Chapter 2 – Saul-Paul at the Gates of Damascus (How is St Paul’s past experience relevant to people on the earth today?)
No matter what name we use to point to Him, the Christ being has always been the main creative source and original prototype of the evolution of humanity. Ben-Aharon writes, “In great, epochal acts of cosmic-earthly sacrifices, He shaped humanity from the very first steps of its earthly evolution, forming it in the process more and more in His likeness and...increasingly forming Himself also in the likeness of man until the time came when both sides were ripe enough to allow a mutual ‘face to face’ penetration to take place. The first was Jesus of Nazareth’s complete merging in spirit, soul, and body with the cosmic Christ.” p 34. The second was Paul’s (Lazarus’ initiation was an essential but transitional phase). St. Paul’s initiation and experience of Christ on the road to Damascus (discussed in Acts, and demonstrated in his Epistles to the Churches in the New Testament) was the first seed of a new and modern type of spiritual awakening. It took place in public during the day, while he was awake, and the spiritual light shone through and transformed the physical world and body. Instead of diminishing wakefulness and self-consciousness (as in older forms of Initiation), Christ enhanced Paul’s self-identity and self-knowledge, merging together incarnation and excarnation. Christ became Paul’s intimate teacher, transforming him directly out of the spiritual worlds. The lives and acts of Jesus and Paul established a living temple or a permanent living process in the spiritual worlds and in the core of the human being itself. This seed (that holds an infinite power to blossom and copy itself) bestows the potential for every human on the earth to be able to repeat this selfconscious face to face mutual essence exchange with the source of the Spiritual I AM. Since 1933, all humans can potentially experience this, but now we must begin from completely modern, wide-awake, clear thinking and perception, and with a modern ego intact. Christ’s Second Coming only intensifies our Individual experience of Self, not diminishes it. The power of self is transformed morally. This new appearance demands humans to now stand maturely on their own two feet. In this sense, the individual contributes to his own Initiation.
Ben-Aharon describes the 3 main elements of the fundamental ‘Pauline method’ from his own experience and research: 1) powerful illumination of self-knowledge and recognition of the death forces, 2) transformation and reshaping of man’s soul, and 3) the gift of the future seeds of body, soul, and spirit, which give man the free responsibility to shape himself and the earth. What St Paul experienced is the essence of what all humans can now unfold as they begin, one by one, to be pealed open and turned inside out by the new Christ teaching. Now a growing number of humans can begin to circle around the Christ to be taught by him directly, and no longer in a mystical and hidden way, but in a way that is woven into and on top of our daily life and awareness. But we have to develop ourselves spiritually to meet Him. His light now shines behind our earthly light, so close to us. Saul recognizes, as each one of us must recognize in the moment of meeting the Spirit-Self, that our body, life, and soul is filled with anti-Christian forces. Our ether body is largely controlled by Ahriman or Satan, while our astral body and consciousness is largely controlled by the fallen Angel, Lucifer. These are groups and offspring of beings that were not able to follow the regular path of spiritual evolution. They fell behind in their development and thus now try to live through their failed human stage by using us. For example, in the first moment of his illumination, Saul sees that it is he who has been rejecting Christ. In the first stage, I must painfully recognize that it is I who have killed the Christ (the Spirit and my own Self) and set up an anti-Christ on a throne inside myself. Through this awakening to the deep structure and basis of our life and consciousness, we see what actually causes illness and death (the response of the Good Gods to the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman in us), and what allows our daily consciousness with its clarity and subjectivity to arise (Lucifer and Ahriman in us). We realize that we cannot just banish them, but that we have to transform them, and through this life and soul process, transform our very human nature. But as we become conscious of Lucifer and Ahriman working in us, and face it morally, freely, cognitively and responsibly as a mature Self, their powers over us are diminished and re-oriented. Their work (which does have its purpose in the divine plan) can then proceed in a more limited way that does not overstep its boundaries. When Lucifer and Ahriman are separated and put into their proper places, the open human heart can then find the Christ Spirit, who shows the source of all morality: the eternal love which is “the highest soul reality of Christ-permeated man.” (p 36) The moment of the meeting with Christ for Saul is therefore not just the single moment of a lightning-strike, but it bestows the seed and the process for a lifetime of work. Ben-Aharon writes, “Over and above his Saul-Paul duality, St Paul continuously endeavours to construct a bridge of free knowledge and moral love on which he could firmly stand, holding himself upright in the sight of the Christ and justifying his upright soul position.” (p 36)
Each one of us can follow this pattern as we slowly and freely unfold our cognitive and moral capacities of living thinking, loving feeling, and enspirited will, to breathe in and out with our very BECOMING into the spiritual nature of the Christ Spirit. Through awakening and spiritualizing the words written by Steiner, which constitute the external form of Anthroposophy, we can then intensify and enhance the present modern appearance of Christ in the life, light, warmth, and tone of our virtual bodies, that are now becoming holy Sun-bodies. We then self-consciously and with clear concepts and full wakefulness can wed Anthroposophia with the Spirit-I AM of all humans. If we can flow together with the fluid of the text of The New Experience of the Supersensible itself, we find that it leads to the living temple of Christ. In this way Yeshayahu Ben-Aharon’s acts of wedding the living Spirit of Anthroposophy with the etheric Christ in his own being, now become a new seed and prototype in the living memory of the Earth, which we can also plant into ourselves. This is the seed that will grow into the etheric chalice that the Independent School of Spiritual Science and the Global Event College will develop to allow the Michael School to work again on Earth in the 21st and 22nd centuries.
