the “Children of the Sun"*

- the Future Heart of Anthroposophy -

*the Anthroposophical Movement, as described in the Hopi Oral History and Prophecy

of the True White Brother, which Oral History remembers Atlantis

Anthroposophy is not yet incarnate - Steiner thought it would take about 400 years for this work to actually impact human culture.  At this quarter-way mark in 2012, we have finished only one century of this process, and are also on the Cusp of the Third Millennium. 

During the 20th Century, following Steiner’s death, this spiritual work experienced a Fall from Grace.  This was unavoidable and was described by Steiner in this way: if certain matters were not accomplished,  then karma would hold sway.  When Steiner died the Executive fell to internal squabbles, the exalted mood of the Christmas Conference faded away, the National Societies took sides on these issues, and the International Anthroposophical Society split apart, all of which happened between 1925 and 1935.  Ahriman was essentially victorious on the social plane of existence.

Following WWII, this was healed on this social (horizontal) plane, but not on the spiritual (vertical) plane.  The Anthroposophical Society, in which we are membered, is not at all connected to the Spiritual World in the same fashion as when Steiner lived.  How could it be?

The essential foundation of what Steiner gave has been mostly forgotten, except for a very few.  Hardly anyone, including members and leaders of various kinds, have penetrated in practice to the heart of the New Mystery of Thinking, concerning which Steiner wrote about in A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe’s World Conception; Truth and Knowledge; and, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.  What is perhaps even worse, is that the New Mysteries of Community (described in Lecture Six of Awakening to Community as the “Reverse Cultus”) are hardly known at all, much less anywhere seriously practiced.

What Steiner predicted, namely the intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence, has come to pass.  People have confused Anthroposophy with Spiritual Science (they are not the same).   We also have not understood that the reason Steiner spoke of Michaelic Courage was because the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence was an act of the will, not a collection of concepts or thoughts.  Our I fully manifests only in the will.

All the same, nothing is wrong in the Anthroposophical Society or among the members.  This condition is simply an effect produced by karma, and the opponents whose duty it is to resist our wills in order that these wills may be strengthened by having something to overcome.

What is noted above then, as not yet present, is simply the work that we need to take up next so as to continue to go toward “the Children of the Sun” Heart of the Future of Anthroposophy, by: developing the will to bring alive in our Society, and in human culture, the New Mystery of Thinking and the New Mystery of Community (the New Feminine Mysteries).  If we fail to do this the culture of the Third Millennium will be lost to Ahriman, and humanity will experience a great tragedy, losing for too long a time any real knowledge of the Cosmic Christ.

There are new spiritual matters that can be learned, such as: how to experience the Second Coming by experiencing the Second Eucharist in the Ethereal - that is how to become a modern disciple of Christ by accepting the freely given  grace of Holy Breath; and, how to learn of the facts of Ahriman’s present incarnation and its meaning for the present and future.  For futher insights, from Elizabeth Ancrum MacKensie, go here: Christian Esotericism at Tibby Fowler's Bothy

From my thinking and experience:

The New Mystery of Thinking (living or clair-thinking)

 My experience is that besides the attention (which determines what objects of thought my thinking approaches) there is also the intention - the self-chosen moral reason I think … two acts of will at the creative seed-roots of thinking. What happens after their mutual application is that we pass through the naive state of thinking-about to thinking-with, then to thinking-within and finally to thinking-as. These transformations are led by the intention, which learns through practice to sacrifice. If I am thinking-about another human being, for example, my instinctive and reactive feelings (sympathy and antipathy) will guide this thinking-about. If I surrender and master these instinctive uncultivated feelings (beam and mote), thinking-about becomes thinking-with (what Steiner called Goetheanism, or organic thinking).   Much of this is already the natural possession of ordinary consciousness within the American Soul as it instinctively strives to will the good and think with the heart.  It is just not noticed because we don’t look (looking, or introspection, being what Steiner called in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: the exceptional state).

If I add a complete sacrifice of my total world view (become poor in spirit), I now stand with my intention leading my attention to a more pure perception of the object of thought, such that thinking-with becomes thinking-within. I then start to know the Other with greater intimacy. In the final surrender/sacrifice, I let go the centrality of my own I – I am not there anymore, and the metamorphosis is complete: thinking-within becomes thinking-as. I have transcended my self and fully identified with the Other. Steiner called this “pure” thinking. This whole process then leads to a kind of collapse of the assumed gap between I and Thou, such that we arrive at what Steiner called: “it thinks in me”. The role of the attention determines which objects my thinking approaches, but it is the intention which shapes the growing intimacy between my “self” and the object of thought.  The Thou is not only other human beings, but spiritual beings as well.

A crucial aspect, of the intention towards the objects of the attention, is the will to love.  If we cannot love the objects of thinking, there can be no true spiritual intimacy between their essence and our essence.

The New Mystery of Community

While it is the mystery of thinking that provides us with our moral orientation in life - i.e. with the good, it is the mystery of community which provides us with the true.  Moral life is individual (I not we), and the seeking for the true is universal (we not I).  Through the practice of the Reverse Cultus we engage each other in a shared search for the truth, and via that dialogue then rise together into the world of the spirit, where within that communion we co-create new conceptual knowledge (the true).

 This seeking of the I for unity with the true and the good is what Steiner called the Consciousness Soul, or the joining of the Soul to Eternity via intercourse with the Holy Breath of the Cosmic Christ.

Through these means of practice then, the will element of the true nature of the Cosmic Michaelic Intelligence is returned to its proper role in the future of Anthroposophy.  The Children of the New Sun Mysteries take up their role as the washing the feet forerunners of humanity’s scientific exploration of the inner world of spirit, which then unites with our exploration of the true scientific nature of the outer world of matter on the path to the creation of the New Jerusalem.   By service, sacrifice and love, the Anthroposophical Society then rediscovers its heart, and Rudolf Steiner’s true legacy is moved forward in support of the highest social Arts of the Third Millennium, carried on the soul-wings of the knowing doer.