The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. From Jesus to Christ

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The topic that will form the subject of today’s reflections is one of profound significance for contemporary spiritual life, and it will be discussed from the perspective from which I have often had the opportunity to speak on various questions of spiritual life here in this city, from this very place. It is precisely this topic that our friends have requested for this evening. But in general, it is not very easy to speak about such a specialized—albeit profoundly significant—topic from the perspective of spiritual science. For in doing so, one must, in a certain sense, assume that the esteemed audience recalls some of what has already been said in the other lectures regarding the foundations of the spiritual science referred to here.

[ 2 ] This spiritual science is by no means something that is already widely recognized or in any way substantiated today. On the contrary—this spiritual science is something that can be said to still rank among the most unpopular and misunderstood spiritual movements of our time. And especially when it comes to a topic like today’s, such misunderstandings and opposing views must be taken into account all the more. For the opinion is still all too widespread that spiritual science might attack or endanger this or that religious creed, which may be—or could be—precious and dear to this or that soul for whatever reason. This, however, is by no means the case, as becomes clear to anyone who delves more deeply into spiritual science. Spiritual science aims to be a science and, in a certain sense, a continuation of what has flowed into human development over the past three to four centuries as the scientific way of thinking. It merely seeks to bring forth from the human soul what constitutes the scientific way of thinking in a different way than natural science itself can do with its research methods. For this spiritual science is concerned—not with anything that is outwardly perceptible to the senses, nor with anything that the intellect observes on the basis of the senses—but with the world of the spiritual. It therefore stands to reason that questions relating to the spiritual life of human beings should be considered from this spiritual-scientific standpoint. For many people today, there is certainly no question that could be as important in the spiritual life of humanity as the question encompassed by today’s topic—the question of Christ Jesus. I would like to preface this with just a few remarks so that we may reach a reasonable understanding of the perspective of spiritual science, and then proceed immediately to the specifics of today’s topic.

[ 3 ] What gives rise to misunderstandings upon misunderstandings and rejections upon rejections of spiritual science is that, although spiritual science is a continuation of the scientific way of thinking, it fundamentally places entirely different demands on the human soul than this scientific way of thinking itself. How does that mode of thinking—which has rightly emerged from the natural sciences and which today is increasingly capturing people’s minds—approach the highest questions of spiritual life? It asks: What can human beings know? How far does human knowledge extend? — And let it be said right away: This question is of the highest value, and spiritual science will have no objection to it. It is most admirable when philosophers or other thinkers set out to determine how far human thinking and human cognition can extend, on the assumption that the human soul is exactly as it is observed in everyday life and in conventional science. It is very easy to conclude: Human cognition extends this far; it reaches up to this limit, but does not go beyond it. — This is, after all, something one encounters daily today. One can recognize this within the limits of the human spirit, but not that. Spiritual science takes a completely different perspective.

[ 4 ] Spiritual science is based on the perspective of the development of the human soul; it is based on the perspective that this human soul, as it is in the immediate reality of everyday life and as it must function within conventional science, certain definable limits of cognition, yet this human soul can transform itself through certain inner processes it undertakes within itself and with itself; it can make of itself something capable of penetrating into realms of existence other than those recognized in everyday life or in conventional science. In other lectures I have had the privilege of giving here, and in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*, I have drawn attention to how the soul, through the intensification of those activities of everyday life, comes to transform itself into something entirely different. Today, by way of introduction, I can only hint at the fundamental principles. Through certain exercises that involve an intensification of what is called “attention” in ordinary life, or of what is called “devotion” in ordinary life—through an unlimited intensification of these inner human experiences—the soul comes to truly carry out a kind of spiritual chemistry within the human being itself.

[ 5 ] As human beings exist in everyday life, their [physical] life is intimately connected with their spiritual life. Everything we do in everyday life, we do in such a way that what intervenes spiritually in the physical-bodily realm makes use of the latter as an instrument. Now let me give an example to which I attach no particular importance, but which I wish to use merely for the sake of illustration: [namely] how hydrogen combines with oxygen to form water. Now the chemist steps in, separates out the hydrogen, and shows that something emerges from the water that has properties entirely different from those of water. Such “spiritual chemistry” takes place when the soul applies to itself what I have demonstrated in my book *How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*. The soul, as a spiritual being, separates itself from the physical, learns to recognize the abilities to live inwardly—turned away from, as it were, lifted out of the physical-bodily realm. This is the great experience that the spiritual researcher must undergo within himself—not through any speculation, not through any philosophy, but through the devoted practice of his soul to make it independent of [everyday] activities, of its senses, and of the influence of the physical-bodily realm. This is the great experience of the spiritual researcher: to know what it means to live spiritually and soulfully within oneself, without living in the body. This is only a hint of what I have often taken the liberty of discussing in other lectures here, and which I ask you to accept today as an assertion, for my task is, after all, to show how such research—carried out by a soul that has made itself a spiritual researcher—must consider what we call the “Christ Event” or—perhaps we could also say—the “Christ Jesus Event” in the course of human evolution.

[ 6 ] Whatever any religious creed has to say about Christ Jesus is received through experiences that must, of course, take place within the physical realm. What spiritual research has to say is attained when the soul—freed from its physicality, if I may use this frowned-upon term—has become clairvoyant and surveys the course of human development as it can indeed be surveyed when the soul is no longer in the body, when it is outside the body in the spiritual world.

