Second Coming, Page 8

Before we relate this more precisely to the Blood of Christ, let us see also the parallel remarks on this process from WW, Lect. 8:

For clairvoyant sight something streams continuously out of our heart—our heart, the outcome of our blood circulation. If you see clairvoyantly the blood pulsating through the human body, then you also see how this blood becomes rarefied again in the heart, how in its finest elements—not in its coarser, but in its finer parts—it is dissolved and returns to the etheric form. Just as the blood has gradually been formed in the ether, so in the human body of the present day we have the reverse process. The blood becomes etherized, and streams of ether flow continuously from the heart towards the head, so that we see the etheric body built up in an opposite direction by way of the blood. Thus what crystallized out from the etheric during the early part of Lemuria to form the human blood circulation and the heart we now see returning to the etheric form and streaming in the human etheric body towards the brain. . . . [He here relates this process also to our thinking.] These etheric currents are indirectly related to a delicate and important part of the human brain called the pineal gland. They continuously lave the pineal gland, which becomes luminous and its movements as physical brain-organ respond in harmony with these etheric currents emanating from the heart. . . . So you see we have not only a process within the Earth which leads to solidification, but also a reverse process of rarefaction.

Continuing from RCE, Lect 9:

Just as in the region of the human heart the blood is continually being transformed into etheric substance, so a similar process takes place in the macrocosm. We understand this when we turn our eyes to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of Jesus Christ. This blood must not be regarded simply as chemical substance, but by reason of all that has been described as the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, it must be recognized as something altogether unique. When it flowed from His wounds and into the earth, a substance was imparted to our earth which, in uniting with it, constituted an event of the greatest possible significance for all future ages of the earth, and it could take place only once. What happened with this blood in the ages that followed? Nothing different from what otherwise takes place in the heart of man. In the course of earthly evolution, this blood passed through a process of “etherization.” Just as our blood streams upward from the heart as ether, so, since the Mystery of Golgotha, the etherized blood of Christ Jesus has lived in the ether of the earth. The etheric body of the earth is permeated by what the blood that flowed on Golgotha became. This is important. If what has thus come to pass through Christ Jesus had not taken place, man’s condition on the earth could only have been as previously described. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, however, there has existed the continuous possibility for the activity of the etheric blood of Christ to flow together with the streamings from below upward, from heart to head.

Because the etherized blood of Jesus of Nazareth is present in the etheric body of the earth, it accompanies the etherized human blood streaming upward from the heart to the brain, so that not only do these streams that I described earlier meet in man, but the human bloodstream unites with the bloodstream of Christ Jesus. A union of these two streams can come about, however, only if man is able to unfold true understanding of what is contained in the Christ impulse. Otherwise, there can be no union; the two streams then mutually repel each other, thrust each other away. In every age of earthly evolution, we must acquire understanding in the form suitable for that epoch. At the time when Christ Jesus lived on earth, preceding events could be rightly understood by those who came to His forerunner, John, and were baptized by him.. . . The evolution of humanity progresses, however, and in our present age it is important that man should learn to understand that the knowledge contained in spiritual science must be received and gradually be able so to fire the stream flowing from heart to brain that anthroposophy can be understood. If this comes to pass, individuals will be able to comprehend the event that has its beginning in the twentieth century: the appearance of the etheric Christ in contradistinction to the physical Christ of Palestine.

We have now reached the moment in time when the etheric Christ enters into the life of the earth and will become visible, at first to a small number of people, through a natural clairvoyance. Then in the course of the next 3,000 years, He will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people.

In the rest of the lecture, Steiner elaborates how the Maitreya Buddha will lead humanity to a fuller understanding of Christ, but the conditions will then be quite different from now. That will be in the Age of Philadelphia (Rev 3,7-13; see I-25, I-24 and I-19). Our present Cultural Age will end about one millennium before that. The “Coming” of Christ, however, may be said to commence with the etheric and then move into even higher worlds. ECMCR, Lect. 7 (11-18-11), pp. 110-111, breaks down the progressively greater cognition of Christ as follows:

Thus the three progressive levels of comprehension expressed in Is 6,9-10 will become actuality for “a number of human beings.” However, while the matter is not entirely clear from what is said in ECMCR, it would appear to be proper to refer to each of these levels of perception as still involving also the etheric world, for that world is composed of all four of the different levels of ether. In The Festivals of the Seasons (FESTS), Lect. 14 (January 2, 1916), “Perceiving and Remembering,” Steiner states, “Let us now recall that the etheric body of man naturally consists of the different kinds of ether which we have learned to distinguish. We recognize these as consisting of warmth-ether, light-ether, chemical-ether (by which the music of the spheres is communicated) and life-ether.” He goes on to show how the “light body,” i.e., “light-etheric body,” is the one that enables our memory. It is also the “light-etheric body” that, when freed from the physical body upon death, gives the human being its brief (approximately three-day) panoramic view of the entire life just passed.