The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture we found that moral impulses are fundamental in human nature. From the facts adduced, we tried to prove that a foundation of morality and goodness lies at the bottom of the human soul, and that really it has only been in the course of evolution, in man's passage from incarnation to incarnation, that he has diverged from the original instinctive good foundation and that thereby what is evil, wrong and unmoral has come into humanity. But if this is so, we must really wonder that evil is possible, or that it ever originated, and the question as to how evil became possible in the course of evolution requires an answer. We can only obtain a satisfactory reply by examining the elementary moral instruction given to man in ancient times.

The pupils of the Mysteries whose highest ideal was gradually to penetrate to full spiritual knowledge and truths were always obliged to work from a moral foundation. In those places where they worked in the right way according to the Mysteries, the peculiarity of man's moral-nature was shown in a special way to the pupils. Briefly, we may say: The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that freewill can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favourably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express man's right procedure by saying: this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the centre of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtues of which we have spoken: first—valour, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one's disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may turn the scale in either of these directions. In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects. He then becomes a being shut up within himself, who, as he cannot bring his deeds into harmony with the whole, loses his connection with things. This was shown to the pupils in respect to all that a man may do. He may degenerate in such a way that he is torn in pieces, and losing his own individuality is crushed by the objective world; on the other hand, he may degenerate not merely in courage, but also in every other respect in such a way that he hardens within himself. Thus at the head of the moral code in all the Mysteries there were written the significant words: “Thou must find the mean,” so that through thy deeds thou must not lose thyself in the world, and that the world also does not lose thee.

Those are the two possible extremes into which man may fall. Either he may be lost to the world, the world lays hold on him, and crushes him, as is the case in foolhardiness; or the world may be lost to him, because he hardens himself in his egoism, as is the case in cowardice. In the Mysteries, the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man to observe eternal moral principles he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this. Freedom in life consists rather in man's being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is either lost to the world, or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes.. In the course of evolution evil became not only a possibility but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time. What man cannot attain in one life, because he does not always find the mean at once, he will attain gradually in the course of evolution in as much as man diverts his course to one side, and is then obliged, perhaps in the next life, to strike out again in the opposite direction, and thus bring about the balance.

What I have just told you was a golden rule in the ancient Mysteries. We often find among the ancient philosophers echoes of the principles taught in these Mysteries. Aristotle makes a statement, when, speaking of virtue, which we cannot understand unless we know that what has just been said was an old principle in the Mysteries which had been received by Aristotle as tradition and embodied in his philosophy. He says: Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, holds the balance between the too much and the too-little. Aristotle here gives a definition of virtue, such as no subsequent philosophy has attained. But as Aristotle had little tradition from the Mysteries, it was possible for him to give the precise truth.

That is, then, the mean, which must be found and followed if a man is really to be virtuous, if moral power is to pulsate through the world. We can now answer the question as to why morals should exist at all. For what happens when there is no morality, when evil is done, and when the too-much or the too-little takes place, when man is lost to the world by being crushed, or when the world loses him? In each of these cases something is always destroyed. Every evil or unmoral act is a process of destruction, and the moment man sees that when he has done wrong he cannot do otherwise than destroy something, take something from the world, in that moment a mighty influence for good has awakened within him. It is especially the task of Spiritual Science—which is really only just beginning its work in the world—to show that all evil brings about a destructive process, that it takes away from the world something which is necessary. When in accordance with our anthroposophical standpoint, we hold this principle, then what we know about the nature of man leads us to a particular interpretation of good and evil.

We know that the sentient-soul was chiefly developed in the old Chaldean or Egyptian epoch the third post-Atlantean age. The people of the present day have but little notion what this epoch of development was like at that time, for in external history one can reach little further back than to the Egyptian age. We know that the intellectual, or mind-soul, developed in the fourth or Graeco-Latin age, and that now in our age we are developing the consciousness-or spiritual-soul. The spirit-self will only come into prominence in the sixth age of post-Atlantean development.

Let us now ask: How can the sentient-soul turn to one side or the other, away from what is right? The sentient-soul is that quality in man which enables him to perceive the objective world, to take it into himself, to take part in it, not to pass through the world ignorant of all the diversified objects it contains, but to go through the world in such a way that he forms a relationship with them. All this is brought about by the sentient-soul. We find one side to which man can deviate with the sentient-soul when we enquire: What makes it possible for man to enter into relationship with the objective world? It is what may be called interest in the different things, and by this word “interest” something is expressed which in a moral sense is extremely important. It is much more important that one should bear in mind the moral significance of interest, than that one should devote oneself to thousands of beautiful moral axioms which may be only paltry and hypocritical. Let it be clearly understood, that our moral impulses are in fact never better guided than when we take a proper interest in objects and beings. In our last lecture we spoke in a deeper sense of love as an impulse and in such a way that we cannot now be misunderstood if we say that the usual, oft-repeated declamation, “love, love, and again love” cannot replace the moral impulse contained in what may be described by the word interest.

Let us suppose that we have a child before us. What is the condition primary to our devotion to this child? What is the first condition to our educating the child? It is that we take an interest in it. There is something unhealthy or abnormal in the human soul if a person withdraws himself from something in which he takes an interest. It will more and more be recognised that the impulse of interest is a quite specially golden impulse in the moral sense the further we advance to the actual foundations of morality and do not stop at the mere preaching of morals. Our inner powers are also called forth as regards mankind when we extend our interests, when we are able to transpose ourselves with understanding into beings and objects.

Even sympathy is awakened in the right manner if we take an interest in a being; and if, as anthroposophists, we set ourselves the task of extending our interests more and more and of widening our mental horizon, this will promote the universal brotherhood of mankind. Progress is not gained by the mere preaching of universal love, but by the extension of our interests further and further, so that we come to interest ourselves increasingly in souls with widely different characters, racial and national peculiarities, with widely different temperaments, and holding widely differing religious and philosophical views, and approach them with understanding. Right interest, right understanding, calls forth from the soul the right moral action.

Here also we must hold the balance between two extremes. One extreme is apathy which passes everything by and occasions immense moral mischief in the world. An apathetic person only lives in himself; obstinately, insisting on his own principles, and saying: This is my standpoint. In a moral sense this insistence upon a standpoint is always bad. The essential thing is for us to have an open mind for all that surrounds us. Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become unmoral. Thus we see that apathy and lack of interest in the world are morally evil in the highest degree.

Anthroposophy is something which makes the mind ever more active, helps us to think with greater readiness of what is spiritual and to take it into ourselves. Just as it is true that warmth comes from the fire when we light a stove so it is true that interest in humanity and the world comes when we study spiritual science. Wisdom is the fuel for interest and we may say, although this may perhaps not be evident without further explanation, that Anthroposophy arouses this interest in us when we study those more remote subjects, the teachings concerning the evolutionary stages through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and the meaning of Karma and so on. It really comes about that interest is produced as the result of anthroposophical knowledge while from materialistic knowledge comes something which in a radical manner must be described as apathy and which, if it alone were to hold sway in the world, would, of necessity, do untold harm.

See how many people go through the world and meet this or that person, but really do not get to know him, for they are quite shut up in themselves. How often do we find that two people have been friends for a long time and then suddenly there comes a rupture. This is because the friendship had a materialistic foundation and only after the lapse of time did they discover that they were mutually unsympathetic. At the present time very few people have the “hearing” ear for that which speaks from man to man; but Anthroposophy should bring about an expansion of our perceptions, so that we shall gain a “seeing” eye and an open mind for all that is human around us and so we shall not go through the world. apathetically, but with true interest.

We also avoid the other extreme by distinguishing between true and false interests, and thus observe the happy mean. Immediately to throw oneself, as it were, into the arms of each person we meet is to lose oneself passionately in the person; that is not true interest. If we do this, we lose ourselves to the world. Through apathy the world loses us; through uncontrolled passion we lose ourselves to the world. But through healthy, devoted interest we stand morally firm in the centre, in the state of balance.

In the third post-Atlantean age of civilisation, that is, in the Chaldaic-Egyptian age, there still existed in a large part of humanity on earth a certain power to hold the balance between apathy and the passionate intoxicating devotion to the world; and it is this, which in ancient times, and also by Plato and Aristotle, was called wisdom. But people looked upon this wisdom as the gift of superhuman beings, for up to that time the ancient impulses of wisdom were active. Therefore, from this point of view, especially relating to moral impulses, we may call the third post-Atlantean age, the age of instinctive wisdom. You will perceive the truth of what was said last year, though with a different intention, in the Copenhagen lectures on The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind. In those lectures we showed how, in the third post-Atlantean age, mankind still stood nearer to the divine spiritual powers. And that which drew mankind closer to the divine spiritual powers, was instinctive wisdom.

Thus, it was a gift of the gods to find at that time the happy mean in action, between apathy and sensuous passionate devotion. This balance, this equilibrium was at that time still maintained through external institutions. The complete intermingling of humanity which came about in the fourth age of post-Atlantean development through the migrations of various peoples, did not yet exist. Mankind was still divided into smaller peoples and tribes. Their interests were wisely regulated by nature, and were so far active that the right moral impulses could penetrate; and on the other hand, through the existence of blood kinsmanship in the tribe, an obstacle was placed in the way of passion. Even to-day one cannot fail to observe that it is easiest to show interest within blood-relationship and common descent, but in this there is not what is called sensuous passion. As people were gathered together in relatively small tracts of country in the Egypto-Chaldaic age, the wise and happy mean was easily found.

But the idea of the progressive development of humanity is that that, which originally was instinctive, which was only spiritual, shall gradually disappear and that man shall become independent of the divine spiritual powers. Hence we see that even in the fourth post-Atlantean age, the Graeco-Latin age, not only the philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, but also public opinion in Greece, considered wisdom as something which must be gained as something which is no longer the gift of the gods, but after which man must strive. According to Plato, the first virtue is wisdom, and according to him, he who does not strive after wisdom is unmoral.

We are now in the fifth post-Atlantean age. We are still far from the time when the wisdom instinctively implanted in humanity as a divine impulse, will be raised into consciousness. Hence in our age people are specially liable to err in both the directions we have mentioned, and it is therefore particularly necessary that the great dangers to be found at this point should be counteracted by a spiritual conception of the World, so that what man once possessed as instinctive wisdom may now become conscious wisdom. The Anthroposophical Movement is to contribute to this end.

The gods once gave wisdom to the unconscious human soul, so that it possessed this wisdom instinctively, whereas now we have first to learn the truths about the cosmos and about human evolution. The ancient customs were also fashioned after the thoughts of the gods.

We have the right view of Anthroposophy when we look upon it as the investigations of the thoughts of the gods. In former times these flowed instinctively into man, but now we have to investigate them, to make the knowledge of them our own. In this sense Anthroposophy must be sacred to us; we must be able to consider reverently that the ideas imparted to us are really something divine, and something which we human beings are allowed to think and reflect upon as the divine thoughts according to which the world has been ordered. When Anthroposophy stands in this aspect to us, we can then consider the knowledge it imparts in such a way that we understand that it has been given us so as to enable us to fulfil our mission. Mighty truths are made known to us, when we study what has been imparted concerning the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, concerning reincarnation, and the development of the various races, etc. But we only assume the right attitude towards it when we say: The thoughts we seek are the thoughts wherewith the gods have guided evolution. We think the evolution of the gods. If we understand this correctly we are overwhelmed by something that is deeply moral. This is inevitable. Then we say: In ancient times man had instinctive wisdom from the gods, who gave him the wisdom according to which they fashioned the world, and morality thus became possible. But through Anthroposophy we now acquire this wisdom consciously. Therefore we may also trust that in us it shall be transformed into moral impulses, so that we do not merely receive anthroposophical wisdom, but a moral stimulus as well.

Now into what sort of moral impulses will the wisdom acquired through Anthroposophy be transformed? We must here touch upon a point whose development the anthroposophist can foresee, the profound moral significance and moral weight of which he even ought to foresee, a point of development which is far removed from what is customary at the present time, which is what Plato called the “ideal of wisdom.” He named it with a word which was in common use when man still possessed the ancient wisdom, and it would be well to replace this by the word veracity, for as we have now become more individual, we have withdrawn ourselves from the divine, and must therefore strive back to it. We must learn to feel the full weight and meaning of the word ‘veracity’, and this in a moral sense will be a result of an anthroposophical world conception and conviction. Anthroposophists must understand how important it is to be filled with the moral element of truth in an age when materialism has advanced so far that one may indeed still speak of truth, but when the general life and understanding is far removed from perceiving what is right in this direction. Nor can this be otherwise at the present time; as owing to a certain quality acquired by modern life, truth is something which must, to a great extent, be lacking in the understanding of the day, I ask what does a man feel to-day when in the newspapers or some other printed matter he finds certain information, and afterwards it transpires that it is simply untrue? I seriously ask you to ponder over this. One cannot say that it happens in every case, but one must assert that it probably happens in every fourth case. Untruthfulness has everywhere become a quality of the age; it is impossible to describe truth as a characteristic of our times.

For instance, take a man whom you know to have written or said something false, and place the facts before him. As a rule, you will find that he does not fear such a thing to be wrong. He will immediately make the excuse: “But I said it in good faith.” Anthroposophists must not consider it moral when a person says it is merely incorrect what he has said in good faith. People will learn to understand more and more, that they must first ascertain that what they assert really happened. No man should make a statement, or impart anything to another until he has exhausted every means to ascertain the truth of his assertions; and it is only when he recognises this obligation that he can perceive veracity as moral impulse. And then when someone has either written or said something that is incorrect, he will no longer say: “I thought it was so, said it in good faith,” for he will learn that it is his duty to express not merely what he thinks is right, but it is also his duty to say only what is true, and correct. To this end, a radical change must gradually come about in our cultural life. The speed of travel, the lust of sensation on the part of man, everything that comes with a materialistic age, is opposed to truth. In the sphere of morality, Anthroposophy will be an educator of humanity to the duty of truth.

My business today is not to say how far truth has been already realised in the Anthroposophical Society, but to show that what I have said must be a principle, a lofty anthroposophical ideal. The moral evolution within the movement will have enough to do if the moral ideal of truth is thought, felt and perceived in all directions, for this ideal must be what produces the virtue of the sentient-soul of man in the right way.

The second part of the soul of which we have to speak in Anthroposophy is what we usually call the mind-soul, or intellectual-soul (German—Gemütsseele). You know that it developed especially in the fourth post-Atlantean, or Graeco-Latin age. The virtue which is the particular emblem for this part of the soul is bravery, valour and courage; we have already dwelt on this many times, and also on the fact that foolhardiness and cowardice are its extremes. Courage, bravery, valour is the mean between foolhardiness and cowardice. The German word “gemüt” expresses in the sound of the word that it is related to this. The word “gemüt” indicates the mid-part of the human soul, the part that is “mutvoll,” full of “mut,” courage, strength and force.

This was the second, the middle virtue of Plato and Aristotle. It is that virtue which in the fourth post-Atlantean age still existed in man as a divine gift, while wisdom was really only instinctive in the third. Instinctive valour and bravery existed as a gift of the gods (you may gather this from the first lecture) among the people who, in the fourth age, met the expansion of Christianity to the north. They showed that among them valour was still a gift of the gods. Among the Chaldeans wisdom, the wise penetration into the secrets of the starry world, existed as a divine gift, as something inspired. Among the people of the fourth post-Atlantean age, there existed valour and bravery, especially among the Greeks and Romans, but it existed also among the peoples whose work it became to spread Christianity. This instinctive valour was lost later than instinctive wisdom.

If we look round us now in the fifth post-Atlantean age, we see that, as regards valour and bravery, we are in the same position in respect of the Greeks as the Greeks were to the Chaldeans and Egyptians in regard to wisdom. We look back to what was a divine gift in the age immediately preceding ours, and in a certain way we can strive for it again. However, the two previous lectures have shown us, that in connection with this effort a certain transformation must take place. We have seen the transformation in Francis of Assisi of that divine gift which manifested itself as bravery and valour. We saw that the transformation came about as the result of an inner moral force which in our last lecture we found to be the force of the Christ-impulse; the transformation of valour and bravery into true love. But this true love must be guided by another virtue, by the interest in the being to whom we turn our love. In his Timon of Athens Shakespeare shows how love, or warmth of heart, causes harm, when it is passionately manifested; when it appears merely as a quality of human nature without being guided by wisdom and truth. A man is described who gave freely of his possessions, who squandered his living in all directions. Liberality is a virtue, but Shakespeare also shows us that nothing but parasites are produced by what is squandered.

Just as ancient valour and bravery were guided from the Mysteries by the European Brahmins—those wise leaders who kept themselves hidden in the background—so also in human nature this virtue must accord with and be guided by interest. Interest, which connects us with the external world in the right way, must lead and guide us when, with our love, we turn to the world. Fundamentally this may be seen from the characteristic and striking example of Francis of Assisi. The sympathy he expressed was not obtrusive or offensive. Those who overwhelm others with their sympathy are by no means always actuated by the right moral impulses. And how many there are who will not receive anything that is given out of pity. But to approach another with, understanding is not offensive. Under some circumstances a person must needs refuse to be sympathised with; but the attempt to understand his nature is something to which no reasonable person can object. Hence also the attitude of another person cannot be blamed or condemned if his actions are determined by this principle.

It is understanding which can guide us with respect to this second virtue: Love. It is that which, through the Christ-impulse, has become the special virtue of the mind-soul or intellectual-soul; it is the virtue which may be described as human love accompanied by human understanding. Sympathy in grief and joy is the virtue which in the future must produce the most beautiful and glorious fruits in human social life, and, in one who rightly understands the Christ-impulse, this sympathy and this love will originate quite naturally, it will develop into feeling. It is precisely through the anthroposophical understanding of the Christ-impulse that it will become feeling.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha Christ descended into earthly evolution; His impulses, His activities are here now, they are everywhere. Why did He descend to this earth? In order that through what He has to give to the world, evolution may go forward in the right way. Now that the Christ-impulse is in the world, if through what is unmoral, if through lack of interest in our fellow-men, we destroy something, then we take away a portion of the world into which the Christ-impulse has flowed. Thus because the Christ-impulse is now here, we directly destroy something of it. But if we give to the world what can be given to it through virtue, which is creative, we build. We build through self-surrender. It is not without reason that it has often been said, that Christ was first crucified on Golgotha, but that He is crucified again and again through the deeds, of man. Since Christ has entered into the Earth development through the deed upon Golgotha, we, by our unmoral deeds, by our unkindness and lack of interest, add to the sorrow and pain inflicted upon Him. Therefore it has been said, again and again: Christ is crucified anew as long as unmorality, unkindness and lack of interest exist. Since the Christ-impulse has permeated the world, it is this which is made to suffer.

Just as it is true that through evil, which is destructive, we withdraw something from the Christ-impulse and continue the crucifixion upon Golgotha, it is also true that when we act out of love, in all cases where we use love, we add to the Christ-impulse, we help to bring it to life. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matthew 25, 40), this is the most significant statement of love and this statement must become the most profound moral impulse if it is once anthroposophically understood. We do this when with understanding we confront our fellow-men and offer them something in our actions, our virtue, our conduct towards them which is conditioned by our understanding of their nature. Our attitude towards our fellow-men is our attitude towards the Christ-impulse itself.

It is a powerful moral impulse, something which is a real foundation for morals, when we feel: “The Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished for all men, and an impulse has thence spread abroad throughout the whole world. When you are dealing with your fellow-men, try to understand them in their special, characteristics of race, colour, nationality, religious faith, philosophy, etc. If you meet them and do this or that to them, you do it to Christ. Whatever you do to men, in the present condition of the earth's evolution, you do to Christ.” This statement: “What ye have done to one of My brothers, ye have done unto Me,” will at the same time become a mighty moral impulse to the man who understands the fundamental significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. So that we may say: Whereas the gods of pre-Christian times gave instinctive wisdom to man, instinctive valour and bravery, so love streams down from the symbol of the cross, the love which is based upon the mutual interest of man in man.

Thereby the Christ-impulse will work powerfully in the world. On the day when it comes about that the Brahmin not only loves and understands the Brahmin, the Pariah the Pariah, the Jew the Jew, and the Christian the Christian; but when the Jew is able to understand the Christian, the Pariah the Brahmin, the American the Asiatic, as man, and put himself in his place, then one will know how deeply it is felt in a Christian way when we say: “All men must feel themselves to be brothers, no matter what their religious creed may be.” We ought to consider what otherwise binds us as being of little value. Father, mother, brother, sister, even one's own life one ought to esteem less than that which speaks from one human soul to the other. He who, in this sense does not regard as base all that impairs the connection with the Christ-impulse cannot be Christ's disciple. The Christ-impulse balances and compensates human differences. Christ's disciple is one who regards mere human distinctions as being of little account, and clings to the impulse of love streaming forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which in this respect we perceive as a renewal of what was given to mankind as original virtue.

We have now but to consider what may be spoken of as the virtue of the Consciousness- or Spiritual- Soul. When we consider the fourth post-Atlantean age, we find that Temperance or Moderation was still instinctive. Plato and Aristotle called it the chief virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Again they comprehended it as a state of balance, as the mean of what exists in the Spiritual-soul. The Spiritual-Soul consists in man's becoming conscious of the external world through his bodily nature. The sense body is primarily the instrument of the Spiritual-Soul, and it is also the sense body through which man arrives at self-consciousness.

Therefore the sense-body of man must be preserved. If it were not preserved for the mission of the earth, then that mission could not be fulfilled. But here also there is a limit. If a man only used all the forces he possessed in order to enjoy himself, he would shut himself up in himself, and the world would lose him. The man who merely enjoys himself, who uses all his forces merely to give himself pleasure, cuts himself off from the world—so thought Plato and Aristotle—the world loses him. And he, who denies himself everything renders himself weaker and weaker, and is finally laid hold of by the external world-process, and is crushed by the outer world. For he who goes beyond the forces appropriate to him as man, he who goes to excess is laid hold of by the world-process and is lost in it.

