Jesaiah Ben-Aharon is an Israeli Anthroposophist. He seems to support the Israeli peace movement and has co-founded several organizations promoting “threefolding”, the political vision of Rudolf Steiner (the founder of Anthroposophy). I recently reviewed Ben-Aharon's alter-globalization book “America's Global Responsibility”. This book, “The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century”, is a more narrow work containing mystical-esoteric speculations. The publisher, Temple Lodge, has also published works by Sergei O Prokofieff, who until his death last year was one of the international leaders of the Anthroposophical Society.
Many Anthroposophical writings strike me as very “dogmatic”, in the sense that they are entirely based on Rudolf Steiner's ideas. Steiner passed away already in 1925. By contrast, Ben-Aharon claims to have esoteric knowledge about important supersensible events that took place after Steiner's physical death. The year 1933 and the period 1933-45 are particularly important, being (of course) the period of Adolf Hitler's rule in Germany. Steiner regarded Germany and Russia as central from a spiritual viewpoint. Germany (and more broadly Central Europe or perhaps all of Europe) was the current pivot of human cultural-spiritual evolution, while Russia was its future home. Ben-Aharon considers the Jews important, as well. Nazi Germany's war against the Soviet Union and attempted extermination of the Jews must therefore have some kind of occult significance. Moreover, 1933 was the year when Steiner expected the second coming of Christ, which he envisioned as an event on the “etheric” plane, accessible only to people with developed supersensible gifts. In the outer world, however, 1933 was the year when Hitler and the National Socialists took power in Germany! Ben-Aharon believes that the two events were intimately connected.
The speculations in “The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century” are hard to follow, and seem to be based both on the author's own visionary experiences and discussions with other practicing Anthroposophists. The main point is that Rudolf Steiner's untimely death cut short human spiritual evolution on Earth. Instead, the evil forces went to the offensive. In the form of “Bolshevism” (Stalinism?) and Nazism, principally the latter, they succeeded in destroying the divine image in many humans. Hitler was a kind of Anti-Christ figure. His attacks on the Jews and the Russians were attempts to stop positive spiritual evolution. He also attempted to wipe out the positive achievements of the German Volk. The evil men spawned by Nazism will be reborn in future times as a completely non-human race and then wreak even more havoc. Thus, the Third Reich was a response to the coming of Christ in the etheric.
Ben-Aharon also describes the counter-moves of the good forces gathered around Christ and Michael (the archangel Michael, who played an important role in Steiner's later thinking). Ben-Aharon believes that certain advanced human souls have formed a “Michaelic school” in the spiritual world, and that these souls have the ability to attract evil energy emanating from Earth and transmute it into goodness. As a response to these efforts, Christ sacrificed himself a second time by entering the bowels of the Earth and fusing with the evil creature dwelling there. By this re-enactment of the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ has once again saved humanity and put evolution on the right track. On the etheric-occult level, Earth has already been reborn as a “Sun”. What role Rudolf Steiner's soul played in these events is never spelled out, but it's certainly implied that he left his mortal coil in order to accomplish even greater works on the heavenly planes…
One of Ben-Aharon's points seems to be that humans, principally the Anthroposophists themselves, now play a very central role in Earth's future evolution and our salvation. When Christ appeared in Palestine 2000 years ago, not even his disciples fully comprehended him, and Christ's work of redemption was his own. In 1933-45, by contrast, the Michaelic school of human souls took an active and leading role in the fight against evil, becoming co-workers with the returning Christ. This is obviously a call to the present-day members of the Anthroposophical Society to see themselves as playing a very leading role, too. Ben-Aharon references Prokofieff's works several times, suggesting a connection between their respective ideas. Prokofieff has been accused by more traditionalist supporters of Steiner of being something of an innovator. It seems Ben-Aharon is also an innovator in his own right.
In order to accept the ideas found in “The Spiritual Event”, one must first embrace the original worldview of Steiner, and work from there. I admit that I'm very skeptical. While Steiner and other Anthroposophists occasionally said interesting or useful things, their writings also contain a lot of weird, arcane or absurd material. The whole notion of Christ sacrificing himself repeatedly to save humanity sounds strange even from a Steiner-inspired viewpoint, due to the central place the Mystery of Golgotha played in Steiner's eschatology. That being said, I will nevertheless give this highly esoteric work three stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment