In the following text I present the work of anthroposophist Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon as the spiritual thread which can weave between the 20th and 21st centuries and connect the anthroposophical impulse given by Rudolf Steiner with our time and the future in an esoteric real way.
The Mystery of Golgotha and the Second Coming of Christ
According to Rudolf Steiner, the central mystery which gives the whole of human creation and becoming its future potentiality, direction and meaning, is the mystery of Golgotha. In this event, the cosmic source of creation, the Logos, incarnated, came to its own and made of the earth its new place of dwelling. The Son-aspect of the Godhead, in Christianity and by Rudolf Steiner named the Christ, entered into the created world, enveloped and took in Death and transformed it into an eternal fountain of a new cosmic life. The moment of death on the cross was therefore in truth the moment of a cosmic birth when the Christ-spirit entered the Earth.
If the first part of human and earthly becoming was one of incarnation and descent, making of spirit ever more dense matter, then the mystery of Golgotha made possible the turning point of this process; a gradual ascent and transubstantiation of matter to spirit. From then on, the source of becoming is living inside human history, working from within earthly time. As the universe was and is nourished by the forces of the Sun, so from then on, the earth itself became a potential source of life and light: the seed for a new Sun was planted in the Earth. This means that the Logos-created universe is more and more given over to its own evolution as an evolution of freedom. This places the human being as the gate through which the divine creative world passes, and in passing through its created past, makes of the old a new Heaven and a new Earth.
The mystery of Golgotha made this rebirth of the universe possible, it was its pivotal event, out of which came the first-borne, Jesus-Christ. But this is a redemptive process and creative becoming which involves all of humanity and the earth, and its realization is – independent of any confessional religious-dogmatic belonging – the gradual process of taking up and individualizing the Christ-impulse. In the depth of time grows the Sun-becoming forces implanted in the earth at the Mystery of Golgotha.[1]
It is in this perspective that one must understand the reappearance of Christ, His second coming. This mystery of which the Bible speaks has not been unveiled until Rudolf Steiner showed how it relates to the mystery of Golgotha as an evolutionary process. Only when evolution had become an integral part of humanity´s understanding of itself and the earth could the mystery of Golgotha be revealed as belonging to a creative-evolutionary process that unfolds from within earthly time. And only when redemption and deliverance was understood in its true light as belonging to a process within an evolution of freedom, could the Second Coming be understood as part of it.
Steiner describes the Second Coming of Christ as “the greatest mystery of our time” (25.01.1910) and as an event that will begin to unfold among humans in the 20th Century. This will be a momentous event that will change everything he says, both for incarnated and non-incarnated souls, and it will bring about the emergence of new soul-faculties. Let us bring before us some quotations from Rudolf Steiner where he speaks about this momentous event within human evolution.
“The event we are discussing is the human acquisition of a new faculty of perception in the etheric realm”. (25.01.1910) “Along with this, there will be great changes, and biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Everything will be transformed for those on earth, as well as for those who are no longer in a physical body. Regardless of where they are, souls are meeting entirely new faculties.” (25.01.1910)
The Second Coming of Christ is significant for all, and it will bring ordinary humans entirely new faculties. People will be given glimpses into the spiritual (etheric) world, a potential for spiritual development and self-knowledge
“A number of souls will have the unique experience of self-awareness, along with the feeling of living in another world – a world entirely different form the one of ordinary consciousness. It will be like a kind of shadowy, vague presentiment, similar to the gift of sight to one borne blind. Through esoteric training, as we call it, clairvoyant faculties will be acquired much more readily, but because humankind continues to evolve, these will also appear naturally – at least in rudimentary form.” (25 January 1910) “During the 20th century, new human soul faculties will gradually evolve in some people. Before the end of the century it will be possible, for example, to perceive the human ether body. Another faculty will allow one to look within and see, as though in a dream, an image of a future act. Some will be endowed in such a way that they will have yet another experience; Paul´s personal experience near Damascus will become common for certain people.” (18 April 1910)
These faculties are described by Steiner in various ways; from vaguer to the full revelation like St. Paul experienced it at Damascus. Their emergence will begin relatively soon he says in 1910; will become relatively clear in the years between 1930 and 1940, and especially the years 1933, 1935 and 1937 will be significant (25 January 1910). But they require humans to actively receive them; they are like seeds in the soul, they must be received by an honest and questioning soul and understood and developed as a potential for growth, and anthroposophy was given for that purpose. Anthroposophy was given to prepare for the event of the Second Coming of Christ.
