01. {. 1970.
The human I stands at the center of anthroposophy. It provides the orientation for the human constitution and our knowledge of the human being, a knowledge that becomes practical in fields like pedagogy and medicine. But the I is also closely con- nected to the human being’s cosmic origin and the Christ Being.
Entering into the study of anthro- posophy we soon find that the very heart of it is the mystery of the human I or self. This is one of the central issues in anthroposophical Christology and one of the most important questions in anthroposophy altogether.
I Organization
Rudolf Steiner gave a very clear and differentiated description of the entity he would in later lectures refer to as the human “I” organization’ in his book The Threshold to the Spiritual World. There, each chapter is in three parts, with a summary given after each. This means that there are three distinct stages, with one aspect of the human I organi- zation considered at each: “The human being as an independent entity (I),” “the ‘other self’ which finds its own expres- sion in repeated lives on earth” and ac- cording to this definition corresponds to the higher I,1 and the “true I,” the actual core of the human spirit.
Spiritually, the special characteristic of the present age is that in it comes the great event of the coming of the Christ on the astral plane in etheric form. This and the existential relationship of the Christ to the human I lead to the ques- tion of how He relates to the threefold human I organization.
The Mystery on Golgotha brought a profound change for the earthly I. From then onwards human beings were able to take their awareness of the I with them into the spiritual world and therefore enter into it in full conscious awareness.2 This could only be achieved once humanity had fully developed the spiritual or consciousness soul and es- tablished the science of the spirit which addresses the earthly I. Human intellec- tuality also has its roots in this earthly I. Through modern inner development it can today take the form of pure thinking and be raised together with awareness of our I nature to the world of the spirit, where the encounter with the etheric Christ takes place.
The process goes hand in hand with the spiritualization of our earthly I. Rudolf Steiner described it as follows. “Progress then merely consists in human beings not only developing a higher lev- el of intellectuality for themselves but also taking it up into the astral world. With the development of such an intel- lectual clairvoyance, the Christ visible in the etheric can and will come to meet human beings who have progressed in this way, doing so more and more often and distinctly over the next three mil- lennia.3 Taking spiritualized intellectual- ity into the astral world so that, having become clairvoyant in our thinking, we meet there the etheric Christ will be the most important thing our earthly I can do in our time.
Two Ether Streams
Rudolf Steiner spoke of an important aspect of the process in his lecture on the etherization of the blood. He re- ferred to two ether streams rising from the heart to the head and connecting the human being with the spiritual world around him. The first stream is the etherized human blood. The “in- tellectual element” moves from below upwards in it. The second stream is the etherized blood of the Christ which since the Mystery on Golgotha is to be found in every human heart. The two streams initially run parallel. They have to come together, however, as a ma- jor precondition for seeing the etheric Christ. How do they come together? Rudolf Steiner gave a surprising answer. Union comes when human beings are ready and willing to take the new way of understanding the Christ into their soul and let it come alive in themselves. In other words, it comes when we study the science of the spirit using not only the head but above all the heart as our new organ for gaining insight (see the previous theme of the year).
The Future
The etheric revelation of the Christ will take about 3,000 years, having be- gun in the 20th century. It is, however, part of a wider scheme. This concerns the two Christ revelations of the future that will be at an even higher level—the coming of the Christ in the astral body in the lower devachan, and an even lat- er, great revelation of his I nature in the upper spiritual world.4
If we consider that according to the above-mentioned book the spiri- tual world is all around the “other self” (higher I) and the higher spiritual world around the true I—elsewhere Rudolf Steiner spoke of them as the upper and lower devachan5—we see the direct connection between those two future revelations of the Christ and the higher and the true human I in the way in which his present revelation is connected with the spiritualization of the earthly I.
We can clearly see, therefore, that the evolution of I quality in human beings— the goal of this earth—and the progressively higher revelations of the Christ are indissolubly bound up with each other. If we take this into our I con- sciousness and let it grow and develop, we will indeed be on the road that can take us human beings of today to the Christ.
Sergei O. Prokofieff
1. Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about the relationship between earthly I and higher I in his Bologna lecture (see recommended reading).
2. Rudolf Steiner. The Gospel of Matthew (GA 123), lecture of September 9, 1910.
3. Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity (GA 130), lec- ture of November 18, 1911.
4. Ibid.
5. See the final chapter in Rudolf Steiner’s Threshold to the Spiritual World (GA 17), “Remarks on the relationship between the things said here and the details given in my Theosophy and Occult Science.”
Recommended Reading
In English:
Rudolf Steiner, The Threshold of the Spiri- tual World (GA 17) in A Way of Self-Knowledge And the Threshold of the Spiritual World. Great Barrington: SteinerBooks, 2006.
Rudolf Steiner, The Etherization of the Blood (lecture of October 1, 1911) in The Re- appearance of the Christ in the Etheric. Great Barrington: Anthroposophic Press, 1983.
In German:
Rudolf Steiner, Das gespiegelte Ich. Der Bologna-Vortrag—Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Anthroposophie. [The mirrored I. The Bologna lecture—The philosophical foundations of anthroposophy]. Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 2007. Also in Philosophie und Anthroposophie. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1904–1923 [Philosophy and anthroposophy. Collected essays 1904–1923] (GA 35).
Wolf-Ulrich Klünker, Anthroposophie als Ich-Berührung [Anthroposophy as contact with the I]. Dornach, 2010.
Sergei O. Prokofieff, Das Rätsel des menschlichen Ich. [The riddle of the human I]. Dornach, 2010.
Anthroposophy Worldwide No. 2/10
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