The Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012-2033: Rudolf Steiner and the Culmination of Anthroposophy

By Steffen Hartmann

In a series of vibrant and lively essays, Steffen Hartmann focuses on a little-known but critically important theme relating to the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner described the collaboration between human souls connected to the Platonic and Aristotelian 'schools' or groupings – both here on Earth and in the spiritual world. These groupings of souls work within a wider metaphysical collective known as the 'Michael School', led by the ruling Spirit of our age, Michael. Prior to their births, millions of human souls were prepared within this School to help them face the challenges of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
We may have forgotten these pre-existence experiences, but they can be reawakened within us, says Hartmann. Indeed, it is possible consciously to reconnect to our earlier incarnations and to perceive our karma. The book begins with this theme and leads to Rudolf Steiner's 'Michael Prophecy' of 1924 – to his vision of the millennium and the era in which we now live, especially the crucial period between 2012 and 2033.
Dealing with the 'anthroposophical block' in the emerging holistic building of humanity, the author contextualizes the topic with reference to direct personal experiences. The sharing of such considered experiences can help to stimulate self-reflection in the anthroposophical movement and contribute real spiritual substance to contemporary culture. This little book provides stimulation to spiritual seekers who carry within them deeper questions about life in the modern world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Temple Lodge Publishing
• Release date: Sep 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912230501

Steffen Hartmann

STEFFEN HARTMANN, born in 1976 in Freiburg im Breisgau, studied piano in Hamburg and participated as accompanist in master classes with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and has worked closely with the soprano Marret Winger. In 2007, together with Matthias Bölts, he founded the MenschMusik Institute in Hamburg, a leading innovator in the field of contemporary music education. He has followed an inner meditative path based on anthroposophy since 1997 and has worked as a teacher of meditation for several years. Steffen Hartmann regularly writes essays on salient topics connected to anthroposophical spiritual science, meditation and music. Together with Torben Maiwald, he founded the publishing house Edition Widar. He is the author of Wege zum Geist (2012), Von der Philosophie zur Anthroposophie (2013), Aus Widars Wirken (2014), Geistesgegenwart und Schöpferkraft (together with Anton Kimpfler, 2015), Die Michael-Prophetie Rudolf Steiners und die Jahre 2012 bis 2033 (2017), Vom Schicksal der Töne in unserer Zeit (2018) and Mit Widar Zukunft schaffen (with Prof. Dr Volker Fintelmann, 2019). He has led the Rudolf Steiner Haus Hamburg branch of the Anthroposophical Society since 2012, in addition to holding lectures worldwide and conducting seminar and concert activities in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Greece and Brazil.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Learning to Perceive Karma

One of Rudolf Steiner’s primary objectives was to stimulate real self-knowledge and karmic knowledge of destiny. He wanted to awaken spiritual memory in his students and co-workers. In his short but weighty essay Etwas vom Geist-Verstehen und Schicksals-Erleben (Concerning understanding spirit and experiencing destiny).¹ Steiner writes that there is an experience of destiny in which one does not lose oneself. One can still experience the self as active in one’s own destiny. For this, however, one must acquire a ‘non-egoistic view of the destiny of man’. Then one can find ‘the I who freely shapes his own destiny’, he elaborates.

In his Karma lecture from 9 May 1924, Rudolf Steiner described an exercise in detail through which the practitioner—starting with individual life situations—can arrive at concrete insights into his or her own karma.² This four-day exercise begins with placing a past event from a particular day before the soul: objectively, vividly, right down to all the very details of the sensory experience. For example, an encounter with another person in all its nuances and apparent minor details is awakened and viewed inwardly with as much soul power as possible—appearance, words, tone of voice, gestures, actions, atmosphere and chronological sequence. This picture is thus imprinted into the astral body of the meditator. On the following night, when the astral body is outside the physical and etheric bodies, it continues to shape the picture and ‘the outer etheric impregnates the picture with its own substance.’

Now the second day begins; one comes out of the night transformed. ‘From the astral body, the image is imprinted on the etheric body of the person.’ On the second day, feelings subtly emanate from the original image and its transformation through one’s own bodily members. I sense that, ‘this picture gives me very specific feelings’. After this second day follows the second night, during which the etheric body continues to expand upon the image.

