It is my view, in the mind’s eye, that at the time of
Christ’s Incarnation the Aristotelians in the
spiritual world functioned as “living concepts” of
Christ’s Being, and the “living percepts”, the
eye-witnesses around Jesus Christ were predominantly
Platonists. So the concepts or conceivers were
living human beings just as the eye-witnesses, the
perceivers, were living human beings.
The full Reality of Christ comprises both what those on
Earth with Jesus Christ perceived and experienced
AND what R.S calls the “reversed Christ event; the
departure of Christ from
the Sun.”, the experience of the
Aristotelians. What unites percept and concept
is thinking – but here we are positing human beings as
the concepts and percepts of an event so what unites
them is also a being..Michael, the Regent of the
Cosmic Intelligence.
These groups of souls have essentially different
experiences of the event. The one group experience
the culmination of the departure of a Cosmic spiritual
being from His cosmic spiritual home, a cosmic
planetary experience. The other group of souls have
the experience of a man on earth, a human being, an
Andropos experience. In the souls of those around
Jesus Christ is the question “Who is He?”. This we have
from Matthew, Mark and John. And this question
echoes even into our own day. In the other
souls the question is more like “Where has Christ gone?
What does “Earth”
mean?” Again a question that echoes in souls even into our
days.
This viewpoint arose from many years of carrying around
RS’s insight that the Aristotelians were not on
earth during the Mystery of Golgotha. From this
viewpoint the history of the Platonists and the
Aristotelians as described by RS can be viewed as a
history in pursuit of answers to these soul questions
arising on earth and in the spiritual world at the
Turning Point of Time. This history can also be viewed as
the history of human thinking from one Michael age,
the time of Plato and Aristotle, to the new Michael
age, our own days. One could also say it is the history
proceeding from the time when concept and percept
separated to make room for intellect in the human
being...when human perception was losing its
clairvoyance and the thinking faculty began to lose
the experience of thoughts as beings approaching
from without and experience them as concepts,
produced within.
So without too much strain one could also view the history
of the Platonists and Aristotelians as the fate of
percept and concept and all the antitheses that can derive
from one-sidedness regarding their roles in
cognition. Theirs are the leading roles, as it were, in
the drama of cognition.
Of course this viewpoint, in the mind’s eye, hinges on and
is workable (ie revelatory) through the conjecture
that the rhythm of alternating incarnations of Platonists
and Aristotelians began after the simultaneous
incarnations of Plato,Socrates, Aristotle and Alexander.
This rhythm, as far as we know, came to an end in
the 19thC, the start of the new Michael age, with
again simultaneous incarnations of all these
individualities.
What, if anything, can this mean?
At the moment of the Baptism in Jordan the Aristotelians
must have experienced something like a spiritual
eclipse of the spiritual sun, lasting for 3 years. For had
not Christ chosen a new abode? But Michael remained
with them enabling them to bear it. They experienced
at the baptism in Jordan something like the eclipse
of the sun that would occur for the Platonists only
at the Crucifixion.
(Those coming to Earth in the immediate aftermath of the
atom bomb would also experience something like a
spiritual/moral eclipse of the earth by the black sun
demon Sorat. One could connect all this to the
appearance of Christ in the etheric of the earth and I am
sure there is much more to be worked out
here.)
As the Aristotelians came to Earth again after the Mystery
of Golgotha their souls would be plunged into the
Earth question regarding Jesus Christ “Who was He?” for
they had no “is” experience of Jesus Christ on
earth. One could perhaps say that for them the
Mystery revolved around Jesus of Nazareth. The
Platonists, rising into the spiritual world would now meet
the completed “reverse Christ event” but with
varying degrees of consciousness regarding the Crucifixion
and the events thereafter.
I am sure there are many among us, and not among us, who
can, in the right way re-live these experiences and
follow the nodal growth points to come to further
understanding. I am thinking here of the way leading
through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition and not
the way through Stigmata and its fixed visionary
components. The Mystery of Golgotha was both a
culmination and a new departure.
So, from this viewpoint what was the culmination spoken of
by RS? Well one could say, it was the meeting on
Earth of the living human concepts and living human
percepts of Christ under the gaze of Michael in the
Consciousness Soul Epoch. The full Reality of Jesus
Christ is the meeting of concept and percept on this
side of the threshold, no longer, as it were, across
the divide of the threshold. Christ is met on Earth, no
longer in Heaven.
But another fact plays in. That fact is the end, as far as
we know, of the alternating rhythm of Platonist and
Aristotelian incarnations ( in the broad sense, there will
always be
exceptions) sought by Aristotle as now an earthly
necessity. He himself “converted”. He took on, with
regard to Anthroposophy, the Platonic task.
There are many ways to view this, but one way is that in
each of us, concept and percept must be brought
together by our individual thinking. In other words,
natural Platonists can freely “convert” to
Aristotle, and natural Aristotelians can freely “convert”
to Plato. Both are Christian. This inner flexibility
is indeed a “threshold crossing”, for each leaves the safe
soul – ground of known experience for the
unexperienced soul-ground of the other. Each has to
“walk upon the waters” to meet the other.
This inner conversion involves sacrifice for the greater
good of Anthroposophy. It is an inner task for
individuals who may find, in this life, an outer
expression of this in the meeting of Platonist with
Aristotelian. Regardless, out of this certainly
sacrificial process in RS we have gained Anthroposophy
as we know it.
This has little to do with the Society, except as context
for such meetings, and as Joel’s essay points out
there are other contexts. However whilst it may have
little to do with the Society I believe it has
everything to do with the Movement, for not all Platonists
or Aristotelians are anthroposophists. Many natural
Platonists within the AS have been excluded,
expelled or had life made intolerable within the AS...but
then so have a number of Aristotelians!
Did the culmination spoken of by RS take place? Well
Christ is certainly not the property of the AS and
its members or former members. So I have no doubt that
many “living human percepts” have met many “living
human concepts” out in the wide world. The question
for Anthroposophists, it seems to me, can only be
whether such meetings took or are taking place with
a sufficient degree of consciousness within the world of
Anthroposophy to give to the rest of the world what
it needs.
Is it necessary to identify a further incarnation of RS to
“ground” this culmination in his being? That must be
an open question for each individual, to cover which the
Scots have a
well known line of poetry, “The best- laid schemes
o’ mice and men gang aft agley..”
To me, the meeting of Prokofieff and von Halle is a
meeting in this context but is a terrifically sad
caricature. Sad not because they represent the best of the
two streams, but sad because they do not.
E.A.MacKenzie Easter Tides 2014