Thus what man has developed for the building up of the Spiritual-soul can be dissolved, so that he comes into the position of losing the world. Temperance or Moderation is the virtue which enables man to avoid these extremes. Temperance implies neither asceticism nor gluttony, but the happy mean between these two; and this is the virtue of the Spiritual-Soul. Regarding this virtue we have not yet progressed beyond the instinctive standpoint. A little reflection will teach you that, on the whole, people are very much given to sampling the two extremes. They swing to and fro between them. Leaving out of account the few who at the present day endeavour to gain clear views on this subject, you will find that the majority of people live very much after a particular pattern. In Central Europe this is often described by saying: There are people in Berlin who eat and drink to excess the entire winter, and then in summer they go to Carlsbad in order to remove the ill-effects produced by months of intemperance, thus going from one extreme to the other. Here you have the weighing of the scale, first to one side and then to the other. This is only a radical case. It is very evident that though the foregoing is extreme, and not universal to any great extent, still the oscillation between enjoyment and deprivation exists everywhere. People themselves ensure that there is excess on one side, and then they get the physicians to prescribe a so-called lowering system of cure, that is, the other extreme, in order that the ill effects may be repaired.

From this, it will be seen that in this respect people are still in an instinctive condition, that there is still an instinctive feeling, which is a kind of divine gift, not to go too far in one direction or another. But just as the other instinctive qualities of man were lost, these, too, will be lost with the transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean age. This quality which is still possessed as a natural tendency will be lost; and now you will be able to judge how much the anthroposophical world conception and conviction will have to contribute in order gradually to develop consciousness in this field.

At the present time there are very few, even developed anthroposophists, who see clearly that Anthroposophy provides the means to gain the right consciousness in this field also. When Anthroposophy is able to bring more weight to bear in this direction, then will appear what I can only describe in the following way; people will gradually long more and more for great spiritual truths. Although Anthroposophy is still scorned to-day, it will not always be so. It will spread, and overcome all its external opponents, and everything else still opposing it, and anthroposophists will not be satisfied by merely preaching universal love. It will be understood that one cannot acquire Anthroposophy in one day, any more than a person can take sufficient nourishment in one day to last the whole of his life. Anthroposophy has to be acquired to an ever increasing extent. It will come to pass that in the Anthroposophical Movement it will not be so often stated that these are our principles, and if we have these principles then we are anthroposophists; for the feeling and experience of standing in a community of the living element in anthroposophy will extend more and more.

Moreover, let us consider what happens by people mentally working upon the particular thoughts, the particular feelings and impulses which come from anthroposophical wisdom. We all know that anthroposophists can never have a materialistic view of the world, they have exactly the opposite, But he who says the following is a materialistic thinker: “When one thinks, a movement of the molecules or atoms of the brain takes place, and it is because of this movement that one has thought. Thought proceeds from the brain somewhat like a thin smoke, or it is something like the flame from a candle.” Such, is the materialistic view. The anthroposophical view is the opposite. In the latter it is the thought, the experience in the soul which sets the brain and nervous system in motion. The way in which our brain moves depends upon what thoughts we think. This is exactly the opposite of what is said by the materialist. If you wish to know how the brain of a person is constituted, you must inquire into what thoughts he has, for just as the printed characters of a book are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts, so the movements of the brain are nothing else than the consequence of thoughts.

Must we not then say that the brain will be differently affected when it is filled with anthroposophical thoughts than it will be in a society which plays cards? Different processes are at work in your minds when you follow anthroposophical thoughts from when you are in a company of card players, or see the pictures in a movie theatre. In the human organism nothing is isolated or stands alone. Everything is connected; one part acts and reacts on another. Thoughts act upon the brain and nervous system, and the latter is connected with the whole organism, and although many people may not yet be aware of it, when the hereditary characteristics still hidden in the body are conquered, the following will come about. The thoughts will be communicated from the brain to the stomach, and the result will be that things that are pleasant to people's taste to-day will no longer taste good to those who have received anthroposophical thoughts. The thoughts which anthroposophists have received are divine thoughts. They act upon the whole organism in such a manner that it will prefer to taste what is good for it. Man will smell and perceive as unsympathetic what does not suit him—a peculiar perspective, one which may perhaps be called materialistic, but is exactly the reverse.

This kind of appetite will come as a consequence of anthroposophical work; you will like one thing and prefer it at meals, dislike another and not wish to eat it. You may judge for yourselves when you notice that perhaps you now have an aversion to things, which before your anthroposophical days you did not possess. This will become more and more general when man works selflessly at his higher development, so that the world may receive what is right from him. One must not, however, play fast-and-lose with the words “selflessness” and “egoism.” These words may very easily be misused. It is not altogether selfless when someone says: “I shall only be active in the world and for the world; what does it matter about my own spiritual development? I shall only work, not strive egoistically!” It is not egoism when a person undergoes a higher development, because he thus fits himself more fully to bear an active part in the furtherance of the world development. If a person neglects his own further development, he renders himself useless to the world, he withdraws his force from it. We must do the right thing in this respect as well, in order to develop in ourselves what the Deity had in view for us.

Thus, through Anthroposophy a human race, or rather, a nucleus of humanity will be developed, which perceives temperance as a guiding ideal not merely instinctively, but which has a conscious sympathy for what makes man in a worthy way into a useful part of the divine world-order, and a conscious disinclination for all that mars man as a part in the universal order.

Thus we see that also in that which is produced in man himself, there are moral impulses, and we find what we may call life-wisdom or practical wisdom as transformed temperance. The ideal of practical wisdom which is to be taken into consideration for the next, the sixth post-Atlantean age, will be the ideal virtue which Plato calls “justice.” That is: the harmonious accord of these virtues. As in humanity the virtues have altered to some extent, so what was looked upon as justice in pre-Christian times has also changed. A single virtue such as this, which harmonises the others did not exist at that time. The harmony of the virtues stood before the mental vision of humanity as an ideal of the most distant future. We have seen that the moral impulse of bravery has been changed to love. We have also seen that wisdom has become truth. To begin with, truth is a virtue which places man in a just and worthy manner in external life. But if we wish to arrive at truthfulness regarding spiritual things, how then can we arrange it in relation to those things? We acquire truthfulness, we gain the virtue of the Sentient-Soul through a right and appropriate interest, through right understanding. Now what is this interest with regard to the spiritual world? If we wish to bring the physical world and especially man before us, we must open ourselves towards him, we must have a seeing eye for his nature. How do we obtain this seeing-eye with reference to the spiritual world? We gain it by developing a particular kind of feeling, that which appeared at a time when the old instinctive wisdom had sunk into the depths of the soul's life. This type of feeling was often described by the Greeks in the words: “All philosophical thought begins with wonder.” Something essentially moral is said when we say that our relationship to the super-sensible world begins with wonder. The savage, uncultivated human being, is but little affected by the great phenomena of the world. It is through mental development that man comes to find riddles in the phenomena of everyday life, and to perceive that there is something spiritual at the back of them. It is wonder that directs our souls up to the spiritual sphere in order that we may penetrate to the knowledge of that world; and we can only arrive at this knowledge when our soul is attracted by the phenomena which it is possible to investigate. It is this attraction which give rise to wonder, astonishment and faith. It is always wonder and amazement which direct us to what is super-sensible, and at the same time, it is what one usually describes as faith. Faith, wonder and amazement are the three forces of the soul which lead us beyond the ordinary world.

When we contemplate man with wonder and amazement, we try to understand him; by understanding his nature we attain to the virtue of brotherhood, and we shall best realise this by approaching the human being with reverence. We shall then see that reverence becomes something with which we must approach every human being and if we have this attitude, we shall become more and more truthful. Truth will become something by which we shall be bound by duty. Once we have an inkling of it, the super-sensible world becomes something towards which we incline, and through knowledge we shall attain to the super-sensible wisdom which has already sunk into the subconscious depths of the soul. Only after super-sensible wisdom had disappeared do we find the statement that “philosophy begins with wonder and amazement.” This statement will make it clear that wonder only appeared in evolution in the age when the Christ-impulse had come into the world.

It has already been stated that the second virtue is love. Let us now consider what we have described as instinctive temperance for the present time, and as practical wisdom of life for the future. Man confronts himself in these virtues. Through the deeds he performs in the world, he acts in such a way that he guards himself, as it were; it is therefore necessary for him to gain an objective standard of value.

We now see something appear which develops more and more, and which I have often spoken of in other connections, something which first appeared in the fourth post-Atlantean age, namely the Greek. It can be shown that in the old Greek dramas, for instance in Aeschylus, the Furies play a role which in Euripides is transformed into conscience. From this we see that in earlier times what we call conscience did not exist at all. Conscience is something that exists as a standard for our own actions when we go too far in our demands, when we seek our own advantage too-much. It acts as a standard placed between our sympathies and antipathies.

With this we attain to something which is more objective, which, compared with the virtues of truth, love and practical wisdom, acts in a much more objective, or outward manner. Love here stands in the middle, and acts as something which has to fill and regulate all life, also all social life. In the same way it acts as the regulator of all that man has developed as inner impulse. But that which he has developed as truth will manifest itself as the belief in super-sensible knowledge. Life-wisdom, that which originates in ourselves, we must feel as a divine spiritual regulator which, like conscience, leads securely along the true middle course. If we had time it would be very easy to answer the various objections which might be raised at this point. But we shall only consider one, for example, the objection to the assertion that conscience and wonder are qualities which have only gradually developed in humanity, whereas they are really eternal. But this they are not. He who says that they are eternal qualities in human nature only shows that he does not know the conditions attached to them.

As time goes on it will be found more and more that in ancient times man had not as yet descended so far to the physical plane, but was still more closely connected with divine impulses, and that he was in a condition which he will again consciously strive to reach when he is ruled more by truth, love and the art of life in regard to the physical plane, and when in regard to spiritual knowledge he is actuated by faith in the super-sensible world. It is not necessarily the case that faith will directly lead into that world, but it will at length be transformed into super-sensible knowledge. Conscience is that which will enter as a regulator in the Consciousness- or Spiritual-Soul. Faith, love, conscience; these three forces will become the three stars of the moral forces which shall enter into human souls particularly through Anthroposophy. The moral perspective of the future can only be disclosed to those who think of these three virtues being ever more increased Anthroposophy will place moral life in the light of these virtues, and they will be the constructive forces of the future.

Before closing our observations, there is one point which must be considered. I shall only touch upon the subject, for it would be impossible to analyse without giving many lectures. The Christ-impulse entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. We know that at that time a human organism consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies received the Ego-impulse or “I” from above, as the Christ-impulse. It was this Christ-impulse which was received by the earth and which flowed into earthly evolution. It was now in it as the ego of Christ. We know further that the physical body, etheric body and astral body remained with Jesus of Nazareth; the Christ-impulse was within as the ego. At Golgotha, Jesus of Nazareth separated from the Christ-impulse, which then flowed into the earth development. The evolution of this impulse signifies the evolution of the earth itself.

Earnestly consider certain things which are very often repeated in order that they may be more easily understood. As we have often heard, the world is maya or illusion, but man must gradually penetrate to the truth, the reality of this external world. The earth evolution fundamentally consists in the fact that all the external things which have been formed in the first half of the earth's development are dissolved in the second half, in which we now are, so that all that we see externally, physically, shall separate from human development just as the physical body of a human being falls away. One might ask: What will then be left? And the answer is: The forces which are embodied in man as real forces through the process of the development of humanity on the earth. And the most real impulse in this development is that which has come into earth evolution through the Christ-impulse. But this Christ-impulse at first finds nothing with which it can clothe itself. Therefore it has to obtain a covering through the further development of the earth; and when this is concluded, the fully developed Christ shall be the final man—as Adam was the first—around whom humanity in its multiplicity has grouped itself.

In the words: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me,” is contained a significant hint for us. What has been done for Christ? The actions performed in accordance with the Christ-impulse under the influence of conscience, under the influence of faith and according to knowledge, are developed out on the earth-life up to the present time, and as, through his actions and his moral attitude a person gives something to his brethren, he gives at the same time to Christ. This should be taken as a precept: All the forces we develop, all acts of faith and trust, all acts performed as the result of wonder, are—because we give it at the same time to the Christ-Ego—something which closes like a covering round the Christ and may be compared with the astral body of man.

We form the astral body for the Christ-Ego-impulse by all the moral activities of wonder, trust, reverence and faith, in short, all that paves the way to super-sensible knowledge. Through all these activities we foster love. This is quite in accordance with the statement we quoted: “What ye have done to one, of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

We form the etheric body for Christ through our deeds of love, and through our actions in the world which we do through the impulses of conscience we form for the Christ-impulse that which corresponds to the physical body of man. When the earth has one day reached its goal, when man understands the right moral impulses through which all that is good is done, then shall be present that which came as an Ego or “I” into human development through the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ-impulse shall then be enveloped by an astral body which is formed through faith, through all the deeds of wonder and amazement on the part of man. It shall be enveloped by something which is like an etheric body which is formed through deeds of love; and by something which envelops it like a physical body, formed through the deeds of conscience.

Thus the future evolution of humanity shall be accomplished through the co-operation of the moral impulses of man with the Christ-impulse. We see humanity in perspective before us, like a great organic structure. When people understand how to member their actions into this great organism, and through their own deeds form their impulses around it like a covering, they shall then lay the foundations, in the course of earthly evolution, for a great community, which can be permeated and made Christian through and through by the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see that morals need not be preached, but they can indeed be founded by showing facts that have really happened and do still happen, confirming what is felt by persons with special mental endowments. It should make a noteworthy impression upon us if we bear in mind how, at the time when he lost his friend, Duke Charles Augustus, Goethe wrote many things in a long letter at Weimar, and then on the same day—it was in the year 1828, three-and-a-half years before his own death, and almost at the end of his life—he wrote a very remarkable sentence in his diary: “The whole reasonable world may be considered as a great immortal individual which uninterruptedly brings about what is necessary and thereby makes itself master even over chance.” How could such a thought become more concrete than by our imagining this Individual active among us, and by thinking of ourselves as, being united with him in his work? Through the Mystery of Golgotha the greatest Individual entered into human development, and, when people intentionally direct their lives in the way we have just described, they will range themselves round the Christ-impulse, so that around this Being there shall be formed something which is like a covering around a kernel.

Much more could be said about virtue from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. In particular long and important considerations could be entered into concerning truth and its connection with karma, for through Anthroposophy the idea of karma will have to enter into human evolution more and more. Man will also have to learn gradually so to consider and order his life that his virtues correspond with karma. Through the idea of karma man must also learn to recognise that he may not disown his former deeds by his later ones. A certain feeling of responsibility in life, a readiness to take upon ourselves the results of what we have done, has yet to show itself as a result of human evolution. How far removed man still is from this ideal we see when we consider him more closely. That man develops by the acts he has committed is a well-known fact. When the consequences of an action seem to have come to an end, then what could only be done if the first act had not taken place, can still be done. The fact that a person feels responsible for what he has done, the fact that he consciously accepts the idea of karma, is something which might also be a subject for study. But you will still find much for yourselves by following the lines suggested in these three lectures; you will find how fruitful these ideas can be if you work them out further. As man will live for the remainder of the earth development in repeated incarnations, it is his task to rectify all the mistakes made respecting the virtues described, by inclining to one side or the other, to change them by shaping them of his own free will, so that the balance, the mean, may come and thus the goal be gradually attained which has been described as the formation of the coverings for the Christ-impulse.

Thus we see before us not merely an abstract ideal of universal brotherhood, which indeed may also receive a strong impulse if we lay Anthroposophy at the foundation, but we see that there is something real in our earthly evolution, we see that there is in it an Impulse which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. And we also feel ourselves under the necessity so to work upon the Sentient-Soul, the Intellectual-Soul and the Spiritual-Soul, that this ideal Being shall be actualised, and that we shall be united with Him as with a great immortal Individual. The thought that the only possibility of further evolution, the power to fulfil the earth mission, lies in man's forming one whole with this great Individual, is realised in the second moral principle: What you do as if it were born from you alone, pushes you away and separates you from the great Individual, you thereby destroy something; but what you do to build up this great immortal Individual in the way above described, that you do towards the further development, the progressive life of the whole organism of the world.

We only require to place these two thoughts before us in order to see that their effect is not only to preach morals, but to give them a basis. For the thought: “Through your actions you are destroying what you ought to build up,” is terrible and fearful, keeping down all opposing desires. But the thought: “You are building up this immortal Individual; you are making yourself into a member of this immortal Individual,” fires one to good deeds, to strong moral impulses. In this way morals are not only preached, but we are led to thoughts which themselves may be moral impulses, to thoughts which are able to found morals.

The more the truth is cultivated, the more rapidly will the anthroposophical world conception and feeling develop ethics such as these. And it has been my task to express this in these lectures. Naturally, many things have only been lightly touched upon, but you will develop further in your own minds many ideas which have been broached. In this way we shall be drawn more closely together all over the earth. When we meet together—as we have done on this occasion as anthroposophists of Northern and Central Europe—to consider these subjects, and when we allow the thoughts roused in us at gatherings such as this to echo and re-echo through us, we shall in this way best make it true that Anthroposophy is to provide the foundation—even at the present time—for real spiritual life. And when we have to part again we know that it is in our anthroposophical thoughts that we are most at one, and this knowledge is at the same time a moral stimulus. To know that we are united by the same ideals with people who, as a rule, are widely separated from one another in space, but with whom we may meet on special occasions, is a stronger moral stimulus than being always together.

That we should think in this way of our gathering, that we should thus understand our studies together, fills my soul, especially at the close of these lectures, as something by which I should like to express my farewell greeting to you, and concerning which I am convinced that, when it is understood in the true light, the anthroposophical life which is developing will also be spiritually well founded. With this thought and these feelings let us close our studies today.

I'd like to ask your forgiveness, first of all, for being unable to speak to you tonight in your native language. But friends who have been attending my lectures to members of the Anthroposophical Society this week have assured me that it would be all right to speak to you on a spiritual scientific subject in German.

The local members have also suggested the underlying theme of this evening's talk; I am to speak on the relationship of spiritual science—or anthroposophy, as it may also be called—to Christianity. In order to do so, I must first say something about the nature and significance of what is meant by spiritual science, about the point of view from which I shall be speaking.

This spiritual science is not trying to found either a new religion or a new religious sect of any kind. It hopes to be able to fulfill the tasks required spiritually of our contemporary culture.

Several hundred years ago, the dawning of the modern scientific age signified an advance in human cultural life which can be compared to the steps we must now take in mankind's development if further progress is to be made. Natural science opened the modern age for mankind through the knowledge of external physical laws. Spiritual science should play a similar role in the present and near future in recognizing the laws of the realms of soul and spirit and applying them to ethical, social, and all other aspects of cultural life.

Although it is still misunderstood and misrepresented—and understandably so—it can trust the power and effectiveness of its truth when it considers the course of natural science at the beginning of the modern age. Natural scientists, too, had to face prejudices hundreds and even thousands of years old. But truth possesses powers which always help it to victory against any hostile forces.

Now that we have mentioned the trust the spiritual scientist has in the truth and effectiveness of his work, let us turn to the nature of that research which is the basis for this spiritual science.

The spiritual scientist's way of looking at things is wholly in keeping with the methods of natural science. However, it must certainly be clear that since spiritual science covers an entirely different field from the external sense-perceptible field covered by natural science, researching the spiritual realm requires a fundamental modification of the natural scientific approach. The methods of spiritual science are in keeping with those of natural science in the sense that any unprejudiced person trained in natural science can accept the premises of spiritual science. However, as long as the natural scientific method is conceived one-sidedly, as all too often happens today, then prejudice will be heaped upon prejudice when it comes to applying the natural scientific approach to spiritual life. Granted, natural scientific logic must be applied to what most concerns man but which is most difficult to investigate for that very reason. Granted, this way of thinking must be applied to the very being of man himself. Granted, in spiritual science man must examine his own nature, making use of the only tool that he has at his disposal—himself. The premise of spiritual science is that in becoming an instrument of investigation into the spiritual world, man has to undergo a transformation that enables him to look into the spiritual world, something he cannot do in ordinary life.

I'd like to start with a comparison from natural science, not to prove anything but just to make it clear how the spiritual scientific way of looking at things rests entirely on the premises of natural scientific thinking. Let us take water as an example drawn from nature. Suppose we are looking at the qualities of water as we find it around us. Then along comes the chemist and applies his methods to the water, breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen. Well, what is he doing to the water? As you all know, water doesn't burn. The chemist takes hydrogen out of the water, and hydrogen is a gas that burns. No one just looking at water can tell that it contains hydrogen and oxygen, which have totally different properties from water.

As spiritual science shows, it is equally impossible for us to see the inner qualities of another person. Just as the chemist can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the spiritual scientist, by means of an inner process which must be prepared in the soul's very depths, is able to distinguish between the external physical and soul-spiritual aspects of what confronts him outwardly as a human being. He is interested initially in examining, from the spiritual scientific viewpoint, the soul-spiritual aspect as something separate from the bodily nature. No one can discern the real facts of the soul-spiritual from looking at the merely external bodily nature, any more than the nature of hydrogen can be discerned without first extracting it from water.

Nowadays it very often happens that as soon as one begins to say this sort of thing one hears: “This conflicts with monism, which must be adhered to at all costs.” Well, monism can't keep even chemists from splitting water into two parts. It's no argument against monism when something that can actually happen does happen—for instance, when the soul-spiritual is recognized as distinct from the bodily nature by applying the methods of spiritual research.

These methods, however, cannot be applied in laboratories or hospitals, but are processes that have to take place in the soul itself. They are not miraculous qualities; they are faculties which we possess to a certain degree in daily life. But they have to be infinitely heightened if we are to become spiritual researchers.

I don't want to beat around the bush with all kinds of general statements, so I'll come right to the point. We are all familiar with the soul capacity known as memory, and are aware of how much depends on it. Imagine waking up some morning with no idea of where we've been and who we are. We would lose everything that makes us human. Our memory, which has possessed inner coherence ever since early childhood, is essential to our life as human beings. The study of memory leaves contemporary philosophers perplexed. There are already some among them who go so far as to turn away from the monistic-materialistic view when it comes to looking at memory. In precise research they find that, although sensory perception (if one may refer to an activity of soul in this way) is superficially bound to the body, it will never be possible to say that memory is bound to the body at all. I am just calling this to your attention. Even the French philosopher Bergson, a man who certainly shows no tendency to delve into anthroposophy, has pointed to the spiritual nature of memory.

