עברית Let’s say, if you wish, as old Bilbo did, standing on the shores of infinity, ‘This spectacle I haven’t seen before, I am ready for a new adventure’!
This is an extract from the end of a lecture I gave in Forum-3 in November 2017, published in the forthcoming book, The Time is at Hand! Ahrimanic and Michaelic immortality and the Apocalypse of the Age of Michael (Ereignis Verlag, Fall 2023, Temple Lodge Spring 2024).
The fourth and decisive accomplishment of Ahrimanic immortality is that in the 20th century, among growing number of people, the Ahrimanic Doppelgänger could fulfil his desire, to remain connected to human souls when they die and enter with them into the spiritual world after death. He was able, as Rudolf Steiner said, ‘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 that more and more people must learn- in the first half of the 21st- is this: to individualize the new revelation of the etheric Christ, as demonstrated in Cognitive Yoga, and build for themselves an immortal etheric body and an ‘etheric individuality’, a Christ permeated ‘I’, and that both the Christed etheric body and Christed ‘I’ created now on earth will remain with us also as we pass through the gate of death. This etheric bridge formed on earth is kept intact through death and connects the Michaelic community with it higher counterpart in the etheric world. In this way, the school of Michael on earth and in the etheric world will be connected and begin to communicate consciously, united in strong bonds of love and reciprocal empowerment.
This means that when Ahriman boasts in his great achievements on earth and in the nearest subterranean etheric world since the end of the 20th century, forcefully commanding his fast-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 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’. [1] 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’.[2]
As we described above, in the course of the 20th century, Ahriman took over Christ’s natural sphere of influence, and made it his own. This means that our main task in the first part of the 21st century must be to create this etheric sphere by our own efforts and re-establish Christ’s etheric kingdom that was taken from him and from humanity. 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 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 as far as humanity is concerned, He remains homeless, and we remain godless, as long as we don’t create consciously a new etheric home for him and for us on the etheric earth. By creating a communal sphere of vibrant life and love giving forces, we lift the heavy ahrimanic stone placed over the suppressed appearance, words and deeds of the etheric Christ in the 20th century and resurrected his consciousness and presence in our hearts. We bring his active and creative being to life among us. It is the highest mission of the new Michaelic school in the second century of Michael and must be fullfed with outmost devotion and spiritual scientific exactitude until the middle of the century. Only this deed will make possible the second great intervention of the Michaelic impulse towards the end of the century.
This means also that when the victorious Ahriman continues to strengthen his ironclad dominance over humanity, in the first part of the 21st century a lively Michaelic, Christ permeated human community will have countered it with the consciously created bridge of immortal life, that 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. Until the middle of the century, it can naturally only be a smallest enclave of true Michaelic civilization, but highly vital and potent seed nevertheless, that proves strong enough to navigate the stormy waves of the first half of the century. In the middle of the century, it must have made the bridge ever broader and safer for growing numbers of souls to communicate consciously with the guidance of Michael in the etheric world.
When the seed of this bridge is completed in the centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference, the ‘old man with the lamp’ will be able to exclaim for the third time that ‘the time is at hand!’ and the temple of the new earthly-human Sun would be able rise, become visible, where free human hearts weave and beat together in the new community, fired by the heart forces of the new earthly-human Sun.
Of course, it will demand earnestly dedicated creative work to accomplish this, as it will not fall by itself from the etheric heavens as the Manna on the Israelites in the desert. We have to build it ourselves from the ground floor, from the very elementary foundations of spiritual science, step by step, fired by the love and enthusiasm of the new Christ impulse. Step by step we must prove to ourselves that we can create spiritual science anew and resurrect it from the grave of civilization. And we must test and prove, not in theory but in real spiritual communal praxis, that each step is actually accomplished in the most practical spiritual and social work; we must demonstrate to ourselves, that a wholly practical path can be created, through mutual empowerment, trust and healing of our mortal, wounded selves. Then we shall receive the greatest help from the spiritual world that was ever given to humans in the course of history. [3]
As a matter of fact, the veil that separates the physical from the spiritual worlds today, is thinner than ever before, and it is getting thinner all the time, because this is the main drive of the age of Michael. Objectivelyspeaking, this is so. Subjectively, from the human side, the opposite is as true: humans have in the last century made this veil compact and impenetrable. But this also means, that this subjective construction, artificial as it is, becomes- for us- a formidable objective obstacle! However, dear friends, the good news is that this situation is entirely up to us, it is placed squarely in our freedom, to breakthrough our human made walls and enter the etheric world through this thinnest veil- or harden it further. If we dedicate the fire and enthusiasm of our will, feeling and thinking, to break through our own fetters, we will find the greatest help coming towards us from the other side, as was never possible before in human evolution. This fact is one of the most remarkable experiences that one undergoes today on crossing the etheric threshold.
