The Formation of the True ‘I’

The Formation of the True ‘I’

The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second coming

 Volume 2

Chapter 4: The Construction of the First Etheric-Cognitive Layer of the Bridge

Summary

The Builder of the bridge, the true ‘I’, is formed and actualized by the activity of spiritualized thinking; the center of this process is the development of two petaled lotus flower between the eyes.In is intensified through the merging the forces flowing between the two petaled lotus flower and the higher self in the pineal. This brings about the rirst formation of Spirit Self; Now we are ready to undertake the deeper confrontation with Ahriman in his workshop in the modern brain. This confrontation allows us to concentrate our work on construction of the first etheric-cognitive layer of the bridge from the head, through the larynx, to the heart. Then the battle with luciferic-ahrimanic forces in the heart and the sacrifice of the Green Snake occurs, which anchores and condences- etherically speaking- the first etheric layer of the bridge in the etheric heart, on the foundation of which the second- soul-astral layer will be constructed. .

As Rudolf Steiner repeatedly demonstrated, from the most varied points of view, the freest human activity in the physical world, which begins in ordinary self-consciousness, is the activity of pure thinking. Therefore, we turn again to the most productive source and springboard, The Philosophy of Freedom, in which the formation of the true ‘I’ is actualized. This comes about as the result of the union formed between ordinary self-consciousness and the forces of the true ‘I’ that work in pure thinking: ‘Thinking, in its own essential nature, certainly contains the true “I”, but it does not contain the self-consciousness... The [spiritual] “I” is to be found within the thinking... the “self-consciousness” arises... through the bodily organization. However, this must not be taken to imply that the self-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organization. Once arisen, it is taken up into thinking and shares henceforth in thinking's spiritual being’.^[1] And this is precisely the most important formative process during the spiritualization of thinking: we must experience it as it occurs, as real human-cosmic experience.

 If we experience this in full consciousness - and only in full consciousness, can it be experienced - we will say to ourselves: we are now participating in the birth process of an absolutely unique human-cosmic being, which we shall baptize and name ‘the true I’. Right here it experiences its first and foremost stage of spiritual formation and consolidation. This constitutes, at the same time, the most basic foundation of the bridge, and must, therefore, be as solid and robust, spiritually speaking, as possible. It takes place in the essence exchange between the higher spiritual ‘I’ that works unconsciously in ordinary consciousness and expresses itself in pure thinking, and our ordinary ‘I’, experienced in daily self-consciousness.

 Our ordinary experience of self-consciousness is based on the reflected representation of the ‘I’, supplied by the brain mirror, and the power that flows through pure thinking is real supersensible spiritual power, in which the higher spiritual self is active. In ordinary consciousness, the two are wholly separated from each other. But when we begin to spiritualize thinking - and this can only take place in self-conscious and free activity - the two ‘I’s, the represented, reflected mirror image and the higher spiritual self, exchange their essences with each other, and each assimilates, transforms, and carries the assimilated and transformed essence of the other in itself as a wholly new part of its real being. Ordinary self-consciousness, spiritualized by the spiritual force of pure thinking in which the higher spiritual self is working, becomes spiritualized self-consciousness; and the spiritual force of the higher spiritual self, working unconsciously in pure thinking, becomes self-conscious. Through the middle eye point of their Umstülpung process, both beings meet, exchange their essences, and become a wholly new spiritual being that never existed before, on earth or in the spiritual worlds.

  Thus the two are spiritually wedded and mutually fertilize each other, to unite and become a synergetic and holistic human-cosmic, cosmic-human Self; they parent and give birth together to a third ‘I’: a self-conscious and spiritually active ‘I’, that experiences itself in fullest, clearest, spiritual self-consciousness, as an independent spiritual being, outside the physical brain and body, embedded in the spiritual worlds, and - at the same time - fully grounded in ordinary thinking, perception and self-consciousness. In each moment of its actualization, it appears as the quintessence and archetype of all further, more advanced, essence exchanges between the lower and higher selves. This is the Ur-phenomena of all future essence exchanges and mutual fertilizations, spiritualizations and individuations, in the growing and diversifying soul- and spirit community of the human being. The true ‘I’ is the firstborn child of the essence exchange and mutual fertilization of the lower and higher selves, and in this way, it becomes the self-consciously active middle self, that can unite or hold the two parents apart, combine and synthesize, diversify, and differentiate them at will, and use their forces to fulfil the requirements of its specific spiritual and physical tasks. And this ‘I’ is the being that we designate, as Rudolf Steiner did, as the true ‘I’, who alone can unite and form, in its innermost middle activity, the higher and lower selves, and extend this activity that starts in pure thinking, to all aspects of spiritual development, in soul, spirit, and body.