[ 7 ] Now, this evening I will have to choose, so to speak, a very special way [of communicating] for my topic, for what the spiritual researcher—once he has made the preparations for his insights that I have just indicated—perceives, he attains through direct spiritual vision when, separated from the body, he engages in spiritual-soul activity and directs his spiritual gaze toward the events and processes of the world. What the spiritual researcher beholds cannot be communicated so directly; it can only be communicated when the spiritual researcher directs his gaze toward conditions that can be seen in the ordinary world—conditions that every human being can see—as they can only be viewed when the perspective of spiritual vision is adopted. Therefore, I will have to refer to certain processes of external life, and it might seem to some of you, my esteemed listeners, as though I were speaking only in parables, perhaps in analogies. That is not what I mean! But what I do mean—which may well appear to be an analogy—is merely a way of expressing what spiritual research has to say about our questions.

[ 8 ] With regard to one of the aspects—the most important one in the question we are addressing today—it is extremely important to come to an understanding with contemporary thought. In the field of natural science, it is acknowledged that it is not enough merely to record the individual processes of nature—to, so to speak, merely recount or list them—but rather that the natural scientist must progress from mere recounting and recording to the laws that, quite certainly and as a matter of course, invisibly permeate and interweave the phenomena, as it were. A natural law itself is something one attains by delving deeply into the phenomena of the sensory world—not simply by recounting or describing them, but by understanding how to relate them to one another in such a way that they reveal their inner regularity. But one does not go that far simply with regard to what becomes history, what emerges as history. And that is why it is not easy to find understanding if one applies the scientific method, so to speak, solely to the spiritual aspect of history.

[ 9 ] I don’t like to speak about personal matters, but in this case, the personal is also objective. When my book *Christianity as a Mystical Fact* was published many years ago—a work grounded in spiritual-scientific reflections on the question of Christ—the title was chosen with great care to indicate that it presented a particular perspective. I did not call it *The Mysticism of Christianity*. To what extent Christianity contains mysticism—that was not what I wanted to explore in this book; nor did I intend to expound on Christian mysticism or the mystical life of a Christian. Rather, I wanted to show that the emergence of Christianity—that a life of the Christ impulse in the history of human development—is a fact. This can only be understood if spiritual realities are perceived behind the historical development, behind the narratives and descriptions; if realities reveal themselves to a spiritual eye—in other words, if the reality itself constitutes mysticism—occurring directly in the world in a mystical sense. By this I meant to suggest that only those who are able to see not merely the Christian development as it appears in the historical records and narratives, but who are capable of perceiving in Christianity something in which the facts are arranged just as they are in the solar system—where the sun establishes itself as the most important factor—are capable of grasping the spirit of Christianity. This becomes apparent when one examines the facts from a scientific perspective. People are not yet accustomed to examining historical facts in this way. Consequently, in history, it is easy to describe how one fact follows another—just as one would observe in the natural sciences—without realizing that the way one views historical development, the way one looks at the facts, is the most important thing. One must recognize that the Christ problem is a decisive factor and that only through it can one attain inner insight, can one arrive at an understanding of what actually happened.

[ 10 ] In modern science, there is a law whose details may be contested but whose fundamentals have been recognized—namely, Haeckel’s famous biogenetic law, which states that every organism, at the beginning of its development in the embryo, undergoes a brief repetition of all the stages that characterized the development of the organisms from which it descends. With regard to external physical form, the human being, during this embryonic stage, passes through, so to speak, the stages of a lower animal, a fish, and so on. This is something anyone can learn from natural science itself; such laws are recognized in natural science. Now, for spiritual observation, an extraordinarily important law of human development emerges, which of course takes on a very different form than a natural scientific law such as the one just mentioned, because it applies to the realm of spiritual life; but it is no less a law for human knowledge than the laws of natural science are. This law can be observed by spiritual researchers when one raises the question: There have undoubtedly been various stages in human development as well, in which the human being has passed through various phases in the course of history.

[ 11 ] We need not delve now into the course of human development as it unfolded in prehistoric times; we need only assume that historical times were certainly preceded by prehistoric times. But anyone who even briefly glances at the course of human development can say: What humanity has gone through from epoch to epoch, from century to century, has taken various forms. — And then it is only natural that we ask ourselves: Can this entire history of humanity be compared to anything? — What I am saying is indeed drawn from the course of human history, but it is presented here as it appears to the spiritual-scientific gaze. I need only turn to the external facts and thus [find] the words to express what the spiritual-scientific gaze perceives. To gain some insight into human development, one might ask: To what can this entire development of humanity be compared? — Well, it can be compared to the individual life of a human being. Human life was different in ancient times—in the historical eras that history looks back upon today—such as, for example, the times of ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Persian cultures. The experiences in Greek and Roman culture were also different from those in today’s cultural world. And only someone who refuses to acknowledge the diversity of life can believe that the conditions of spiritual existence in our present day are comparable to those that existed during the Greek and Roman periods or during the ancient Egyptian period. Nor do the experiences of an individual in childhood resemble those of youth or young adulthood, or those of middle age and old age. Human development takes on various forms; we can even say that it passes through different stages of life. But then another question arises: To which stage in an individual’s life can we compare the current age of humanity? This question can really only be answered through the spiritual sciences.

