A Co-Creative Journey

A Co-Creative Journey

Cognitive Yoga: How a book is born

Heavenly Jerusalem and the Mysteries of the Human Body

(Temple Lodge 2017, Ereignis Verlag 2022)

The Word becoming flesh is the first Michael revelation; the flesh becoming Spirit must be the second Michael revelation.

Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of 22 November 1919 (GA 194).

 In the fourth Chapter of the book, The New Experience of the Supersensible (now part of volume 1 of The Modern Christ Experience and the Knowledge Drama of the Second Coming), I described the three main aspects of the meeting with the etheric Christ. In this meeting, Christ stands by you to encourage you to awaken yourself to new life as a whole human being, in spirit, soul and body. It can also be said that he gracefully plants in your spirit, soul and body a unique gift, made of three potential golden spirit seeds, that you can develop in your spirit, soul and body, by means of your own forces, if you choose to do so. 

  For 15 years I was working on this project inwardly, about which I didn’t speak or wrote, because the given Christ experience must be first fully spiritualized and individualized, and then experienced again as part of the knowledge drama of the second coming. When the book was published in 1995, I could fully describe the cultivation and development of the first golden seed, but only give some indications concerning the development of the second, while the third seed was only in its beginning. Therefore, when the book wass published in 1995, only the first seed planted in the spirit, could be fully described, and the development of the second seed, planted in the soul, could only be indicated in some outlines. The dcultivation of the third seed in the body proved to be much more difficult, because it was hindered by strong obstacles, and was still largly in potential state.

 However, I continued to work on the complete development of the three spirit seeds, through the end of the century and the beginning of the 21^st century. The task was to learn how to apply spiritual science to individualize the gracefully given Christ Impulse not only in the spirit, but also in the soul and bodies. Only by means of modern spiritual science is it possible today to explore, discover, and activate these deeply hidden spiritual forces, slumbering in the primordial foundations of the soul and bodies, and bring them to full imaginative consciousness.

 The third golden spirit seed, planted in the body, had to wait, until I reached my eighth seven-year period, in the age of 56-63, in which- usually wholly unconsciously- the forces of Spirit Man (Atman) are activated. During these years, I could also experience how I was supported by forces activated through the development of Spirit Self (in the age of 42-49) and Life Spirit (49-56). This brought about a change in my faculty of Imagination, on which I was working for decades, because it could be supported by more potent spiritual forces than previously.

  Starting subtly in 2010 and gaining momentum in 2011 and 2012, I could feel the awakening of the new soul forces. This enabled me to grasp imaginatively also some aspects of the potential spiritual forces of the three bodies, because the faculty of Imagination was now increasingly saturated by stronger inspirative and intuitive elements. As I describe in detail in Cognitive Yoga, I could then overcome some of the powerful obstacles found in the bodies, composed of desires, drives and instincts, and penetrate consciously deeper into them. I felt that the more this eighth seven-year period progressed, for the first time I could reach my goal, to complete- in certain limits naturally- the development of the faculty of Imagination, individualized and spiritualized by spiritual science. Then I could use the forces of this Imaginative Soul, to awaken some aspects of the pure, virgin, Nathanic forces hidden in the depths of the three bodies, and unite them with the forces of the etheric Christ. And this is what I described in my book, Cognitive Yoga.

 During 2012,  when I felt that I could not progress further, I asked the spiritual world for  special help. Asking for help in such a way (help is otherwise always given...), is a special, indeed, a festive occasion, and one must be sure in one's heart that the cause and timing is truly appropriate. And so it was during Michaelmas 2012. I felt that the time was ripe and that it would be proper and productive to prepare and wait for such a festive meeting with my spiritual colleagues. 

 I want to share some aspects of what I experienced during this event in Christmas 2012, in the more personal and imaginative language of storytelling, described in Cognitive Yoga: How a book is born, in chapter 5, A co-creative Journey.

 It was an individualized Christmas nativity tale, a kind of modern Olaf Asteson journey, about the earthly ripening of a research problem, its heavenly conception, embryonic life, and finally its birth on earth, as a fully conscious, embodied, spiritual knowledge, that could later be expressed also as the content of a physical book, printed black on white. This winter tale is what follows…

 (to be continued)

Continue to read in chapter 5, A co-creative journey