Courage must only be found to drive the money-changers out of the Temple

Courage must only be found to drive the money-changers out of the Temple... to confront the abstractions and things estranged from reality, to set against them full reality and therewith the spiritual reality.

The Preface of the Second Volume

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

Volume 2: The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming, Part 1

Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Second Mystery of Golgotha

Chapter 1. The Spiritualization of Thinking

Chapter 2. The Spiritualization of Sense-Perception

Chapter 3. The Preparation of the Construction of the Bridge of Spiritual Memory and Continuity of Consciousness

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

Chapter 5. The Construction of Second, Astral-Soul Layer of the Bridge

Preface

'In this fifth post-Atlantean age he has the greatest possibility of

making himself spiritual. No age has been so favorable to

spirituality as this fifth epoch. Courage must only be found to drive

the money-changers out of the Temple. Courage must be found to

confront with the real, abstractions and things estranged from

reality, to set against them full reality and therewith the spiritual

reality'.

Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of 8 January 1918 (GA 180)

In the first volume, The Modern Christ Experience, we described the first, gracefully given meeting with the etheric Christ, taking place in three stages. Through His threefold appearance, words and deeds, the Christ plants three potent golden spiritual seeds in the human spirit, soul and body, and demonstrates their possible future cultivation.

 As we pointed out in the introduction to the first volume, Rudolf Steiner described the threefold meeting with the etheric Christ, using the Imaginative language of Revelation. He pointed out that the Christ is experienced ‘in three guises: once through Himself, then through His garment, and thirdly through the deeds He accomplishes for human beings on earth’. In the first stage of the meeting: ‘In us, in our own being He becomes this light — this gives the insight of the Christ-Being in our own self. It becomes an indwelling insight, an insight that dwells within the human being’. Then in the second stage, the indwelling ‘I’ of Christ reveals itself as the indwelling power of the creative word, the Logos in us, and in the third stage, it becomes the individualized power of creative love, working through the will. (Lecture of 14 September 1924, GA 346).

 These three stages of the given meeting were described in the fourth chapter of the first volume. In the given meeting, they are experienced as a given gift, which man can only develop further by means of his own free spiritual activity. In the two parts of The Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming (contained in volumes 2 and 3) we describe how they are developed in three stages of the bridge construction, by fully conscious spiritual scientific activity.

 That is, through the three stages of the meeting and with the gift of the three golden spiritual seeds, the Christ is offering His Self to humanity. In this sense, the knowledge drama is the beginning of that future stage, which Rudolf Steiner referred to when he said:

At a future time when people will be increasingly well-prepared to receive the Christ-‘I’, it will imbue the souls of human beings to an ever-increasing degree so that they can strive upward to approach the position where their great model, Christ Jesus, used to be.

And  he added:

Those who are inspired and permeated by the Christ-‘I’, the Christians of future time, will understand not only the Christ who has passed through death, but the triumphant Christ of the Apocalypse, resurrected in the spiritual fire, the Christ, whose coming has already been predicted. Men who are Christ-inspired will be transformed from Saul-men into Paul-men and will behold with increasing clarity a spiritual fire.

        (Lecture of 11 April 1909, GA 109, My italics).  

 Therefore, the task of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming is to transform the first, given meeting to the second, voluntarily gained meeting, and to individualize the gift of Christ’s ‘I’, bring the potential forces of the three seeds to conscious life, and create a threefold permanent bridge of spiritual memory and continuity of consciousness between man and Christ, earth and the spiritual worlds.

To understand the knowledge drama of the Second Coming in its relation to the given modern Christ experience, it is important to grasp the nature of the transition from the given to the voluntary meeting. It was also described from a different point of view, in the Prelude to this book, The Three Meetings. At the beginning of each stage of the knowledge drama, we transform and contract the given Imaginative experiences of each of the three stages into their potent, concentrated seed-essence. To achieve this, we intentionally suppress the Imaginative pictures and contents that clothe each given stage, and then contract and preserve only their intensive formative seed essence. The knowledge drama must disregard all the given Imaginative pictures and concentrate on the potential forces of the three golden spirit seeds planted in the threefold human being, in spirit, soul and body. If we compare the appearance, words and deeds of the Christ in the given meeting to the fully grown, flowering and ripening plant, in the knowledge drama we involve and transform it back into three potential formative seeds, from which we gradually develop the whole plant again, by means of our own forces. The goal of the knowledge drama is to develop the potential future forces of the three seeds through purely free spiritual scientific activity, to individualize them consciously, and use them to create the full human ‘flowering plant’ given in the meeting with the etheric Christ. But now this flowering human plant will be a freely actualized and grown human-cosmic plant, in spirit, soul and body. We do the same with the Christ-given keys of overcoming death and evil, and the creative power of His given ‘I’, the fiery two-edged sword of His mouth. We discard all the Imaginative elements of these gifts, offered as grace in the first meeting, concentrate on their creative seed forces, and use them to create a purely human approach to the etheric Christ in the second meeting.

 The transformation of the given meeting into a potential seed as the free starting point of the knowledge drama, also enables us in due course to meet our spiritual teachers in the spiritual world, who use it to lend their helping hand on this path. Therefore, these words of Rudolf Steiner serve us as a guiding spiritual light through the entire path of the knowledge drama of the Second Coming:

Nothing is given to a pupil as something finished, but the teacher leaves it up to him to do something with it. Everything is like a seed that is placed into the pupil's soul so that it can unfold its activity there. Development is placed in the pupil's own hand. The impulse is given into the I, and the I must develop it out of its own power that should be kindled inwardly...May his soul blossom thereby, just as a flower comes forth from a seed. Let this pupil hold this thought fast in his soul: May the I's freedom and independence always be preserved. And looking up to Christ, let there always stand in our soul: Christ is the archetype of the I, let my I strive to become a copy of this archetype. And ‘I am’ is the only right name for this archetype.

(Esoteric lesson of 3 March 1909, GA 266a).