[ 12 ] Spiritual science takes this view, which you are already familiar with and which has already been demonstrated here in other lectures: When a human being enters this physical earthly existence, then what constitutes them, what defines them, is not merely determined by what comes from their father and mother—or what is inherited from their ancestors in general—but, according to the spiritual-scientific viewpoint, human beings descend to their earthly existence with their spiritual-soul aspect from a spiritual life and unite, in accordance with the laws of nature, with what we receive from our father and mother. Spiritual science is based on the principle that it is the spiritual-soul aspect that collaborates in the entire formation of the physical-bodily being —when we observe how a child grows into sensory existence, when we contemplate these wondrous mysteries of the developing human being, how the initially indefinite facial features become more defined, how clumsy movements give way to more skillful ones, and so on. Here spiritual science shows us how the being emerging from the spiritual world takes hold of the substantial physical body, how it works upon it—shaping and forming it.

[ 13 ] Now, this human life does indeed break down into a descending phase and an ascending phase—and then back into a descending phase. And one can easily see that around the thirty-fifth year—between the thirtieth and the thirty-fifth year—there is a kind of midpoint of human life on earth. Up until this thirty-fifth year, a human being is, in fact, an ever-expanding entity emerging from the spiritual-soul realm, descending to unite with the physical-bodily realm. Spiritual science—as has likely been emphasized repeatedly here—is grounded in the concept of repeated earthly lives. Thus, under certain circumstances, we can look back from our present life into earlier earthly lives. The way in which we prepare our physical constitution ourselves from within our spiritual and soul life—with which we descend into the physical and corporeal realm—and the way we shape our destiny—all of this is influenced by what we have worked out in previous lives, by what we have acquired in previous lives. A closer spiritual-scientific examination now shows that throughout our entire ascending life, well into our thirties, we are still directly working on our physical body, on the framework of our destiny; we reap the fruits that we carry into this life from the spiritual realm—that is, also from our previous earthly lives. As we now experience our physical earthly existence, as we connect with the outer world and thus advance our soul, we have spiritual-soul experiences. These spiritual-soul experiences form within us a kind of spiritual-soul core. Around the age of thirty—toward the age of thirty-five—we have, in a certain sense, arranged our lives—if I may use that expression—in such a way that, in this life, we essentially find ourselves in a situation that corresponds to the spiritual causes we brought with us into this present earthly life.

[ 14 ] From this midpoint in life onward—a period between the ages of thirty and thirty-five—our spiritual-soul core —that is, what we develop in our present life—in such a way that it then lives within us for the rest of our lives, just as the forces of the new plant seed live within the plant, just as they live within it even when the leaves wither and fall off, and just as these forces of the new plant seed outlive the plant to link the plant’s end with the beginning of a new plant seed. Thus we live throughout our entire life, but in such a way that from our thirtieth to our thirty-fifth year, the spiritual-soul forces take the lead—the spiritual-soul forces that we have developed in our lives. Even then, when our sensory life begins to decline in the second half of life, when our hair turns gray, when the skin wrinkles, when this outer life can be compared to a withering plant, what was, so to speak, prepared at birth—but remained enclosed and hidden during the first thirty years of human life—becomes ever stronger and stronger, ever more powerful and powerful; what we have brought with us from our previous existence becomes ever stronger and stronger and passes through the gate of death, shedding the earthly body just as a plant sheds its leaves, and passes into the spiritual world to prepare for a new existence. In this way, we have pointed to an important aspect of life; [we have pointed out] how we are to regard, in a sense, the fresh life forces of youth—the spiritual-soul forces originating from prenatal lives—[we have pointed out] where these forces, so to speak, stand at a turning point—where the outer physical forces begin to wither and we lead a life on Earth, nurturing the new spiritual-soul seed that passes through the gate of death to enter the spiritual world and [relatively] soon become a new earthly human being again.

[ 15 ] When we now take a broad view of human life, we can—in a higher sense than would otherwise be possible—raise the question: To what can our present age be compared? In the course of human development, we view human life in such a way that we can compare our present epoch to the thirties or early thirties of a person’s life, or to the years slightly beyond that. You can, of course, find more precise details in the literature on spiritual science; I would have to give many lectures if I were to fully substantiate what I have just said. When one looks at our present life—the life that surrounds us in culture and in all human activities—one sees, from a spiritual scientific and objective perspective, that this life in the outer world can indeed only be compared to that part of human life that lies slightly beyond the ages of thirty to thirty-five. Human development on Earth has thus already entered a stage of life that lies beyond middle age.

[ 16 ] One need only turn one’s attention to this, need only compare—from this perspective—what humanity [in today’s culture] is experiencing with its admirable achievements to what was experienced in Egyptian-Chaldean or Greco-Roman culture. I wish only to cite superficial examples; I wish to point out that precisely those admirable achievements in technology and industry are the consequences of the natural sciences; and this very fact shows that human beings are already living in an age that has become detached from their outer life and from what is directly connected to their physicality. Egyptian and Greek culture placed human beings in the world in much the same way that a child or a young person is placed in the world, in which all activities are still directly dependent on what is connected to the human being and his physicality. An ascending life is what we observe in the individual human being during childhood; a life, on the other hand, detached from the human being, carried out, as it were, in objectivity—everything mechanical, mechanically detached—that is our present life!

