(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
“Man has two eyes
One only sees what moves in fleeting time
The other
What is eternal and divine.”
-The Book of Angelus Silesius
Rudolph Steiner says in The Reappearance Of Christ In The Etheric (1983), “We
will now apply the law of correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm,
between the large and small worlds, to another important matter. Just as
an ordinary life, we have our humdrum days—waking up, going to bed, waking
up again, going about our usual tasks—so it is also in the far reaches of
space. There, too, everything goes about its usual course; the rising and
setting of the sun are repeated in a regular rhythm. However, just as the
family’s methodical pace is interrupted when a child appears, completely
new impulse enters earthly existence with a new spiritual being, such as
a comet, has the same effect in space. All material is the expression of
something spiritual, and occult science is able to indicate what lies behind
phenomena. The way in which modern science tries to occupy itself with comets
is similar to a fly observing the Sistine Madonna. It crawls over the Madonna,
it certainly sees the colors, sees a spot of red here, a spot of blue there,
but beyond this it sees nothing at all.
“A man rises to true human dignity only when he grasps the depths of relationships
that lie at the foundation of the spiritual. People should not rush so blindly
past what the heavenly signs have to show them. Wisdom should inflame and
enlighten its association both small and great. Take as an example of this
the wisdom filled organization of an anthill. There, the whole has the meaning;
every ant feels itself to be a member of the whole. Human beings, however,
regulate their social life according to what each individual considers useful
for himself. They run around each other senselessly, without understanding.
Human life is really nonsensical in many ways.
“Whenever a person takes on an inner discipline, however, he makes himself
ripe for what should be brought forward as a third fact: the possibility
of looking out into the etheric with newly awakened faculties. There the
soul will see what Paul once saw: Christ in His etheric body. Without books
and documents this great event—the second coming of Christ—will take place
for those who have made themselves worthy of it. It is the obligation of
anthroposophy to announce this. There are already human beings who sense
that we have overcome the Dark Age and are approaching a more luminous era.
The Anthroposophists must walk this path consciously. Anthroposophy must
bring its fruits to humanity, so that souls are made capable of uniting themselves
with Christ. Whether these souls inhabit a physical body or not makes no
difference; He has descended to the dead as well as to the living. The great
and sublime event of Christ’s appearance in the etheric thus has significance
for all the world.”