How do memory and the power of recall actually confront us? Events long past enter our soul as images. Although the events themselves may lie far in the past, our soul is actively involved in conjuring them up from the depths of our inner life. And what emerges from these depths can be compared with the original experience, though in contrast to the images provided by our sensory perceptions memories are pale. However, they are closely connected with the integrity of our soul life. And without memory, we would not find our way in the world. But memory is built upon the power to recall, through which the soul can conjure up what is hidden in its memories.

This is where spiritual science comes in. Please note that it is not memory as such, but the power of summoning up a mental content from the soul's depths, which can be infinitely strengthened. Then this power can be used not only for conjuring up past experiences but for quite other purposes as well. Methods of spiritual research are not founded upon any external procedures applicable in laboratories or upon anything perceptible to external senses, but rather upon intensive soul processes which anyone can undergo. What makes these processes valuable is the boundless heightening of our attentiveness or, in other words, the concentration of our thought life.

What is this concentration of thought life?

This evening I have only a short hour to speak, so I'll just be able to touch on the principles of the topic under discussion. You can find the details in my books, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, Occult Science—an Outline, and The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Let me outline the basic soul activities which represent a boundless heightening of the attentiveness necessary for human life. Only this heightening makes spiritual research possible.

What activity does a person usually engage in when he confronts his surroundings? He perceives things; he applies his brain-bound thinking to them and forms mental images about them. As a rule he does nothing further with these images. But methods of spiritual science, based upon the concentration of thinking, begin just where our everyday mental activity leaves off. Anyone wanting to become a spiritual researcher must carry on from this point.

We must choose mental images which we ourselves can form for ourselves in detail and bring them into our field of consciousness. These should preferably be symbolic images that do not need to correspond with the external world. We must place these images, taken from the practice of spiritual science or suggested to us by the spiritual researcher, at the center of our full consciousness, so that for a longer period we turn our attention away from everything external, concentrating on a single image. Whereas we usually move on from one mental image to another, in this case we marshal all our soul forces, concentrate them on one chosen image, and devote ourselves totally to this image. A person observed in this activity seems to be engaged in something resembling sleep (although it is in fact radically different). For if such concentration is to be fruitful, that person must indeed become in some respects like a sleeper.

Just before we fall asleep, we feel how the will forces in our limbs quiet down, how a kind of twilight settles around us, how the activity of the senses ebbs away. Then we lose consciousness. In concentration, as in sleep, our senses must be wholly shut off from all impressions of the outer world; the eye should see as little, the ear hear as little as in sleep, and so on. Then the whole soul life is focused on a single mental image. This is what makes concentration radically different from sleep. In fact, it could be called fully conscious sleeping. Whereas in sleep the darkness of unconsciousness floods the soul, the aspiring spiritual researcher lives in a heightened state of soul activity. He mobilizes all the strengths of his soul and focuses them on the chosen image. The point here is not that we observe the mental image; it rather gives us the opportunity to pull our soul forces together and channel them. That's the important thing, because in this way we gradually succeed in wresting our soul-spiritual being free from our bodily nature. Again I refer you to my books for the details.

What I've just explained cannot be achieved all at once. Most people, even those who are not distracted by the demands of daily life, have to work for years on such concentration exercises; it is impossible to keep at them for more than a few minutes at a time, or for more than a fraction of an hour at most. We must repeat them again and again until we really succeed in strengthening the powers that otherwise slumber in everyday life (but are nevertheless there) so that they become effective in us to the point of freeing our soul-spiritual being from our bodily nature.

Let me share facts with you rather than talk abstractions, and say at once that if the spiritual researcher succeeds, by persevering energetically and devotedly in his exercises, in reaping the fruits of his efforts, then he arrives at an experience of what could be called purely inner consciousness. From then on, he can make sense of a statement that previously meant nothing to him: “I know that I am outside my body; in grasping and experiencing my inner being, I am outside my body.”

I'd like to describe this experience to you in detail. We notice first of all that the power of thinking, which is usually active only in the affairs of daily life, frees itself from the body. To begin with, this experience is faint, but it makes its appearance in such a way that, having had it, we know it for what it is. Only when we return to our body and have submerged ourselves in the life of the brain, manifested in physical substance, do we realize what resistance the brain offers. We are aware that we use the brain as an instrument for ordinary thinking; but now we know that we have been outside it. We gradually learn to make sense of the statement, “You are experiencing yourself in the soul-spiritual element.” We experience our head as though clothed in its thoughts. We know what it means to have separated our soul-spiritual element from our external bodily nature. First we get to know the resistance that bodily life puts up, and then to know life independent of the body. It is just as if hydrogen were to become aware of itself outside of the watery element. That is the case with a person who does exercises of this kind. And if he continues to do them faithfully, the great and significant moment comes when real spiritual research begins—a profoundly shattering moment that has far-reaching consequences for our entire existence. This moment can occur in thousands of different ways, but I will characterize it in the way it most typically comes about.

If we have carried on these exercises for a certain period of time, training our souls in conformity with the natural scientific approach, then that moment finally comes, either during waking life or in a sleep from which we awaken to realize that we are not dreaming but experiencing a brand new reality. The experience can be such, for example, that we say, “What is going on around me? It is as though my surroundings were receding from me, as though the natural elements were striking like lightning and destroying my body, and I nevertheless maintained myself, unlike this body.” We come to know what seers throughout the ages have always pictured as “reaching the gates of death.” This image brings home to us the true soul-spiritual state of man when he is living purely in the soul-spiritual element, instead of perceiving himself and the world through the instrument of his body (and this we experience only through the image; the reality is met only in death).

The shattering thing is to know that we have released ourselves from our body with our thinking capacity. And other forces can be similarly released so that we become ever richer and more inward as regards our soul life.

But the one exercise that I have characterized as concentration or as an unbounded heightening of attentiveness is not enough. We achieve the following result with this exercise: When we have arrived at the point where the soul experiences itself, images that we can call real imaginations make their appearance. Images rise up, but they are vastly different from those of our ordinary memory. Whereas ordinary memory contains only images of external experiences, these images arising now from the grey depths of our soul have nothing in common with anything that can be experienced in the outer world of the senses. Objections that we might easily be deceiving ourselves, that what thus arises from these grey depths of soul may merely be reminiscences produced by memory, don't hold up. For the spiritual researcher learns to distinguish exactly between what memory can summon up and something radically different from the content of memory.

We must keep one thing in mind, however, when talking about this moment of entering the spiritual world: namely, that people who suffer from visions, hallucinations, or other such pathological conditions are not well suited to spiritual research. The less a person tends in that direction, which is a mere reflection of ordinary experience, the more safely and certainly he advances in the field of spiritual research. A large part of the preparation for spiritual research consists in learning to distinguish exactly between something that arises in an unconscious and pathological manner from within, and the new element which can make its appearance as spiritual reality following a spiritual scientific schooling of our soul.

I'd like to mention a radical difference between visionary or hallucinatory experiences and what the spiritual researcher perceives. Why is it that so many people believe themselves to be already in the spiritual world, when they are only having hallucinations and visions? How unwilling people are to learn anything really new! They cling to the old and familiar. These sick soul-figments appear to us in hallucinations and visions in basically the same way as external sensory reality. They are simply there, confronting us; we do nothing to make them appear. The spiritual researcher is not in the same situation with regard to his new spiritual surroundings. I've told you how he has to concentrate and refine all the forces of his soul that are usually asleep. This requires him to exert a strength and energy of soul not present in external life. He must constantly hold on to this strength when he enters the spiritual world. It is characteristic of hallucinations and visions that a person remains passive; he doesn't need to exert himself. However, as soon as we become passive toward the spiritual world for even a moment, everything disappears. We have to stay with it and to be continuously active. That is why we cannot be mistaken, since nothing of the spiritual world can appear to us in the way a vision or hallucination does. We must be fully active in confronting every least detail of what appears to us out of the spiritual world, so that we grasp what we are facing. This uninterrupted activity is vital for true spiritual research. But only then do we enter a world radically different from the world of the senses, a world where spiritual actualities and beings surround us.

But another thing is still needed: Wresting the soul free of the body happens as described. This further need, however, can again be explained with a scientific comparison. When we extract hydrogen, it remains separate at first, but then it combines with other substances, becoming something quite different. The same thing must happen to our soul-spiritual being after its separation from the body. This being must link itself up with beings not of the sensory world. It must unite with them and thus perceive them.

The first stage of spiritual research is separation of the soul-spiritual from the bodily nature. The second is entering into relationship with beings that work behind the scenes of the sensory world. To say this is held against one nowadays, even more so than any vague talk of “spirit” in general. Many people today feel the urge to acknowledge the existence of something spiritual; they speak of a spirit behind the world order and are perfectly satisfied to be pantheists. But as the spiritual researcher sees it, pantheism is just like taking someone out into nature and remarking, “Look, all this around you is nature,” instead of saying, “Those are trees, clouds; that's a lily, that's a rose.” Leading a person from one experience of nature to another, from one being to the next, and saying, “All this is nature,” is to tell him nothing. The facts must be presented concretely and in detail. It is acceptable today to speak of an all-pervading spirit, but the spiritual researcher cannot rest content with that. After all, he is entering a realm of spirit beings and spiritual realities which are differentiated, just as the external world is concretely differentiated into clouds, mountains, valleys, trees, flowers, and so on. But although we differentiate natural phenomena into plant, animal and human kingdoms, it is not acceptable today to speak of concrete details and facts encountered upon entering the spiritual world. The spiritual researcher cannot help but point out that entering the spiritual world means entering a world of real, concrete spiritual beings and events.

Another exercise we need to do is to intensify our feeling of devotion—devotion felt in everyday life and in life's special moments as religious reverence. This devotion must be boundlessly heightened and developed, so that a person can reach the stage of giving himself devoutly over to the stream of cosmic events, as he does in sleep. In contemplation or meditation, he must forget about any bodily movement, again as he does in sleep.

This is the second exercise, and it must alternate with the first. The person doing the exercise forgets his body so completely that he not only stops thinking about it but can even shut out all stirrings of feeling and will, just as in sleep he shuts out all awareness of bodily stirrings. But this condition must be brought about consciously. Adding this exercise in devotion to the first, he will succeed in making himself at home in the spiritual world with the help of his awakening spiritual senses, just as he finds his way into his physical surroundings with the help of his external senses.

A new world now dawns before him, a world that is always inhabited by his soul-spiritual being. A reality becomes apparent to his inner observation—a reality still rejected by current prejudices, although it is just as much a fact of strictly scientific research as our modern evolutionary theory. I am referring to the fact that he comes to know the soul-spiritual core of his being in such a way the he realizes: “Before I was conceived and born into this life which clothed me in a body, I existed as a soul-spiritual being in a spiritual realm. When I pass through the gates of death, my body will fall away. But what I have come to know as the soul-spiritual core of my being, which can live outside my body, will pass through the gates of death. From then on, it lives in a spiritual world.”

In other words, we come to recognize the immortality of the soul already in this life between birth and death. We become familiar with something we know to be independent of the body and with the world that the human soul enters after death. We come to know this soul-spiritual core in such a way that we can describe it with scientific clarity.

Observing a plant, we see how the seed germinates, how leaves and blossoms develop, and how the fruit forms, producing new seed. We realize how its life culminates in this seed. Leaves and blossoms drop off, but the seed remains, bearing the promise of a new plant. We become aware that the seed, the essential part of a new plant, is already living in the plant we are observing. As we look at life between birth and death, we thus come to recognize that something develops in the soul-spiritual element that passes through the gates of death and is, moreover, the germ and essential core of a new life. The soul-spiritual core of our being, which is hidden in everyday life but reveals itself to spiritual science, carries the potential for a new human life just as certainly as a plant seed has the potential to become a new plant. Looking at things in this way, we arrive at the realization of repeated earth-lives in full harmony with the natural scientific approach. We know that the sum total of man's life consists not only of the life between birth and death but also of the life running its course between death and rebirth, from which man then embarks upon a new incarnation.

The only possible objection to what I've just said is that the germinating seed could perish if conditions didn't foster the development of a new plant. Spiritual science meets this objection by pointing out that, though the plant seed in its dependence on outer conditions may perish, there is nothing in the spiritual world to hinder the gradual ripening of the core of the human soul as it prepares for a new life on earth. In other words, the core of the human soul which matures during one earth-life will appear again in a further life on earth. I can only indicate briefly how the spiritual researcher, faithful to natural scientific methods of investigation, comes to this view of repeated earth-lives.

People have accused spiritual science of being Buddhistic because it speaks of reincarnation. Spiritual science certainly does not draw what it has to say from Buddhism; it is firmly founded on the premises and principles of modern natural science. But spiritual science widens modern natural science to cover the life of the spirit without even taking Buddhism into account. Spiritual science can't help acknowledging the truth of reincarnation. It can't change the fact that in ancient times Buddhism spoke out of old traditions about repeated earth-lives.

I'd like to mention in this connection that Lessing's mature thinking, deepened by experience, led him to speak about reincarnation. At the end of a long working life, Lessing wrote his treatise on the education of the human race, in which he advanced the idea of repeated earth-lives. He said somewhat as follows: “Is this teaching to be rejected just because it appears at the dawn of human culture, before any scholarly prejudice could cloud it?” Lessing refused to be swayed by the fact that this teaching was a product of ancient times, a teaching that was later pushed into the background by scholarly prejudice. Spiritual science also doesn't need to shy away from it simply because it appears in Buddhistic doctrine. That is certainly no reason to accuse spiritual science of Buddhistic leanings.

Spiritual science recognizes the truth of repeated earth-lives out of its own sources, and it points us to our connection with the totality of human life through the ages. For the souls living in us have been here many times before, and will return again and again. Let us look back on early cultural epochs—for instance, to the time when people lifted their eyes to the pyramids. We know that our souls were already living at that time and that they will appear again in the future; they take part in every epoch.

It is still perfectly understandable today that people have a bias against such teachings. There are also people who take everything the way they want to see it. They know that Lessing was a great man, but it makes them uncomfortable to know that he acknowledged the truth of reincarnation at the height of his career. So they say, “Oh, well, Lessing was getting senile in his old age.” That makes people more comfortable than to think that we have each been part of every civilization that ever existed on the earth.

Now, how does spiritual science want to introduce the facts I've just explained into contemporary culture? Why, no differently than natural science presents its findings, although this means that spiritual science is subject to the same prejudices as the initial findings based on the modern natural scientific approach. Just think of Copernicus, Galileo, or Giordano Bruno. What happened when Copernicus claimed that the earth didn't stand still, but revolved around the sun, and that the sun actually stood still in relation to the earth? How did people react? They thought that religion was at stake, that people's religious piety was jeopardized by this advance in knowledge.

It took the Church until the nineteenth century to remove the teachings of Copernicus from the Index and to integrate them into its doctrine. In every age advances in thought have had to fight against old prejudices. This young spiritual knowledge wants to make itself felt in human culture today in the same way as the new natural scientific knowledge did in its day. Spiritual science wants to emphasize the fact that mankind is ready to acquire knowledge of the spirit, just as in the achievements of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno the need for a new science of nature was made evident at a time when mankind was ready for it.

In his day, even Nicholas Copernicus, a canon of the Church, was accused of not being a Christian. And now it is easy in certain respects to accuse spiritual science of being unchristian. When this happens, I always think of a priest who, on becoming rector of his university, delivered a lecture about Galileo. He spoke somewhat as follows: “In those days people had religious prejudices against Copernicus. But a truly religious person knows that God's glory and light are not dimmed when we consciously penetrate the secrets of the universe. He knows that the grandeur of our view of God has in fact only increased as a result of extending our knowledge beyond the realm of the senses to calculate the course of the stars and the particular characteristics of the heavenly bodies.”

A truly religious person can grasp that religion is only enriched and deepened by scientific knowledge. Spiritual science doesn't want to have anything to do with founding a new religion or to give rise to prophets or founders of sects. Mankind has matured; the time for prophets and founding religions is over. And in future people who feel the urge to be prophets will suffer a different fate from the prophets of old, who, in accordance with the ways of their times, were rightly revered as outstanding individuals. People of today who try to be prophets in the old sense will simply be laughed at. Spiritual science doesn't need any prophets because by its very nature it bases what it has to say upon the depths of the human soul, depths which our souls cannot always illuminate. And the spiritual scientist simply wants to investigate his subject as an unassuming researcher, drawing attention to vital matters. He says, “I've discovered it; you can discover it for yourself, too, if you try.” It won't take long until the spiritual investigator is recognized as a researcher just like any chemist or biologist. The difference is that the spiritual researcher does his research in a field of concern to every human soul.

Tonight I could only sketch the activity of the research done in this field. But if you study the matter in more detail, you will find that it addresses the most vital questions of the human soul, questions concerning the nature of man and his destiny. Both are questions which can stir human beings to their depths every hour of every day; they give us strength for our work. And because the concerns of spiritual science deal with the depths of the human soul, it is only natural that it should grip us and unite with our inmost self, thereby deepening and enhancing our religious feeling to an unusual degree.

Spiritual science does not want to usurp the place of Christianity; on the contrary it would like to be instrumental in making Christianity understood. Thus it becomes clear to us through spiritual science that the being whom we call Christ is to be recognized as the center of life on earth, that the Christian religion is the ultimate religion for the earth's whole future. Spiritual science shows us particularly that the pre-Christian religions outgrow their one-sidedness and come together in the Christian faith. It is not the desire of spiritual science to set something else in the place of Christianity; rather it wants to contribute to a deeper, more heartfelt understanding of Christianity.

Can it be said that when Copernicus was arriving at his concept of the solar system in the peace and quiet of his study, he wanted to reshape the order of nature? It would be mad to say anything of the sort. Nature stayed as it was, but people learned to think about nature in a way that accorded with the new view of the world. I've taken the liberty of calling a book on Christianity that I wrote many years ago Christianity as Mystical Fact. No one used to mulling over what he presents to the world would choose such a title without weighing it carefully. Why, then, did I choose it? Only in order to show that Christianity is not a mere doctrine to be interpreted this way or that; it has entered the world as a fact that can only be understood spiritually. Nature didn't change because of Copernicus, nor does the truth of Christianity change when spiritual science is used as a tool for understanding it more completely than was possible in times gone by.

I've taken more time than was intended, but perhaps you will let me draw your attention to one concrete aspect of Christian spiritual research. Studying ancient pre-Christian cultures from the viewpoint of the spiritual researcher, we find that they all had mystery places which were simultaneously centers of religion, art, and science. Although the exoteric cultures of earlier times did not allow people to delve into the spiritual world by means of the spiritual scientific methods I have described, it was possible for certain individuals to be admitted into the mysteries as pupils or candidates for initiation. The art of the mysteries helped them to achieve what I have just been describing—namely, withdrawing from the physical body and developing a body-free soul life. And what came of it? The achieving of this body-free soul life enabled them to experience the spiritual world and the pivotal event in man's evolutionary history, the Christ Event.

Exoteric scholarship pays far too little attention to the role played by these pupils of the mysteries, although this is not for lack of available material on the subject.

Let me mention a symptomatic instance. St. Augustine said that there have been Christians not only since Christ's appearance on earth, but even before His coming. Anyone saying that today would be accused of heresy. A Church Father could say it, however, and that was indeed St. Augustine's opinion. Why did this Christian teacher state such a thing? We get a sense of why he said it when we see in reading Plato, for instance, how he prized the mysteries and how he speaks of their significance for the whole life and being of mankind. Some words of Plato that seem harsh have come down to us. He said that human souls live in muddy swamps after death if they have not been initiated into the holy mysteries. Plato spoke out of his conviction that the human soul is essentially of a spiritual nature, and that he who withdraws his soul from the physical body as a result of initiation can behold the spiritual world. A person who has not worked his way into the mysteries seems to Plato to be cut off from his true being. The crucial point is that in ancient times the mysteries were the only way to leave the world of the senses and gain entry into the world of the spirit. So it was that those who were recognized as schooled in the mysteries, men like Heraclitus and Plato, were called “Christians” by the Church Fathers because the mysteries had taught them to see the spiritual world.

That, however, is no longer the case. The relationship of the human soul to the spiritual world is tremendously different today than it was in pre-Christian times. What I have been describing tonight about what every soul can undertake for itself to succeed in entering the spiritual world has been possible only since the founding of Christianity. Since then, every soul who applies the methods set forth in the books mentioned above can ascend to the spiritual world through a process of self-education. In pre-Christian times the mysteries and the authoritative guidance of teachers were essential; there was no such thing as self-initiation then. And when spiritual science is asked what brought about this change, the reply based on its research must be that it was brought about by the Mystery of Golgotha. The founding of Christianity has introduced to mankind a reality that can only be researched spiritually. Christ Himself could be found previously in the realm of the spirit only by a person who had learned in the mysteries to withdraw from his body. He can be found since the Christ Event by every human soul willing to make the effort. What the mysteries once introduced to human souls dwells since the Mystery of Golgotha in every human soul, shared by all alike.

How is this to be understood?

Those who were recognized as schooled in the mysteries, men like Heraclitus and Plato, were called “Christians” by the Church Fathers because the mysteries had taught them to see into the spiritual world. Spiritual science shows that while Jesus was living in the way the Gospels tell of it, there came a moment in His life—the baptism in the Jordan—when Jesus was transformed. A Being not there before entered into Him and lived within Him for the next three years. The Being that thus entered Him went through the Mystery of Golgotha. This is not the time to go into detail concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, but spiritual science, from its fully scientific point of view, confirms what the Gospels relate. Through the Event on Golgotha the Being Who could previously be experienced only in spiritual heights united with earthly humanity. Since the time He passed through death on Golgotha, Christ lives in all human souls alike. He is the source of strength whereby every soul can find its way into the spiritual world. Human souls on earth have been transformed by the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ came, as He said, “from above,” but He has taken up His earthly abode in our human world.

