Approaching The Mystery Of Golgotha

"Truths cannot be transmitted simply as stable dogmas. Truths are always of a given moment and, at each moment, must be grasped anew. This demands at each moment a renewed activity in relation to the human gift of understanding." -- Jörgen Smit (from the foreword) The goal of this study is to cultivate the experience of living, intuitive thinking, such as we experience with every new understanding. As Kühlewind puts it, this unique contribution to practice of anthroposophy has a twofold purpose: "to stimulate working with spiritual science through exercises, and to stimulate independent new formulations of its content on the basis of experience." Working with Anthroposophy will help guide beginning students and inspire longtime students of the path opened up by Rudolf Steiner. As with all of Kühlewind's works, this book opens new insights with each reading.

In February of 1913 - a landmark year for Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy - the first General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society was held. In September, the Foundation Stone for the Goetheanum was laid in Dornach. The ground for Anthroposophy as we know it today was established. Such is the background for the remarkable lectures contained in this volume. Outwardly, they begin to set the record straight. Inwardly, they seek to establish a right relationship of service to Christ and the spiritual worlds in accord with the spirit of the times, the archangel Michael.

"The Michael age has dawned. Hearts begin to have thoughts. Enthusiasm no longer flows from mystical obscurity, but from the inner clarity that thought conveys. To grasp this is to receive Michael into one's soul. Thoughts that today seek to grasp the spirit must spring from hearts that beat for Michael as the fiery cosmic prince of thought." --Rudolf Steiner For centuries, the tradition of the "mystical chronology" of the world's seven archangelic regents has been part of Western esoteric teaching. According to this tradition, 1879 marked the return of the solar spirit Michael--the archangel of the Sun--to oversee earthly evolution. Steiner always placed his life and work in the service of Michael's evolutionary task. And he recognized that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, humanity emerged from the Kali Yuga--the Dark Age--and entered the Age of Light. Against this background, Steiner described the ascent of Michael as cosmic ruler, his battle with the "dragon" of the spirits of darkness, and his roles as the countenance of Christ and the guardian of cosmic intelligence. He also gave many profound indications of how Michael's evolutionary task depends on the free and independent collaboration of human coworkers. Speaking on behalf of Michael, Steiner laid out the essentials for a new Michaelic path to full humanity. Among the elements of this path are the development of selfless individuality; cosmopolitanism; the practice of the presence of Christ; fearlessness; the transformation of thinking and perception in a new synthesis of science, art, and religion; the spiritualization of space; and the separation of thought from language. The Archangel Michael gathers most of Steiner's statements on this subject, making it an important source for coming to terms with today's political, social, psychological, and spiritual crises.

Before the sacrifice of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ being performed three great sacrifices in the spiritual world. Those sacrificial acts made possible the selflessness of the senses, the body's physical organs, and the human capacities of thought, feeling, and volition. This is an essential lecture for a deeper understanding of Rudolf Steiner's Christology and what he terms the "turning point in time"--Christ's incarnation and the Mystery of Golgotha.

‘If one is unable to conceive of the Christ mystery as a true reality, one also cannot develop any ideas and concepts relating to the rest of world existence that are imbued with reality, which really penetrate to the truth’. – Rudolf Steiner In a series of 17 lectures, Rudolf Steiner throws new light on the historical background and esoteric meaning of what he refers to as the central event of human and earthly history: the Christ mystery or ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’. Basing his commentaries on personal spiritual research, Steiner emphasizes the key nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, through which ‘...something was accomplished which has to do not with the moral order alone but with the whole world-order in its entirety’. This relates to a transformation of the spiritual environment of the earth and a potentially radical change in human consciousness. Building on the core themes of this course, Steiner presents a variety of fascinating topics, including: original sin and the idea of resurrection; faith and knowledge; the nature of sleep and the riddle of fatigue; the violation of the mysteries by the Roman Emperors; the teachings of Mani and Augustine; our relationship to the dead in spiritualistic séances; and the correspondence between the Platonic year, a day in a person’s life and a human life-time. Although first delivered to audiences a century ago, these lectures have lost none of their resonance; indeed, their essential message is perhaps more relevant than ever. They are published here in a new translation and for the first time in a complete English edition. ‘So let us endeavour to make spiritual science our own not merely as a teaching but as a language, and then wait until we find the questions in this language that we may address to Christ. He will answer, yes He will answer!’

