A ray of light from the future

This book is a true gem, a living and luminous magical "stone" that creates new worlds. And this is also its essential "content," as the full title reveals: Michaelic Yoga: How a Book Is Born. The Heavenly Jerusalem and the Mysteries of the Human BodyIt recounts how a spiritual experience related to a research problem helped the author progress in the development of Michaelic Yoga. It presents this story as a path that elucidates the intimate, psychic nature of spiritual research as a whole and demonstrates how it involves co-creative communication with the spiritual world.

Despite its brevity (108 pages), this book, written in an easily flowing style, contains a wealth of wisdom valuable to practitioners on the spiritual path. The central image presented in the book invites us to accompany the author on a pilgrimage, a modern-day Christmas Nativity story that unfolded during the holy days and nights of 2012. But this glimpse into his spiritual experience is designed to stimulate our own capacity for spiritualization and creativity. Ben-Aharon's work never presents images or representations that can be passively absorbed. His writings always contain an element of "problematization" that stimulates the reader, transforming reception into a conscious activity and practice. The inspiration and wisdom contained within are thus always imbued with a humanistic approach and awareness. These are, in fact, things that Ben-Aharon explicitly addresses in the book.

The book begins with an overview of some of the central aspects and essences of the evolutionary task of individualizing the Christ impulse in our time. This is also connected to Ben-Aharon's earlier work and his own spiritual biography. Ben-Aharon's work began with a spiritual experience of the Second Coming of Christ, and he has deepened and explored this mystery in all his subsequent works. This booklet invites us to gain insight into his process of deepening this mystery with regard to the dormant virginal powers within bodies and to see how it relates to the present Christ impulse and the macrocosmic forces of the Nathanic Jesus. Thus, even in this brief introduction, we are given a compelling account of the task of spiritualizing the whole person.

Following this introduction, the first chapter presents the four seasons of spiritual research. These six pages are full of stimulating and inspiring thoughts that can be very helpful for individual research and study.

In the spring of enthusiastic, youthful study, the researcher explores topics from their own perspective and from their own life experience, "supported by a deliberate development of our mental powers and abilities, growing from the bottom up" (p. 23). But when research enters its summer, it signifies "an intensifying crisis in which a major problem emerges and matures, long resisting all conscious efforts to solve it" (p. 23). As these few indications suggest, we already gain a clear and dynamic picture of the mental research process. It becomes evident how the problem and its exploration must develop if they are to truly grow and open themselves to the spiritual world, rather than remaining mere ideas within our subjective consciousness. The next phase is the soul's autumn of the 'involutive' spiritual pregnancy, in which 'the spiritual researcher regains his spiritual activity, but now in reverse… He must learn how to turn his activity inward in order to become a 'spiritual-psychic mother' of the growing and developing essence of the research' (p. 25). The final phase is the wintry Christmas event, the birth in the physical world in the form of a book, an initiative, a work of art, etc.

Chapter two presents "The Mystery of Conception" in its relation to intellectual work. In the research calendar, this is the high point of summer, when the spiritual sun fertilizes the researcher's problem seed:

Now, the following fact must be emphasized: fertilization and conception only occur when the spiritual world freely offers them as a loving act of grace. The mature problem must completely detach itself from the soul and be transformed into an independent spiritual being that lovingly opens and offers itself to the higher worlds and beings. (p. 33)

The book details Ben-Aharon's investigation into this mystery, but I leave it to the reader to explore and work with this imagination within the book.

Chapter three describes “An Insurmountable Problem.” This leads us to the central research problem, which, in short, is to breathe etherealized sensory perception into the body in order to spiritualize it down to physical matter.

The general backbone of the entire yoga process is the constant spiritualization and exhalation of pure thought using the Philosophy of Freedom, and the specific path of developing the capacity for imagination—which was my main task—is concentrated on the etherization of sensory perceptions and their inhalation into the bodies. (p. 41)

This inhalation of etherealized perception through the cognitive breathing of pure thinking and perceiving belongs to the Michaelic impulse of the spiritualization of the bodies as well. But the deeper this process penetrates, the more it will inevitably encounter the deeply unconscious and instinctual forces. Here one encounters an astral-bodily point where the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have a stronghold and create an impenetrable barrier. This diaphragmatic threshold, as it is also called in Michaelic Yoga, is also described by Steiner, as it relates to the organization of the twelve senses. It is a deposition of the middle senses of smell, taste, and touch onto the physical senses of balance, movement, and life (p. 51). When one has progressed this far in the development of Michaelic Yoga, one must confront "the Ahrimanic, instinctual side of the intellect if, armed with the etheric Christ impulse, one wishes to find the way to the virginal, pure Adamic forces in the unconscious depths of the body." (p. 52)

When he encounters this blockage a second time in his spiritual biography, now as an insurmountable problem, Ben-Aharon “could not help but realize that my teacher had a particular interest in the development of this problem.” (p. 53)

In the fourth chapter – “Some Soul Experiences at the Threshold” – we learn about the dialogue between mind and soul and how the spiritual world inscribes signs and letters into our physical, embodied lives. The ability to discover and read this occult writing is a “test” of wakefulness with which the researcher must connect.