Spiritual science is reproached for saying that Jesus was not always the Christ, but that Christ's life on earth began only when Jesus was thirty years old. Prejudiced humanity confronts spiritual science with one superficiality after another. The mere stating of the fact instantly invites prejudice. And the same holds true of almost everything that our opponents say regarding the position spiritual science takes on Christianity.

Don't we all agree that a child only begins to remember around his third year? Does this mean that what lives in him now was not already present before then? When we speak of Christ's entering into Jesus, are we thereby denying that Christ had been related to Jesus from birth on? We would not deny this any more than we would deny that the child has a soul before the soul becomes aware of itself during the third year of life. If we understood rightly what spiritual science had to say, we would not oppose it.

Anthroposophy is further reproached for making Christ a cosmic being; however, it only widens our earthly way of looking at things beyond merely terrestrial concerns into the far reaches of the universe. Thus our knowledge can embrace the universe spiritually, just as Copernicus, with his knowledge, embraced the external world. The need spiritual science feels to encompass what is most holy to it is simply due to a feeling that is religious and deeply scientific at the same time. Before Copernicus, people determined the movements of the stars on the basis of what they saw. Since Copernicus, they have learned to draw conclusions independent of their sensory perception. Is spiritual science to be blamed for doing the same with respect to the spiritual concerns of mankind? Up until now, people regarded Christianity and the life of Christ Jesus in the only way open to them. Spiritual science would like to widen their view to include cosmic spiritual reality as well. It adds what it has researched to what was known before about the Christ. It recognizes in Christ an eternal Being Who, unlike other human beings, entered once only into a physical body and is henceforth united with all human souls.

Those persons who make Christianity the basis for battling against spiritual science commit a peculiar error. Just inquire of spiritual science whether it opposes what it finds in Christianity! It affirms everything Christianity stands for and then adds something more to it. But to suppress what spiritual science has to add is not to insist on Christianity but rather to insist on a narrow view of it. In other words, it means to behave just like those who condemned Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno. It is easy to see the logical error at the root of this argument. People come along and say, “You talk of a cosmic Christ living in the far reaches of the universe; this makes you a Gnostic.” This is the same kind of error that we fall into if a person says to us, “I've just been given money by someone who owed me thirty crowns. But he gave me forty, because he was lending me ten in addition.” If we now insist that the man hasn't paid his debt because he returned forty crowns instead of thirty, we're talking nonsense, aren't we? If people reproach the spokesmen of spiritual science with the remark, “You are not only saying what we say about the Christ, but you add to it,” they don't notice what a monstrous mistake they've made; they are not speaking truly objectively, but out of strong emotion. Let people argue whether or not the findings of spiritual science about Christianity mean anything to them. That depends on what people think they need. Of course it would be possible for us to reject Copernicus, Galileo, or Giordano Bruno. But we cannot claim that spiritual science has less to offer on the subject of Christianity or that it is hostile to it.

And there's something else that must be added here when the relationship of spiritual science to Christianity is discussed. Mankind changes as each individual goes from life to life in succeeding epochs. Our souls incarnated in times before Christ united with the earth, and they will continue to be reborn into further earth-lives in which the Christ is joined with the earth. From now on, Christ lives in each human soul. If our souls acquire ever greater depth as they live through successive earth-lives, they become increasingly independent and inwardly ever more free. Therefore they need fresh means of understanding ancient wisdom and need to continue making progress out of this inner freedom. It must be stated that spiritual science confidently proclaims these ancient Christian truths in a new form because it has understood the depth, truth and significance of Christianity. Let those who insist on clinging to their prejudices believe that spiritual science undermines Christianity. Anyone familiar with modern culture will find that it is precisely those people who cannot be old-fashioned Christians who have been convinced of the truth of Christianity by spiritual science. For what it has to say about Christianity can be said by spiritual science to every human soul, since the Christ of Whom it speaks can be found by every human soul within itself. But spiritual science can also say that it sees Christ as the Being that once really entered into human souls and into the earth-world through the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. Faith has nothing to fear from knowledge, for the elements of faith, raised to the level of the spirit, need not shun the light of knowledge. Thus spiritual science will win those souls for Christianity who could not be won by speaking to them like a prophet or as a founder of a sect, but instead they need to be addressed by an unassuming scientist who draws their attention to what can be found in the field of spiritual science and who sets the strings in every human soul vibrating in harmony.

Anyone can become a researcher in the field of the spirit; you can find the ways described in the books mentioned earlier. But it is also true that a person who is not a researcher in this field can be permeated by the truth if he lets it work upon him without bias. Otherwise, he won't be able to free himself from prejudices. All truth resides in the human soul. Not everybody may be able to achieve the seer's view of spiritual truth, but the more our thinking is freed from sensory realms, the more fully it can follow the spiritual scientist as he draws our attention to his findings along spiritual paths. He only wants to make us aware that there are truths that can spring to life in every soul because they are already dormant in it.

Before closing I'd like to point out how spiritual science fits into our cultural life today. Spiritual science is in full agreement with the natural scientific way of seeing and thinking about things. It wants to present itself to culture in the same way that the loyal canon Copernicus and Galileo and Giordano Bruno presented themselves in their times.

Let's think for a moment of Giordano Bruno—what did he really do? Before he appeared on the scene and spoke words so significant for human evolution, people gazed into the skies and talked of the heavenly spheres in the way they thought they saw them. They spoke of the blue vault of the heavens as the boundary of the universe. Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno had the courage to break through sensory appearances and to establish a new way of thinking. What was Giordano Bruno actually saying to his listeners? He said, “Look at the firmament, the blue vault of the heavens. The limitations of your knowledge have created it. That is as far as your eyes see; it is your eyes that create this boundary.” Giordano Bruno extended their view beyond these limits. He felt it permissible to point out that everlasting starry worlds were embedded in the vastnesses of space.

What is the task of the spiritual researcher? Let me try to express it in terms of recent spiritual evolution. The researcher must point to a sort of “firmament of time,” to birth and death as the boundaries of human life. He maintains that the exoteric viewpoint sees birth and death as a “firmament of time” because of the limitations of human understanding and perceptive capacity. Like Giordano Bruno, the spiritual researcher must point out that this “time firmament” doesn't really exist, but that people think it does simply because of their limited way of seeing. Giordano Bruno pointed beyond the supposed limits of space to endless worlds embedded in its vast expanses. The spiritual scientist must similarly explain that behind the supposed boundaries of birth and death there stretches never-ending time, in which the eternity of the human soul, the eternal being of man as it passes from life to life, is embedded. Spiritual science is in complete harmony with the impulses that brought about these changes in natural science.

May I be allowed to draw attention once again to the fact that spiritual science has no desire to found a religion of any kind; rather does it want to set a more religious mood of soul-life and to lead us to the Christ as the Being at the center of religious life. It brings about a deepened religious awareness. Anyone who fears that spiritual science could destroy his religious awareness resembles a person—if I may use this analogy—who might have approached Columbus before he set sail for America and asked, “What do you want to discover America for? The sun comes up so beautifully here in our good old Europe. How do we know if the sun also rises in America, warming people and shining on the earth?” Anyone familiar with the laws of physical reality would have known that the sun shines on all continents. But anyone fearing for Christianity is like the person described as fearing the discovery of a new continent because he thinks the sun might not shine there. He who truly bears the Christ-Sun in his soul knows that the Christ-Sun shines on every continent. And regardless of what may still be discovered, either in realms of nature or in realms of spirit, the “America of the spirit” will never be discovered unless truly religious life turns with a sense of belonging toward the Christ-Sun as the center of our existence on the earth, unless that Sun shines—warming, illumining, and enkindling our human souls. Only a person whose religious feeling is weak would fear that it could die or waste away because of some new discovery. But a person strong in his genuine feeling for the Christ will not be afraid that knowledge might undermine his faith.

Spiritual science lives in this conviction. It speaks out of this conviction to contemporary culture. It knows that truly religious thinking and feeling cannot be endangered by research of any kind, but that only weak religious sentiment has anything to fear. Spiritual science knows that we can trust our sense for truth. Through the shattering events in his soul life which he has experienced objectively, the spiritual researcher knows what lives in the depths of the human soul. Through his investigations he has come to have confidence in the human soul and has seen that it is most intimately related to the truth. As a result, he believes—signs of the times to the contrary—in the ultimate victory of spiritual science. And he counts on the truth-loving and genuinely religious life of the human soul to bring about this victory.

My dear sisters and brothers, it would be good if everyone who participates in an esoteric class were completely aware of the importance of the same. We're supposed to step out of everyday life consciously; it must seem to us as if the veil that separates us from the spiritual world is completely pulled away so that we can place ourselves in it. In a proper meditation we should become body-free, leave everything that's connected with corporeal things, extinguish all interests in corporeal life and only be devoted to the object of our meditation. We should step out of our body and leave it behind completely, as in sleep, except that in meditation it happens consciously. One thing we do take with us, and that's the effect of lungs and heart, the breath of life that Jahve Elohim once blew into earth man. While we're entirely devoted to our meditation we'll have the feeling that our brain is only an etheric brain. When a man thinks it has nothing to do with his brain. When he feels it has nothing to do with the heart organ. Just as when a carriage leaves deep ruts in a dirt road this has nothing to do with the wheels as such but is dependent on the road's consistency, so one can't judge organs by what one sees, as physiologists and anatomists do. It's not the organs that think and feel, it's the spiritual beings and forces that work into them. Just as letters are only characters for a word's content, so organs are only signs through which higher beings express themselves in men.

Our cerebellum is a remnant of the Moon stage of evolution; it sits there as a sign of the battles that the Gods fought for us. The cerebellum arose from what was thought on old Moon. There were no errors in our thoughts then, for divine powers thought for us and guided our thoughts. Man had no freedom yet; divine beings directed him. Now that he's become independent he must be responsible for what he thinks. There are also remnants of old Moon in the cerebrum's pineal and pituitary glands; on old Moon they were what the lung and heart are in man today. And what a man does now will form his cerebrum on Jupiter. What he thinks in connection with his cerebrum now will form his cerebellum on Jupiter. A man must bear the consequences of his thinking now that he's become free, and the cerebellum sits in the back of his head like a judge, for it will take the effects of everything that he thought on earth over to Jupiter. And so I ask you: Do we still need a Judgement? Isn't this judgement much more gripping and powerful than the one Michelangelo could portray in his Last Judgement? Just estimate the tragedy that lies in the fact that a man now has to bear the consequences of his deeds, feeling and thinking himself.

But we have a consolation, a support in the fact that Christ has entered earth evolution: if we entrust ourselves to him he will bear our deeds, feelings and thoughts over to Jupiter. That's why it's so important that spiritual science should enter our age, so that an understanding for the true Christ can become alive again.

In her Secret Doctrine Blavatsky speaks of Jahve as a moon God, but because she mixed in her own feelings there are errors in there, and much of the bad karma that burdens the Theosophical Society arose from this. And since Jahve was understood so little it's not surprising that one understands the Christ being so little now. To correct this Lucifer and Ahriman had to be spoken of right at the beginning of our Movement, for one can only get a right estimation of Jahve through a knowledge of their nature and activities. One only leads men into spiritual worlds properly if one leads them past Lucifer and Ahriman so that they get to the Christ there. If one doesn't place Christ at the centre of esoteric life one leads them to Lucifer. But one doesn't like to call these things by the right name, one deceives oneself about their true nature. What one calls scientific in certain circles is really ahrimanic. For instance, a Theosophist said that Occult Science is psychic-mystical, whereas the writings of Besant and Leadbeater are occult and scientific. But they're ahrimanic, and what he calls psychic and mystical should be called Christian. For Occult Science and our whole work was inspired by the Christ being himself. We should always keep this in mind, my dear sisters and brothers.

We came over from the Moon where we were still in the lap of the Gods: Ex Deo nascimur. We unite ourselves with Christ on earth and die into him: In ... morimur. Then the Holy Spirit will lead us over to the reincarnation of the earth—Jupiter: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Introductory words in memory of Mrs. Danielson, who died a few months earlier. In a soul's bright moments in the spiritual world it feels united with those who were striving towards the same thing that it was, and the streams of love that are sent to it from here create these luminous moments for it. She's active in the interests of theosophical matters as an angel who makes a connection between theosophists in the north and those in central Europe.

Thursday prayer. About individuality and shame. About the conclusions we should draw from this. We should look upon all of this as something that concerns our own personality. Descriptions of our own being. About the feeling of one's inner being; as if a flask with water were heated from an inner point, and one felt this warmth of the water as if one were the feeling water oneself. How this warmth must then permeate is used as a means of support for esoteric training, and so is abstinence from alcohol and meat. One's spiritual being becomes ever greater and expands out into the cosmos. About the feelings of devotion and reverence. Two forces: angels demons Christ. How esoteric development proceeds. About visions. Indications that it's going correctly; fear, unsteadiness, the ground being pulled out from under one's feet. A feeling of shame, but not of egoism should arise thereby. The counter-forces that a pupil must oppose this with.

One who does the exercises correctly will sooner or later notice the appearance of certain effects. One can tell whether the effects are right or wrong by certain accessory phenomena. If these particular side-phenomena appear, then it's a correct development even if no visions, pictures, colors or light-effects appear. Whether the accessory phenomena can appear is up to one's karma. The teacher can point to the path but he can't remove hindrances.

A human soul's wish for visions and phenomena is often a hindrance to all progress. And if men have them, it's also a mistake to be satisfied with them and to not want to strive further.

First one feels that something becomes alive within one. This feeling is as if we were in water in a vessel with a source of warmth at its center that streams through the water. We must then feel this warmth with our whole being.

LET me begin by extending to you my heartiest greeting. Friends in Norrköping have expressed the wish that on this occasion I should speak upon a theme concerning that Being Who, in the realm of Spiritual Science, is above all else near to us-the Christ Being. I have endeavored to comply with this wish by undertaking to speak about the coming to life, and the meaning, of the Christ Being in the human soul. We shall thereby have the opportunity of speaking of the most human and intimate significance of Christianity from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

Let us consider the human soul. Speaking from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we have a short word which, although it does not embrace all that is included in the expression ‘human soul,’ indicates that which for us earth-men fills and permeates the soul element to its furthest limits-the word ‘I.’ In so far as we are earth-men, our Ego being reaches as far as does our soul nature. By the name of the ‘I,’ or Ego being, we are reminded of one of the four most immediate principles of man. We speak, in the first instance, of four members or principles of the human being-the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. And we need only recall one thing in order to have the starting point for what we shall be considering in these lectures. It is only necessary to be reminded of the fact that we do not regard the laws and the living essence of the physical body of man as being capable of explanation by anything presented by our earthly environment. We know that when we want to understand the physical human body we must go back to the three preceding embodiments of our earth-the Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon periods. In a remote, primordial past, during Old Saturn, the germ of the physical body was already laid. During the Old Sun the foundation of the etheric body was laid; and during the Old Moon that of the astral body. In reality our Earth evolution in all its phases and in all its epochs is none other than that which gives to the Ego the possibility of the fulfillment of its whole being. It may be said that just as at the end of the Old Saturn period the physical body had reached a significant stage of its evolution, at the end of the Old Sun the etheric body had reached a significant stage of its evolution, the astral body at the end of the Old Moon, so at the end of the Earth period our Ego will have reached a significant point of its evolution. We know that our Ego develops through three soul members or principles, through the sentient soul, the intellectual or rational soul, and the conscious or spirit-soul. All the worlds that come within the range of these three soul members are also concerned with our Ego. In the course of our Earth evolution these three soul members first prepared for themselves the three external bodily members-the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body-through long Earth periods. In successive Post-Atlantean epochs of civilization the three soul principles developed further, and in future Earth periods they will again adapt themselves to the astral, etheric and physical bodies, so that the Earth can be prepared to pass over to the Jupiter evolution. If we take the expression comprehensively enough we might also speak of man's Earth evolution as his soul evolution. It may be said that when the Earth began, the soul element also began, in conformity with law, to bestir itself in man. At first it began to work on the external sheaths, then it developed its own being, and from then onwards begins again to work on the external sheaths in order that preparation may be made for the Jupiter evolution. We must keep before our mind's eye what man is meant to become in his soul during the Earth evolution. He is to become what may be designated by the expression ‘personality.’ This personality needs in the first place what may be called ‘the free-will.’ But it needs also, on the other side, the possibility of finding within itself the way to the Divine in the world. On the one side free-will, the possibility of choosing between the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false; and on the other side, the laying hold of the Divine so that the Divine penetrates into the soul and we know ourselves to be inwardly filled with it. Such are the two goals of man's soul evolution on the Earth. This human soul evolution on the Earth has received two religious gifts for the purposes of the attainment of these two goals. The one religious gift is destined to lay down in the human soul those forces which lead to freedom, to the capacity for differentiation between the true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad. And on the other side another religious gift had to be given to man during his Earth evolution, in order that there might be laid in his soul that seed through which the soul can feel united to the Divine within itself. (‘Atoned’ is the rendering suggested by a translator.)

The first religious gift is that which we meet in the beginning of the Old Testament as the mighty picture of the Temptation and the Fall.

The second religious gift comes to us from all that ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’ signifies.

The Temptation and the Fall have to do with what planted freedom in man, the gift of being able to distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false. The Mystery of Golgotha points to the possibility of man's soul finding once again the path to the Divine, of knowing that the Divine can flash up within it and penetrate it. These religious gifts include everything that is most important in the Earth evolution—everything proceeding from the Earth evolution that the soul can experience in its uttermost depths, that is associated most profoundly with the being and the development of the human soul. How far is there a connection between existence and development of the inner experience of the human soul?

I do not want to put these matters before you in an abstract way. I want to start from a perfectly concrete element, from a certain scene in the Mystery of Golgotha as it stands before our eyes in historical tradition and has impressed itself-and should indeed have impressed itself still more—in the hearts and souls of men. Let us assume that we have in Christ Jesus, that Being of Whom we have again and again spoken in the course of our lectures on Spiritual Science. Let us assume that in Christ Jesus we have before our spiritual eyes That Which must be manifest to us men as bearing the greatest importance for the whole universe. And then let us place in contrast to this feeling the outcry, the fury, of the enraged multitudes of Jerusalem at the time of the condemnation before the crucifixion. Let us place before our minds the fact that the High Court of Jerusalem for its own sake held it above all things necessary to question Christ Jesus as to His relationship with the Divine, as to whether He claimed to be the Son of God.

Let us recall to our spiritual eyes the fact that the High Court held such a claim to be the greatest blasphemy that Christ Jesus could have uttered. An historical scene is there before us—a scene wherein the people cry out and clamor for the death of Christ Jesus. And now let us try to picture to ourselves what this shouting and rage of the people signified historically. Let us ask: ‘What ought these people to have recognized in the Christ Jesus?’ They ought to have recognized that Being Who gives meaning and significance to earth life. They ought to have recognized that Being Who had to accomplish the deed without which earth humanity cannot find the way back to the Divine. They ought to have understood that humanity has no significance apart from this Being. Men would have to strike out from the evolution of the earth the word ‘man’ if they wished to strike out the Christ event. Now let us set before our minds that this multitude condemned and were enraged against the Being Who actually makes man upon this earth, and Who is destined to give to the earth its goal and purpose. What lies in this? Surely this, that in those who in Jerusalem at that time were the representatives of human knowledge concerning the true being of man, the knowledge of man was obscured. They had no knowledge of what man is, what his mission on the earth is to be. We are told nothing less than that humanity had reached a point where it had lost itself, where it had condemned That Which gives to the earth evolution its purpose and significance. And out of the cries of the enraged multitude could be heard, not the words of wisdom, but of folly: ‘We do not wish to be men, rather do we wish to cast away from us that which gives us any further meaning as men.’

When we reflect on all this, the relation of man to sin and guilt, in the sense of Pauline Christianity, assumes a different aspect. Man, in the course of his evolution was able to fall into sin which he could not of himself wash away; that is what St. Paul says. And in order for it to be possible for man to be cleansed of sin and debt, Christ had to come to the Earth. That is St. Paul's view. If this view requires any evidence, it is there in the fury and the clamoring of those who cried ‘Crucify Him!’ For this cry implies that the people did not know what they themselves were to be on the Earth; they did not know that it was the aim of their earlier evolution to veil their being with darkness. Here we come to what may be spoken of as the attitude of preparation of the human soul for the Christ Being. This attitude of preparation may be described as follows: Through what it is able to experience within itself, the soul feels, even though it may not be able to express it in words: ‘Since the very beginning of the Earth I have developed in such a way that through what I possess in my own being I cannot fulfill the aim of my evolution. Where is there anything to which I can cling, which I can take into myself and with it reach my goal in evolution?’ To feel as if the human being extends far beyond anything that the soul can achieve through its own strength won during its evolution on the Earth hitherto—such is the Christian attitude or mood of preparation. And when the soul finds that which it must recognize as essentially bound up with its being—but for the attainment of which it could not find the power within itself—when the soul finds that which bestows this power—it finds Christ. The soul then develops. its connection with the Christ, saying to itself: ‘At the very beginning of the Earth a living nature was predestined for me: during the course of Earth evolution darkness has descended over this living nature and when I now look into this darkness I lack the power whereby I may bring it to fulfillment, but I turn my spiritual gaze upon the Christ Who gives me the power.’ The human soul feels the approach of Christ and stands as if in a direct personal relationship to Him. The soul seeks Christ and knows that it cannot find Him if He does not give Himself to humanity through human evolution, if He does not approach from the beyond.

There is a fairly well-known Christian Church Father who was not afraid to speak of the Greek philosophers, Herakleitos, Socrates and Plato, as Christians who lived before the founding of Christianity. Why does he do this? St. Augustine himself said: ‘All religions have contained something of the Truth, and the element of Truth in all religions is what is Christian in them, before there was Christianity in name.’ St. Augustine dares to say that. Nowadays many a man would be regarded as a heretic if he were to say a similar thing within certain Christian bodies.