When you perceive consciously what is taking place in the closest supersensible world, linked most intimately with our physical earth and life, you will be highly amazed to realize where we truly stand. You will see that all the spiritual beings and human souls that remained loyal to Michael through the Ragnarök of the 20th century, are eagerly standing in line waiting to come to our help. For more than a century they are searching in all corners of the cosmos and earth for human souls, who would want to communicate with them, and this search is so frustrating, because human souls have become so passive, arrogant, closed and isolated. They search so hard for souls that would want to start a creative dialogue with them, based on mutual fertilization and love. But most people are making themselves, by their free decisions and deeds, completely unreachable in our time! Either because they are sure that they already do the right thing, which is a common luciferic illusion in many spiritual streams, or because they are convinced that the fate of humanity has been decided for the worst and they withdraw into comfortable virtual and/or spiritual hideouts. This changes entirely when we develop real faith in the active power of the living spirit, based on practical, repeated experience, not on concepts and theories. Then we create communal situations and events of practical love and mutual trust, healing and transformation, through which this communication is made possible. When we actually do it, our spiritual companions begin to breath happily again, and join our work in most creative ways. The beings who remain loyal to Michael and the Christ in the last century can only work in an atmosphere permeated with the deepest, honest forces of freedom and love, mutual healing and trust, through which alone they can connect with us. This is the absolute precondition in the present age, and it will be the precondition in all future ages to come.
Dear friends, in one lecture I could only indicate that much. But I wanted to share even if only briefly some aspects of the real work that is being done on earth in the true school of Michael in the present and near future. Ahriman will continue to intensify his work, he never sleeps, nor do his servants. The bad guys are on fire, they work really well. But those who believe themselves to be good must have their holidays and weekends, summer vacations and long timeouts! They are actually waiting for the age of retirement and say: then we will have all the time we need to do our long neglected spiritual and social work! As Yates overserved so well in 1919, referring to the time of the second coming:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Kindly notice, dear friends, that when I read these lines, you instinctively and urgently put into operation the ‘law of exception’, the younger brother of the ‘law of reversal’, that we learn to experience in the unconscious depths of our souls, if we practice honest self-knowledge. If you bring this instinctive reaction to consciousness, and you pull yourself out of your comfortable state of ‘it is naturally not I who is meant here, I am an exception’, you will tell yourself candidly: no other person but me is meant here, because if I am honest, I must say that instinctively I consider myself part of ‘the best’, and in truth I lack all true, fiery, conviction in the good! And my anthroposophical life and work is lukewarm at best on sunny days! We will admit it only, however, if we practice truthful self-knowledge and place our etheric hands on our etheric hearts; of course, we believe that we belong to the good people, good enough to deserve the next lazy pause and refuge, and can postpone our meditations and creative social engagement until we retire… Nor must we care too much to build the future Michaelic community. After all, didn’t we try it in our 20’, and burned our fingers badly in this fire, that we shall never risk trying it a second, or third, or fourth, or any more times. Even thinking about it is so terrifying and exhausting, isn’t it, let’s retreat into a longer respite!
But these retreats are not the rest that we need today. Are we really tired today? To be truly tired, is something that humans have totally forgotten. We feel exhausted and develop chronic fatigue syndromes, and cannot sleep healthily, because we don’t get healthily, creatively, tired anymore, as in the good old days manually working and creative people did. When did we become so tired lately that we felt it in our bones, after spiritual work, after life changing and healing social creation? Only then you know what it means to become truly tired, creatively exhausted, and then you will also sleep well, and get up fresher and younger the next morning.
When the centenary of the Christmas foundation conference is commemorated in short six years, let us gather in a peaceful, deeply rested and healed, harmonious mood and feeling. Let us feel: Well, now we can really start to create the future path. We can begin again from the beginning because we know a little better what it takes to build this Michaelic community, bridge and immortality, the seed of which Rudolf Steiner planted in the earth 3x33 years ago. Look at our older friends and see how younger they have grown and feel how much younger you have become in the last 10 years thanks to our work together. And let’s say, if you wish, as old Bilbo did, standing on the shores of infinity, ‘This spectacle I haven’t seen before, I am ready for a new adventure’! And you will feel the enthusiastic mood of expectation, to undertake this new creative venture, and feel that you are ready to start working on building this community in a totally new way. This is the first experience of Michaelic immortality, the etheric bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness, created by working with the etheric forces of our incarnated and excarnated friends and mentors, living on earth and in the etheric world.
[1] Lecture of 17 December 1922 (GA 219).
[2] Esoteric lesson of 16 December 1911 (GA 266).
[3] In my book, The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity, I described the formation processes of the community of the school of spiritual science from various points of view. Among others, the creation of the future Michaelic ‘school of love’ is reported in some detail.