“The Christ needed a forerunner, and, similarly, spiritual science had to appear to prepare for the age of clairvoyance.” (10 May 1910) “It presents us with a tremendous responsibility, because it [Anthroposophy] is a preparation for the very real reappearance of the Christ”. (25 January 1910) “It is anthroposophy´s task to announce this.” (10 May 1910) “Through spiritual science, we are preparing ourselves to understand the significant era ahead. To be anthroposophist, it is not enough to approach spiritual science as a theory; it must be brought to life within us. This great event must be observed with complete precision.” (18 April 1910) “Spiritual science must bring its fruits to humankind so that souls become capable of joining with Christ. It makes no difference whether those souls inhabit a physical body or not; Christ descended to those who have died as well as to those who are alive on earth. The great, sublime event of Christ´s appearance in the ether is significant for all. (10 May 1910)”
But Steiner also stresses that it can go by unnoticed if humans are not prepared.
“The faculties I have described are like seeds in the soul. In the future they will be developed and we must say that human destiny will lie, to a certain extent, in one´s own hands” (18 April 1910). “During our epoch, it is more likely than ever before that people will be unable to comprehend this most important event for humanity. People might fail to understand that it provides a real glimpse into the spiritual world, though only a shadowy and vague one. There might be so much evil and materialism on earth, for example, that most of humanity would not show any understanding…” (25 January 1910)
These quotes show how all-important an understanding and awareness of this event is, and it also puts Anthroposophy in its own light. Anthroposophy must be understood and practically related to the Event of the Second Coming, because this is the greatest mystery of our time and belongs to the heart of Anthroposophy itself. Anthroposophy, Anthropos-Sofia is the becoming cosmic of the human and the becoming human of the cosmos, and this is the gradual individualization of the Christ-impulse. Understood in its continuation with the mystery of Golgotha, the second coming is the growth of that which has been maturing and contracting more and more intensity since the Mystery of Golgotha, becoming more and more human and divine forces of love, life and light in one united stream of becoming. In the 20th Century, after 2000 years of intensification, the Christ-forces working within human history were ripe to being their next stage of growth. The new faculties that Steiner spoke of belong to this maturation and unification of the Christ with the life of humanity. They signal a new beginning in the spiritual life of humanity, and the possibility of an individualization of the spiritual life, light and love of the Christ never before seen. Anthroposophy was given for this, and the goal of creating a new spiritual culture for the whole of the earth must be seen in this universal-cosmic perspective. The transformative power and depth that could have come about as a result of this event can be measured with respect to the force that its reversal and total opposite brought about during the 20th Century.
If we are to actualize this potential and begin to use it for the good so that it will not only continue to be reversed and harvested for evil ends, then we need to understand and make conscious the connection between this event and Anthroposophy. But that requires to bring anthroposophy as a body of teaching into living touch with the super-sensible Being to which it belongs and from which it sprang to earthly life through Rudolf Steiner. This means and requires to look upon Anthroposophy as something which is not static and given, as a body of knowledge to carry with oneself, or any institution or tradition. Anthroposophy is a spiritual Being. It springs from the becoming-human of the cosmos and the becoming-cosmic of the human as a real process in human beings in history, connected to the spiritual events of human history and becoming. To engage with it is to engage in this process, and the beings involved in this process. But then how do we do that today, in the second decade of the new millennium, more than hundred years after Steiner spoke about the new faculties and possibilities coming out of the Second Coming of Christ as the greatest mystery of our time?
How can we bring together Steiner´s prophesies about the 20th century with our place in time? Steiner prophesized the reappearance of Christ as a potential momentous event of spiritual growth, as the next stage in the development of the Christ-impulse on the earth, bringing human consciousness into touch with the spiritual life in which we live, move and have our being. But when we look at history and humanity´s spiritual life during the 20th century, what we see is not the spiritual Event of the Second Coming, but its absolute reversal; the world wars, Holocaust, Gulag, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and endless warfare.