We most readily arrive at an understanding of what this Church Father wished to convey when he called the old Greek philosophers Christians, by endeavoring to transport ourselves into the feeling of those souls who in the first post Christian centuries tried to determine their personal relationship to the Christ. These souls did not think of Christ as having had no relation to the Earth evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ has always had something to do with the evolution of the Earth. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, however, His task, His mission in the Earth evolution, was changed from what it was before. It is not Christian to seek Christ in the evolution of the Earth only since the Mystery of Golgotha. True Christians know that Christ had always been connected with the evolution of the Earth.

Let us now turn to the Jewish people. Did the Jews know Christ? I am not speaking of whether the Jewish people knew the name of Christ or whether those who really understand Christianity are justified in saying: ‘Judaism had Christ: Judaism knew Christ.’ It is possible to have some person or other near one, and to see his external form without recognizing his essential being, or being able to place a right value upon him, because one has not risen to real knowledge of him. In the true Christian sense ancient Judaism had Christ, only it did not recognize Him in His true Being. Is it Christian to speak in this way? It is Christian in as true a sense as it is Pauline. Where was Christ for ancient Judaism? It is said in the Old Testament that when Moses led the Jews into the wilderness, a Pillar of Cloud went before them by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. It is said that the Jews passed through the sea, that the sea parted in order that they might pass through; but that behind them the Egyptians were drowned, for the sea closed in on them. It is also said that the Jews murmured, but that at the command of God, Moses was able to go to a rock and to strike it with his staff so that water poured forth for the Jews to drink. Moses led the Jews, he himself being led by God. Who was the God of Moses? We will in the first instance allow Paul to answer. We read in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (x. 1-4): ‘Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud (he means the pillar of fire) and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.’ Thus according to Paul, Who was it who led the Jews and who spoke with Moses? Who was it who had allowed water to flow out of the rock and who turned away the sea from the path of the Jews? Only those who wished to declare that Paul was no Christian would dare pronounce it unchristian to see Christ in the guiding God of the Old Testament, in the Lord of Moses.

In the Old Testament there is a passage which must, I think, present great difficulties for all who reflect more deeply. It is a passage to which anyone who does not read the Old Testament thoughtlessly, but who wants to understand its connections, will return again and again. ‘What may this passage mean?’ he asks himself. The passage is as follows: ‘Then Moses raised his hand, and struck the Rock with the staff twice; thereupon much water came forth, and the congregation drank, and their cattle. But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: Because ye have not believed in Me to sanctify Me before the children of Israel, ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I will give unto them.’ Take this passage in its context in the Old Testament: When the people murmured, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with a staff: Moses struck with his staff on the rock, and water flowed out; everything that the Lord commanded took place through Moses and Aaron, and directly after this, we are told that the Lord reproved Moses—if it is a reproof—for not having believed in Him. What does it mean? Take all the commentaries on this passage, and try to understand the passage by means of what has been written in them. One understands it as one understands a great deal in the Bible—that is to say, really not at all, for behind this passage a mighty mystery is hidden. What is hidden in this passage is this: He Who led Moses, Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, He Who led the people through the Wilderness and caused water to flow out of the Rock, He was the Lord Christ! But the time was not yet come; Moses himself did not recognize Him; Moses thought He was another. That is what is meant by Moses not having believed in Him Who had commanded him to strike the Rock with his staff.

How did the Lord Christ appear to the Jewish People? We are told that by day it was in a Pillar of Cloud, and by night it was in a Pillar of Fire—and by His dividing the waters for their safety ... and many other things which we can read in the Old Testament. In phenomena of cloud and fire He appeared and was active, but never did it occur to the ancient Jews: That Which appeared in the Pillar of Cloud and in the Pillar of Fire, That Which worked wonders such as the parting of the waters, appears in its purest original form in the human soul. Why did this never occur to the ancient Jews? Because, owing to the course taken by human evolution, the soul of man had lost the power to feel its deepest being within itself. Thus the Jewish soul could look into Nature, it could allow the glory of the phenomena of the elements to work upon it; everywhere it could divine the existence of its God and Lord; but directly, within itself as it was, it could not find Him.

There in the Old Testament we have the Christ. There He worked, but men did not recognize Him. How did the Christ work? Do we not see how He worked, when we read through the Old Testament? The most significant thing Moses had to impart to his people through the mouth of Jehovah was the Ten Commandments. He had received them out of the power of the elements from which Jehovah spoke to him. Moses did not descend into the depths of his own soul; he did not ask in lonely meditation: ‘How does God speak in my own heart?’ He went up into the mountain, and through the power of the elements the Divine Will revealed itself to him. Volition, or Will, is the fundamental character of the Old Testament—this fundamental character is often called that of Law. Will works through the evolution of man, and is expressed in the Decalogue, in the Ten Commandments. The God proclaimed His Will to man through the elements. Will holds sway in the Earth evolution. That is, really, the purport of the Old Testament, and the Old Testament, in accordance with its whole purport, calls for man's subjection to this Will.

If we hold before our souls what we have just been considering, we can express the result in the words: The Will of the Lord was given to men; but men did not know the Lord: they knew not the Divine in such a way as to connect it with their own human soul.

Now let us turn from the Jews to the heathen. The heathen, had they Christ? Is it Christian to say of the heathen that they also had Christ? The heathen had their Mysteries. Those initiated in the Mysteries were brought to the point where their soul passed out of their bodies; the tie connecting body and soul was loosened; and when the soul was outside the body, the soul perceived the mysteries of being in the spiritual world. Much was connected with these Mysteries; much varied knowledge came to the candidates for initiation in the Mysteries. But when we investigate what was the highest that the disciple of the Mysteries could receive into himself, we find that it consisted in the fact that outside his body he was placed before the Christ. As Moses was placed before Christ, so, in the Mysteries was the disciple placed with his soul, outside his body, before Christ. Christ was there for the heathen also, but for them He was there only in the Mysteries. He revealed Himself to them only when the soul was out of the body. Christ was there for the heathen, even if among the heathen there was as little recognition of this Being as Christ, as there was among the Jews of that Being of Whom we have just spoken and before Whom the Mystery-Disciples were placed. The Mysteries were instituted for the heathen. Those who were fit and ready were admitted into the Mysteries. Through these Mysteries Christ worked upon the heathen world. Why did He work thus? Because the soul of man, in its development since the beginning of the earth, had lost its inherent power to find its true being through itself. This true being had to reveal itself to the soul of man when unhampered by the ties of human nature, that is to say when it was not bound up with the body. Hence Christ had to lead men through their being divested of their human nature in the Mysteries. Christ was there for the heathen too I He was their Leader in the Mysteries. For never could man have said: ‘When I develop my own powers, then I can find the meaning and purport of the earth.’ This meaning was lost, obscured in darkness. The forces of the human soul had been pressed down into regions too deep for the soul of itself, through its own powers, to have been able to realize the meaning of the earth.

When we allow that, which was given in the heathen Mysteries to the disciples and candidates for initiation, to work upon us, it is Wisdom. To the Jews was given WILL, through the Laws; to the disciples of the heathen Mysteries was given WISDOM. But if we look at what characterizes this heathen Wisdom, may we not express it in the words: If he did not go out of his body when he was a pupil of the Mysteries, the Earth-man could not recognize his God as such. As little through Wisdom as through Will could the Divinity reveal Himself to man. We find words that sound most wonderfully through Greek Antiquity, like a mighty demand upon humanity. At the entrance to the abode of the Mysteries of Apollo stood the words, ‘Man, know thyself!’ What are we told by the fact that these words, ‘Man, know thyself,’ stood before the abode of the Mysteries, like a demand upon man? We are told that when man remains what he has become since the beginning of the Earth, nowhere outside can he fulfill the commandment ‘Know thyself.’ He must become something more than man; he must loosen in the Mysteries the ties which bind the soul to the body, if he is to know himself. These words, standing like a mighty demand before the abode of the Mysteries of Apollo, point to the fact that darkness had fallen upon humanity—in other words that God could be reached through Wisdom as little as He could directly reveal Himself as Will.

In the same sense as the individual human soul feels that it cannot bring forth within itself the forces which impart to it the purport of the Earth, so we see the human soul at such a stage of development among the Jews that even Moses himself, their leader, did not recognize Who was leading him. Among the heathen we see that the demand ‘Know thyself’ could be fulfilled only in the Mysteries, because man, as he had developed in the course of the evolution of the Earth, was unable with his connection of body and soul to unfold the power whereby he could know himself. The words, ‘Not through Will and not through Wisdom is God to be known,’ sound to us from those ages. Through what, then, was God to be known?

We have often characterized the essential nature of the point of time when Christ entered into the evolution of earth-humanity. Let us now consider exactly what it meant when it is said that a certain darkness of the soul of man had set in, that the Divine could be revealed neither through Will nor through Wisdom. What is the real meaning of this?

People speak of so many relationships between the human and the Divine. They often speak of the relationship between the human and the Divine and of the meaning which the human has within the Divine, in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between the relation of the human to the Divine, or of any other earthly thing to the Divine. To-day we find again and again that philosophers want to rise to the Divine through pure philosophy. But, through pure philosophy one cannot rise to the Divine. Certainly by means of it man does come to feel that he is bound up with the universe, and to know that the human being must, in some way or other, be bound up with the universe at Death; but how and in what manner he is thus connected with the universe man cannot know through pure philosophy. Why not? If you take the whole meaning of what we have considered to-day, you will be able to say to yourselves:

That which is first revealed to the soul of the Earth-man between birth and death is too weak to perceive anything that transcends the earthly that leads to the Divine-Spiritual. In order to make this quite clear to ourselves let us investigate the meaning of immortality.

In our day, many people have no longer any knowledge of the real meaning of human immortality. Many to-day speak of immortality when they can merely admit that the being of the human soul passes through the gates of death, and then finds some place or other in the Universal All. But every creature does that; what is united into the crystal passes over into the Universal All when the crystal is dissolved; the plant that fades passes into the Universal All. For man the thing is different. Immortality has only a meaning for man when he can carry his consciousness through the gates of death. Picture to yourselves an immortal human soul which was unconscious after death; such immortality would have absolutely no meaning at all. The human soul must carry its consciousness through the gates of death if it is to speak of its immortality. Because of the way in which the soul is united to the body, it cannot find anything in itself of which it can say, ‘I carry that consciously through death,’ for the consciousness of man is enclosed between birth and death; it reaches only as far as death; at first the consciousness possessed by the human soul extends only as far as death. Into this consciousness there shines the Divine Will, for example in the Ten Commandments. Read in the Book of Job as to whether this illumination could stimulate man's consciousness to such strength that it might say to itself: ‘I pass as a conscious being through the gates of death.’ What an intense interest there is for us in these words spoken to Job: ‘Submit thyself to God and die!’ We know that the man was uncertain as to whether he would pass through the gates of death with consciousness. And let us set beside this the Greek saying which gives expression to the dread felt by the Greek in the face of death: ‘Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shades.’ Here we have the testimony from heathenism also to the uncertainty felt by man concerning his immortality. And how uncertain many people are even to-day. All those people who say that man, when he goes through the gates of death, passes into the Universal All and is united with some Universal Being or other, take no heed of what the soul must ascribe to itself if it is to speak of its immortality.

We need only pronounce one word, and we shall recognize the position that man must take up with regard to his immortality—this is the word Love. All that we have said concerning the word Immortality we can now connect with what Love designates. Love is nothing we appropriate to ourselves through the Will; Love is nothing that we appropriate to ourselves through Wisdom; Love dwells in the region of the feelings, and we know that we could not be the ideal human soul, if that human soul could not be filled with love. When we penetrate into the nature of the soul, we realize that our human soul would no longer be a human soul if it could not love. But now, let us suppose that we were to pass through the gates of death in such a way that our human individuality was lost, and that we were to be united with some Universal Divinity. We should then be within this Divinity; we should belong to It. We could no longer love the Godhead; we should be in Him. Love would have no meaning if we were in the Godhead. If we could not carry our individuality through death, we should in death have to lose love, for in the moment that individuality ceased, love would cease. One being can only love another that is separate from itself; if we carry our Love of God through death, we must carry with us through death that which kindles Love within us.

If the meaning of the earth is to be brought to man, information concerning his immortality must be given him in such a way that his nature may be thought of as inseparable from Love. Neither Will nor Wisdom can give to man what he needs; only Love can give man what he needs. What was it then that became darkened in the course of man's evolutionary path over the Earth? Let us take the Jews, or the Heathen: the consciousness beyond death had become obscure, dark. Between birth and death-consciousness; beyond death and beyond birth—darkness; nothing remained of the consciousness within the earth-body—‘Know thyself’—at the entrance of the Greek Mysteries, the most holy demand of the Greek sanctuary upon mankind. Man could only answer: ‘If I remain bound to my body with my soul as when an earth-man, I cannot recognize myself in that individuality which can love beyond death. I cannot do it.’ The knowledge that man can love as individuality beyond death—that was what had become lost for man. Death is not the cessation of the physical body. Only a materialist can say that. Suppose that in every hour that he lived in his body, man's consciousness were such that he knew as certainly what lies beyond death as he knows to-day that the sun will rise on the morrow and take its journey across the heavens. Then death would have no sting for him, death would not be that which we call death; man would know in the body that death is only a phenomenon leading from one form to another. Paul did not understand by ‘death’ the cessation of the physical body; by ‘death’ he understood the fact that consciousness only extends as far as death, and that man, in so far as he was united with the body in the existence of that period, could, within his body, extend his consciousness only as far as death. Wherever Paul speaks of death we might add: ‘Lack of consciousness beyond death.’

What gave to man the Mystery of Golgotha? Is it a number of natural phenomena, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire that stands before humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha? No! A man stands before men—Christ Jesus. With the Mystery of Golgotha did anything out of mysterious nature take place—did a sea divide so that the people of God could go through? No! A man stood before men, Who made the lame to walk and the blind to see. That proceeded from a man.

The Jew had had to look into Nature when he wanted to see Him Whom he called his Divine Lord. Now it was a man Who could be seen. Of a man it could be said that He had God dwelling in Him. The heathen had to be initiated; his soul had to be withdrawn from his body in order that he might stand before the Humanity which is the Christ. On the earth he had been unable to divine the Christ; he could only know that the Christ was outside the earth. But He Who had been outside the earth came upon the earth, took on a human body. In Christ Jesus there stood as man before men That Being Who formerly had stood in the Mysteries before the soul that was liberated from the body. And what came to pass through this? In this the beginning was made, whereby the powers that man had lost since the beginning of the Earth in the course of the earth-evolution—the powers through which his immortality was assured to him—were to come again to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the overcoming of Death on Golgotha the forces originated which could rekindle the powers which had been lost. And the path of man through the earth-evolution will henceforth be that by taking the Christ more and more into himself he will discover that within himself which can love beyond death—that is to say, he can stand before his God as an immortal individuality. Therefore only since the Mystery of Golgotha, has the saying become true: ‘Love God above all, and thy neighbor as thyself.’

Will was given from the burning thorn bush; Will was given through the Ten Commandments. Wisdom was given through the Mysteries. But Love was given when God became man in Christ Jesus. And the guarantee that we can love beyond death, that by means of the powers won back for our souls a Society of Love exists between God and man, and love of all men for one another—the guarantee for that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul has found what man had lost from the primal beginnings of the earth, in that his forces had become ever weaker and weaker.

Three forces in three members of the soul: Will, Wisdom, Love I In this Love the soul experiences its relation to Christ.

I wanted to bring these things before you from a certain angle. What may have seemed aphoristic in the explanations given to-day will find its context later on. But I think we can inscribe deeply within our souls, that progress in the knowledge of Christ is a real gain for the human soul, and that when we consider the relationship of the human soul to Christ, it again becomes clear to us how before the Mystery of Golgotha there was a sheath, as it were, between the human soul and Christ; how this sheath was broken by the Mystery of Golgotha, and how we can say with truth: ‘Through the Mystery of Golgotha a Cosmic Being flowed into the Earth-life, a Super-earthly Being united Himself with the Earth.’

As to what the human soul can experience in itself with its Christ, we shall speak of together during the next few days. We shall speak in the following lectures of all that the human soul, with Christ, can experience within itself.

As we live through the day and realize all that we owe to the sun, and to what extent the tasks of life are connected with the sunlight, we forget that through the whole pleasure and satisfaction we derive from the sunlight, there runs the thread of sure knowledge that, on the following morning, after we have rested through the night, the sun will rise anew for us. This is a part of the confidence that lives in our soul—confidence in the lasting reality of the world order. We may not always consciously realize it, but if asked, we should certainly answer in this sense. We devote ourselves to-day to our work because we know that the fruit of our work is assured for tomorrow, that after the night's rest the sun will reappear, and the fruits of our labor can ripen. We turn our gaze upon the earth's covering of plants; this year we revere and admire all its display; we know that the world order ordains that the same covering of plants and fruits for next year will proceed from the seed of this year. If asked again why we live on with such a sense of security, we should in similar circumstances give the answer that the reality of the world order seems to us assured; it seems to us a matter of certainty that what has matured as far as seed in the old crops will in reality reappear.

But there is something of special significance for our inner soul-life, there is something in life which requires a pledge or guarantee of some kind, because, for those who truly think and feel, it does not bear that guarantee of certainty within itself—‘our ideals’—and so much is contained in the expression, ‘our ideals.’ When we think and feel in a higher sense, our ideals belong to those things that are more important to our souls than is external reality. It is our ideals which set our souls inwardly aflame, and in many connections impart to its life its value and dearness. When we look into external life, and at what assures for us the reality of life, we are often troubled by the thought: does this reality contain something that assures to us just the most precious thing in life—the realization of our ideals?

Innumerable conflicts of the human soul proceed from the fact that people doubt more or less strongly in the realization of that upon which they would fain rely with every fiber of their being; that is to say, the realization of their ideals. We need only consider the world of the physical plane in an unprejudiced way and we shall find innumerable human souls passing through the hardest, bitterest struggles owing to the non-attainment of what they hold to be of value in the ideal sense. For from the evolution of reality we cannot in the same sense conclude that our ideals in life will prove to be the seed of a future reality in the same way as the plant seeds of this year foretell the coming harvest. These plant-seeds, we know, will bear within them that which next year will be reality in the widest sense. But if we consider our ideals, we may indeed cherish in our souls the belief that these ideals will have some significance, some value for life; but certainty we cannot have. As human beings we should like our ideals to be the seeds for a later future, but we look in vain for that which can give them assured reality. Even when we consider the physical plane, we find our souls with their ideals, frequently in a parlous condition.

Let us pass from the world of the physical plane into the world of the occult, into the world of hidden spirituality. A man who has become a spiritual seer learns to know souls in the period through which they have to pass between death and a new birth, and it is very significant when one turns the spiritual gaze upon those souls who in their earthly life, were wholly filled with high ideals, with ideals brought forth out of the fire and the light of their hearts.

A man has passed through the gate of death, and has before him the well-known life-tableau, the memory-picture of his past earth life, and interwoven with it is the world of ideals. This world of ideals can come before a man after death in such a way that his feelings concerning it may be expressed as follows: ‘these ideals which have fired and illumined my heart in its innermost recesses, and which I have considered the dearest, the most intimate treasure of my heart, now assume a strange unfamiliar aspect. They look as though they would not rightly belong to all that I remember as actual earth-experience on the physical plane.’ Yet the dead man feels himself magnetically attracted to these ideals of his; he feels, as it were, fascinated by them. But they may also contain an element that gives him a mild shock; he feels that this element may be dangerous, that it may alienate him from the earth-evolution, and what is connected with the Earth-evolution in the life between death and a new birth. In order to express myself quite clearly, I should like to connect what I have said with concrete experiences, with which some of those sitting here are already familiar, but which must this evening be illumined from a certain side so that they may be brought into connection with what I have said in reference to the nature of human ideals.

Of recent years, a man of poetic nature joined us [Christian Morgenstern.]. As the result of a life of dedication to the purest idealism, and a life that had already in pre-anthroposophical days passed through a mystical deepening, this man entered our Movement. Despite the fact that his soul dwelt in a body that was a prey to consumption, he dedicated himself, heart and soul, to our Movement. In the spring of this year we lost him from the earth-life; he passed through the gate of death. He has left to mankind a series of wonderful poems, which have been recently published. Owing to the difficulties of his external physical life, he was in a certain sense, for long periods separated in space from our Movement, either in a lonely spot in the Swiss mountains, or in some other place, where he had to care for his health. But away there, he clung to our Movement, and his poems, which in certain circles have lately been recited over and over again, are the poetic reflection, as it were, of what we have been developing for more than ten years. Now he has passed through the gate of death, and a very remarkable thing results from the occult observance of this soul. The significance of the soul's life in that disease-stricken body has become apparent only since the death of that body. That which this soul absorbed while his soul faithfully followed the progress of our Movement, developed greater force under the surface of the gradually dying body. The diseased body concealed this so long as the soul dwelt within it. And now, when one comes into the presence of this soul after death, there shines forth, as it can only shine forth in the spiritual life, the content of the life which this soul absorbed. The cloudlike sphere, as it were, in which our friend now lives after having passed through the gate of death, is present like a mighty cosmic tableau. For the occult observer it is a most striking sight. It may, perhaps, be said that the occult seer is able to cast his gaze round the whole wide sphere of the cosmic world, but it is one thing to allow the gaze to wander round the whole sphere of the cosmic world of soul, and another to see, separated out from a particular human soul something that has the appearance of a mighty tableau, like a painting of what otherwise is there of itself in the spiritual world. Just as we have the physical world around us, and then see it reflected in the magnificent paintings of a Raphael or Michelangelo, so is it in the spiritual world in the case of which we are here speaking. Just as one never says in presence of a picture by Michelangelo or Raphael, ‘this picture gives me nothing more for I have the whole great reality before me,’—so one does not say, in observing the tableau that mirrors in a soul all that one elsewhere perceives in the vision of spiritual reality, that this soul tableau is not an infinite enrichment. And it may be said that there is infinitely more to be learnt in the presence of this friend who after death contains in his soul a reflection of all that has been described from out the spiritual worlds through the course of many years, than from direct contemplation of the vastness of spiritual reality.

