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Review of Cognitive Yoga: Making Yourself a New Etheric Body arts & ideas Making Yourself New Cognitive Yoga: Making Yourself a New Etheric Body and Individuality, by Yeshayahu (Jesaiah) Ben-Aharon (Forest Row: Temple Lodge, 2016) 213 pp. Review by David Adams This is a most extraordinary book—probably the most extraordinary book that has been written within anthroposophy since the original work of Rudolf Steiner. Yet it is unusually challenging to write a concise review of it that does justice to its diverse, groundbreaking, and intimately experiential treasures. Aside from the sheer volume of significant spiritual content, this is because it is so densely written, with a nearly unrelenting content of descriptions and char- acterizations of mostly unfamiliar spiritual experiences, exercises, processes, and meetings. To be properly grasped, it should really be worked with meditatively— and probably read in shorter segments rather than all at once. Yet there is also a grand, metamorphosing flow and building culmination to the book as a whole. I have always understood that there are three path- tures the various comments, suggestions, indications, and ways to spiritual development or initiation offered within explanations relating to this most contemporary of spiri- anthroposophy: the Christian path focused around work- tual paths, and then through personal experimentation to ing with The Gospel of St. John, the “Rosicrucian” path forge these into a daily practice of spiritual self-develop- described in Steiner’s foundational How to Know Higher ment. In addition to being a first-hand description of the Worlds, and “a path” (the most safe and modern) based on various phases, stages, and meditative tasks of this path, it work with the content and form of Steiner’s The Philosophy is also a handbook for would-be practitioners of the path, of Spiritual Activity (or Freedom). Yet it has never been quite the “Knowledge of Higher Worlds” for this previously rath- clear what exactly this latter path involves and how ideally er obscure path. Ben-Aharon himself mostly refers to it as it proceeds, how it differs from the work one can do with a report of his spiritual-scientific research, but it is also a other philosophical texts, and what specific exercises it handbook for practicing this path. might entail. One acquires from that book understanding Perhaps Ben-Aharon’s most decisive insight is that of how we create reality by linking percept and concept, this “Philosophy” path is actually the same as, or part of, how this activity is the source of our freedom, the develop- that “new yoga” practice Steiner began to speak about in ment of sense-free thinking (pure thinking and willing), a few places starting on November 30, 1919 (The Mis- and how all this can help guide us in living a moral life of sion of the Archangel Michael, CW 194) and especially in “ethical individualism.” But it never seemed to spell out The Boundaries of Natural Science in 1920 (CW 322). Or directly a specific path of spiritual development. we should probably say, as Ben Aharon does at one point, For the first time known to me since Rudolf Steiner’s that the “new yoga” practice is a kind of intensification (or somewhat scattered hints about the spiritual development extension?) of work that can be done with the Philosophy. work related to the content of The Philosophy of Spiritual This path or practice that Ben-Aharon names “cogni- Activity, someone has both actually traveled quite far on tive yoga” (also at times “Michaelic yoga”) has been called that path, and written (in English!) a kind of understand- the “new yoga” or “light yoga” or the “new yoga will.” able, sequential “guidebook” for those wanting to pursue Perhaps it could be better named “etheric yoga” or even this journey—which proves to be especially about free- “perceptual yoga” or “sensory yoga,” which would not ing, purifying, and individualizing one’s etheric body appear to over-emphasize the work with thinking at the and, in the process, connecting it with the etheric world expense of work with sensing, feeling, and willing, a long- in general—the lowest level of the spiritual world. time problem within our movement. However, I think It is a unique and significant contemporary achieve- that, as chief pioneer of this path, Ben-Aharon should ment to connect and interpret from Rudolf Steiner’s lec- have the right of naming. 