May the Holy Spirit Descend Upon You
and the Christ Unfold Within You.
We live today in an age in which the words of Christ Jesus are fulfilled: “I am with you always.” In special times, he is especially close to us, speaking of new things that took place at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.
"When Christ Jesus accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha, He was truly alone, for His disciples had not only fled; their consciousness had also fled from them. They were in a kind of dream state and experienced the events in such a way that they did not look back on them with full consciousness until the Feast of Pentecost. In a peculiar way, they experienced this gathering with Christ after the Resurrection, so that they saw the following in images: Here and there we were with him, he spoke; that is only becoming clear to us now. — But now they experienced something strange. They saw the images of their experiences with Christ again, just as they had been during their time together after the Resurrection.
But it was as if something different were always appearing in succession: an image would appear that gave them a memory of a physical encounter they had experienced as if in a dream-like trance. But two events always presented themselves to them: a time together after the Resurrection and a time together before they had fallen into a trance, when they were still with Christ in their physical bodies, recognizable to physical consciousness. The events appeared to them like two images superimposed upon one another. One showed a memory of a physical event, the other a reawakening of what they had experienced with Christ in a different state of consciousness.
Through this superimposition of two images, it became clear to them what had actually taken place over time. What had taken place in the development of the Earth stood clearly before them on the Feast of Pentecost. If one wishes to describe what they experienced, one is confronted with two magnificent and profound events. What had taken place stood before their perception, triggered by the Pentecost event. But the fact that what had previously been in the cosmos is now on Earth became apparent to them. All of this only becomes clear to us when we have the Akashic Records before our eyes.
Let us begin with the experiences that human beings have. Before descending into a new earthly incarnation, a human being first experiences spiritual realities. He then passes through the embryonic stage and birth, transitions through the material body into physical earthly life, and finally returns to the spiritual world. Such is the development of his soul. These stages differ for every being. Let us attempt to apply them to the Christ Being.
Christ experiences his states in a different way. From baptism to the Mystery of Golgotha, there is a kind of embryonic state. Dying on the cross is the birth; life with the apostles after the Resurrection is a journey on Earth. The transition into the Earth’s aura is what the transition into the spiritual world is for the human soul. Exactly the opposite occurs for Christ. He chooses the opposite for his destiny. The human soul goes from the earth into the spiritual world; Christ goes from the spiritual world into the earthly sphere, unites with the earth, in order to pass into the earth’s aura through the great sacrifice. This is Christ’s transition to Devachan. And now, within the earth’s aura, Christ lives out his self-chosen Devachan. Man ascends from the earth to heaven; Christ, conversely, descends from heaven to the earth to live with humanity. This is his Devachan.
The fact that God had thus entered into His earthly existence was revealed to the apostles and disciples at the Feast of Pentecost through the image of the Ascension—which was, in reality, a descent to Earth—as one of the final events. This made it clear to them what had happened, what fate had befallen the development of the Earth. At the Feast of Pentecost, the apostles felt transformed and filled with a new consciousness: this was the descent of the Spirit, the inner illumination of a spirit-filled realization.
Of course, one may come across as a dreamer or a fantasist when recounting these events, but on the other hand, it is understandable that the great events that have taken place in earthly life cannot be expressed in ordinary terms."
Rudolf Steiner, From Akashic Research: The Fifth Gospel GA 148, 16 November 1913, Hamburg.