עברית The Modern Christ Experience
The Modern Christ Experience and The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
Volume 1
The Modern Christ Experience and The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming
From the Preface
As Rudolf Steiner demonstrated in his entire spiritual scientific work, in the new age of Michael the forces of clear and exact thinking (and sense- perception), grounded in the Consciousness Soul, can be spiritualized, and transformed into the new forces of supersensible perception and cognition. These new forces can also grasp and investigate the etheric appearance, words, and deeds of the Christ. The Christ impulse, past, present, and future, the center and sense of all human evolution, can for the first time become the goal of fully individualized human experience and research. To this absolutely new stage of the evolution of human consciousness in our time, Rudolf Steiner referred, when he said that ‘every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognizing forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth cultural epoch’. (Lecture of 13 March 1915, GA 159).
This is the essence of the modern Christ experience and the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, described in the present, four volume, book.
The essence of modern spiritual science is precisely this: the freely acquired human knowledge of a thoroughly Christ-permeated and transformed universe, nature, and human evolution and history. Precisely because humanity is beginning to attain this special connection to the etheric Christ, the need for spiritual science will only increase, because only spiritual science can illuminate, with its spiritual light of clear and precise knowledge, this special connection, and its consequences for human and earthly evolution.
The more the epoch of the Consciousness Soul develops during the age of Michael and the Second Coming, and the more it emerges out of the intellectual residues of the previous Mind Soul epoch, the Consciousness Soul will be experienced in its true nature. Only the new Michael-Christ impulse can bring this about. Then fire and courage, love and devotion will become the hallmark of spiritual scientific activity and creativity. The true nature of the Consciousness Soul, transformed by the forces of Michael and Christ, is indeed already highly spiritual. As we showed from various points of view in Cognitive Yoga and The Three Meetings, the essence of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, described in volumes 2 and 3 of the present book, is actualized through the fact that ‘Christ is a Being who proves Himself, who realizes Himself in us as we acquire spiritual knowledge’. (Lecture of 12 April 1914, GA 153). But the free spiritual activity of the Consciousness Soul is sovereign, creative, and active. It is inwardly aflame with the fire of love and enthusiasm for the mysteries of the world and of man, and thoroughly irradiated and penetrated with the forces of clear, precise, and living thinking and Imagination. It experiences any passivity, givenness and obscurity only as the resistance on which it can unfold and strengthen its independent cognitive and moral forces. These characteristics of the Consciousness Soul, if they are truly developed, are those that enable it to come to grips with the new, naturally developing faculties of supersensible perception, which bring about the modern Christ experience as a natural initiation event, because it finds in this event an infinite source of future strengthening and spiritualizing of its innate spirit forces…
The task of spiritual science is to transform this given initiatory fact into modern initiation science, as it transforms the sense-perceptible appearance of any physical object into the spiritual scientific revelation of its spiritual being. To understand this fundamental relation of any given fact or experience, and spiritual scientific research, we must consider that from a spiritual-scientific point of view, every experience, be it sensible or supersensible, is a given and therefore, as such, an external fact. So long as it is not thoroughly penetrated and transformed by the active and independent thinking and Imaginative forces of the Consciousness Soul, it remains a personal, subjective event that, notwithstanding its personal value, cannot become in this form a matter of scientific research. For spiritual science, therefore, such an experience must first become an object of anthroposophical research, as described in this book.
And this research discovers also, the reciprocal connection between the given Christ experience and the potential spiritual faculties in the human soul. The first thing that we discover is that the new faculties that perceive the etheric Christ in the meeting, are awakened in human souls by Him. Furthermore, when we develop these faculties further through the development of spiritual science, and create the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, we also discover that the light of spiritual knowledge, created in this way, is coming from the same source. This is also described in my previous book, The Three Meetings: Christ, Michael, and Anthroposophia, written as a prelude to the present book. This experience is a most significant moment in the evolution of the knowledge drama.
