Michaelic Yoga This is a unique book that recreates Rudolf Steiner's method of spiritual research in a way that draws on both individual experience and Steiner's works. In several lectures in 1919 and 1920, Steiner presented what he called a yogic light-soul process or a new Michaelic Yoga (Michael's show, GA 194 and Limits of our knowledge of nature, GA 322). Ben-Aharon develops these indications of Steiner into a completely transparent methodological presentation based on his own experience, research and practice of anthroposophical spiritual science during the last 40 years.

The book ranges from the beginning of a cognitive yoga practice to a description of how, on this foundation, a new etheric body and a new individuality are created. In other words, the journey of transformation it describes is immense. At the same time, it is also practical and helpful for the very first elementary steps of this new yoga practice. On every page, the true essence of spiritual research and development shines through: Cognitive insight and wisdom are always permeated by a moral impulse that awakens the reader to the true nature of spiritual development. It is always the whole soul that evolves, and this text reflects that. The development of higher cognitive powers is presented here directly and intimately in its relationship to the moral element.

The author, Dr. Yeshayahu (Jesaiah) Ben-Aharon, has published several books on both the method of spiritual science and his own research, such as... The new experience of the supernatural, The spiritual event of the 20th century and last Twilight of Mankind and Resurrection of MankindThe central theme that runs through his entire work is the Second Coming of Christ and the role that anthroposophy plays in receiving and developing this potential for humanity.

The in Michaelic Yoga The described process begins with the task of purifying perception and thought. Rudolf Steiner's epistemology demonstrates how, in normal consciousness, thinking and perception are always intertwined, and how an understanding of the cognitive process requires that we comprehend this intertwining and resolve it through the development of pure thinking. In this way, a practice is implicitly contained in Steiner's early epistemology. Michaelic Yoga This book begins by helping us understand this composition of ordinary cognition and learn to practice this development of pure thought and pure perception. It explains, step by step and in a clear and accessible way, how thought and sense perception are purified and separated, and shows how this purification leads to a supersensible experience of the forces behind ordinary thought and sense perception. This process culminates in the formation of a new, independent etheric body capable of living and perceiving in the etheric world.

Based on this principle of purifying and intensifying the perceptual and cognitive poles of experience, Ben-Aharon invites us to follow the etherization of the senses step by step and in this way develop powers of spiritual knowledge by spiritualizing ever deeper aspects of the body.

Starting with the most easily accessible elements, we are shown how vision and the color red can be etherified. Ben-Aharon demonstrates how, from Goethe's experience of color as quality, we can arrive at an experience of color as pure intensity, which then leads to a complete revelation as spiritual enlightenment.

In a chapter focused on thinking, Ben-Aharon provides a remarkable picture of both the nature and origin of thought, as well as the experiences one has when encountering the death forces that constitute ordinary thinking consciousness. This is a central and essential aspect often overlooked in anthroposophical treatises on thinking and its spiritualization.

Starting from this purification and polarization of sensory perception and thought, Ben-Aharon then addresses the sense of smell, which, as he shows, merges with the senses of taste and touch in normal consciousness to form a threshold or impenetrable zone. To penetrate this blockage, the lower senses must be etherified, and Ben-Aharon provides insights into practical research that, to my knowledge, surpass anything currently found in any other book on spiritual knowledge.

In the etherization process of the formative forces of perception and thought, a gradual permeation and release of the forces active in the body takes place. In response to this spiritualization, free cosmic forces fertilize the released individual forces, and this etheric process gives birth to a new etheric body. The creation of a new etheric body leads to the spiritual birth of a new individuality and its capacity to live consciously in the etheric world. This is the theme of the last four chapters and leads to an "exchange of essence" with the cosmic source of becoming, an encounter with the etheric Christ.

The book's form is a combination of an explanation of the spiritualization process and a meditative text in itself. It contains a wealth of extremely interesting and challenging descriptions of spiritual transformations; for example, the activation of the third eye, the two-petaled lotus flower, and its relationship to the etherization of the whole body, or how to learn to think, speak, and walk in the spiritual world. If one wants to read a book today that presents the spiritual-scientific process in its entirety, I believe it is impossible to find a better one than Michaelic Yoga.

Torbjørn Eftestøl (doctoral scholarship holder at the Norwegian Academy of Music and member of the School of Humanities and the Global Event College)