This is an occult fact. I have repeatedly mentioned it to friends in different places and I have now taken from it elements that are of importance in connection with the subject we are to-day considering. As this occult fact presents itself, it shows me something else. In face of all the opposition to-day to the promulgation of occult teaching as we give it—the question may often be put (I will not say there is ‘doubt’ but that the question is put): ‘What progress will this occult teaching find in the hearts and souls of men?’ ‘Is there any guarantee, any assurance that the work of the Anthroposophical Society will continue to influence the course of the spiritual evolution of humanity?’ The sight of what the soul of our friend has become is one such assurance from the occult world. Why? The friend who has left behind him the poems: Wir Janden einen Pfad (‘We found a Path’) lives in the immense cosmic tableau that is for him after death like a kind of soul-body; but while he was connected with us, he absorbed into his being our teaching about the Christ. He absorbed this anthroposophical teaching, binding it to his own soul in such a way that it became the very spiritual heart-blood of his soul; it contained the Christ as substance. The Christ Being flowed into him in the teaching. The Christ, as He lives in our Movement, passed over into his soul. In the face of this occult fact, the following presents itself. The man who goes through the gate of death may indeed live in a cosmic tableau of this kind; he will go forward with it through the life that lies between death and a new birth. This will work and be embodied in his whole being, or rather it will ‘en-soul’ his whole being, and it will permeate his new earth-life, when he again descends to a life on earth. There is also this in addition, that such a soul receives a germ of perfection for its own life, and progresses in the evolution of the earth's existence. All this comes to pass because of the fact that such a soul has absorbed the teaching into its being. But this particular soul accepted all the teaching, steeped through and spiritualized by the Christ Being, by the conception of the Christ Being which we can make our own. All that such a soul absorbed, however, is not merely a treasure stimulating the further evolution of this single soul, but through Christ Who is there for all mankind, it is a treasure which works back again upon the whole of mankind. And that cosmic tableau which for clairvoyant eyes is being developed in the soul of him who this spring passed through the portal of death-that Christ enfilled soul-tableau, is to me an assurance that what may be given to-day from out of the spiritual worlds will, through the love of Christ radiate into souls who will come later. They will be set on fire, inspired by it. Not only will our friend carry forward our Christ-enfilled teaching to the greater perfecting of his own life, but because it has become part of his being it will become an impulse from the spiritual world to the souls who will live in the coming centuries; into them will pour the rays of that which is Christ-enfilled. Your souls cannot take in for themselves alone the teaching which is their most precious possession, but they will bear it through epochs of evolution yet to come. If you will enfill this teaching with Christ, it will stream forth as a seed into the whole of humanity because the Christ Being belongs to the whole of humanity. Where Christ is, the treasures of life are not isolated; their fruitfulness for individuals is always there, but at the same time they become a treasure for the whole of mankind.

We must place this clearly before our souls. We see then what a significant difference there is between Wisdom that is not filled with Christ, and Wisdom that is illuminated by the Light of Christ. When we come together in a narrower circle of our Society we are not there for the sake of abstract considerations, but in order to follow up true occultism, undismayed by what the modern world has to say against this occultism. Consequently we may speak of matters which only come to our knowledge through investigation in the spiritual.

A second example shall be mentioned. In recent years we have had occasion in Munich to perform what we call the Mystery Dramas, and Swedish friends have frequently been present. The performances of these Mystery Dramas had to differ in many respects from other performances. There had to be a sense of responsibility to the spiritual ·world. One could not attend these Mystery Plays as if one were going to an ordinary theatre. What is done in such a case must proceed from one's own soul-powers. But let us understand clearly that when in our physical life we want to carry something out through the will of our souls, we are compelled to use our muscular power, which is imparted to us from without, as it were, but which belongs to us. If we lack this muscular power that comes to us from outside, we cannot carry out certain things. In a certain sense muscular force belongs to us, and yet again not to us. So it is with our spiritual faculties, only there, our physical forces, our muscular forces do not help us when these faculties are to be active in the spiritual spheres. The powers of the spiritual world itself must come to our aid; the powers and forces which stream out of the spiritual world into our physical world must irradiate and permeate us. Undertakings of a different character may indeed begin with another consciousness. It was always clear to me that the facts could only be presented as the years went on, that the different impulses might only be used when definite spiritual forces, moving in this direction, flowed into our human forces, when spiritual ‘Guardian-Angel’ forces flowed into our human forces.

In the early days when we were beginning our activities in a very small circle—and when we gathered together in Berlin, at the beginning of this century, it was always very easy to count the number present. For a short time a faithful soul was always among them, a soul who through her Karma possessed a special talent for beauty and art. Even though it was for a short time, this soul worked with us, in all our most intimate activities. With an inner depth of feeling, and an enlightened enthusiasm, this soul worked among us, and absorbed the cosmological teachings which it was possible to give at that time. And I remember even to-day how at that time a fact came before my soul which may perhaps seem unimportant, but which may be mentioned here. When our Movement began, a periodical which, for well-considered reasons, was called ‘Lucifer,’ came into being. At that time I wrote an article under the title of ‘Lucifer’ which was meant to lay down, in germ at any rate, the direction along which we wished to work. That article, even if it does not say so in words, adhered to the direction in which the then Theosophical—and now Anthroposophical Society—should be maintained, and I may say that that article too is Christ-enfilled. The lifeblood of Christianity is in that article, and as such it can flow into those souls who absorb what that article contains. It may perhaps here be mentioned that at that time this article met with the most heated opposition among the circle of the few who had joined us from the old theosophical Movement. Everywhere was this article considered entirely ‘untheosophical.’ The personality of whom I have been speaking entered into this article with the warmest possible heart and the deepest inner feeling; and I was able to say to myself: when it is a question of the actual truth, her acquiescence is of far more importance for the progress of the Movement than all the rest of the opposition together. In short, this soul was deeply interwoven with all that was to flow into our anthroposophical Movement. She soon died; as early as 1904 she passed through the gate of death. For a while after death she had to struggle through in the spiritual world to that which she really was. Not so early as 1907, but from the time of our plays in Munich, from 1909 onwards, and then in an increasing degree as time went on, this soul was always there guarding and illuminating what I was able to undertake in connection with our Munich Festival Plays. All that this soul, owing to her talent for the beautiful, was able to give to the artistic realization of our anthroposophical ideas, worked down out of the spiritual world, as though from the guardian angel of our Mystery Plays, in such a way that one felt in oneself the power to take the necessary initiative. Just as in the physical world our muscular energy supports us, so the spiritual force streaming down from the spiritual worlds flowed into one's own spiritual force. Thus do the dead work with us, thus they are present with us. That was yet another case—and here comes the point about which I must specially speak to-day—that was again a case in which all that the personality had absorbed in the field of Anthroposophy manifestly assisted progress not only in her individual life, but it flowed back again to us in something that we ventured to do for the whole Movement. Two possibilities existed; this personality had accepted all that she could, she had it in her soul, and so she could apply it for the sake of her further progress through life and also through the life after death. ... That is right—it ought to happen so—for the human soul must, if it is to attain its divine goal, become ever more and more perfect; it must do all that is possible to help forward this perfecting. But because this soul had taken into herself the whole purport of what it is to be ‘Christ-enfilled,’ what she had taken into herself was able to work not merely for herself but it was able to flow down to us—and become in its effectiveness, a kind of common possession for us all. That is what Christ brings about when He permeates the fruits of our knowledge. He does not take away all that these fruits of our knowledge represent for our individuality; Christ died for all souls; and when we rise up to that knowledge which must be possessed by all true earth-men:—‘Not I, but the Christ in me’—when we realize the Christ within us in all that we know, and when we attribute to Christ the forces which we ourselves employ, then, what we take into our being works not for ourselves alone, but for the whole of humanity. It becomes fruitful for the whole of humanity. Look at the souls of men over the earth. Christ died for them all, and that which you receive in His Name you receive for your own perfecting, but also as a most precious possession that is effective for all mankind.

And now let us return to our introductory words this evening. It was said that when, after death, we look back upon our life-tableau, on that which we have lived through, it appears to us as though our ideals might have something strange about them. We feel in regard to our ideals that they really do not bear us forward to the common life of men, that they have no inherent guarantee of reality in the general life of men, that they carry us away from it. Lucifer has a powerful influence over our ideals because they flow in such beauty out of the human soul, but only out of the human soul, and are not rooted in external reality. This is why Lucifer has such power, and it is really the magnetic impulse of Lucifer which we experience after death. Lucifer approaches us, and the ideals we have are especially valuable to him, because by the indirect path of these ideals he can draw us to himself. But when we permeate with Christ all that we attain spiritually, when we feel the Christ in us, knowing that what we receive, is also received by the Christ in us—‘Not I, but the Christ in me’—then, when we pass through the gate of death we do not look back upon our ideals as though they tended to alienate us from the world. Our ideals have been committed to Christ and we know that it is Christ Who makes our ideals His own concern. He takes our ideals upon Himself. ‘Not I alone can so take my ideals upon myself that they are seeds for humanity upon the Earth, as surely as the plant-seeds of the present summer are seeds for the earthly plant-robe for the coming summer; but the Christ in me can do this; the Christ in me permeates my ideals with the reality of substance.’ And of those ideals we can say: ‘Yes, as man we give expression to ideals upon the earth, but in us lives Christ, and He takes them upon Him.’ These are the real germs of future reality. Christ-enfilled Idealism is permeated with the Seed of Reality, and he who truly understands Christ looks upon these ideals in this way; he says: Ideals have not as yet in themselves that guarantee of their own reality, their own actuality, which inheres in the plant-seed for the coming year; but when our ideals are committed to the Christ within us, then they are real seed. Whoever has a true Christ consciousness making into his life substance St. Paul's words ‘Not I, but the Christ in me is the Bearer of my ideals,’ he has this realization. He says: there are the ripe germinating seeds, there are the streams and seas, the hills and valleys—but close by is the world of idealism; this world of idealism is taken over by Christ, and it is like the seed of the future world in the world of the present, for Christ bears our ideals on into the next world as the God of Nature bears the plant-seeds of this year on into the coming year.

This gives reality to idealism; it removes from the soul those bitter, gloomy doubts which can arise in the feeling: What becomes of the world of ideals that are intimately bound up with external reality, and with all that I must consider of value? He who takes the Christ-Impulse into himself perceives that all that ripens in the human soul as wisdom-treasure is permeated, saturated through and through with reality. And I have brought two examples before you, in order to show you out of the occult world, how different is the working of that which is committed, Christ-enfilled, to the soul, from that which is committed to it only as wisdom which is not Christ-enfilled. What the soul has filled with Christ in this earth-life flows down to us in quite a different way from that which is not filled with Christ.

A terrible impression is produced, when clairvoyant consciousness looks out into the spiritual world and sees souls, in whom full Christ consciousness has not arisen during their last incarnation, fighting for their ideals—fighting for what is dearest to them, because in their ideals Lucifer has a power over them, which enables him to separate them from the fruits of reality which the whole world ought to enjoy.

Quite different is the aspect of those who have allowed their soul-wealth, their wisdom-wealth, to become Christ-enfilled. Such souls work upon us already in this life, evoke in us an after-glow, they animate and vitalize our souls, even in bodily life. What can be felt as most precious inner soul-warmth, as comfort in the most difficult conditions of life, as support in the blackest abyss of life, is this very condition of being filled with the Christ Impulse. And why? Because he who is really permeated with the Christ Impulse feels that in the conquests of his soul, however imperfect they may appear in earthly life, there lies this Christ-Impulse as the assurance and the guarantee for their fulfillment. This is why Christ is such a consolation in the doubts of life, such a support for the soul. How much for the souls of earth remains unfulfilled in life! How much seems to them to be of value, although in the outer physical world it can only appear to be like vain hopes of spring. But what we honestly feel in our soul, what we can unite with our soul as a valued possession—that we can commit to Christ; and whatever may be the prospects of its realization, when we have committed it to Christ He bears it forth upon His wings into Reality. It is not always necessary to have knowledge of this, but the soul that feels the Christ within it, as the body feels its life-giving blood, senses the warmth, the element of realization in this Christ-Impulse in respect of all that cannot be realized in the external world, though the soul with perfect justification longs for its realization. The fact that clairvoyant consciousness sees these things when it surveys souls after death is only a proof of how justifiable is the feeling of the human soul, when in all that man does, in all that he thinks, he feels himself Christ-enfilled, takes the Christ into his soul as its comfort, as support, saying in earth life: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me!’ For man may say: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’ in this earth-life! Recall to your souls a passage which stands in my book Theosophy and which is meant to indicate one of those points where, at a certain stage of the spiritual life, there is a realization, a fulfillment of what fills the soul in this earthly-life. In a certain passage of my Theosophy I have drawn attention to the fact that ‘Tat wam asi,’ ‘Thou art That,’ upon which the Eastern sages meditate, comes before man as a reality at that moment when the transition from the so-called soul-world into the spiritual world takes place. Look up the passage in question. But something else can become a reality, in a matter that is of immense human significance in reference to St. Paul's words: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’ which the Christ-enfilled soul may say in this life. If man knows how to experience in such a way that it is inner truth, this ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ it comes to fulfillment after death with mighty import. For what we accept in the world under the aspect of life which can be expressed in the words ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ becomes our own possession, our inner nature between death and a new birth, to such an extent that we may impart it as fruit to the whole of humanity. What we so take that we accept it under the point of view ‘Not I’ Christ makes into a common possession for all humanity. What I accept from the point of view ‘Not I,’ of this I may dare, after death, to say and to feel, ‘“Not for me alone” but for all my fellow men I And then only may I say the words: “Yes, I have loved Thee above all, even above myself,” therefore have I hearkened to the command, “Love thy God above all.”‘—‘Not I, but Christ in me’ And I have fulfilled that other command, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ for that which I have attained for myself will, through the fact that Christ bears it in reality, become the common property of all earth-humanity.

We must allow such things as these to work upon us, and then we experience what Christ has to signify in the human soul. Christ can be the bearer and supporter, the comforter and illuminator of the soul of man; and so we gradually become familiar with that which may be called the relation of Christ to the human soul.

One of the concepts which must rise up within us when we speak of the relations of Christ to the human soul is that of sin and its debt. We know what the significance of the concepts of guilt and sin has in the Christianity of St. Paul. Our present age is, however, little adapted for a really deep inner understanding of the wider connections between the concepts ‘Death and Sin’ and ‘Death and Immortality,’ that are to be found in Paul's writings. This lies in the materialism of our times. Let us recall what I said in the first lecture of this course, that there could be no true immortality of the human soul without a continuation of consciousness into the conditions after death. An ending of consciousness with death would coincide with the fact, which in that case would have to be accepted, that man is really not immortal. The unconscious continuance of man's being after death would mean that what is the most important of all, that which makes man into man, would not exist after death. An unconscious human soul surviving after death would not mean much more than the sum of atoms acknowledged by materialism, which remain even when the human body is destroyed.

For Paul it was a matter of unshakable conviction that it is only possible to speak of immortality if the individual consciousness is maintained. And as he had to think of the individual consciousness as subject to sin and guilt it may be taken for granted that Paul would think: ‘If a man's consciousness is obscured after death by sin and guilt, or by their results—if after death, consciousness is disturbed by sin and guilt, this signifies that sin and guilt really kill man—they kill him as soul, as spirit.’ The materialistic consciousness of our time is far remote from this. Many modern philosophic investigators are content to speak of a continuance of the life of the human soul, whereas the immortality of man may only be identified with a conscious continuance of the human soul after death.

A difficulty of course arises here, especially for the anthroposophical world conception. To be faced with this difficulty we need only direct our attention to the relationship of the concepts of ‘Guilt and Sin’ and of ‘Karma.’ Many people get over this by saying that they believe Karma to be a debt which a man contracts in anyone of his incarnations; he bears this debt with him, with his Karma, and discharges it later; this, in the course of incarnations, compensation is brought about. Here begins the difficulty. These people then say: ‘How can this be reconcilable with the Christian acceptation of the conception of the forgiveness of sins through Christ?’ And yet again the idea of the forgiveness of sins is intimately bound up with true Christianity. It is only necessary to think of this one example: Christ on the Cross between two malefactors. The malefactor on the left hand mocks at Christ: ‘If Thou wilt be God, help Thyself and us.’ The malefactor on the right held that the other ought not to speak thus, for both had merited their fate of crucifixion—the just award of their deeds; whereas He was innocent, and had yet to experience the same fate. The malefactor on the right added to this: ‘Think of me when Thou art in Thy Kingdom.’ And Christ answered him: ‘Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.’ It is not permissible merely to gainsay these words and omit them from the Gospel, for they are very significant. The difficulty arises from the question: If this malefactor on the right has to wash away what he has brought about in his Karma, what does it mean when Christ, as it were, pardoning and forgiving him, says: ‘To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise?’ It may appear that the malefactor on the right will have to wash away his debt with his Karma, even as the one on the left. Why is there a difference made by Christ between the malefactor on the right and the one on the left? There is no doubt at all that the conception of Karma is here met by a difficulty that is not easy to solve. It is solved however when we try to probe more deeply into Christianity by means of Spiritual Science. And now I shall approach the subject from quite another side, the nature of which is already known to you, but which can bring certain remarkable circumstances to light.

You know how often we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman, and how Lucifer and Ahriman are represented in my Mystery-Plays. When one begins to consider the thing in a human-anthropomorphic sense and simply makes of Lucifer a kind of inner and of Ahriman a kind of outer criminal, there will be difficulty in getting on; for we must not forget that Lucifer, besides being the bringer of evil into the world, the inner evil that arises through the passions, is also the bringer of freedom; Lucifer plays an important role in the universe. In the same way it must be said of Ahriman that he, too, plays an important part in the universe. When we began to speak more of Lucifer and Ahriman, it was our experience that many of those who were associated with us became uneasy; they still had a feeling left of what people have always thought of Lucifer, namely, that he is a fearful criminal in the world, against whom one must defend one's self. Feeling this about Lucifer they could not of course give unqualified assent to a different conception because they must assign to Lucifer an important role in the universe, and yet again Lucifer must be regarded as an opponent of progressive Gods, as a being who crosses the plan of those Gods to whom honor is rightly due. Thus, when we speak of Lucifer in this way, we are in effect ascribing an important role in the universe to an enemy of the Gods. And we must do the same in the case of Ahriman. From this point of view it is quite easy to understand the human feeling that asks: ‘What is the right attitude to adopt towards Lucifer and Ahriman; am I to love them or hate them?’ It should be quite clear from the way in which one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman that they are beings who, by their whole nature do not belong to the physical plane, but have their mission and task in the Cosmos outside the physical plane, in the spiritual worlds. In the Munich lectures of the summer of 1913, I laid particular emphasis on the fact that the progressive Gods have assigned to Lucifer and Ahriman roles in the spiritual worlds; and that discrepancy and disharmony only appear when they bring down their activities into the physical plane, and arrogate to themselves rights which are not allotted to them. But we must submit to one thing, to which the human soul does not readily submit when these matters are under consideration, and it is this: that our judgment, our human judgment, as we pass it, holds good only for the physical plane, and that this judgment, right as it may be for the physical plane, cannot be simply transferred to the higher worlds. We must therefore gradually accustom ourselves in Anthroposophy to widen out our judgments and our world of concepts and ideas. It is because materialistically-minded men of the present day do not want to widen their judgment, but prefer to hold to that which holds good for the physical plane that they have such difficulty in understanding Anthroposophy, although it is all perfectly intelligible.

If we say: ‘one power is hostile to another,’ or ‘hostility is unseemly,’ it is quite correct from the physical plane. But the same thing does not hold good for the higher planes. On the higher planes the judgment must be widened. Just as in the realm of electricity positive and negative electricity are necessary, so also is spiritual hostility necessary in order that the universe may exist in its entirety; it is necessary that the spirits should oppose one another. Here comes in the truth of the saying of Herakleitos, that strife as well as love constitutes the universe. It is only when Lucifer works upon the human soul, and when through the human soul strife is brought into the physical world, that strife is wrong. But this does not hold good for the higher worlds; there the hostility of the spirits is an element that belongs to the whole structure, to the whole evolution of the universe. This implies that as soon as we come into the higher worlds, we must employ other standards, other colorings for our judgments. That is why there is often a feeling of shock when we speak of Lucifer and Ahriman on the one side as the opponents of the Gods, and on the other side as being necessary to the whole course of the universal order. Hence we must, above all things, hold firmly in our minds that a man comes into collision with the universal order if he allows the judgment which holds good for the physical plane to hold good for the higher worlds.

This is the root of the whole matter and it must again and again be emphasized that Christ, as Christ, does not belong to the order of the other entities of the physical plane. From the moment of the baptism in Jordan, a Being Who had not previously existed on Earth, a Being Who does not belong to the order of earth-beings, entered into the corporeal being of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, in Christ, we are concerned with a Being Who could truly say to the disciples: ‘I am from above, but ye are from below,’ that is to say: ‘I am a Being of the kingdom of heaven, ye are of the kingdom of earth.’ Now let us consider the consequences of this. Must earthly judgment that is entirely justifiable as such, and that everyone on earth must maintain, be also the judgment of that Cosmic Being Who, as Christ, entered the Jesus body? That Being, Who entered the body of Jesus at the baptism in Jordan, applies not an earthly but a heavenly judgment. He must judge differently from man.

And now let us consider the whole import of the words spoken on Golgotha. The malefactor on the left believes that in the Christ merely an earthly being is present, not a being whose realm is beyond the earthly kingdom. But just before death there comes to the consciousness of the malefactor on the right, ‘Thy kingdom, O Christ, is another; think of me when Thou art in Thy kingdom.’ At this moment the malefactor on the right shows that he has a dim idea of the fact that Christ belongs to another kingdom, where a power of judgment other than that obtaining on the earth, holds sway. Then, out of the consciousness that He stands in His kingdom, Christ can answer: ‘Verily, because thou hast some dim foreboding of My kingdom, this day (that is with death) thou shalt be with Me in My kingdom.’ This is a reference to the super-earthly Christ power that draws up the human individuality into a spiritual kingdom. Earthly judgment, human judgment, must of course say: ‘As regards his Karma, the right-hand malefactor will have to make compensation for his guilt even as the one on the left,’ for the heavenly judgment, however, something else holds good. But that is only the beginning of the matter, for of course it might now be said: ‘Yes, then the judgment of heaven contradicts that of the earth. How can Christ forgive where the earthly judgment demands karmic retribution?’