This gaping hole must be perceived and felt as a burning anthroposophical question. If – as Steiner said could and obviously did happen – humanity slept through the spiritual event of the Second Coming, then how are we to relate to this event today? How are we to understand what happened, and how are we to awaken to the reality of our spiritual situation in the universe and actively engage with it?
The Second Coming of Christ and the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century
In my experience, the only way to see into and fill this gaping hole with light is to take into heart the imagination of the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century. This imagination was written down and published by Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon already in 1993 as The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century. The Occult Significance of the Twelve Years 1933-45 in Light of Spiritual Science. Read as part of the spiritual work of its author as a whole, many of the burning questions of Anthroposophy today can be brought in a new perspective and understood in a much deeper sense.[2]
In the book we are given an imagination of the Second Coming of Christ in the etheric world. The imagination shows how a revelation and birth of a new sphere of life, what Ben-Aharon gives the name the Earthly-Human Sun, took place as a ripening of 2000 years of spiritual activity connected to the stream coming from Golgotha. It also reveals how this sublime event is connected on the one hand to the super-sensible activity of Anthroposophy and its leading individualities, and on the other to the spread of evil and spirit-forgetfulness covering the earth. This imagination strikes me as an indispensable source of light and warmth for the future development of Anthroposophy because it directly connects the Second Coming of Christ with the being of Anthroposophy. If we want to understand the Christ-nature and -becoming of our Cosmos today, we can begin by making into our own what is here given. If we do that, taking this imagination as belonging to a work and an impulse coming from the heart-blood of Anthroposophy itself, then we are taught many things. In the following I want to give a very brief and condensed image of a process of metamorphosis that we can see and which reveals Anthroposophy as a continuous stream of becoming from Rudolf Steiner´s earthly activity through the 20th Century and the Spiritual Event, and right into the present moment.
Ben-Aharon writes that the 20th Century was and is the century when humanity fell into the abyss. The background for this is humanity´s failure to come to grips with itself in the age of freedom; the failure to truly ask itself and listen to the voice of conscience in the knowledge drama of its own evolving nature. As humanity was unable to reach a truthful connection to the spirit, unwilling to take hold of its consciousness-soul´s spiritual potential, it “failed” its evolutionary transition on the threshold of freedom, and thus underwent a failed initiation. It became a prisoner of the double, of the dark forces of active spirit-denial which took over and have been dominating and “leading” humanity and the earth steadily on its course towards stronger and stronger domination, enslavement and accelerating destruction.
But this failure is but the reversal and negative outcome of the inability to take hold of the potential that is at work in humanity today. During the 20th Century, the evolution of the earth and humanity reached a new stage as the growth of the Christ-impulse, implanted into earthly evolution at the mystery of Golgotha, came to its first fruition. This was the birth of the Earthly-Human-Sun taking place in the life-sphere of the earth, in the etheric world. Even if this was totally slept by on the physical earth, Ben-Aharon shows that for some of the souls who dwelled in the etheric world, it was deeply experienced. Whereas physical humanity became more and more submerged in the forces of hatred, evil and destruction, this higher aspect of humanity, represented by the Michaelic community, experienced the Second Coming as the birth of their own higher self. But this meant that humanity and the earth as a whole became split in two. What was originally a whole evolving being was now divided into a spiritually ascending process and a descending process. In the same way that an initiation of an individual human being means a conscious dying and rebirth, releasing the higher members of the human being consciously into the spiritual world before a reintegration of this new being and consciousness takes place into the lower members (the temple sleep in the old times), so such an initiatory process was to take place for the whole of humanity and the earth. But for humanity as a whole, this was a failed initiation, meaning that the higher and lower aspects of its being was separated into two streams. Whereas an initiatory process took place for conscious etheric humanity, physical humanity and earth were taken over and captured by a downwards spiraling process of evil in its failed initiation process.