Rudolf Steiner described the main formative process of the true ‘I’ through pure thinking, in the following way. ‘To Aristotle the idea of God is a pure actuality, a pure act, that is, an act in which actuality (the formative element) possesses the power to produce its own reality; it does not stand apart from matter, but by reason of its own activity fully and immediately coincides with reality... When we grasp the “I” in pure thought we are in a center where pure thought produces its own essential ‘matter’...The “I” produces its own concept and lives therein as a reality. The activity of pure thought is not immaterial to the “I”, for pure thinking is the creator of the “I”.’ ^[2]   This creation of the true ‘I’ in pure thinking is its human and eternal birth in the human soul and heart. It must be emphasized that because the true ‘I’ is pure actuality, it is created by the pure will, and therefore it exists for our consciousness only when we actually actualize it in the present free spiritual activity. The true ‘I’ comes into being, therefore, only if it is practically actualized, and it becomes our true ‘I’ only if its actual becoming continues as an ongoing, self-actualizing and enhancing spiritual activity. Therefore, to activate the true ‘I’, we must actualize its actualization anew in each moment and stage of our spiritual investigation and can never rest content with the previously achieved accomplishments.

    Historically, Rudolf Steiner actualized an epochal human and cosmic deed, on the one hand completing what he started in his incarnation as Aristotle, 2500 years ago, and on the other hand grounding the new and future orientated spiritual science, opening the path that will lead humanity in the light of the present Michaelic Christ impulse, for all ages to come. Pure thinking, the creator of the true ‘I’, called in The Philosophy of Freedom: ‘love in its spiritual form’, is kindled in the etheric head, actualized in the freed etheric heart, flowing into all deeds of moral love through the whole body and limbs to spiritualize humanity and Earth. Therefore, through this activity of spiritualized love, the Ego of the Christ can be fully individualized in the free human ‘I’, and the three stages of the modern Christ experience can be recapitulated independently by this ‘I’ in the knowledge drama. Then, if this spiritualized true ‘I’ becomes active, connecting the lower earthly self with the higher self, ‘we apprehend... a threefold “I”; a pure “I” belonging to the universalia ante rem [the spiritual world]; an “I” wherein we ourselves are, belonging to the universalia in re [the self-actualizing true ‘I’]; and an “I” which we comprehend and which belongs to the universalia post rem [ordinary self-consciousness]’. This happens ‘when we rise to a true apprehension of the “I”, and the threefold “I” becomes merged into one. The “I” lives within itself; it produces its own concept and lives therein as a reality’.^[3]

 In the language of The Philosophy of Freedom, the true ‘I’ is experienced as ‘the sum of ideas which are effective in us, the concrete content of our intuitions, constitutes what is individual in each of us... Insofar as this intuitive content applies to action, it constitutes the moral content of the individual’. To the extent that the true ‘I’ becomes the source of moral intuition, and its self-actualization expresses itself in moral imagination and technique, it can ‘let this content express itself in life as both the highest moral driving force and the highest motive a man can have, who sees that in this content all other moral principles are in the end united. We may call this point of view ethical individualism’. ^[4]

    This is the foundation of the bridge creation in the knowledge drama of the Second Coming: to unite the two selves, through the individuation and recapitulating of Christ’s Ego, and transform it into the fulness of the true threefold ‘I’. As we also showed in The Three Meetings, precisely at this point, in which pure thought actualizes the true ‘I’, ‘Fichte may supplement Aristotle’, as Rudolf Steiner wrote, and create the first firm foundation and fertile soil in the free human personality, in which Christ’s given gift of His ‘I’ can be individualized by all people, ‘in the light of the Grail’ given through modern spiritual science. In this light man creates his and her true ‘I’ or eternal individuality; and the true ‘I’, whose formation we describe here - is the active agent of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming as a whole, and the builder of the bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness.  It is formed as the result of this entirely new essence exchange between the perishable, mortal personality, based in the lower self, and the higher, spiritual self, creating for the first time in human evolution on the earth, in fully self-conscious human activity, a spiritualized personality, on the one hand, and an individualized higher self, on the other, and uniting them together to form an eternal individuality.