"We live today at a time when the full mystery of the Resurrection body can become manifest to human beings out of the inspirations of Michael.... This was accomplished by Rudolf Steiner not just in a theoretical sense but also practically, and came about through the establishing of a path, accessible to all human beings, which leads to a union with the forces of the Resurrection body." Sergei Prokofieff approaches the deepest mysteries of the Turning Point of Time (the Christ event) through Rudolf Steiner's spiritual research. At its heart stands the question of the restoration of the "phantom" of the physical body and its transformation into the resurrected body of Christ through the Mystery of Golgotha. The author draws a broad and differentiated picture of the tasks and possibilities that the Easter event--as well as Ascension and Pentecost--present, both for the individual and humanity. The final chapter considers the mystery of Easter Saturday, through which the two polar aspects of the Mystery of Golgotha--death and resurrection--interconnect, also explaining the relationship between the Earth Spirit and the interior of the Earth. An appendix tackles the phenomenon of stigmatization from a spiritual-scientific perspective.

10 Lectures in Copenhagen and Norrköping, May 23-30, 1912, July 12-16, 1914 (CW 155) "Spiritual science does not want to replace Christianity; rather, it aims to be the instrument through which the meaning of Christianity can be grasped. And one thing that will become particularly clear through spiritual science is that the being whom we call Christ must be recognized as the center of life on earth, and that what we call the Christian faith is the ultimate religion, the eternal religion for the future of the earth." -- Rudolf Steiner (July 13, 1914) This collection of lectures from 1912 and 1914 offers a deepened understanding of the being of Christ, the divine Logos, in his connection with individual human souls. From religious figures such as John the Baptist and Saint Francis to the twentieth-century poet Christian Morgenstern, these lectures reveal how Christ works with and through all who seek him. The Pauline statement, "Not I, but Christ in me," becomes an inner guide by which each human soul can find a way to intimate union with the Christ being. It is he who has the power to make our ideals and goals in life--if they are worthy--into true seeds of future reality. The time of faith has come and gone. Christ needs our conscious striving, our effort to understand, within the heart's deep core, his ongoing presence and activity in the further evolution of our spiritual Earth and in our journey toward humanness. These lectures are a comfort and a signpost for the soul to walk the inner path of communion with Christ for the healing and redemption of the earth. We may be able, in the end, to redeem the karma accrued by our own individual souls, but for our spiritual work to be fruitful for all humanity it must be brought into connection with Christ. "What we take into ourselves in such a way that it is done from the perspective of 'Not I'-- this is what Christ makes into a common possession for all humanity" (July 14, 1914). "To know Christ means to undergo the school of selflessness.... Under the influence of materialism, the selflessness of humanity was lost in a way, as will be understood in future ages of humanity. However, through absorption in the Mystery of Golgotha, the penetration of the knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha with our whole feeling and soul being, we can once again acquire a culture of selflessness. We can come to understand that what Christ did for the development of the Earth is contained in the fundamental impulse of selflessness, and that what he can become for the conscious development of the human soul is the school of selflessness!" -- Rudolf Steiner (June 1, 1914) To read these lectures is to strike out on the heart's path of fellowship with the living Christ. This book is a translation from German of Christus und die Menschliche Seele. Über den Sinn des Lebens - Theosophische Moral - Anthroposophie und Christentum (GA 155, 3rd ed.), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland, 1994. Cover image: Salvator Mundi (1499-1510) by Leonardo da Vinci.

Steiner shows here deeds of the Christ Being in the spiritual world preceding the incarnation on earth and their relation to standing upright, speech, communication, and thought.