahriman’s world, based in the old and dying Earth and Heaven; it is the newly germinating etheric earthly-human Sun, the new Earth and Heaven of the New Jerusalem. Therefore, Christ’s living, ensouled and spiritual sphere of life and deeds is no longer given by the spiritual world, and He remains homeless as long as humans do not create a new etheric home for Him and for us on the etheric earth. By creating a human sphere of vibrant life and love-giving forces, we lift the heavy ahrimanic stone placed over the suppressed etheric Christ in the course of the twentieth century and resurrect His consciousness and presence in our hearts and bring Him to life among us. It is the highest mission of the new Michaelic movement in the second century of Michael and this must be fulfilled with utmost devotion and spiritual scientific exactitude before the middle of the century, to enable the great, second incarnation of the Michaelic impulse towards the end of the century.

This means that as victorious Ahriman continues to strengthen his ironclad dominance over humanity, a lively Michaelic, Christ permeated human community must oppose and thwart him with the consciously created bridge of immortal life, in the first half of the twenty-first century. This will guarantee the continuous communication with the leadership of the school of Michael in the etheric world. It must become an actual, communal practical science, art and ritual of bridge construction, for which ‘Christ offers himself as the material’, in spiritualized human and social daily life. Up to the middle of the century, it may naturally only become a small enclave of true Michaelic civilization, but nevertheless it may also become a highly vital and potent seed of civilization, which proves strong enough to navigate the stormy waves of the first half of the century and makes the bridge ever broader and safer for a growing number of souls.

When this bridge is completed, the ‘old man with the lamp’ as in Goethe’s Fairy Tale, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, will be able to exclaim for the third time that ‘the time is at hand!’ and the temple of the new earthly-human Sun can rise and become visible, as the middle sphere, where free human hearts weave and beat together in the new community, fired by the heart forces of the new earthly-human Sun.