Whereas in the etheric world above an initiation took place in the experience of the new planetary sphere of light, life and warmth, earthly humanity fell under the domination of its opposing forces. As a result of the divide of humanity these two halves would now by themselves drift apart in opposite cosmic directions and evolutions. Consequently, the evolution of our universe would lead to a dead end and a cosmic catastrophe.
In this failed initiation of humanity, in this encounter and fall into the being of the Beast, the bond uniting all humans into one being, the immemorial bond of creation flowing through the bloodstream of all humans, was poisoned. Physical humanity as an embodiment of the spiritual I was torn apart.
The ancient bond of the human race, the inherited life-blood of creation, was annihilated. Its very heart centre, as the carrier of its inherited, natural ‘I’ being, was attacked and physically and etherically destroyed. As a result, humanity ceased to be one united being and became deeply divided, as was shown above.[3]
Ben-Aharon writes that in the etheric world this was perceived and understood, and with it the knowledge that in the whole of the universe, no preordained solution to this cosmic situation existed. New forces had to be created out of freedom; only out of humanly individualized freedom realized in the spiritual world as a source of creation could an answer to this situation come. We can say that the evolving universe had reached the moment of freedom. We are here standing over against an unfathomable mystery where the human element in the evolving universe played a role that no other beings could do. This was the moment when a sacrificial love borne out of freedom was the only thread that could save the further existence and evolution of cosmos. Let us read a number of passages from the description of this moment of the Great Sacrifice:
‘Michaelic Man’ now experiences, as described above, his unity with the Earth and all its kingdoms and creatures and with mankind as a whole. He is identified wholly with the Christ Being who revealed Himself in his new Heaven and Earth as humanity’s higher Self. Now, in the midst of this tremendous self-conflict, experiencing morally the greatest helplessness of wounded, divided humanity and planet Earth, Michaelic Man must find a surplus of moral-spiritual power in order to formulate his experience as a meaningful world-question, to which he can hope for a redeeming answer.
This was the decisive time of trial and decision. The purely human aspect of the Being of Anthroposophy was tested. It had to find now truly free moral power in order to take upon itself the karma of humanity. It turned its sacrificial will to the wounded humanity on Earth. Michaelic Man, active in the spirit hearts of its human members, responded to the upstreaming cry of humanity…
They opened their hearts to the upstreaming pain, anguish and despair of so many millions of fellow human beings. They actively imbued their higher Michaelic being with the etherized blood of all races and nations on the bleeding Earth. This act ignited this etherized, universally-blended human blood with the fire of their compassion and love for mankind. A mighty moral flame shaped itself in the etheric world. They articulated it into the human World-Question-Word while standing face to face with the greatest evil ever to appear on the stage of human evolution.
They thus linked the oldest moral bond of humanity, now annihilated in the burning evil below, with the highest future goal of humanity residing in the being and consciousness of Christ. They raised their divided all-human self as an offering on that altar whose fire alone can withstand the storms of wildest evil. They became the question of world and human evolution, and wrote it with fiery letters in the astral light sphere of the Earthly-Human Sun. This offer of all-embracing human love will abide with humanity and the Earth until the last of its fallen creatures is redeemed. (The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, page 38-41)
This sacrificial act of Michaelic Man, of the human compassion and love for humanity and the earth created an etheric heart-bridge connecting the etheric world above and the physical earth and humanity below. And it was only within, through and on this heart-bridge of compassion and the act of uniting with the destiny of earthly humanity by Michaelic Man, that the Christ could then “walk” and unite Himself with humanity again, now beginning the redemption of its evil core
Then the Michael pupils could see how, out of the innermost core of the temple of the Earthly-Human Sun, a Being comes forth, no longer only an embryo of future evolution. Nurtured and matured through human acts of sacrifice, He made His way from the heights of His Revelation downward, crossing the Michael bridge from Heaven to Hell. As his pathway He used the etherized bloodstreams that ascended, spiritualized in the new heart center of humanity, from the evil abyss below. They could follow Him with their spirit gaze. He descended ever deeper, until He merged Himself completely with the evil being of humanity in the abyss, blending His downpouring life, soul and spirit forces with that being. In their upward striving sacrifice, carrying to Him the etherized pain of the nations of the world, they beheld Him sinking ever deeper into the core of burning human evil, uniting Himself with it and dying livingly into the densest point of its being. They witnessed thus the second Mystery of Golgotha at the moment of its happening. (The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, page 42-43)
During the 20th Century humanity underwent a new cosmic death and resurrection. As a failed initiation, the higher and lower being of humanity separated and was thus taken over by its evil double. But the sacrificial love of Michaelic Man as part of the Second Coming of the Christ in the etheric world could became the bridge uniting these two halves into one future being again. The Michaelic act of uniting with the destiny of humanity created a new heart-organ which will replace the old dying heart and resurrect humanity from its grave. But for this resurrection to happen, the new spiritual-etheric heart of humanity must unite more and more with the life-stream of earthly humanity, and must throughout all future times grow into and incorporate itself into humanity as its new life-body and I-carrier. This will become a new substance and a new bond resurrecting and uniting humans as the new Michael-Christ humanity of the future.