[ 17 ] One could demonstrate this for all areas of life—for art, science, philosophy, as well as for religious life. It confirms with complete certainty what I was just able to hint at only superficially: Today, in the overall development of humanity, we stand at a point that goes beyond the midpoint of the human race. One could demonstrate this in particular by the way in which pedagogy must today be rationally justified—quite differently than in times past, because children today are growing up in a world where pedagogy must be artificially elaborated, detached from what are immediate impulses. Compare this with all pedagogy from those stages of human development that, so to speak, lie before the midpoint of human existence, and you will find that there, all pedagogy seeks to arise from immediate human intuition and immediate human instincts. Precisely when one seeks to observe the rational development of the being being educated, one will find full external confirmation of what I have to say from the perspective of spiritual science. What spiritual science shows us, however, is that we are currently in the age of maturity, which extends beyond the middle of life.

[ 18 ] The spiritual researcher now considers this entire course of human development. He allows it to unfold before him, as I have roughly characterized it, and proceeds entirely objectively. This development reveals itself to him as he turns his gaze to the historical evolution of the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, and Egyptian periods. Here it becomes apparent that we are dealing with a development that moves toward a certain point—a point that actually falls within the Greco-Roman era. At that point, all of humanity passes through the stage in which a person is between the ages of thirty and thirty-five.

[ 19 ] But while we are now living our lives — because our bodies possess a surplus of life force—we use this surplus to, so to speak, [compensate for] the decline of our individual lives, living beyond the age of thirty-five by nurturing the spiritual-soul seed until we pass through the gate of death—the life of humanity as a whole unfolds differently. There, when the youthful forces of humanity were exhausted, development needed, as it were, a new impetus. It required a force that no longer lay within humanity itself—a turning point that we can discern simply by observing human and historical development, a turning point that we could identify even if we knew nothing of the Gospel or of any Christian tradition! Let us hypothetically assume that we knew absolutely nothing about any Christian development and were to view human history in such a way that we set aside everything Christian: Nevertheless, we would find that during this period, the Greco-Roman era, there lies a turning point for the entire earthly development of humanity—as far as we can survey it. We would find that, after the existing forces of this human development had run dry, something occurred that can be described as a new impetus; we would see something flowing into this human development that had not been there before.

[ 20 ] If we now wish to examine more closely what has flowed into the development of humanity, we must take a look at the mysteries of ancient times. This life of mystery, which has already become somewhat known through contemporary literature—we might also call them the secrets of life—existed in all ancient cultures. Mysteries were rituals performed at specific sites that were, so to speak, both churches and universities; the rituals performed there were intended to attain a certain kind of knowledge. They were also cult rituals designed to develop the human soul in such a way that it could grow into a life beyond the everyday. These mysteries were practiced in a wide variety of ways among the most diverse peoples and within the most diverse cultures. What all mysteries had in common, however, was that the leaders of the individual mysteries drew into the mysteries those human souls whom they believed to be capable of developing for the respective [mystical] life. Within these mysteries, however, people held a different view of human knowledge and the life of the human soul than is commonly held today—precisely the view that spiritual science is intended to revive in a certain way.

[ 21 ] It was believed that the human soul, as it exists in everyday life, certainly has limitations, that it cannot penetrate those realms where the human soul connects with the very sources of existence itself. It was believed that the human soul must first [develop] a certain moral conscience, a certain insight, and undergo a certain preparation, so that by applying certain powers it could transform itself into a different being, in order to then attain powers of insight that go beyond everyday life — powers of cognition through which it could look into what lies above and beyond sensory things, that is, into a spiritual world.

[ 22 ] If one traces the various mysteries as they existed among different peoples with the spiritual eye, one finds that there were essentially two kinds of mysteries. One type of mystery involved the spiritual leaders guiding the initiates in a very specific way with regard to their soul life. They were developed in such a way that their perception became independent of the physical body. Their spiritual-soul nature was drawn out of the physical body. But this took place in two different ways: one way is found in the Greek and Egyptian mysteries, the other more so in the Persian and Near Eastern mysteries.

[ 23 ] In the Egyptian and Greek mysteries, the practice was to accustom the students to divert all their attention away from the outside world and turn all their perceptions inward. They learned to enter a state that otherwise occurs in human beings only—one might say, involuntarily—when a person is put to sleep, when external sensory impressions cease, and when the world allows its impulses to act upon the person more from within. In this way, the soul of such a mystery student was led entirely into itself, thereby strengthening his inner life. Such a soul lived an inner, intense life of a kind that a human being can never experience in the waking state when he is given over to external sensory impressions. Such a soul experiences itself inwardly in a much more intense, powerful life. And such a soul then came, at a certain point in its inner experience, to be able to say of itself: A human being is something one only comes to know when one tears oneself away from all sensory life, when one experiences oneself very strongly within oneself.

[ 24 ] Then a very specific, peculiar mood would always come over the student—it was, after all, a matter of experience to arrive at this [special] mood—but the students did indeed arrive at this mood. This mood consisted of the student saying to himself, drawing from his inner life—from what he perceived in his intensified soul life: “Just as I am in ordinary human life, that is how I have been [until now], in order to coexist with the outer sensory world; but that is not who I am in my full human nature, in what I am actually meant to be as a human being.” I can achieve this in the world only by strengthening myself within, by feeling and experiencing myself from within.”—Through this, the student came to the natural realization that human beings carry within themselves a spiritual-soul core that they cannot fully live out in their outward, physical life, and that human beings can attain higher qualities of the soul than those found in outward life. When a person experienced himself inwardly as a human being in this higher sense, he felt closer to the Divinity—the Divinity in which his primal source lies. They felt closer to the point where human soul life is directly connected to the primordial source of existence and life. They felt at home in their divine homeland. They felt born from the divine foundation of the world; they experienced themselves in communion with their God, with their origin. This was the path that the individual soul traveled.

