עברית Modern spiritual knowledge is the fruit of a joint creative spiritual venture between humanity and the spiritual worlds.
A Co-Creative Journey: The Holy Nights of Christmas 2012
Cognitive Yoga: How A Book Is Born
Heavenly Jerusalem and the Mysteries of the human body
Temple Lodge, London, 2018
When you realize that what you experience is the result of a real spiritual co-production, a community effort, involving many beings beside yourself, and that your part is indeed infinitely humble when viewed and evaluated from the perspective of the higher worlds. Yet joyfully and gratefully you experience this fact, that the Michaelic beings could say 'yes' to your so partial and incomplete effort, and have accepted, saturated and fulfilled it, because they experienced that what you have offered them is worthy of their consent, that they can breathe it in, assimilate and enhance it and breathe it out back to you as such infinitely transformed and spiritualized substance and form.
A Co-Creative Journey: The Holy Nights of Christmas 2012
This little book relates some experiences I had during the spiritual research which was eventually published in my book Cognitive Yoga. Usually I am concerned with communicating the objective results of my research and not what I experienced whilst doing it. But an objective description of what the individual soul undergoes during spiritual research can be valuable to the study of anthroposophy and to those who pursue the spiritual path themselves.
Through faithful inner work, over many years, the path of spiritual science can become a living spiritual being – an intimate friend in the realms of soul and spirit. This being can blossom into an extended spiritual community or school. One can converse and co- create with this spiritual school, including the being of one’s teacher, by learning its inner language. In Christmas 2012, I was confronted with a major obstacle in my research work. After struggling alone, I felt I could not progress without consulting my colleagues in the spiritual world. The intimate soul experiences described in this book took place during such a gathering – a special, festive occasion with an active and engaged community of spiritual beings.
I want to share some aspects of what I experienced during this event, in the more personal and imaginative language of storytelling. It is a kind of new, individual, Christmas nativity tale, about the earthly ripening of a research problem, its heavenly conception, embryonic life, and finally the birth on earth of what becomes a physical book, printed black on white.
The most central discovery described in this book confirms a fact often described by Rudolf Steiner, namely, that the modern soul stands in a wholly new, and independent, relation to the spiritual world, which was not yet possible in previous ages. This relation becomes a foundation for developing a creative dialogue, creative cooperation, with the spiritual world: A real co-creative, human-cosmic venture.
What the true spiritual scientist communicates, the results of his spiritual research, are not simply given to him from above in finished, formed Imaginations, as was customary in the past, nor are they simply the projection of his personal creations. The resulting knowledge is in fact the fruit of a joint creative spiritual venture.
In my experience, this fact is confirmed in all stages of my research. Precisely If your loyalty to your teacher is free and honest in this sense, you will experience each one of the results of your research as a real wonder. When you further inquire how these results have come about, you will discover that your work relates to them like a seed is related to the fully developed plant. Then your success will make you deeply humble, because you realise that what you experience is due to the fact that spiritual beings received, transformed and saturated the fruits of your work and returned them to you. The resulting knowledge is in fact the fruit of a joint creative spiritual venture.
This raise, however, justifiably, some important questions.
On the one hand, the truly modern scientist of the spirit, is not a passive receiver of knowledge, be it sensible or supersensible. He is creative and independent spirit, basing everything he researched and communicate about it solely on his fully conscious and individualized work. The assimilation, digestion, and production of knowledge is his most intimately known and familiar process. This may however lead to a one-sided emphasis on 'freedom' which easily give birth to swarms of unbridled anthroposophical speculations, visions and fantasies. On the other hand, there stand firm those hardened conservatives, that will not allow any deviation from their own interpretation of the master’s written words. And so, the war between the two vast camps, the more Luciferic freedom fighters and the more Ahrimanic conservatives, goes on and on. Through the tumult caused by this war the true middle path is covered, denied and neglected.
What many find hard to grasp, is this: that the most independent, self-reliant and free spiritual research is grounded, first and above all, in what is learnt and earned from your teacher. Real spiritual science is in this regard not different from what holds true for each and any branch of craft, art, science, athletics and any other truly creative human achievement. All really creative people, known and practice this secret through the ages: Freely offered loyalty to the father- and mother source of your craft, is the key to creative spiritual freedom. I call this also “radical conservatism. As Rudolf Steiner’s say, it is 'freedom not in the sense of license, but freedom born of a free spirit and a firmly disciplined mind'. (Lecture of 27.10.1918, in GA 185)
But what does your teacher really teach you? he teaches you the actual method of anthroposophical research; and it is naturally only up to you, out of your free choice- as I emphasized also in the preface- to teach yourself how to become radically conservative, freely loyal to your teacher’s method, from the first step to the very last stage you can presently climb. And this method you apply to whatever experience you chose to investigate. So, for example, in the book, Cognitive Yoga, Rudolf Steiner’s method is applied to the spiritualization of ordinary thinking and sense perception. In the book, The New Experience of the Supersensible, it is applied to the supersensible experience of the etheric Christ. Whatever the experience is, I was always striving to remain as conservatively loyal as possible to the method and phenomena I am investigating. And it is precisely this freely chosen and applied, staunched radical conservatism, that brings bout the spiritual results of true spiritual investigation.
Now, however, if you are honest in your research, and have come thus far, you will experience the results of your research as wonder each time. When you then further inquire how the results have come about, you will find that your work was only partly responsible for them. Then your success will make you deeply humble, because you realist that what you experience is due to the fact that spiritual beings received, transformed and saturated the fruits of your work and returned them to you. Then you understand that what you experience is the result of a real spiritual co-production, a community effort, involving many beings beside yourself, and that your part is indeed infinitely humble when viewed and evaluated from the perspective of the higher worlds. Yet joyfully and gratefully you experience this fact, that the Michaelic beings could say 'yes' to your so partial and incomplete effort, and have accepted, saturated and fulfilled it, because they experienced that what you have offered them is worthy of their consent, that they can breathe it in, assimilate and enhance it and breathe it out back to you as such infinitely transformed and spiritualized substance and form.