Today one easily confuses the concepts of individuality and personality. The individuality is the everlasting that runs through the earth-lives. Personality is that which the human being develops during an earth-life... The more the inner human being is able to transform his external being... the individuality is expressed in the personality... Is that lost at death forever? No, this does not get lost... What one understands by resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing else than the preservation of the personal in all following incarnations. What the human being has gained as a personality remains to him because it is attached to the individuality and this carries it further into the following incarnations... As much as we have worked on ourselves, as much as we have made of ourselves, we do not lose it’. ^[5]   

  This is therefore the substantial threefold eternal individuality, the human-cosmic essence of the true ‘I’: it spiritualizes the lower self and  individualizes the higher self, and unites both as an eternal, immortal individuality, in its middle self; from the mortal and perishable personality it takes its unique contribution to human evolution, namely, spiritualized self-consciousness; from the higher self it assimilates the eternal spiritual substance and force and makes it its own. In its threefoldness, the true ‘I’ becomes a wholly new middle-heart being in human evolution and a Christ begotten new human ‘I’ in the universe, because it contains in its innermost self the forces of the individualized higher self and the spiritualized mortal personality and merges them into one self-conscious and eternal spirit individuality. ^[6]

   When this threefold process is actualized repeatedly, we also discover the primeval source and fountain of eternal life, which constantly nourishes the true ‘I’, flowing from the mysterious depths of our virgin and childlike nature; we discover the Ur-potentiality of the ‘I’ in the being of the so-called ‘Nathanic ‘I’, the purest spiritual reservoir of the ‘I’, to which the true ‘I’ turns again and again to rejuvenate and replenish its exhausted forces. We find it, when we can experience that ‘a certain Ego substance was not brought into the stream of physical incarnations... that was now protected from entering physical incarnations. Instead, this Ego preserved the form, the substantiality, which man had had before proceeding to his first earthly incarnation... this Ego, which was, as it were, held back ‘in reserve’, was given into the care of the Holy Mysteries through Atlantean and post-Atlantean times... It was therefore untouched by any Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences; it was indeed something we can think of, in contrast to other human Egos, as an empty sphere, still completely virginal regarding all earth experiences- a nothing, a negative, in this respect’. ^[7] This purely spiritual and virgin Nathanic Ego is the inexhaustible fountain of fresh Ego forces, to which the true ‘I’, permeated by the substantial Ego of Christ, constantly turns, to drink and nourish itself form the youngest and eternal fountain of life, in which the spiritual Ego forming forces are eternally renewed and resurrected.

Our highest ideal in this respect is to form and develop the threefold true ‘I’ in this way, through the intimate guidance and mentoring of Christ’s indwelling ‘I’, so it will become, more and more, the fruitful mother soil, in which the three sacred spirit seeds that the etheric Christ planted in our spirit, soul, and body, will be healthily cultivated, and grown. And ‘this threefoldness can be rightly taken when our hearts are enlivened through and through by Anthroposophia... Thus he [the true ‘I’] becomes the threefoldness of all existence... He will grasp this threefoldness and he will recognize himself as an individually free human being within the reigning work of the gods in the cosmos, as a cosmic human being, an individual human being within the cosmic human being, working for the future of the universe as an individual human being within the cosmic human being.’ ^[8]

    We shall try to demonstrate below how this spiritual praxis is actually done and strive to report as exactly and lively as possible, in ordinary language, some of its concrete esoteric aspects.

   Rean On: The Further Spiritualization of the True ‘I’ through the Two Petalled Lotus Flower and Pineal Gland

The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, Part 1:

The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, Volume 2

[1]      The Philosophy of Freedom, chapter 9, ‘The ideal of Freedom’ (GA 4). My italics. This important passage that was added by Rudolf Steiner to the second edition in 1918, reflects the fact that in the previous year the groundbreaking book, The Riddles of the Soul,  was published, in which the reciprocal relations between spirit, soul and body, the three states of consciousness (Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition), three soul forces (thinking, feeling, will) and three functional bodily systems (nerve-sense, rhythmic, metabolic-limb), became the basis of anthroposophy, as the truly modern spiritual science. (About the role of this book in the creation of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, see The Three Meetings, chapter 3, The Platonic-Aristotelian Essence exchange at the end of the 21^st century).

[2] Philosophy and Anthroposophy, GA 35. My italics.

[3]       Philosophy and Anthroposophy (GA 35).

[4]       The Philosophy of Freedom, chapter nine, The Idea of Freedom (GA 4).

[5]       Lecture of 15th March 1906 (GA 54). My italics. In the third lecture of The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, The Universal Language of Michael and the Being of Rudolf Steiner, I showed how this highest spiritual goal of human evolution was actualized for the first time in its archetypal spiritual form in the life and being of Rudolf Steiner.

[6]       Because we will often use the concept of ‘true threefold ‘I’, it must be added that the true ‘I’ can also be seen as a distinct, fourth being, because it coordinates and harmonizes the three separate soul forces, unites, and embodies their three higher spiritual archetypes, Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man.

[7]  Lecture of 12 December 1911 (GA 131). My italics.

[8]  Laying the Foundation Stone of the General Anthroposophical Society, 25 December 1923, 10 a.m. (GA 260).