[ 25 ] But it was bought—this must be stated, for only when it is stated can one fully understand this peculiar purpose of human development—this path was bought by the fact that selfishness in the human soul increased, not decreased! And that is precisely why the leaders of the Mysteries placed such great importance on proper, appropriate preparation, for they knew: If an unprepared person comes—one who has not been brought up in selflessness and human love before embarking on the spiritual path, one who lacks a solid foundation—then, through the nature of the mysteries, he does indeed unite with his God, but he would have to pay for this with a self-centered, increasingly selfish nature. For by withdrawing from participation in the outer world and living within oneself, one experiences the human self more intensely; one experiences egoism—if I may use the term—more intensely. And so the visionaries of these mysteries, who experienced this vision of God through a strengthening and invigoration of their inner self, were only able—thanks to a sound inner core—to maintain a good moral way of life despite the intensification of their egoism. That was one form [of mystery training], namely the one [through] which [the students]—without initiation—attained a higher vision.

[ 26 ] Among the other types of mysteries, for example, there was one that was particularly pronounced in the ancient cultures of the Near and Middle East—namely, one through which a person was initiated into existence by freeing themselves from inner experience. One had to suppress everything inner and soulful, just as it exists in ordinary life. They were, as it were, drawn out of their inner, soul-life experiences—out of worries and sorrows, drives and desires—and their personal existence was transformed into an experience in which they intensely shared in everything that happens in everyday life: the external phenomena of nature. They experienced winter and summer in everyday life. The student of such mysteries was not merely to pass through the changing seasons in the same way one usually experiences winter and summer; he was to experience the entire life of the Earth—as the Earth grew cold, as the leaves, the plant world, and all life withered away in winter—to the point where it permeated his entire physical being. He was to feel himself a part of the entire Earth organism; he should experience within himself, in his soul, the sadness and desolation of the frost; he should feel himself to be a part of earthly existence. He should rejoice when Midsummer came and the sun stood at its highest; he should feel the fresh life springing forth in such a way that he rejoiced at it, experiencing, as it were, the entire awakening of life. And then, when the sun was at its highest, the soul was led to share in the experience of the entire cosmos. Through this, these people experienced the cosmos quite differently than we do in our [modern] observation of nature. They rose to the spiritual-soul realm that is poured out over our cosmos and felt themselves within the soul of the universe.

[ 27 ] Once one had undergone this initiation as a student, one would then arrive at a very specific experience. One would, as it were, step outside of oneself—not in a negative sense, but in a positive one. One entered a state of being outside oneself—one does not readily call it an ecstatic state, because the word is misused today and is often used to describe something that is frowned upon. One gained a vision of the natural phenomena of the entire cosmos and felt at one with the cosmos. And then came that very specific experience, which can be expressed, for example, with the following words. The student could say to himself: I am allowed to live with the cosmos; I am allowed to experience, with the utmost intensity, the spiritual and soul forces that the cosmos holds within itself; and something becomes clear to me there, namely that the cosmos is designed, ultimately, to bring forth the human being. I am the son of the cosmos! And if humanity were not in the cosmos, creation would not have reached its goal, would not have come to its end. — It is quite another thing to say what I have just said in abstract terms than to experience it after one’s entire soul has been transformed, after one has come so far as to truly feel oneself to be a part of the cosmos. The initiates of these mysteries sensed this. Through this elevation of the entire human consciousness, it was absolutely essential that, through this experience, the human being arrive at a sense of pride. Pride was that communion with the divine-spiritual aspect of this world, just as the other kind of communion—achieved through the sensory world—was egoistic. And the student’s moral development had to be such that he, who was to experience the divine and thereby saw that the entire external world was directed toward the human being, did not succumb to utter arrogance.

[ 28 ] In these two ways, all the insights that became part of humanity’s knowledge in ancient times were attained. What was necessary back then? What was necessary in those ancient times was for humanity to receive, as it were, fresh forces through which it was led toward upward development—it was necessary because, at the time of its birth as a human race on Earth, it did not live out this outer sensory life to its fullest, just as a child does not live out the fullness of humanity. Humanity [at that time] attained full humanity [only] through the mysteries. The entire ancient culture is composed of two elements: that which was experienced by strengthening the inner life, and that which was experienced by beholding the entire vast universe in its magnificent states and thus being able to say: All of this tends toward, draws toward, the human being—toward what I possess within myself as the spiritual-soul aspect. — The latter type of mystery student, in particular, gazed out into the vastness of the universe in such a way that he said: Out there in the vastness of the universe is that which must come upon me, which must penetrate me, if I am to recognize myself as a human being in the fullest sense of the word. I live on Earth and cannot look out into the vastness of the world. Yet when the Spirit comes upon me from the vastness of the world, then I can regard myself as a human being in the fullest sense of the word.