30 • being human In addition to Ben-Aharon’s extensive study of the Cognitive Yoga (and its shorter follow-up book Cogni- writings on spiritual science, I think two features from his tive Yoga: How a Book Is Born, to be reviewed later) re- background helped him uniquely to decipher, pursue, and veals for the first time something of the full scope of Ben- describe in detail this path, both of which he mentions in Aharon’s spiritual achievements in pioneering the path of his preface. The first was a supersensible experience of the cognitive yoga (and what lay behind the writing of his etheric Christ in his early twenties (with various follow- earlier books), making it easier for others to also pursue ups). The second has been his lifelong involvement with this challenging journey of spiritual development. He modern and postmodern philosophy, highlighted by his emphasizes how such progress or achievements are to be doctoral dissertation The Cognition of the ‘I’ in Husserl’s received with humility as gifts of grace from the spiritual Phenomenology. More recently, probably no other anthro- world. In more than one way he indicates something of posophist has investigated, understood, and interpreted the supersensible assistance he has received in traversing the contemporary spiritual value of the writings of post- this path (and presumably, in writing this book). modernist philosophy more widely and deeply. He links experientially from an enhanced but also I know anthroposophical friends who have given up contemporary human perspective to some of the most reading some of Ben-Aharon’s earlier books (such as The difficult-to-fathom anthroposophical developments de- Event in Science, History, Philosophy & Art and The New scribed by Rudolf Steiner (whom he also quotes at times Experience of the Supersensible) because they weren’t famil- to make these links). After reading Cognitive Yoga, you iar enough with twentieth-century philosophy, especially can start interpreting many things Steiner said in a new the terminology and means of expression of contempo- light, and it also provides new, fresh, seemingly more ex- rary postmodernism, or due to the challenging endnotes periential understandings within the cognitive yoga con- in New Experience. That should not be an issue here. I text for a number of familiar anthroposophical terms and found that the challenge in this generally understandable concepts like Spirit Self (Manas), Imagination, Inspira- book is more to maintain focus as the author describes of- tion, the etherization of the blood, the resurrected bodily ten lofty or sublime spiritual experiences and unfamiliar Phantom, the sentient body, the etheric Christ, the third supersensible meditative methods involved in the various eye, Adam Kadmon, the Holy Grail, the future means stages of practicing cognitive yoga. Previous study of The of human reproduction proceeding from the larynx, and Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is probably the best prepa- the functioning of several chakras—even for some not- ration for this book and the cognitive yoga path, although specifically-anthroposophical concepts such as the Im- this is not exactly a beginner’s book for anthroposophy. maculate Conception, the Eucharist, the Tree of Life, the The first two chapters give a penetrating overview of New Jerusalem, kundalini, entelechy (Aristotle), and the our ordinary representational cognition and sense of real- idea of a purely etheric “world wide web.” ity, based on ideas in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity In the rest of this review, I will give a beginning, par- (but also on insights of modern philosophy, though Ben- tial picture of some stages of the cognitive yoga practice, Aharon doesn’t mention that). He then starts depicting including quotations to provide a sense of the “tone” and the cognitive yoga path with “how to” meditative instruc- quality of writing one can encounter in this book. There tions that seem very doable and achievable but steadily are often repetitions in varying language as well as period- progress during the course of the book to loftier and more ic summaries that help the reader keep track of the prog- challenging spiritual experiences. Many passages, espe- ress on this journey through mostly unfamiliar spiritual cially in the last half of the book, are poetic, inspiring de- territory. The steps and experiences of this path are not as pictions of spiritual meditative processes and experiences. concisely described as with Steiner How to Know Higher Some of these by themselves seem to lift or even purify Worlds path. Almost every step is given multiple depic- the soul of the actively involved reader just through men- tions and reviews—but each time stated somewhat differ- tally and imaginatively following Ben-Aharon’s language. ently, as if circling around a certain reality, approaching I found that one can almost get a kind of “contact high,” it from slightly varying perspectives. Ben-Aharon writes, absorbing as if by osmosis the detailed depictions of stages “Such repetition and recapitulation form a vital part of of spiritual experiences along this new yoga path. In any the cognitive yoga practice and research. One must spiral case, much of this book requires “an intensified inner back again and again to the original practices of each pro- cognition and participation from the reader.” (p. 126) cess, in order to move on to a higher level.” (117) spring issue 2018 • 31 arts & ideas The specific meditative exercises or processes that are the greater cosmic whole.
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