עברית The Reception and Individuation of the Christ-‘I’ Through The Philosophy of Freedom
The Reception and Individuation of the Christ-‘I’ Through The Philosophy of Freedom
The Three Meetings: Christ, Michael, Anthroposophia
From Chapter 6: The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
The Philosophy of Freedom creates the formative force and etheric
organs of knowledge required for the reception and individuation
of the Christ-‘I’ by the free human ‘I’. This constitutes the first stage of the knowl-
edge drama of the Second Coming. It forms the template on which
the given meeting is transformed into a voluntary meeting and the
first unconscious entry into the Grail Castle is transformed into the
fully conscious second entry.
When thinking is spiritualized, it takes leave of the physical
brain and uses only the etheric brain, transforming form and con-
tent at the same time. The form and content of thinking are no
longer reflected and devitalized in the physical brain. The content
of thinking returns to its original spiritual state, resurrected as a
living cosmic thought content, and is experienced in its primor-
dial vibrant and radiant being. And when spiritualized thinking
unites with the cosmic stream of thinking, it gives it a new form: a
human-cosmic form.
This form is a new creation in the universe, that would not have
come into being if man didn’t create it on earth with the force of
cosmic thinking. From a certain moment—that must be exactly
grasped and delimited in full consciousness—the spiritual content
and formative activity of cosmic thought spiritualizes the phys-
ical form of thinking and resurrects its killed content. From this
moment, the form of thinking is no longer determined by the phys-
ical brain, but by the etheric brain, and taken up by the astral body
and Ego. And the content of thinking is no longer the mere dead
logical skeleton of earthly thinking, but the vibrant light-filled life
of cosmic thinking.
From this stage, the form and content of thinking alike are trans-
formed and transubstantiated in the etheric body and stream out
into the higher worlds. The form of spiritual activity and the con-
tent of spiritual perception consist now of the same living substance
and force. Both mutually determine and transform each other in
this reciprocal essence exchange. Furthermore, the form of self-con-
sciousness of the earthly ‘I’ is also transformed with the spiritual-
ization of the form and content of thinking. In the free human-cos-
mic formation of cosmic thought, the active ‘I’ becomes conscious
of its real spiritual being and substance. Therefore, when cosmic
thinking ‘thinks in me’ it also ‘thinks me’, forms and transforms me
into its cosmic likeness. Now it is not ‘I’ that thinks, because it is
not the ordinary ‘I’ that forms this content; the content flows into
my real spiritual ‘I’ from the cosmos when I spiritualize my think-
ing and lift it to the etheric brain; the free activity of the thinking
‘I’ is permeated and spiritualized by the spiritual flow of cosmic
thought. But this also transforms the content and form of cosmic
thought itself. While the ‘I’ is spiritualized by cosmic thinking, cos-
mic thinking is reciprocally individualized through the free activity
of the thinking ‘I’.
This reciprocal transformation of human and cosmic thinking
is the fundamental activity of acquiring spiritual knowledge, that
makes modern spiritual science into modern science. It is the gift
of Michael to humanity in his present age, and thanks to this gift,
the given meeting with the Christ can be transformed into the fully
conscious meeting, in which the mystery of the ‘I’ gift is known and
individualized. In the language of The Philosophy of Freedom, this
process can be also described as follows.
‘Intuitive thinking,’ writes Rudolf Steiner, is a ‘spiritual percept
grasped without a physical organ.’ This is experienced imme-
diately, when we use only our etheric brain to think. Now, says
Rudolf Steiner further, this fully spiritualized thinking, ‘is a percept
in which the perceiver is himself active’ and ‘a self-activity which is
at the same time perceived’. These mysterious words that Rudolf
Steiner added in 1918 to the second edition of The Philosophy of Free-
dom, contain a secret of true spiritual cognition and knowledge, that
cannot be experienced by ordinary thinking. The first stage of the
knowledge drama is founded on this fact, because this self-deter-
mining, self-reliance on spiritual activity, is the only guarantee of
true freedom in the spiritual world. It makes spiritualized thinking
into the bridging force between human thinking and imaginative
cognition. In this way, The Philosophy of Freedom becomes the mid-
wife and formative force of the new spiritual cognition.
But what does Rudolf Steiner really mean by the above-cited
riddle? He refers to the simultaneous and reciprocal spiritualization
of human thinking, and individuation of cosmic thinking. When
he says that intuitive thinking ‘is a percept’ he means that the
real ‘I’ perceives cosmic thought as the content of thinking. And
in the experience of the cosmic thought content, ‘the perceiver is
himself active’, because the real ‘I’ brings forth this thought con-
tent through the activity of intuitive thinking. Therefore, when ‘a
self-activity... is at the same time perceived’, cosmic thought per-
ceives itself—through the real ‘I’—and is individualized. In any
real spiritual activity, bringing forth spiritual content and perceiv-
ing it, is enacted, perceived, and known, as a mutually determined
and reciprocated process.
In the etheric body, the active spiritualization of thinking and
the passive reception and perception of cosmic thinking, become
one reciprocal process of essence exchange: spiritualized think-
ing is penetrated by cosmic thinking, it becomes human-cosmic
thinking, and cosmic thinking becomes cosmic-human thinking.
Outside human activity, cosmic thinking is not self-conscious,
it is integrated with all other cosmic beings and events; it gains
self-consciousness through the real ‘I’, at the same time in which
the human ‘I’ becomes conscious that he is a spiritual being. The
human ‘I’ perceives cosmic thinking, it individualizes it; it gains
from cosmic thinking the knowledge of its spiritual essence, and
becomes this essence, and gives its self-consciousness to cosmic
thinking. The ‘I’ is permeated by the cosmic substance of thinking,
through which it actualizes its spiritual being, and gives cosmic
thinking its individualized human form. The ‘I’ is made cosmic,
and cosmic thinking is individualized.
In this way, through the spiritualization of thinking, the Ur-phe-
nomena of the mystery of essence exchange, taking place between
the human ‘I’ and cosmic thinking, is actualized for the first time.
It transforms both, and creates a wholly new human-cosmic, cos-
mic-human, being in the universe. In this manner, The Philosophy
of Freedom creates the formative force and etheric organs of knowl-
edge required for the reception and individuation of the Christ-‘I’
by the free human ‘I’, that constitutes the first stage of the knowl-
edge drama of the Second Coming. It forms the template on which
the given meeting is transformed into a voluntary meeting and the
first unconscious entry into the Grail Castle is transformed into the
fully conscious second entry.
In the meeting with the etheric Christ in the modern Christ expe-
rience, the spiritual percept is not cosmic thought content but the
given ‘I’ of Christ. In the first meeting, this ‘I’ can only be perceived
and experienced. In the second meeting, the etheric heart organ,
created in the spiritualization of thinking by the real ‘I’, becomes
the conscious receiver of this ‘I’. The real ‘I’ perceives the given ‘I’
as it is given and perceives itself as its self-conscious receiver. It is
self-conscious in this intercourse activity, in the act of giving and
receiving, and in the reciprocal relations between the giver—the
Christ—and the human receiver; it is active as an independent spir-
itual being in its giving and reception.
Through spiritual activity and organs formed through the spir-
itualization of thinking and self-consciousness, described above,
the giving and receiving of the ‘I’ of Christ becomes a fully con-
scious process. The task of the knowledge drama is therefore to
receive and conceive, individualize, and recapitulate this giving
and receiving process as a whole and transform the given ‘I’ into
an indwelling ‘I’ in the human ‘I’.