In the physical world, the real spiritual source of spiritual science is unknown, and is revealed for the first time when it is spiritualized by means of the new supersensible faculties. Then we realize that it springs from the same spiritual source, namely, from the unique connection between the beings of Christ and Michael. Each helps the human soul to develop its specific faculties and forces: the etheric Christ inspires the new supersensible faculties, and Michael stimulates the possibility of spiritualizing modern clear thinking. Each is in turn enriched, deepened, and strengthened by the other. We spiritualize the conscious activity of spiritual science through the spiritual faculties that the etheric Christ awakens in the soul.
The spiritual science we get to know in the physical world is after all also a mere physical appearance. It must be spiritualized like any given physical fact, and the modern Christ experience awakens in the soul the faculties to do this. And when we spiritualize the given physical form of spiritual science, we use its spiritualized forces to investigate the Christ experience.
And what do we discover then? Wonder of wonders, as Novalis would have said, we discover that, as Rudolf Steiner pointed out, ‘Often, my dear friends, I am asked by our members: how do I bring myself into a connection with the Christ? This is a naive question, because everything towards which we can strive, every line that we read in our anthroposophical science, is a bringing of oneself into a relation with the Christ. We are actually doing nothing else but this. And the one who wishes to have a special connection [to the Christ] only shows, in a naive way, that he really would have liked to avoid the somewhat uncomfortable way of study and reading’. (Lecture of 13 June 1916, GA 169).
Through the meeting with the etheric Christ and the knowledge drama of the Second Coming, ‘the somewhat uncomfortable way of study and reading’ of spiritual science becomes a fiery, enthusiastic, Michaelic impulse in the human soul and heart. Reading and study of the results of the supersensible investigations of spiritual science become the most inspiring and joyful cosmic cultus and spiritual communion, for the souls that experience the real spiritual world.
In this way a spiritual life cycle comes about, a reciprocal, mutual essence exchange, between the given appearances of the etheric Christ and spiritual science. The modern Christ experience and the new spiritual faculties that it awakens allow us to spiritualize the earthly form of spiritual science, and the spiritualized forces of spiritual science, can be applied to investigate the modern Christ experience and develop the given supersensible faculties further. As our experience has shown, the two streams grow more and more intimately with each other, and lead us to their source in the spiritual world, in which it is revealed as the connection between the Christ, Michael, and the third mysterious being, whom we learn to know as Anthroposophia.
When we activate Christ’s given forces to spiritualize spiritual science on the earth, we do this with the same forces by means of which Rudolf Steiner created spiritual science for the first time at the beginning of the last century. He did it as an initiate, the teacher of the present epoch, and expected his pupils to do the same, on the level of ordinary humans. This is the true meaning and mission of modern spiritual science, described in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. Thus, the modern Christ experience connects us to the source of the present stream of Michael and the real being of Anthroposophia because the Christ Himself is their spiritual source. He becomes the portal through which we meet Michael and Anthroposophia and experience their reciprocal relationships and create from their united forces the bridge of spiritual memory and continuation of consciousness in the knowledge drama of the Second Coming.
Our first task at the end of the last century was to resurrect the old anthroposophy from the grave of present civilization with the help of the modern Christ experience. This was done for two reasons: first, to actualize on earth the living continuation of the stream of Michael that continued to develop in the etheric world after the death of Rudolf Steiner in 1925. At the end of the century, this continuation had to be accomplished in the physical world. And second, when the old anthroposophy was resurrected, it was transformed into the chalice to receive the new stream of Michael, the new anthroposophy of the 21st century. This stream flows directly from its presently active spiritual source. Only when the resurrected old anthroposophy and the new stream of Michael become one earthly-spiritual stream, can the work of Michael in the first half of the 21st century be done.
Therefore, we can say that the mutual crossings, fertilizations and essence exchanges between the modern Christ experience and spiritual science, old and new, between earthly and supersensible anthroposophy, is the main subject of this book. And the middle, heart organ, through which old Anthroposophia is resurrected and united with her spiritual, young self, is the modern Christ experience. Through the modern Christ experience, earthly Anthroposophia is constantly resurrected, renewed, and rejuvenated and unites with her spiritual being in the spiritual world, and at the same time, the Christ experience becomes ever more conscious and illuminated by the light of her spiritual knowledge on the earth.