[ 29 ] Then came the age in which humanity’s youthful vitality had, so to speak, dried up, in which the entire human race had reached that stage at which the individual stands between the ages of thirty and thirty-five. Now, I would have to give many lectures again if I were to substantiate what needs to be said here with further explanations. At that time, [when humanity entered] this stage of development, the ancient mysteries had lost their meaning for people, because what has just been alluded to—the mysteries—was intended for a youthful humanity. Now there came to pass what is still so difficult for the human mind to acknowledge today. What in the ancient mysteries did indeed come upon the individual student—and took place only when he stepped out of ordinary, everyday life, when he drew his soul out of himself—[no longer occurred]; what occurred was that even if a person had continued to attempt to draw his soul out of himself in this way, he would no longer have seen a spiritual-soul element coming to him from the cosmos. The ancient disciples felt, when they were at the right stage of development: What underlies the world as a spiritual-soul element comes upon me, penetrates into me. — The mystery student, particularly the Persian and Near Eastern ones, felt, when in his extraordinary human state, how the Spirit settled upon his soul, how he was permeated by the Spirit of the world. As long as youthful forces were present in humanity, it was so. It can now be demonstrated that during the Greco-Latin period this ceased to be the case for human nature, and a time came when one could have performed all the old rituals without, however, being inspired from the cosmos as before—a time when inspiration no longer occurred because human beings possessed in their souls only the fresh, unspent youthful vitality [of humanity] in his soul did he possess the ability to be inspired by the worlds in a mystical manner.

[ 30 ] But now something else came into play. What could no longer penetrate the individual human being—what individual human nature was no longer capable of, even through specific mystery rites—now entered human development in a special way. There had to be a human being who directly linked the two paths of the mysteries. And so we see—from the perspective of spiritual science, quite apart from all the Gospels—Christ Jesus entering into the course of world history!

[ 31 ] One might say the following: Let us suppose it were possible for a person to know absolutely nothing about the Gospel, that he had been denied any insight into Christian culture; let us suppose he were to enter the spiritual world today, imbued solely with spiritual science—then he would be able to develop within himself the very thing I have just outlined as a prerequisite. He would have to say to himself: There was once such a point in human development. Human development has moved forward; human beings have preserved a spiritual being within themselves. And this could only have happened because something entered into the development of the Earth that previously only the individual human being had absorbed. — I would, of course, have to give many lectures to elaborate on all of this. When one takes into account everything that spiritual science has to offer, one finds a necessity that can be expressed in a single principle: It was necessary that, at a certain point in the development of humanity, there be a being who took in what had previously been possible only for the students of the mysteries to take in—and did so through the power of the soul’s innermost being, through the highest power of the soul’s innermost being. In other words: A human being had to appear in the historical development of humanity who, in a previous life on Earth, had absorbed that which works inwardly through that development of the mysteries—preparing the soul inwardly to immediately grasp the outer aspects provided by the other type of mystery in the human being.

[ 32 ] Thus, in spiritual science, Christ Jesus appears as a being who, through both inner and natural endowments, possessed that strengthening of the soul which was acquired in one form of the mysteries, and who thereby became capable of receiving what came to the initiate from the cosmos in the other form of the mysteries. Thus, [in this way,] we regard Christ Jesus in spiritual science; that is to say, in spiritual science we must speak of the fact that what the ancient mystery student sought as his connection with the Deity has found expression in Christ Jesus as an immediate historical fact. When did this come to expression? It came to expression at that stage of life in which, in the individual human being, those forces have been exhausted which—as we have seen—had been exhausted in all of humanity at a certain epoch. When Jesus had reached his thirtieth year, he stood as a human being precisely at that stage of life at which human development stood in his time. It was then that he received what we now call the Christ, and this reception took place at the moment characterized in the Gospels as John’s baptism in the Jordan. It was then that Jesus received the Christ into his fully developed soul; he received into his soul, now strengthened from within, what the Spirit of the Cosmos is. Thus, at this turning point in human development, there stands a human being who has received the divine-spiritual within himself. To the soul of spiritual science, this appears in such a way that we can say: What was aspired to in the ancient mysteries has become a historical event!

[ 33 ] And now let us turn our attention to what is alluded to in the Gospels as the death and resurrection; from a spiritual scientific perspective, we are faced with an event that we describe by saying: From that point on, something has been present in the earthly development of humanity that was not there before. This is something that will be quite difficult for [people of] the present day to grasp. Throughout all of ancient times, contact between the human and the divine was, in truth, possible only within the mysteries. Everything else consisted of matters of faith that were derived from the mysteries. In the event of which we are now speaking—the [most fruitful] point in human development—the encounter between the spiritual that pervades the cosmos and a human being took place in such a way that [through] the events from death to what we call the Resurrection, as well as [through] what Christ underwent during the three years of his ministry, [the development] had progressed to such an extent that this force then emanated, flowed forth, from the Mystery of Golgotha; whereas it had previously been, so to speak, in the extra-terrestrial cosmos, it has been contained within the earthly part of the cosmos ever since that time.

[ 34 ] In earlier times, it was necessary to resort to an extraordinary form of development, [namely, two types of mysteries]. One type of mystery was called “subterranean,” in which a person drew inner strength to achieve something that could not be attained through normal development; the other type of mystery was called “superhuman,” in which a person, upon receiving the spirit of the cosmos, experienced the spirit of the cosmos firsthand, as has been described. A person had to emerge from these ancient mysteries; only then could they attain union with the Divine. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, something took place that is a fundamental spiritual fact, for from it springs what was not previously present within human development on Earth. Before that, people lived in an earthly sphere that lay outside of what was brought in from the cosmos through inspiration in the Mysteries. This had now passed into a single human being through the event known as the Baptism of John in the Jordan, and it had flowed out from this single human being into the Earth’s atmosphere, so that every human soul that has immersed itself in it—by seeking a spiritual-soul connection with it—partakes in what follows: the Resurrection.

