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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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Secrets of the Threshold: Foreword
Translated by Ruth Pusch

The reader unfamiliar with these works is advised to turn first to these books as a way of increasing his understanding and appreciation of this volume.
147. Secrets of the Threshold: Welcome 24 Aug 1913, Munich
Translated by Ruth Pusch

Even though there were many good reasons for this postponement, it was especially unfortunate in that just at this time, just in this place, the important message in our friend's work should have been brought before our hearts and souls. This dramatic presentation of the undercurrents and fluctuations in human evolution could have given us a better understanding of the tempestuous happenings of our own day as they come and go.
That statement expresses what is working into our own time, bubbling and boiling under the surface, something that can be understood only when you venture a little way into the mysterious activity in the occult depths of the folk souls.
The people taking part in the performances are at work the whole day, so that they can hardly undertake anything else. They will forgive me for not naming them all, for they are well known to our friends in the Anthroposophical Society.
147. Perception of the Elemental World 25 Aug 1913, Munich
Translator Unknown

To the observation we use in the sense world and to the understanding limited to the sense world, the being of man, the true, inmost nature of man, lies in hidden worlds.
For the faculty of transformation, thinking or imagination; for the opposite condition, the will. To understand this, we should consider that in the physical sense world the human being is a self, an ego, an ‘I’.
These are the things we must know if we wish to penetrate with open eyes and with understanding into the actual spiritual world.
148. On the Fifth Gospel: Lecture IX 06 Jan 1914, Berlin
Translator Unknown

The Essenes were greatly perplexed for they did not understand how such words could be uttered by any human soul, and they gazed at him questionly. He spoke again: “What manner of souls are you?
I want to show you how the whole meaning and course of the evolution of humanity comes to expression in manifold events if only they are understood in the right light. I do not want to go into the idea behind the story of Parsifal and its connection with the development of the Christ Impulse, but to speak of something that underlay everything that was said in Leipzig.
Now the Christ Impulse was a Deed which mankind had not at once been capable of understanding, But because the Christ had passed into the Aura of the Earth, He was working on—as indeed men had conjectured in their dogmas and teachings.
148. On the Fifth Gospel: Lecture X 13 Jan 1914, Berlin
Translator Unknown

Because, after nearly two thousand years of development under the influence of the Christ Impulse, humanity now rightly looks upwards once again, it is thought that the ancient Hebrews, too, looked upwards.
And now let us try to understand the attitude of John the Baptist. Had he not his reasons for speaking in this way to those who came to him at the Jordan?
In the language of those days many words had more than one meaning and were used with the deliberate purpose of indicating a deeper meaning lying underneath. But we cannot really understand these things, my dear friends, unless we connect what has here been said with the mission of Paul.
148. On the Fifth Gospel: Lecture XI 10 Feb 1914, Berlin
Translator Unknown

In the physical body they are vesicular organs, but what underlies them is actually a certain formation of the etheric body. Moreover for everything that found its way to his organs of breathing, too, man would either have felt inordinate desire or deepest loathing.
And to this very day we find that when adherents of purely oriental teachings endeavour to understand Western thought and philosophy, they come to a standstill at the point where Egohood becomes an essential and basic factor.
When a man cannot perceive the young, fertile forces of the Christ Impulse in his ether-body, it is rather like having to live after death under the constant impression of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption. These young, fertile forces of the Christ Impulse... what are they?
148. Fifth Gospel (D. Osmond): Lecture I 01 Oct 1913, Oslo
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

For centuries and centuries men have applied their noblest, most profound thought in attempts to reach an understanding of Christ. Here too, it might seem as if only the most highly intellectual achievements of men would suffice for such understanding.
In other words, if Darwinian thought becomes an impulse in someone who lacks any deep understanding of Christianity—which nevertheless lies in Darwinism—he may end by understanding no more of Darwinism than he does of Christianity.
Nourishment has nothing whatever to do with understanding the nature of foodstuffs. Similarly, the spread of Christianity over the earth had nothing to do with men's understanding of it.
148. Fifth Gospel (D. Osmond): Lecture II 02 Oct 1913, Oslo
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

But now it seemed to the people as if these men had been transformed, as if their very souls had been made new; they seemed to have lost all narrowness, all selfishness in life, to have acquired largeness of heart, an all-embracing tolerance and a deep understanding for everything that is human on the earth. Moreover they were able to express themselves in such a way that everyone present could understand them.
But these men themselves in whom the transformation had come about, who had been awakened by the Spirit of Cosmic Love, now felt within them a new understanding of what had, it is true, come to pass in intimate connection with their own souls, but which they had not previously grasped.
They came to realise that for forty days they had gone about with this Being who upon the Cross had been born, that this Being—the All-prevailing Love itself born out of the Cosmos into the world—had been their Teacher, but that they had not been mature enough to understand His words; they realised that they had been obliged to receive His teachings with the subconscious forces of their souls, that they had gone about with the Christ like sleep-walkers, unable to understand with their ordinary minds what this Being imparted to them.
148. Fifth Gospel (D. Osmond): Lecture III 03 Oct 1913, Oslo
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

From the Baptism by John until the Mystery of Golgotha, therefore, the Christ Being passes through a kind of embryonic existence. The Mystery of Golgotha itself is to be understood as the earthly birth—that is to say, the death of Jesus is to be understood as the earthly birth of the Christ.
Maeterlinck, a man of some genius, is therefore labouring under the illusion that the physical alone can suffer and that for this reason, one who is dead cannot suffer.
These are things of which we must be mindful if we would understand the real significance of the Christ Impulse in the sense in which it must be understood in times to come.
148. Fifth Gospel (D. Osmond): Lecture IV 05 Oct 1913, Oslo
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond

He also perceived that many a time these demonic powers passed over into the believers participating in these rites. For reasons easy to understand, these things have not found their way into the other Gospels. And indeed it is only now, within our spiritual Movement, that such things can be disclosed, because it is only in our time that the human soul is ripe enough to understand the deep and overwhelming experiences which came to Jesus of Nazareth while he was still a young man.
The father died about this time—it was when Jesus of Nazareth was in his twenty-fourth year, or thereabouts. When Jesus came home his soul was still under the mighty impression of how demonic powers held sway in much that was contained in the old heathen religion.
Moreover, since these experiences had come to Jesus of Nazareth, mutual understanding with the Essenes was not as easy as it had been before. For there was something in his soul of which he could say no word to the Essenes—something seemed lacking as they conversed together.

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