It is a difficult question, but we will try to approach it more closely in the course of this lecture. I lay special emphasis on the fact that we are touching here on one of the most difficult questions of Spiritual Science. We must make a difference which the human soul does not willingly make, because it does not like following the thing to its ultimate consequences; there are difficulties in following it up to its ultimate consequences. We shall find it, as I have said, a difficult subject, and you will perhaps find it necessary to turn the thing over in your souls many times in order to get at its real essence.

Firstly, we must make a distinction. We must consider the one element that fulfils itself in Karma in an objective retribution. Here we must clearly understand that man is certainly subject to his Karma; that he has to make karmic compensation for unjust deeds, and when we think more deeply about it, a man will not actually wish otherwise. For suppose that a man has done another person wrong; in the moment of this wrong he is less perfect than before he had done it, and he can only attain the grade of perfection which was his before he committed the wrong by making compensation for it. He must wish to make compensation for the wrong; for only in such compensation does he create for himself the stage of perfection which was his before the act was committed. Thus, for the sake of our own perfecting we can wish nothing else than that Karma is there as objective justice. When we grasp the true meaning of human freedom, we can have no wish that a sin should be so forgiven us; that if, for example, we were to put a man's eyes out, the sin would be so forgiven us that we should no longer need to wipe it away in our Karma. A man who puts out the eyes of another is more imperfect than one who does not, and in his later Karma it must come to pass that he does a corresponding good act, for then only is he again the man that he was before he committed the act. So that when we rightly consider the nature of man, there can be no thought within us that when a man has put out the eyes of another it will be forgiven him, and that Karma will be in some way adjusted. It is fully justified in Karma that we are not excused a farthing, but that the debt must be paid to the uttermost.

But there is another element with regard to the guilt. The guilt, the sin with which we are laden, is not merely our own affair, it is an objective cosmic concern, it means something for the universe also. This is where the distinction must be made. The crimes that we have committed are compensated in our Karma, but the act of putting out another's eyes is an accomplished fact; if we have, let us say, put someone's eyes out in the present incarnation, and then in the next incarnation do something that makes compensation for this act, yet for the objective course of the universe the fact still remains that so many hundred years ago we put someone's eyes out. That is an objective fact in the universe. So far as we are concerned we make compensation for it later. The guilt that we have personally contracted is adjusted in our Karma, but the objective cosmic fact remains—we cannot efface that by removing our own imperfection. We must discriminate between the consequences of a sin for ourselves, and the consequences of a sin for the objective course of the world. It is highly important that we should make this distinction. And I may now perhaps introduce an occult observation which will make this matter clearer.

When a man surveys the course of human evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha and approaches the Akashic Record without being permeated with the Christ-Being, it is easy, very easy indeed to be led into error, for in this he will find records which very often do not coincide with the karmic evolution of the individuals. For example, let us suppose that in, say the year 733, some man lived and incurred heavy guilt. The person now examining the Akashic Record, may at first have no connection with the Christ-Being. And behold! the man's guilt cannot be found in the Akashic Record. Examination of the Karma in a later incarnation of this man reveals that there is something still in his Karma which he has to wipe out. That must have existed in the Akashic Record at a certain point of time, but it is not there.

Examination of the Karma reveals that the man has to make amends; the guilt of the incarnation must have been inscribed in the Akashic Record, but it is not there. Here is a contradiction. This is an objective fact which may occur in numerous cases. I may meet with a man to-day, and if through grace I am permitted to know something about his Karma, I may perhaps find that some misfortune or stroke of fate stands in his Karma, that it is the adjustment of earlier guilt. If I turn to his earlier incarnations and examine what he did then, I do not find this fact registered in the Akashic Record. How does this come about? The reason of this is that Christ has actually taken upon Himself the objective debt. In the moment that I permeate myself with Christ, I discover the deed when I examine the Akashic Record with Christ. Christ has taken it into His kingdom, and He bears it further, so that when I look away from Christ I cannot find it in the Akashic Record. This distinction must be observed: karmic justice remains; but Christ intervenes in the effects of guilt in the spiritual world. He takes over the debt into His kingdom, and bears it further. Christ is that Being Who, because He is of another kingdom, is able to blot out in the Cosmos our debts and our guilt, taking them upon Himself.

What is it that the Christ on the Cross of Golgotha really conveys to the malefactor on the left? He does not utter it, but in the fact that He does not utter it lies the essence. He says to the malefactor on the left: ‘What thou hast done will continue to work in the spiritual world also and not merely in the physical world.’ To the malefactor on the right He says: ‘To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.’ That is to say: ‘I am beside thine act; through thy Karma thou wilt have later on to do for thyself all that the act signifies for thee, but what the act signifies for the universe,’ if I may use a trivial expression, ‘that is My concern.’ This is what Christ says. The distinction made here is a very important one, and the matter is not only of significance for the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, but also for the time before the Mystery of Golgotha.

A number of friends will remember that in earlier lectures I have called attention to the fact that it is not a mere legend, but that Christ actually did descend to the dead after His death. He thereby also accomplished something for the souls who in previous ages had laden themselves with guilt and sin. Error now also comes in when a man without being permeated with Christ, investigates in the Akashic Record the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. Such a man will continually make errors in his reading of the Akashic Record. For this reason I was not in the very least surprised that, for example, Leadbeater, who in reality knows nothing about Christ, should have made the most abstruse statements concerning the evolution of the Earth in his book, Man, How, Whence and Whither. For only when a man is permeated with the Christ-Impulse is he capable of really seeing things as they are, and how they have been regulated in the evolution of the earth on the basis of the Mystery of Golgotha, though they occurred before the Mystery of Golgotha.

Karma is an affair of the successive incarnations of man. The significance of Karmic justice must be considered with that judgment that is our earthly judgment. That which Christ does for humanity must be measured by a judgment that belongs to worlds other than this earth-world. And suppose that were not so? Let us think of the end of the earth, of the time when men shall have passed through their earthly incarnations. Most certainly it will come to pass that all will have to be paid to the uttermost farthing. Human souls will have had to pay off their Karma in a certain way. But let us imagine that all guilt had remained in existence in the earth that all guilt would go on working in the earth. Then at the end of the earth period human beings would be there with their Karma adjusted, but the earth would not be ready to develop into the Jupiter condition; the whole of the earth-humanity would be there without a dwelling-place, without the possibility of developing onwards to Jupiter. That the whole earth develops along with man is the result of the Deed of Christ. All the guilt and debt that would pile up would cast the earth into the abyss, and we should have no planet for our further evolution. In our Karma we can take care of ourselves, but not of humanity as a whole, and not of that which in earth-evolution is connected with the whole evolution of humanity.

So let us realize that Karma will not be taken from us, but that our debts and sins will be blotted out as regards the earth-evolution through what took place in the Mystery of Golgotha. We must, of course, realize to the full that all this cannot be bestowed on man without his co-operation—it cannot be his unless he too does something. And that is clearly brought before us in the utterances from the cross of Golgotha which I have quoted. It is very definitely shown to us how the soul of the malefactor on the right received a dim idea of a supersensible kingdom wherein things proceed otherwise than in the earthly kingdom. Man must fill his soul with the substance of the Christ Being; he must, as it were, have taken something of the Christ into his soul, so that Christ is active in him, and bears him into a kingdom in which he has not indeed the power to make his Karma ineffective, but in which through Christ it comes to pass that debt and sin are blotted out for our external world. This has been most wonderfully represented in painting.

There is no one upon whom such a picture as ‘Christ, as Judge at the Last Day’ (by Michelangelo) in the Sistine chapel can fail to make a deep impression. What really underlies such a picture? Let us take, not the deep esoteric fact, but the picture that is here presented to our soul. We see the righteous and the sinners. It is possible to present this picture differently from the way in which Michelangelo, as a Christian, has done. There is the possibility that at the end of the earth, men, seeing their Karma might say to themselves: ‘Yes, I have indeed wiped off my Karma, but everywhere in the spiritual there stand, written on tablets of brass, my guilt and sin, and these are of serious import for the earth; they must destroy the earth. As far as I am concerned, I have made compensation, but there the guilt stands, everywhere.’ That would not, however, be the truth; it might be there, but it would not be the truth. For through the fact of Christ's death upon Golgotha, man will not see the tables of his guilt and sin, but he will see Him Who has taken them upon Himself; he will see, atoned in the Being of Christ, all that would otherwise be spread out in the Akashic Record. In place of the Akashic Record, the Christ stands before him, having taken all upon himself.

We are looking into deep secrets of the earth's existence. But what is necessary in order to fathom the true state of things in this domain? It is this that men, no matter whether they are righteous or whether they are sinners, should have the possibility of looking upon Christ, that there should be no empty place where the Christ ought to stand. The connection with Christ is necessary, and this malefactor on the right himself shows us his connection with the Christ in what he says. And even though the Christ has given to those who work in His Spirit the behest to forgive sins, it never means that thereby Karma is to be encroached upon. But it does mean that the earthly kingdom will be rescued for him who stands in relationship to Christ, rescued from the spiritual consequence of guilt and sin, which are objective facts even when a later Karma has made compensation for them.

What does it signify for the human soul when one, who may so speak, says in the Name of Christ: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ It means that he is able to assert: ‘Thou hast indeed to await thy karmic settlement; but Christ has transformed thy guilt and sin so that later thou mayest not have the terrible pain of looking back upon thy guilt in such a way as to see that thou hast in it destroyed a part of the earth's existence.’ Christ blots it out. But a certain consciousness is necessary, one that is demanded, one that those who would forgive sins have the right to demand—consciousness of the guilt, and consciousness that Christ has the power to take it upon Himself. For the saying: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’ denotes a cosmic fact, and not a karmic fact.

Christ shows His relation to this so wonderfully in a certain passage—so wonderfully that it penetrates deep, deep into our hearts. Let us conjure up in our souls the scene where the woman taken in adultery comes before Him, with those who are condemning her. They bring the woman before Him, and in two different ways Christ meets them. He writes in the earth; and He forgives, He does not judge at all, He does not condemn. Why does He write in the earth? Because Karma works, because Karma is objective justice. For the adulteress, her act cannot be obliterated. Christ writes it in the earth.

But with the spiritual and not the earthly consequence it is otherwise; Christ takes upon Himself the spiritual consequence. ‘He forgives’ does not mean that He blots out in the absolute sense, but that he takes upon Himself the consequences of the objective act.

Now let us think of all that it signifies when the human soul is able to say to itself: ‘Yes, I have done this or that in the world; it does not impair my evolution, for I do not remain as imperfect as I was when I committed the deed; I am permitted to attain my perfection in the further course of my Karma, in that I make compensation for the deed. But I cannot undo it for the earth evolution.’ Man would have to bear unspeakable suffering if a Being had not joined Himself with the earth, a Being Who undoes for the earth that which cannot be changed by us. This Being is the Christ. He takes away from us, not subjective Karma, but the objective spiritual effects of the acts, the guilt. That is what we must follow up in our hearts, and then for the first time we shall understand that Christ is, in truth, that Being Who is bound up with the whole of earth-humanity. For the earth is there for the sake of the Will of Mankind. Christ is connected with the whole earth. It is the weakness of man, as a consequence of the Luciferic temptation, that although he is indeed able to redeem himself subjectively in Karma, he cannot redeem the earth at the same time. That is accomplished by the cosmic Being-Christ.

And now we understand why many theosophists cannot realize that Christianity is in full accord with the idea of Karma. These people bring into theosophy the most intense egoism, a super-egoism; they do not certainly put it into words, but still they really think and feel: ‘If I can only redeem myself in my Karma, what does it matter to me about the world? Let it do what it will!’ These theosophists are quite satisfied if they can speak of karmic adjustment: but there is a great deal more to be done. Man would be purely a Luciferic being if he were to think only of himself. Man is a member of the whole world, and he must think about the whole world in a sense of sacrifice. He must think about it in the sense that he can indeed be egoistically redeemed through his Karma, but that he cannot at the same time, redeem the whole earth-existence. Christ enters into that. At the moment we decide not to think only of our Ego, we must think about something other than our Ego. Of what must we think? Of the ‘Christ in me’ as Paul says; then indeed we are united with Him in the whole earth-existence. We do not then think of our self-redemption, but we say: ‘Not I and my own redemption—not I, but the Christ in me, and the earth-redemption.’

Many believe they may call themselves true Christians, and yet speak of others—anthroposophical Christians for instance—as heretics! There is surely very little true Christian feeling here. The question may perhaps be permitted: ‘Is it really Christian to think that I may do anything, and that Christ only came into the world for the sake of taking it all away from me and to forgive my sins, so that I may have nothing more to do with my Karma, with my sins?’ I think there is another word more applicable to such a mode of thought than the word ‘Christian’; perhaps the word ‘convenient’ would be better. ‘Convenient’ it certainly would be, if a man had only to repent, and then all the sins that he had committed in the world were obliterated for the whole of his later Karma. The sin is not blotted out from Karma; but it can be blotted out from the earth-evolution, and this it is that man cannot do because of the human weakness that is the result of the Luciferic temptation. Christ accomplishes this. With the remission of sins we are saved from the pain of having added an objective debt to the Earth-evolution for all eternity. When we have this understanding of Christ a greater earnestness will manifest itself in many other things as well. Many elements will fall away from those conceptions of Christ which may well seem full of triviality and cynicism to the man whose soul has absorbed the Christ-conception in all seriousness. For all that has been said to-day, and that can be proved point by point from the most significant passages of the New Testament, tells us that all that Christ is to us comes from the fact that He is not a Being like other men, but a Being Who, from above, that is, ‘out of the cosmos,’ entered into the earth-evolution at the baptism by John in Jordan. Everything proves the cosmic nature of Christ. And he who deeply grasps Christ's attitude towards sin and debt, may speak thus: ‘Because man in the course of the earth's existence could not blot out his guilt for the whole earth—a cosmic Being had to descend in order that it might be made possible for the earth-debt to be discharged.’ True, Christianity must needs regard Christ as a cosmic Being. It cannot do otherwise. Our soul must be deeply permeated by what is meant in the words: ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’ For then from this knowledge there radiates into our soul something that I can only express in these words: ‘When I am able to say: “Not I, but Christ in me” in that moment I assert that I shall be removed from the earth-sphere, that in me there lives some thing that has significance for the cosmos, and that I am counted worthy, as man, to bear a super-earthly element in my soul just as I bear within me a super-earthly being in all that has entered me from Saturn, Sun and Moon.’

Man's consciousness of being filled with Christ will become of great import. And with St. Paul's saying: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ he will connect the feeling that his inner responsibility to Christ must be taken in deep, deep earnestness. Anthroposophy will bring about this feeling of responsibility in the Christ consciousness in such a way that we shall not presume on every occasion to say: ‘I thought so, and because I thought so, I had a right to say it.’ Our materialistic age is carrying this further and further. ‘I was convinced of this and therefore I had a right to say it.’ But, is it not a profanation of the Christ in us, a fresh crucifixion of the Christ in us, that at any moment when we believe something or other, we cry it out to the world, or send it out into the world in writing, without having investigated it?

When man realizes the significance of Christ in all seriousness, a feeling will arise that he must prove himself worthy of the Christ who lives within him—this cosmic principle that is in him.

It may be readily believed that those who do not want to receive Christ as a cosmic principle, but who at every opportunity are ready to regret their offence, will first tell all kind of lies about their fellow men and then want to efface the lies. He who would prove himself worthy of the Christ in his soul will first prove to himself whether he ought to say a thing about which he happens at the moment to be convinced. Many things will be changed when a true conception of Christ comes into the world. All those people who write to-day or disfigure paper with printers' ink because they promptly write down things, of which they have no knowledge, will come to realize that they are thereby putting the Christ in the human soul to shame. And then the excuse will cease: ‘Yes, I thought so; I said it in quite good faith.’ Christ wants more than ‘good faith,’ Christ would fain lead men to the Truth. He Himself has said, ‘The Truth will make you free.’ But where has Christ ever said that when people imagine that they are thinking as He would have them think, this, that, or the other may be shouted out or proclaimed in writing to the world, when they really know nothing about it? Much will be changed! A great deal of modern writing will be unable to exist any longer when men start from the principle of proving themselves worthy of the saying: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me.’ The canker of our decadent civilization will be rooted out when there is a cessation of those voices which, without real conviction, cry everything out into the world, or cover paper with printers' ink irresponsibly, without being first convinced that they are speaking the truth. In this connection we have had to experience many things in the theosophical movement.* [Note by Translator.—In the following passage reference is made to the expulsion from the Theosophical Society of the German Section, of which Dr. Steiner was General Secretary. Those who are unfamiliar with the facts of the case should read the book by Eugene Levy, Mrs. Besant and the Present Crisis in the Theosophical Society, notably pages 48-50.]

How readily was the excuse to hand: ‘Yes, but the person who made the statement was at that moment convinced of its truth.’ What does ‘conviction’ of this kind amount to? It is nothing but the greatest irresponsibility—pure nonsense. It is for no personal reasons, but because of the seriousness of the situation, that I have ventured to draw your attention to the fact that there is no excuse for the lady President of the Theosophical Society to have placed before that Society the irresponsible untruth of the Jesuit fairy-tale. Afterwards people said: ‘But the President withdrew it after a few weeks.’ So much the worse when one in a responsible position trumpets forth something that, after a few weeks, has to be withdrawn, for then comes the world-judgment, and not the personal judgment. And let us add such knowledge as this to that distinction which must be made between the subjective Karma in the Ego of man and that which may be called objective Karma. For no word shall be lost; every man must make compensation for the harm that he has done; there we haven't to talk, we have to take the fact as Christ took it in the case of the adulteress: He wrote the sin in the earth. It must be clearly understood that an objective and not a merely subjective judgment of the world is necessary. That which may, in a certain sense, be called the ‘Christian Conscience’ will arise in an increasing measure as human souls become more and more conscious of the presence of Christ, and the saying of Paul becomes true: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me!’

More and more will the consciousness enter into souls that man ought not to say merely what he ‘thinks,’ but that he must prove the objective truth of what he says.

Christ will be to the soul a teacher of truth, a teacher of the highest sense of responsibility. He will fill souls with this when they come to experience the whole import of the saying: ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’

We shall speak further of these things in the next lecture.

Mankind is ever in need of truths which cannot, in every age, be wholly understood. The assimilation of truths is not only of significance for our knowledge; Truths in themselves contain life-force; and by permeating ourselves with truth, we permeate our soul being with a Cosmic element, just as we must permeate our physical being with air taken from outside in order to live. Deep truths are indeed expressed in great religious revelations, but in such a form that their real inner meaning is often only understood much later.

The New Testament has been written; the New Testament is there as a revelation for humanity—but the whole of the earth's evolution will have to run its course before this New Testament will be fully understood. In the future, man will require much knowledge of the external world, and of the spiritual world also; and if taken in the right sense everything will make for an understanding of the New Testament. The understanding comes about gradually, but the New Testament is written in a simple form so that it can be absorbed, although it can only later and gradually be understood. The assimilation of the truths that are to be found in the New Testament is not without significance, even if we cannot as yet understand the truths in their inner depths. Later on, the truth becomes cognitional force, but it is already life-force; it is imbibed, in a more or less childlike form. And if these very questions which we began to consider yesterday are to be understood in the sense in which they are imparted in the New Testament, we need knowledge of greater depth, with insight into the spiritual world and its mysteries.

To continue the last lecture, we must again examine some occult mysteries, for they will be able to guide us to a further understanding of the riddle of guilt and sin, and from this point of view throw light on the relation of Christ to the human soul.

In the course of our anthroposophical work we have often been faced with a point of view which may be clothed in the form of a question, ‘Why did Christ die in a human body?’ In reality this question expresses the riddle of the Mystery of Golgotha: ‘Why did Christ die, why did the Godhead die, in a human body?’

God died because for the sake of the evolution of the universe it was necessary for Him to be able to enter humanity; it was necessary that a God of the upper worlds should be able to become the leader of the earth-evolution. Christ had to become akin to death. Akin to death! One could wish that this expression might be deeply understood by the soul of man. As a rule a man only meets with death when he himself sees another die, or in different phenomena akin to death, which are to be found in the world, or in the certainty that he must himself pass through the portal of death when the present incarnation is over. But this is really only the external aspect of death. Death is present in quite a different form in the world in which we live. Let us start from an ordinary everyday phenomenon. We breathe the air in and we breathe it out again: but thereby the air undergoes a change. When this air is exhaled it is dead air; as exhaled air, it cannot be inhaled again, for exhaled air is harmful. I only indicate this in order that you may understand the meaning of the occult saying: ‘When the air enters into man, it dies.’ That which is living in the air dies when it enters into man. Death enters the air with every breath taken by man. That, however, is only one phenomenon. The ray of light which penetrates our eye must likewise die, and we should have nothing from the rays of light if our eye did not set itself up against the ray of light as our lungs do in the case of the air; the light that enters into our eye dies in our eye; and as a result of the death of the light in our eye it comes about that we can see. That which is living in the light dies when it penetrates our eye. The ray of light is killed in the eye. We slay it in order that our eye may be able to perceive. We are filled with that which must die within us in order that we may have our earth-consciousness. Corporeally we kill the air; we kill also the ray of light which penetrates us, we kill it in many ways.