Chapter 3 – The Conditions of the Modern Christ Experience – The Evolution of Freedom
Dr. Ben-Aharon indicates how the modern awakening to spiritual perception through the meeting with the new etheric revelation of the Christ must take place in moments of the clearest selfconsciousness. The separation from the protection of the Gods that gradually took place as man was led to become increasingly isolated and independent as an ego on the earth, means that we are now prone to illness and death. Our old instinctive clairvoyance is also gone. The historical time for the old yoga, Buddhism, Taoism, and spiritualism is therefore over. But the good news is that this independence is the basic requirement for the development of a fully free and creative human individual. Contemporary enlightenment and initiation is therefore very different from its ancient forms. The future evolution of the earth depends on a co-working between individual humans who are awakening to their own solar nature, and the Christ spirit. The initial experience of the revelation of the Second Coming is not enough, but the free seed, model, and guidance given by the Christ to a selfconscious humanity, will lead to a “mutual labour and sacrifice, uniting Him and humanity ever more closely.” (p 41) He needs us, just as we need Him. However this means that the meetings with the etheric Christ (what Ben-Aharon calls elsewhere, the Event) often arise in the midst of pain, loneliness, and despair - the real existential outcomes of our modern position on the earth. “The same flash of light that kindles the light of living spirit consciousness also illuminates the deadening, hardening forces in man’s being. And the word of life, when streaming into man’s awakened heart, shows him, in the most exact manner, the existence of evil as a mighty reality in the depth of his soul...The so-called ‘redemption’ through Christ is, therefore, something quite different from what is commonly believed and preached. Many people, unfortunately, see in it an end to their spiritual striving. In reality, however, Christ shows man the depths and heights of his soul in order to place him in a balanced, humble, and realistic position in regard to the burdens of the past and the hopes of the future.” (p 42)
The pain, suffering, and humility of self-knowledge can be difficult existentially, but it also allows us to find our true earthly-spiritual selves. The ahrimanic and luciferic doubles in us will try to overcome our gentle human I AM during this process, but the Christ Spirit can guide the way to freedom. From the point of view of the instinctive clairvoyance that existed long ago in the East, human culture and consciousness from 3000 BC to 1899 AD was an age of darkness (Kali Yuga). Our instinctive spiritual and soul senses became blind and stopped working. But this time period also gave humanity a wonderful opportunity to grow. During the Kali Yuga, we slowly awakened out of our childish sleep and developed a personal sense of self, clear thinking and exact physical perception. The true meaning of our present earth evolution and the deepest essence of the Christ impulse is the gradual spiritualization of the sense of the I AM in the human being. Dr. Ben-Aharon shows in his book, Jerusalem (2019), that the main mission of the Hebrew people was to nourish this independent ego, to develop self-consciousness in a way that was different from the old innate Wisdom of the ancient days. But unfolding and intensifying the sense of Self in individual humans also means that the I AM must be able to penetrate into all of the soul and bodily coverings. “Such a work also brings with it as an unavoidable corollary, a certain devitalization, a suppression as well as corruption of the sheaths’ original constitution.” (p 43) If we are to now to create a wholly new form of spiritual scientific clairvoyance, which does not diminish our independence and clear capacity for thinking and individual love, we need to trace the gradual separation of the etheric body from the physical body since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. A modern physical brain capable of precise scientific reasoning was developed during the Gabriel moon period (1529-1879). This led to the rise of the mechanistic and materialistic sciences during that era, but also to a certain deformation and drying up of the physical body. The etheric body had already loosened from the physical head directly after the time of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, but in the 18th century, the etheric body (the body of light supporting the memory and life of the human being) also began to separate from the heart and lung region. This separation has negative and positive consequences: “It causes a real division of lower and upper man… an excarnating-dispering effect on the upper part of the ego together with a parallel, too strong incarnation on the lower pole.” (p 44)
There are 3 main results of this separation: First, we feel a growing sense of death and dying. Second, it gives rise to the totally modern feeling of nihilism related to the half-conscious feeling of the fissure or abyss between the physical-etheric and the soul and spirit. Third, the breaking apart of all of soul forces tends to lead to a feeling of the evaporation of the ego altogether. All you have to do is look at the growing number of suicides in order to see evidence of this contemporary reality. Thus the Christ will now appear before those who are ‘sick and sorrowful.’ These separations with their resulting painful effects are what it means for all of humanity to begin to ‘cross the threshold.’ The veils are beginning to be lifted, but humans are only dimly aware of this from its existential angst. Bringing the spiritual causes to consciousness and developing etheric cognition out of this modern angst is the purpose of 'The New Experience of the Supersensible' and really all of Ben-Aharon’s works. The two major poles of our modern soul anxiety: emptiness and despair on one side and tragic loss of self-control in evil acts on the other, can lead to a feeling that our very soul and self is evil. World War II and the Holocaust is the most clear outcome of this modern spiritual fact. But the positive potential of this fracturing of modern man is that, if we enliven Anthroposophy in our soul and spirit, we will be ready to build the bridge to the spirit when Christ lights up our way. These two poles “are transformed, in the moment of the meeting itself, into the two pillars of the bridge of consciousness continuation: securing man’s remembrance, awareness and conscious supersensible seeing and comprehending of the living Christ. The Christ is then seen through the metamorphosed forces of death and is experienced through the mystery of man’s evil.” (p 46)
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