The next morning (the third day begins) and the picture appears, ‘like a very real dream’. But one gets the impression that the image of ‘spiritual powers’ is being conveyed to one. On this third day, the image is imprinted on the physical body by the etheric body, all the way into the nerve-and-blood processes. However, this event takes place mostly unconsciously. Then follows the third night; in this night the physical body works on the image: the spiritual forces of the physical body spiritualize the image.

And finally, the morning of the fourth day arrives: ‘And when you then get up this picture is there, you are actually floating inside it; it is actually like a kind of cloud you are immersed in.’ It is an experience of restrained will, a ‘feeling of being in a vice’. And this experience of a restrained will can become the experience of karmic perception. In a note about this same experience, Rudolf Steiner writes to Ita Wegman: ‘In this transformed image a person can see the karmic cause from a previous earthly existence which is causing the present experience.’³

Rudolf Steiner gave us this complex and complicated karma exercise with the intent that it would actually be carried out! He expected that anthroposophists would concretely recognize their own karma by means of such an exercise—and he was concerned and disappointed when people failed to take it seriously.

I would like to outline some of the spiritual and practical aspects of this exercise from my many years of personal experience with it. Early on, one experiences that the conscious thread of experiences breaks off, and no visions appear. This experience of failure is a natural part of the first steps of the exercise. Now, it takes patience and perseverance to continue. Then one can see how something happens which was at first unexpected: One’s interest in life, in the here and now, intensifies. One wakes up to how inattentively one tends to perceive life, how inattentively one tends to live. In order to progress with this karma exercise, I must infinitely increase my interest in the apparent trivialities of life.

Next, I notice that my sensitivity to characteristic constellations of destiny increases. A feeling in my heart develops for what is important for my karma and what is less important. This also affects my interactions with other people. It becomes more and more clear to me with whom I have a karmic connection—even including my dream experience and my awareness of life. And ultimately, pictures and feelings can actually arise that cannot be memories from this life, and these can be distinguished from mere imaginary notions. These pictures point to a past life on earth. And here, yawning abysses begin to emerge. The great challenge arises first to merely perceive these images and inner experiences, to take them seriously (i.e. not to immediately forget them again)—to hold on to them, without rashly attempting to judge them with one’s feelings or with the mind. We must become soberly aware of the fact that in the simple judgements of feeling that arise, Lucifer is at work, just as Ahriman is at work in the overly facile judgements of the mind. And the significant question arises through this inner struggle: How does one deal with this huge gap in our knowledge?

How can I arrive at authentic karmic-knowledge judgements? There is only the middle course, and that consists above of all else in restraining sentimental and intellectual judgements, and in waiting. Continuing to practise in peace and calmness, with patience and a sober mind, waiting for the moment of grace inherent in every real insight into karma.

To make matters worse, the adversarial powers know about human karma and want to use this knowledge to manipulate and interfere with it. Confusion and errors in the field of karmic knowledge—in addition to pure illusions—are caused by individuals recognizing karma either too early or too late. This creates disorder in karma and in the karmic connections between people.

The four-day karma exercise is a powerful spiritual means to illuminate one’s own current life in all its multi-layered relationships with previous earthly lives, and, building on the insights that ensue, to move forward freely into the future. This exercise gradually increases awareness of processes that take place in the unconscious in every human being. The karmic picture directs us through imaginative observation to the past. The language of destiny reveals itself in contemporary inspirational-hearing experience. Intuitive certainty arises from the life that the future brings.

Chapter 2

Rudolf Steiner’s Michael Prophecy and the Years 2012 to 2033

‘Because it is written above us in supersensible script: Be aware that you will return before the end of the twentieth century and at the end of this twentieth century, which you have prepared! Become aware then how that which you have prepared can unfold!’

– Rudolf Steiner on 28 July 1924⁴

‘I have indicated how those individuals who are fully engaged in the anthroposophical movement will return at the end of the century, and that others will then join them, because it will be decided at that time whether earth civilization will be redeemed, or lost.’

– Rudolf Steiner on 3 August 1924⁵

‘The very worst danger would be to align ourselves with anthroposophical trends that only lead to further decay and more illusions, instead of orienting ourselves to the advancing world-ego of Christ... Vacillating disunity should lead to reflection within the work of spiritual science. Then it can be understood why Rudolf Steiner, looking forward to the turn of the century, said on 16 September 1924