[ 35 ] As a result, ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings have been living in a spiritual environment about which we can say: This spiritual environment is “Christianized” because it has absorbed the Christ impulse. – Now that we have entered the age of humanity’s descending evolution, we can establish our relationship with the Christ [only] if we summon the strength within our souls to rise above the dying forces within ourselves. In the old sense, we no longer find the spiritual essence of humanity’s origins. In the new sense, we succeed when we seek access to the Christ and find Him within the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. Therefore, this Christ event reveals itself in a very peculiar way, especially to the spiritual researcher, and it may be interesting to mention here precisely what the spiritual researcher himself experiences with the Christ, so that the full significance of the Christ impulse for human development may also be discerned to some extent from this.

[ 36 ] When the spiritual researcher undergoes within himself what I have described as a process of the soul—that is, when the soul immerses itself in a spiritual world and experiences spiritually what it would otherwise experience through the senses and the physical body—it experiences in the spirit a multitude of spiritual beings. But it experiences these processes in a unique way, depending on whether, while still in the physical body—during ordinary physical existence—it has experienced and felt the Christ, the Christ impulse, within itself, or has not. Even today, one can be a spiritual researcher without having any inner, spiritual connection to the Christ impulse. One can undergo a spiritual development, one can learn to see spiritually, and one will explore much of what constitutes the secrets of the worlds—the mysteries underlying the world—through spiritual-soul vision; yet one will be unable to perceive anything of the Christ impulse and its essence! If, while still in the physical body and before developing spiritual vision, one has established an emotional connection to the Christ Being, then one carries this connection into the spiritual world; one retains what one has attained as a Christ experience here in the physical body as a kind of memory for the spiritual world as well. And one then realizes that even in this physical body—from which one is, after all, separated in spiritual vision—one was already able to have a connection with the spiritual world: this spiritual connection is the connection with the Christ Being. One sees that modern humanity would have to lose its connection to the spiritual world if it did not seek it by way of the Christ Being. Precisely as a spiritual researcher, one learns to recognize how infinitely necessary it has been since the Mystery of Golgotha—in order to maintain within oneself the connection to the inner spiritual life—to seek this connection in the relationship of the human soul to the Christ Impulse. Thus, the Christ impulse appears as that which has been given to humanity as a spiritual reality at a time when the ancient legacies that existed in human development during the pre-Christian era are no longer present. What a person experiences between the ages of thirty and thirty-five is what all of humanity has experienced since the beginning of our calendar. Our inner culture within our entire outer life is, after all, what the soul experiences in everyday life. Human development, however, does not have a body like the individual human being. Human development would have lost its connection to the divine spirituality—which had previously been maintained by the fresh, youthful forces—had not an extraordinary being—a being who descended from the cosmos to Earth—poured itself into the development of humanity on Earth, thereby enabling human beings to rediscover their connection to the spiritual world.

[ 37 ] Well, I know that these ideas are still not very popular in the highest circles today, and that they may be even less so than the general principles and laws of spiritual science. I also know that in a short lecture I cannot offer more than these few suggestions, for when it comes to such an important topic, I obviously cannot instill a conviction, but can only offer a suggestion regarding the direction of spiritual research—which is meant to be a continuation of natural science—and regarding the direction that spiritual science takes in relation to the Christ impulse, the Christ Being. Of course, what has been developed here must take root in the human soul very slowly and gradually, and it will take root all the more as spiritual science itself takes root [in it]. Spiritual science, after all, is not as convenient as many other things that are accepted by the human soul. Spiritual science presupposes that the human soul must first be transformed before it can arrive at these insights. That is why, today, when people tend to adopt a certain passivity toward the spiritual, it is [at first] still stubbornly rejected. But precisely in relation to the experience of Christ, spiritual science points to something significant!

[ 38 ] What could the human being who sought his connection with the Divine in the mysteries find? He could indeed find a connection with the spiritual, but he also had to step outside of himself—in one direction or another—with his humanity; in the experience of the Divine, he had to become, as it were, something that is no longer human. That was the significant progress, that was the magnificent development that occurred with this turning point in human development that I have alluded to: [Human beings could no longer step outside themselves in the manner described, because they no longer possessed the youthful forces of humanity within themselves; they could, as it were, no longer step outside themselves, for humanity had entered a

[ 39 ] had entered a different stage of life; after all, her youth was already behind her. Now the human being no longer needed to reach out beyond themselves in one direction or another; rather, through the Mystery of Golgotha, something had happened whereby the human being, while stepping beyond their ordinary humanity, nevertheless remained human.]

[ 40 ] Human beings no longer need to reach God by either increasing their selfishness or their pride; rather, they reach God by remaining human, [by transforming their own humanity into a higher self, into a greater inner life, and thereby also overcoming the external]. Thus, because Christ entered the course of human development, we can now say to the human being: You must remain human; you must also remain human inwardly, for within yourself you will find what has been imbued into your soul since the Mystery of Golgotha. You need not step outside of your humanity, either downward or upward. – The elevation of egoism was once necessary in one [type of mystery]—the heightening of pride in the other. But what is necessary [today], after the Mystery of Golgotha, for the human soul—which is now to find what was formerly found within humanity itself, within human history on Earth—what was necessary [back then]—and which cannot be described with any other word: That is the deepest, the most significant quality of the human being; that is love! In one form of the Mysteries, selfishness had to be developed; in the other, pride. Now the task is to enable the human being to transcend precisely this egoism and this pride and to feel within themselves the higher human being who strives to overcome egoism [and pride]. And at the same time, it is a matter of entering into a development that does not drive one into pride and arrogance, but remains within the element of love. This underlies Paul’s significant words: “Not I, but Christ in me!” Since the Mystery of Golgotha, one feels Christ first and foremost as that through which one unites with the Divine—not merely in words, but through the Mystery of Golgotha [in reality as well].