The imagination of the Spiritual Event shows us: the creative results of the great sacrifice was the rebirth of the earth as a germinating star in the universe. The Earthly-Human-Sun was borne as the seed for the next planetary incarnation of the earth as Jupiter. The New Jerusalem was borne out of Christ sacrifice when He took upon himself the evil being of Humanity and united with its core to transform it into the highest good in the future. But in the age of freedom, this second Mystery of Golgotha was only possible because Michaelic Man first opened a heart-way by uniting with the destiny of humanity. A decisive human element had to and did contribute to this step in our evolutionary drama.
Michaelic Man
But who and what is this Michaelic Man?
There are several hints to this mystery in the book. On page 33 we read that Michaelic Man taken as “the Higher Self of the whole Michael community, lives also in each of its single members as a special, individual higher self. … It is a Christ-like being, united with the destiny of humanity and the Earth as a whole.” And then when we are brought before the decisive moment of freedom in evolution, where the abyss of world-extinction opened and the only answer could be created from Michaelic Man, we are told that this
was the decisive time of trial and decision. The purely human aspect of the Being of Anthroposophy was tested. It had to find now truly free moral power in order to take upon itself the karma of humanity. It turned its sacrificial will to the wounded humanity on Earth. Michaelic Man, active in the spirit hearts of its human members, responded to the upstreaming cry of humanity. (The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, page 40)
Michaelic Man active in the spirit hearts of its human members responded in this decisive time of trial and decision, where the purely human aspect of the Being of Anthroposophy was tested. Furthermore, this is described as the planetary Midnight Hour event of the Michael school, shaped by the Life Spirit of Anthroposophia which bears the supersensible form and substance of the Christmas Foundation Conference and the Foundation Stone Meditation (page 6f). This Life Spirit
constitutes the substance of the Christmas Foundation Conference and is the Foundation Stone of the School of Spiritual Science and the General Anthroposophical Society initiated and consecrated by the life-sacrifice of Rudolf Steiner – “the Michaelic Grail that descended to Earth at the Christmas Conference of 1923-24” (The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, page 6).
With the imagination of the Spiritual Event we are invited into the spiritual metamorphosis of Anthroposophy as it relates to the Second Coming of Christ and the second mystery of Golgotha. We see how Rudolf Steiner and his pupils act as one spirit-individuality – “Michaelic Man” – bearing the spiritually realized Self of Rudolf Steiner as their special individual higher Self, taking upon themselves the karma of humanity and the Earth in the most intimate becoming with the Christ in His Second Coming.
The love for humanity and its evolution that Rudolf Steiner enacted during his life until 1925, sharing spiritual knowledge and bringing about so many new initiative and impulses for cultural renewal and becoming, this love was crowned in the spiritual-human decision of entering into the becoming of a community on the earth as a shared destiny, engaging with each others karma, expressed and celebrated in the Christmas Foundation Conference in 1923/24. What was the Christmas Foundation Conference celebrating? It was the impulse for a spiritual community, a mutually empowering sister- and brotherhood that carries out spiritual work for the renewal of the earth and humanity from the foundational forces of being itself. It was, as Sergei Prokofiev writes in the title of his great book, the founding of the new mysteries.