…when a research problem becomes deeply imprinted on my mind, soul, and body, and I sense a suggestion or indication from the other side, this is a sign that an opportunity is approaching in which new collaboration with my colleagues in the spiritual world will be possible. During such a time, I cultivate a special “spiritual vigilance,” which I have developed over the years and which allows me to maintain an inconspicuous, subtle, yet sharpened awareness even in everyday life and at work, making myself available day and night for the moment of the event without altering or interfering with my daily duties. (p. 56)

This chapter contains many wonderful descriptions of how the soul life is elevated and how the reading of occult scriptures can take place. This is followed by the central chapter, which describes "A Co-Creative Journey." This is, in a sense, the heart of the book. It presents the spiritual journey into the mysteries of future humanity and Earth, at the center of which lies the becoming of the free and creative cosmic human being. The chapter begins with some essential preliminary remarks about the challenges and requirements for both the spiritual researcher and the creative reader who receives the fruits of their research. The co-creative journey must not end; it must be recreated in every soul, for however advanced this spiritual research is, it is also something in which we can participate.

“Mortal people like us [must] grow and have the courage … to take part in this great work – through many small and great acts of love and sacrifice” (p. 85).

As we follow Ben-Aharon on his co-creative journey with colleagues and masters in the spiritual world, our imagination grows and we come closer to the mystery of a spiritual current of many beings, which is nevertheless a central current of becoming.

Since this vision [of the heavenly Jerusalem] was shown, I was now able to see the birth of humanity's free spiritual being in the last century, as the offspring of many greater and lesser sacred events throughout the entire evolution of humanity from the earliest times to the most distant and remote future. Above all, three dramatic cosmic-earthly breakthroughs, three great spiritual events of recent times, stood out, and the third of them, the great cosmic event of the beginning of the 20th century, proved to be their offspring. First, it was seen in the lightning and thunder on Mount Sinai in the eternal flames of the burning bush, in which, in the fiery letters of Holy Scripture, God's true name, dwelling in Christ, could be expressed in the earthly world: Eheje Asher Eheje, I AM THAT I AM; Secondly, it was viewed as the central event of all earthly evolution, in the physically incarnating Christ himself, the fulfillment of the meaning of the earth and humanity, conceived in Jesus in baptism in the Jordan and born as the Earth's solar spirit in the mystery of Golgotha; and thirdly, the first purely human offspring of this event was born as the creation of humanity's cosmic becoming. This world-changing event took place at the aforementioned Christmas conference of 1923/24, during which the new cosmic human being was born, whose essence was expressed in the Foundation Stone Meditation. (pp. 82/83)

This cosmic-earthly human being is the bridge between Earth and the spiritual world. He was realized by Rudolf Steiner as a fully human endeavor, but after his departure and the apocalyptic events of the 20th century, humanity plunged into the abyss, and its development began to diverge in two opposing cosmic directions. (This is part of the research that Ben-Aharon already presented in 1994 as The spiritual event of the 20th century was publishedTherefore, a new bridge had to be built in the heart of the Earth, and this spiritual event is the work that Ben-Aharon brings into the world. The imagination of the heavenly Jerusalem and its “teaching” showed Ben-Aharon that this ethereal heart bridge was now ready “to multiply and be born in every single human being, in our active and creative free knowledge and our loving social life on Earth” (p. 84). Thus, the breakthrough in the development of Ben-Aharon’s spiritual-scientific work, which incarnated the Christ impulse into the forces of the physical body, coincided with a maturation of this impulse for a communal Evolution and incarnation together. (This is the central theme of the later book.) Twilight of Mankind and Resurrection of Mankind.)

The final two chapters return to the autumn and winter months of the creative process. “The Author Is Pregnant” describes intimate aspects of the nurturing and parenting process of the conceived. It is a pregnancy nurtured by both the spiritual world and the spiritual researcher, and the research now revolves around this inner development. In the final chapter, “A Book Is Born,” Ben-Aharon gives a fascinating account of how he incarnates and brings to birth the true substance of his spiritual work. Here, we can glean intuitions about soul processes and interconnected states of consciousness, and we also learn how etheric forces flow and ultimately transform into the active will of the physical body as the birth event of “writing.”

In this way, the reader is offered a complete cycle of creative life. A cosmic-human process of spiritual-scientific work and grace that "transforms the spiritual person in his entirety and also penetrates the physical body itself..." (p. 105). This little book thus gives us help and an understanding of how "we rightly feel that we are participating in the realization of the present, second Michael revelation:

The incarnation of the Word is the first Michaelic revelation; the incarnation of the flesh must be the second Michaelic revelation. (RS, GA 194) (p. 108)

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