When we call Spiritual Science to our aid, we differentiate earth substance, and the substance of water, air and heat; we then enter into the world of light-ether; we speak also of the warmth-ether. As far up as the light-ether, we kill that which penetrates us; we slay it unceasingly in order that we may have our earth-consciousness. But there is something that is not killed by our earth-existence. We know that above the light-ether there is the so-called ‘chemical-ether,’ and then there comes the ‘life-ether.’ Those are the two kinds of ether which we cannot kill. But, because of this, these two kinds of ether have no special participation in us. If we were able to kill the chemical-ether, the waves of the harmony of the spheres would sound perpetually into our physical body, and we should destroy these waves with our physical life. And if we could also kill the life-ether, we should destroy and continuously kill within ourselves the cosmic life that streams to the earth. In earthly sound a substitute is given to us, but it must not be compared with what we should hear if the chemical-ether were audible to us as physical human beings. For physical sound is a product of the air and is not the spiritual sound; it is only a substitute for the spiritual sound.

When the Luciferic temptation came, the progressive gods were obliged to place man in a sphere, where, from the light-ether downwards death lives in his physical body. But at that time the progressive gods said—and the words are there in the Bible—‘Man has taken unto himself the faculty of differentiation between Good and Evil, but Life he is not to have. Of the Tree of Life he is not to eat.’ In Occultism an addition may be made to this; to the sentence ‘Of the Tree of Life man shall not eat’ might be added the words ‘and the Spirit of Matter he shall not hear.’ Of the Tree of Life man shall not eat and the Spirit of Matter he shall not hear! These spheres were closed to man. Only through a certain process in the old Mysteries were the tones of the Sphere-Music and the Cosmic Life, pulsating through the universe, revealed to those who were to be initiated when it was given them, outside the body, to see the Christ in advance. Hence it is that the old philosophers speak of the Music of the Spheres.

In drawing attention to this, we indicate at the same time those regions from which the Christ came to us at the time of the baptism by John in Jordan. Whence did Christ come? He came from those spheres which had been closed to man, which man had to forget at the beginning of the Earth-evolution, as a result of the Luciferic temptation—from the region of the Music of the Spheres—from the region of Cosmic Life. At the baptism by John in Jordan, Christ entered into a human body, and that which permeated this human body was the spiritual essence of the Harmony of the Spheres, the spiritual essence of the cosmic Life—elements that still belonged to the human soul during its earth-evolution, but from which the soul of man had to be separated as a result of the Luciferic temptation. In this sense also man is related to Spirit. As a being of soul he really belongs to the region of the Music of the Spheres, and to the region of the Word—of the living cosmic Ether. But he was cast out from these regions. They were to be restored to him again in order that he might again be gradually permeated by that from which he had been cast out. Therefore it is that, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, the words of St. John's Gospel touch us so deeply: In the primal beginning, when man was not yet subject to temptation, was the Logos. Man belonged to the Logos ... the Logos was with God, and man was with the Logos, with God. And through the baptism by John in Jordan the Logos entered into human evolution—He became Man.

Here we have the all-important connection. Let us leave this truth as it stands there, and approach the question from another side. Life as a whole shows itself to us only from the external side. If it did not show itself merely from the external side, man would know how he absorbs the corpse of the light into his eye when he sees.

What was it that the Christ had to undertake in order that the fulfillment of St. Paul's saying: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ might be made possible? It had to be possible that Christ should permeate the nature of man; but the nature of man is filled with what is slain through human nature in earth-existence, from the light-ether that dies in the human eye downwards. The nature of man is filled with death; but what lives in the highest kinds of ether was withdrawn in order that human nature might not be filled with their death. But in order that Christ might dwell in us He had to become akin to death, akin to all that is spread out in the world, beginning from the light down into the depths of materiality. Christ had to be able to pass into that which we bear within us as the corpse of the light, of the heat, of the air, etc. It was only because He was able to become akin to death that He could become akin to man. And we must feel within our soul that the God had to die so that He might be able to enfill us, who had acquired death as a result of the Luciferic temptation, so that we might be able to say: ‘Christ in us.’

Many other things are hidden for man behind sense-existence. He turns his gaze upon the plant-world; he sees how the light of the sun conjures forth the plants from out of the soil. Science teaches us that light is necessary for the growth of plants, but that is only half of the truth. He who looks at the plants with clairvoyant sight sees living spiritual elements rising out of them. The light dips down into the plants and rises again out of them as a living spiritual element; the light comes down into the plants in order to be transformed in them and to be born again as a living spiritual element. In the animals it is the chemical-ether that enters, and this chemical-ether is not perceptible to man: if man could be aware of it, it would sound spiritually. The animals transform this ether into water-spirits. The plants transform light into air-spirits; animals transform the spirit active in the chemical-ether into water-spirits. But man transforms what dwells in the cosmic ether-in the life-ether—that which enables him to live at all and which he has been prevented from killing within himself—that he transforms into earth-spirits.

In a course of lectures in Carlsruhe ‘From Jesus to Christ,’ I once spoke of the human ‘phantom.’ This is not the time for drawing the connecting threads between what is to be said here and what was said then about the human ‘phantom,’ but such connecting threads do exist and you will perhaps find them for yourselves. To-day let me present the thing from another side.

There is perpetually brought forth in man something that is also spiritual—the life in him. It is forever passing out into the world. Man projects an aura around him, an aura of rays whereby he enriches the earthly spiritual element of the earth. In the earthly spiritual element of the earth, however, there are contained, all the qualities, moral or otherwise that man has acquired and that he bears within himself. This is absolutely true. Clairvoyant sight perceives how man sends out his moral, intellectual and aesthetic aura into the world and how this aura continues to live as earth-spirit in the spirituality of the earth. As a comet draws its tail through the cosmos, so does man draw through the whole of earthly life the spiritual aura which he projects. This spiritual aura is held together phantom-like, during a man's life, but at the same time it rays out into the world his moral and intellectual wealth of soul. Life is very complicated, and this also is a phenomenon of life.

When, in our occult studies, we go back to the times before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that men of those periods simply radiated this phantomlike entity which contained their moral qualities, into the external world, into the external spiritual aura of the earth. But humanity developed in the course of the earth's existence, and just at the epoch when the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass a certain stage had been reached in the evolution of this phantom-like entity. We may say that in earlier times the phantomlike entity, rayed out by man, was much more evanescent; by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it had become denser, had more form; and as a fundamental characteristic of this phantom-like entity, man had mingled the connection with death, which he was developing in himself, by killing the ray of light that enters into his eye, and so on, as I have explained. These earthly spiritual entities which radiate from man himself are like a stillborn child, because man imparts his death to them. If Christ had not come upon Earth, human beings would, during the sojourn of their souls in earthly bodies, continuously have exuded entities with the impress of death upon them. And with this impress of death there would have been bound up the moral qualities of men, of which we spoke yesterday—objective guilt and objective sin,—they would have been within it.

Let us suppose that Christ had not come. What would have happened in the evolution of the earth? From the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha would otherwise have taken place, men would have spiritually created dense forms to which they would have imparted death. And these dense forms would have had to pass over to ‘Jupiter’ with the earth. Man would have imparted death to the earth. A dead earth would have given birth to a dead Jupiter.

It could not have been otherwise, because, if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come about, man would have lacked the possibility of permeating what rayed out from him, with the Music of the Spheres, and the Cosmic Life. Christ brought these with the Mystery of Golgotha. And when there is a fulfillment of the words: ‘Not I, but Christ in me,’ when we bring about a relationship to Christ within ourselves, that which rays out from us, and which would otherwise be dead, is made living. Because we bear death within us the living Christ had to permeate us, in order that He might give life to the spiritual earth-essence that we leave behind us. Christ, the Living Logos, permeates and gives life to the objective guilt and sin which detaches itself from us and which we do not carry further in Karma, and because He gives it life, a living earth will evolve into a living Jupiter. That is the result of the Mystery of Golgotha.

The soul can, if it reflects, receive Christ in the following way. The soul can realize that there was once a time when man was within the bosom of the divine Logos. But man had to succumb to the temptation of Lucifer. He took death into himself. Into him there passed the germ by which he would have brought to birth a dead earth as a dead Jupiter. That remained behind, which, before the temptation, the human soul had been destined to receive for its earth-existence: with Christ, this entered again into man's earth-existence.

When man takes Christ into himself so as to feel permeated with Christ, he is able to say to himself: ‘That which the gods had allotted to me, before the Luciferic temptation, but which, owing to the temptation by Lucifer, had to remain behind in the Cosmos, enters into my soul with Christ. The soul may become perfect again through taking Christ into itself. Then only am I fully soul; then only am I again what, according to divine decree, I was intended to be from the very beginning of the earth.’ ‘Am I really a soul without Christ?’ man asks himself: and he feels that it is through Christ that he first becomes the soul that the guiding divine Beings intended him to be. That is the wonderful feeling of ‘home’ which souls can have with Christ; for out of the primal cosmic home of the soul did Christ descend, in order to give back to the soul of man that which had to be lost upon the earth as a result of the temptation of Lucifer. Christ leads the soul up again to its primordial home, the home allotted to it by the Gods. That is the bliss and the blessing of the human soul in the experience of Christ. It was this that gave such bliss to certain Christian mystics in the Middle Ages. They may have written many things which in themselves seem to be tinged with too strong a sense element, but it was nevertheless fundamentally spiritual. Such Christian mystics as those who joined Bernard of Clairvaux, and others, felt that the human soul was as a bride who had lost her bridegroom at the primal beginning of the earth; and when Christ entered into their souls, filling them with life, and soul, and spirit, Christ was to them as the bridegroom who united himself with the soul, and whom she had once lost in her original home, whom she had forsaken in order, through Lucifer, to follow the path of freedom, the path of differentiation between good and evil.

When the soul of man really lives into Christ, feeling that Christ is the living Being, Who from the death on Golgotha flowed out into the atmosphere of the earth, and may flow into the soul, it feels itself inwardly vivified through the Christ. The soul feels a transition from death to life.

As up to the most remote future we must live out our earthly existence in human bodies, we cannot hear directly the Music of the Spheres, nor have direct experience of the cosmic life. But we can experience that which flows out from Christ, and in this way, have, by proxy, as it were, that which otherwise comes to us from the Music of the Spheres and the cosmic life. Pythagoras of old spoke of the Music of the Spheres. Why?

Pythagoras was an initiate of the ancient Mysteries. He had gone through the experience wherein the soul passed out of the body. When the soul was out of the body he was able to be withdrawn into the spiritual worlds; there he saw Christ Who was later to come to the earth. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, man cannot speak of the Music of the Spheres as did Pythagoras; but even if his soul does not live outside the body he can speak in another way of the Music of the Spheres. As an initiate he might even to-day speak like Pythagoras; but the ordinary inhabitant of earth can speak of the Music of the Spheres and of the cosmic life only when he experiences in his soul: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ for That is What has lived in the Sphere-Music, and in the cosmic life. But we too must pass through the experience in ourselves; we must receive the Christ into our souls. Let us suppose that a man were to fight against this that he did not wish to receive Christ into his soul. At the end of the earth when the earth spirits, that have arisen in the course Of the life of mankind, have formed themselves into a nebulous spirit-form that has emanated from the earth, such a man would bear with him all those phantom-like entities which had come forth from him in earlier incarnations. There would be a dead earth, and this would pass over, dead, to Jupiter. At the end of the earth-period a man might have carried out and completely absolved his Karma; he might have shouldered the whole of it in order to work out the adjustment of all the imperfections committed by him; he might have become perfect in his soul being, in his Ego, but sin and guilt would remain objectively in what was left behind. That is a truth, for we do not live only for ourselves; we do not live in order that we may become egoistically more perfect; we live for the world, and at the end of the world, the remains of our earth-incarnations will stand there like a mighty tableau if we have not taken into us the living Christ. When we connect what was said in the last lecture with what is being said to-day (and it is really the same, only taken from two sides) we understand how Christ takes upon Himself the guilt and sin of the earth-humanity, in so far as these are objective guilt and sin. And if we have inwardly realized this, ‘Not I, but Christ in me,’ then He takes over what comes forth from us, and these ‘remains’ of ours stand there vivified by Christ, irradiated by Christ and permeated by His life. Our incarnations stand there, that is to say, the remains of these incarnations, and taken as a whole, what do they yield?

Because Christ unites them all—Christ Who belongs to all mankind in the present and in the future—all the remains of the single incarnations coalesce. Let us take one incarnation: certain relics or remains are left, as we have described. Further incarnations have other remains, and so on, up to the end of the earth period. If these relics are permeated with Christ, they coalesce—compress what is rarified and you will get density—spirit also becomes dense, our collective earth-incarnations are united into a spiritual body. That belongs to us, we need it, because we evolve onwards to Jupiter, and it is the starting point of our embodiment on Jupiter. At the end of the earth period we shall stand there with our soul, we shall stand there before our earth-relics, which have been gathered together by Christ, and we shall have to unite ourselves with them in order to pass over with them to Jupiter.

We shall rise again in the body, in the earth-body, that has condensed out of the separate incarnations. From a heart profoundly moved I say: ‘In the body we shall rise again!’

In these days, young people of sixteen, and even less, are beginning to press their own confession of faith, and to talk of having happily grown beyond such nonsense as ‘The Resurrection of the Body.’ But those who seek to deepen their occult knowledge of the Mysteries of the Universe strive gradually to rise to an understanding of what has been said to men, because—as I explained at the beginning of this lecture—it had first of all to be said, in order that men might grasp it as life-truth and then understand it later. The resurrection of the body is a reality, but our soul must feel that it will arise face to face with the earth-relics that have been collected, brought together by Christ, face to face with the spiritual body that is permeated with Christ. This is what our soul must learn to understand. For supposing that (because of our not having received into ourselves the living Christ), we could not approach this earth-body with its sin and guilt and unite with it. If we rejected the Christ, the relics of our various incarnations would be scattered at the end of the earth-period; they would have remained, but they would not have been gathered together by the Christ who spiritualizes the whole of humanity. We should stand as a soul at the end of the earth period, and we should be bound to the earth, to that in the earth which remains dead in our relics. Certainly our souls would, in spirit, be free in an egoistic sense, but we could not approach our bodily relics. Such souls are the booty of Lucifer, for he strives to cross the true earth-goal, he tries to prevent souls from reaching their earth-goal, to hold them back in the spiritual world. And Lucifer will send over what has remained of scattered earth-relics, to the Jupiter evolution as a dead content of Jupiter, which will not separate as Moon from Jupiter, but will be in Jupiter, and will be continually emitting these earth-relics. And these earth-relics will have to be called into life on Jupiter by the souls above, of their own kind.

And now you will remember what I told you some years ago—that the human race on Jupiter will divide itself into those souls who have attained their earth-goal, who will have attained the goal of Jupiter, and into those souls who will form a middle kingdom between the human kingdom and the animal kingdom on Jupiter. These latter will be Luciferic souls, Luciferic—merely spiritual. They will have their body below, and this body will be a direct expression of their whole inner being, but they will be able to direct it only from outside. Two races, the good and the bad, will differentiate themselves from one another on Jupiter.

A Venus existence will follow that of Jupiter; and again there will be an adjustment as a result of the further evolution of the Christ event, but it is on Jupiter that man will realize what it means to wish to be perfect only in his own Ego, and not to make the whole earth his own affair. Through the whole course of the Jupiter cycle man will have to experience that, for all that he has not permeated with Christ, during his earthly existence, will then pass before his spiritual sight.

Let us reflect from this point of view upon the words of Christ which sent His disciples out into the world to proclaim His Name, and in His Name to forgive sins. Why to forgive sins in His Name? Because the forgiveness of sins is connected with His Name. Sins can only be blotted out and transformed into living life if Christ can be united with our earth-relics, if during our earth-existence He is within us in the sense of the Pauline saying: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me.’

And wherever any religious confession, in its outer ceremonial associates itself with this saying of Christ in order to bring home to souls the meaning and significance of Christ, we must seek this deeper meaning in it. When in any form of religious confession, one of His servants speaks of the forgiveness of sins, by Christ's command, as it were, it means that he who with his words about the forgiveness of sins, forms a connection with the forgiveness of sins through Christ, says to the soul in need of comfort: ‘I have seen that thou hast developed a living relationship to Christ. Thou dost unite with objective sin and guilt, and with what as objective sin and guilt is to enter into thine Earth-relics, all that Christ is to thee. Because I have recognized that thou hast permeated thyself with the Christ—therefore I dare to say to thee: “Thy sins are forgiven thee.”‘

Such words always mean that he, who in any religious confession whatsoever, speaks of the forgiveness of sins, is convinced that the person in question has formed a connection with Christ, that he wants to bear Christ in his heart and in his soul. Because of this he is permitted to give comfort when the other comes to him conscious of his guilt. ‘Christ will forgive thee, and I dare to say unto thee that in His Name thy sins are forgiven thee.’ Christ is the only forgiver of sins because He is the bearer of sins. He is the Being Who gives life to human earth-relics, and a wonderful link with Him is created when those who want to serve Him can give comfort in the words: ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee’—to those who show that in their inner being they feel a union with Christ. For it is a fresh strengthening of the relationship to Christ when the soul realizes ‘I have taken such a view of my guilt and of my sins, that it might be said to me that Christ takes them upon Himself, works through them with His Being.’ If the expression ‘forgiveness of sins’ is to be an expression of a truth it must contain as an undertone that the sinner is reminded of his bond with Christ even if he does not form it anew. There must be so inward a bond between the soul and Christ that the soul cannot be reminded of it often enough. And because Christ is bound up with the objective sin and guilt of the human soul, the soul can best remind itself in daily life of its relation to Christ by reminding itself at the moment of the forgiveness of sins, of the existence of the cosmic Christ in the earth's being. Those who join Anthroposophy in the real spirit, and not merely in an external sense, can most assuredly become their own father-confessors. Through Spiritual Science they can learn to know Christ so intimately and feel themselves so closely connected with Him—that they can be directly conscious of His spiritual presence. And, when they have solemnly vowed themselves to Him as the Cosmic Principle, they can in spirit direct their confession to Him, and in their silent meditation ask from Him the forgiveness of sins. But so long as men have not yet permeated themselves with Spiritual Science in this deep spiritual sense, intelligent reference must be made to that which, as an external sign, is known in the various religions of the world as the ‘Forgiveness of Sins.’ Men will become spiritually freer and freer, and in this greater spiritual freedom their communion with Christ will become more and more a thing of direct experience.

And there must be tolerance I A man who thinks that, through the deep understanding which his innermost soul has of Christ—the Spirit of Golgotha—he can hold direct intercourse with the Christ, must look with understanding upon those who need the positive declarations of a confession of faith, and who need a minister of Christ to give them comfort with the words ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee.’ On the other side there should be tolerance on the part of those who see that there are men who can manage for themselves. This may be all an ideal in the Earth existence, but the anthroposophist, at all events, may look out to such an ideal.

I have spoken to you of spiritual secrets which reveal themselves, and which make it possible for men—even those, who have imbibed much spiritual teaching—to look still more deeply into the nature of our being. I have spoken to you of the overcoming of human egoism, and of those things which we must understand before we can have a right understanding of Karma. I have spoken to you of man in so far as he is not only an ‘I’ being, but belong to the whole earth-existence, and is called to help forward the attainment of the divine aim of the earth. Christ did not come into the world and pass through the Mystery of Golgotha in order that He might be something to each one of us in our egoism. It would be terrible if Christ were to be so understood in a sense that the expression of Paul. ‘Not I, but Christ in me’ should only encourage a higher egoism. Christ died for the whole of humanity, for the humanity of the earth. Christ became the central Spirit of the earth Who has to save, for the sake of the earth, the spiritual-earthly elements that flow from man.

Those who read theological works to-day can bear out what I now say. Certain theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries peremptorily disposed of the popular belief of the Middle Ages, that Christ came upon earth in order to snatch the earth from the devil, to snatch the earth from Lucifer. Within modern theology there is an ‘enlightened’ materialism which will not recognize itself as such, on the contrary it imagines itself to be very enlightened; it says: ‘In the dark Middle Ages people said that Christ appeared in the world because He had to snatch the earth away from the devil.’ But the true explanation leads us back to this simple, popular belief of the people. For everything on the earth which is not set free by Christ belongs to Lucifer. All that is human in us—all that is more than what is contained in our Ego, will be ennobled; it will be made fruitful for the whole of humanity when it is permeated with Christ.

And now at the end of what we have been considering during the last few days, I do not want to omit to say these words to each single one of the souls who have gathered together here: Hope and confidence in the future of the work in which we are engaged, can dwell in our hearts, because we have endeavored, from the very beginning, to fill what we had to say with the will of Christ. And in this hope and confidence it may be said that our teaching is itself what Christ wishes to say to us, in fulfillment of His words: ‘I am with you always even to the end of the earth-ages.’ We have wished to be mindful only of what comes from Him; and that which He has breathed into us, according to His promise, we want to take into ourselves as Spiritual Science. Not because we feel our Spiritual Science to be filled with an element of Christian dogmatism, do we consider it truly Christian, but because having Christ within us, it is really a revelation of the Christ. I am therefore also convinced that what takes root as true Spiritual Science in those souls which want to receive our Christ-filled Spiritual Science will be fruitful for the whole of humanity.

Clairvoyant investigation shows that much of what is good in a spiritual sense in our Movement proceeds from those who have taken our ‘Christian’ Spiritual Science into themselves, and who, after having passed through the gate of death, send down to us the fruits of this Christian Spiritual Science. The Christian Spiritual Science, which they have taken into themselves, and which they are now sending down to us from the spiritual worlds is already living in us. For they do not keep it merely for the sake of perfecting their own Karma. They can let it stream into those who want to receive it. Comfort and hope arise for our Spiritual Science when we know that our so-called ‘dead’ are working with us.

In the second lecture we spoke about these things in a certain connection. But to-day, when we have come to the close of this course, I should like to add a personal word.

Whilst I have been speaking to this Norrköping Branch of our Society I could not help being conscious of the spirit of one who was so closely connected with us here. It is really true to say that the spirit of Frau Danielsen like a ‘good angel’ looks on all that this Branch wants to undertake. Hers also was a ‘Christian spirit’ in the sense described, and the souls who knew her will never feel themselves separated from her. May that spirit hover as guardian-spirit over this Branch! Willingly will it do so if the souls that work in this Branch receive it. With these words, which I speak from the depths of my heart, I close these lectures, and I hope that we shall continue to work together on the spiritual path which we have entered.