This impulse could only live on the earth a short time; soon after its founding it became clear that it would have to release itself again from the physical to continue its creative-redemptive work in the spiritual worlds.
The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century shows the spiritual continuation and metamorphosis of this impulse and the forces belonging to it, those invested as well as those still in reserve, unused in physical existence due to Steiner´s early departure.[4] The “great sacrifice” of the Spiritual Event can be seen as a cosmic continuation and fulfilment of the decision enacted by Rudolf Steiner in his physical life to unite with a striving and suffering humanity that has lost the living connection to the spiritual worlds. In The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century we are led to witness how Rudolf Steiner gave his cosmic becoming to the destiny of the Earth and humanity, uniting himself with it at the moment of its encounter with overpowering, all-consuming evil, in a continuation and confirmation of the decision lived on earth to unite with striving humans.
If we look at this “phenomenologically” we see that one and the same thematic thread is being woven in continuous growth and metamorphosis of cosmic proportions. In Rudolf Steiner´s physical life, the light of knowledge and the highest realization of freedom through human consciousness becomes a free act of love and sacrifice enabling the spiritual growth and becoming of the earth and humanity. As this being unites with the forming of a community to which his life and being is given over in the culmination of the decision to form anew and take part in the Anthroposophical society in the CFC, so the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century is a sacrificial deed in which this impulse and decision is renewed and repeated on a cosmic scale. All of humanity and the earth is given a new heart and a new life, begotten out of the Christ-imbued and Christ-individualized being of Michaelic Man, whose higher self was realized by Rudolf Steiner in his evolution. A Maniechean motiv of redemption and of bearing the cross of evil shines through in the freedom borne out of love and the love borne out of freedom. Everything is about shared destiny, about the weaving of karma, teaching all those who live with this Michaelic Man as their own Christ-like higher self about karma as a sacrificial shared destiny.
If we understand the above it means: we must strive to realize the sacrifice made in the etheric world into a reality on the earth. Esoterically speaking, this means to embody the new spiritual life and heart-organ of the Michaelic Man, forged in the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century. More concretely, it means to embody the new etheric body created for humanity from the free human-cosmic work of Rudolf Steiner culminating in the great sacrifice that made possible Christ second Mystery of Golgotha 1933-45. This then, is the reason why I believe Ben-Aharon’s work is an essential new element in any esoteric work with Anthroposophy. Everything depends on more and more individuals embodying the sacrifice of Michaelic Man and incorporating the new etheric forces of the Second Coming.
But this embodying is simultaneously an absolute individual act of freedom and a communal-universal heart-organ. It is an individual life-body that is also a living member; a warmth- and light-giving part of a universal body: the new life body of humanity, the new carrier of the I-being of humanity, the new heart that will replace the old dying heart. The heart-bridge that simultaneously connects humans with their spiritual destiny on the earth and their being in the spiritual world, this vertical-horizontal heart-organ must be individuated, must now be brought down to the earth and into the historical stream of time in which we live our interwoven lives. But by nature, this is a community-being, a community-organ, a community-heart. Only a community of free individuals can individuate this new living heart-organ that was created in the Spiritual Event, and only this work will be a continuation of the CfC impulse.
The karma of the Michaelic school and its members is humanity´s karma: it is the taking on of the wound of humanity, consciously as the heart of anthroposophical spiritual work. Everything is about shared destiny, carrying the karma of humanity and strive to create a new community that can embody the new heart-organ and heart-bridge created in the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century.
Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon
With this perspective we have also arrived at the necessity of taking to heart the message of the Michael-Christ impulse in our time and its messenger. The above is given to humanity in and through The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century as part of the anthroposophical spiritual scientific work of Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon. It is his life and work that brings down the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century, and who opens the path to Rudolf Steiner as the being who sacrificially united himself with humanity and the Earth´s destiny in the times of greatest evil. This work makes it possible to understand the new task of embodying this heart-organ, to do it as part of a community-building process, and, as he shows in the book Cognitive Yoga, to find one´s way towards an experience of this event and the Second Coming of Christ.
Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon is the messenger of Christ´s new relation to humanity after the Second Coming – this can be said because he is the one who experienced and researched the Second Coming of Christ and who found its relation to the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century. I would say that he is therefore also to be seen as the earthly representative of Michael at the turn from the 20th to the 21st Century and today, being one who embodies Michaelic Man on the earth today. From this Michaelic-Christ impulse a new etheric body and heart-organ was created which can re-member for humanity the Spiritual Event so that the new life-body of the Earthly-Human-Sun can begin to grow self-consciously, i.e. anthroposophically, within our earthly historical time. This work therefore truly actualizes the potential for a new Anthroposophical stream on the earth as a continuation of the CFC impulse.
Two thousand years ago in Palestine on Golgotha the Christ-impulse was implanted into humanity and the Earth. In the transition from the 19th to the 20th Century in middle Europe, a modern and free human individuation of this impulse was accomplished for the first time by Rudolf Steiner. Out of an individual free act he gave the fruit of his spiritual development to a new community-building process of a new spiritually ascending humanity. The metamorphosis of this impulse was imperceptible for historical humanity, but led in the etheric world to the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century. The incarnation and incorporation of this impulse into the 20th and 21st Century took place in the original land of Christ´s incarnation, as part of the spiritual-scientific research of his own given experience of the Second Coming of Christ by Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon. We are here witnessing a direct line of the Christ-impulse in human history carried by individualities who give their life and being as the ground upon which it can grow.[5] Today we are at the cusp of its potential further growth I believe, if only enough people would open their eyes and unleash their creative potentials.
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[1] In human life, in the spiritual organism of the human being, there is therefore two streams that flow; one from immemorial part of original creation, and another of the life-element flowing from Golgotha, living in the human being as the potential stream of death-overcoming resurrected Christ-life. In the second part of the Introduction in The New Experience of the Supersensible an explanation is offered of how the incorporation and individualization of the Christ takes place as a merging of these two streams into one in the etherization of the blood, and further also how that relates to the interpenetration of thinking and will through feeling in the spiritual practice of The Philosophy of Freedom. Today, this etherization takes place with regard to the renewal of the Christ-stream as the second mystery of Golgotha in Christ´s Manichean sacrifice. As we will see, this is precisely the revelation that Ben-Aharon has given with the imagination of The Spiritual Event of the 20th Century. This opens the possibility to connect with the new and present stage of growth of the Christ impulse.
[2] Especially should be mentioned the recent The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity. The History of the Michaelic Movement since the Death of Rudolf Steiner. An Esoteric Study, published on Temple Lodge this year (2020).
[3] Ben-Aharon, Jesaiah. The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century: The Occult Significance of the 12 Years 1933-45 in the Light of Spiritual Science (p. 41). Temple Lodge Publishing. Kindle Edition. As a result of this destruction of the I-organization a reversal took place such that from now on the natural course of events leads to the individualization of a reversed I. The ego, and the world and beings to which the forces constituting the ego belong, takes the place of the I. This individuation of the lower ego in the place of the “I” leads humans to an immersion, submersion and merging with the material (Ahrimanic) forces of the world, or alternatively a (Luciferic) spirituality unable to individuate, transform and redeem these very forces. In the final great synthesis of “the Ultimate Luciferic-Ahrimanic Merger”, a new reversed human being is formed in the image of Anti-Christ, the Sorat-being. After the apocalypse of the 20th century the individuation of evil is now a given fact, and the “natural” course of events for a humanity which will change radically in nature and form according to these forces if the Christ-I is not actively incorporated and individuated. See Twilight page 68, and also lecture 6 in Spiritual Science in 21st Century:“The Working of the Christ in the Apocalyptic Spiritual Conditions of the 20th and 21st Centuries”.
[4] See the Foreward to the second edition of the Spiritual Event of the 20th Century where Ben-Aharon indicates how the spiritual economy of forces work with regard to Steiner´s life-time.
[5] See Afterword. The Resurrection of the Etheric Christ in the Twenty-first Century in The Twilight and Resurrection of Humanity for the most profound words about the Christ coming out of the 20th Century´s entombment resurrected as the Sun-being of our Earth and our true Self!
The wondrous music of becoming 