[ 41 ] When God, apart from me, wishes to pour Himself into me; when I am outside my body; [when, in the universe, from the depths of my own soul, I am in God]; when I summon the strength within myself to reach my own soul—then I behold the mysteries of love! – This is what the ancient initiate could say to himself, and with him all other people who were followers of these or other religious creeds. [It is not something grasped outside of me, but something I find when I wish to continue along the paths of my own soul, when I start from what I experience in everyday life: The only thing we experience on earth when we step outside of ourselves is the love I find in another being—in allowing one soul to reach into another soul.] One remains the soul one is when one finds oneself lovingly in another soul; one remains the being one is when one finds oneself lovingly in another being. A person remains and is still a person when they seek to find the Christ within themselves, and they find the Christ within themselves because the Mystery of Golgotha has made it possible for the soul—when it transcends itself while remaining within the human sphere—to arrive at what the words of St. Paul express: “Not I, but Christ in me!” It is a mystical experience to feel that a higher self, a higher humanity, lives within one; that this higher humanity is what carries one’s own soul from life to life, from body to body, and what embeds the soul in the spiritual realm. It is the experience of Christ within oneself—it is a mystical experience! In truth, we cannot experience it unless, through the development of that soul power which manifests itself in the various forms of love, we go beyond the soul itself—yet remain within it. Thus does a person mystically experience Christ within themselves. Spiritual science then reveals what has made this very experience of Christ possible, and perhaps this time I may make myself understood through a comparison that is more than just a comparison.

[ 42 ] It is often said in Western philosophy—and quite rightly so—that we could not see colors if we did not have eyes. Our eyes must be organized for colors, as it were, already innately predisposed to them. If we had no eyes, the world around us would be colorless and dark. The same is true of the other senses. The senses are predisposed to the external world. This led Schopenhauer and other philosophers to call the world our “representation.” Goethe coined the beautiful expression:

If the eye were not like the sun,
how could we see the light?

[ 43 ] In other words: If the eye did not possess the powers that enable it to see colors, the world would be colorless and dark. Of course, a human soul can never come to an understanding of Christ unless it [undergoes] within itself the process I alluded to—namely, transcending itself and experiencing within itself the truth of Paul’s words: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

[ 44 ] But Goethe himself contrasted his own statement with another, and it is important that he also made this statement:

If there were no light that once removed the eye from an eyeless being
then there would be no eye either.

[ 45 ] One is just as true as the other. Without the eye, a being could perceive nothing, and without light, there would be no eye in any living being. It is true: if the soul did not experience Christ within itself, the world would be devoid of Christ for it. If our soul did not have Christ—how could we then perceive Christ? But the reverse is also true, and this is precisely what spiritual science demonstrates: The inner experience of Christ is possible only because the Christ impulse—the Christ presence—has been absorbed by earthly human evolution in the manner described, and because the Christ impulse entered humanity from outside at a specific point in history. Without the historical Christ, there would be no mystical Christ. And it is merely abstract talk if anyone were to claim that a soul could attain the experience of Christ without the historical Christ having entered human development, for before the Mystery of Golgotha there was no mystical experience of Christ. Anything presented as such is based on a misunderstanding—it cannot be. Just as there would be no eye in any living being without the sun, so too there would be no mystical Christ experience without the historical Christ—even though the sun cannot be seen without the eye, and even though the historical Christ, in the true sense of the word, is perceived only by those who experience the mystical Christ within themselves. Thus, spiritual science, as a way of seeing that is entirely free from the Gospel, leads through [an understanding of] human development to the Christ. And since it recognizes the Christ as having once historically appeared, it simultaneously recognizes that this Christ being had to enter into a human being, had to be present once in a human being, so that through that human being, [from within him], the path to the Christ being in the spiritual earth could be found.

[ 46 ] Thus, spiritual science arrives at Christ and, through Christ, at the historical Jesus—and it does so at a time when external scholarship is calling this into question in so many ways. I cannot go along with this questioning, but here in Hamburg, too, there is a world of external scholarship that is constantly calling into question the [documents available to it] regarding the historical Jesus. What has been specifically presented this evening will, of course, be likely to provoke contradiction after contradiction. And I can fully understand this contradiction if some who have listened today say to themselves tomorrow: “After all, what has been expressed here is nothing but a daydream.” — It may seem that way today, but the spiritual researcher knows the truth of the matter; he knows that one must still think of these things today in the same way that people once thought of the great worldviews of so many reformers. The spiritual researcher knows that a serious impulse has been given through these hints about the path that spiritual science is taking—to arrive at the Christ through a spiritual contemplation of human development itself, and to recognize, from the nature of this Christ, the necessity of coming to Jesus, to the historical Jesus. One could utter this paradoxical statement: If there were no Gospels, and if all the Gospels had been lost, spiritual science would nevertheless arrive, through the course of human development, at the knowledge of the divine Christ-being, and from this divine Christ-being to the knowledge of the historical fact that this Christ-being lived at the time when Greco-Roman cultural development reached its turning point. And if one were to go into the details, one would be able to specify, more or less precisely—one might say with mathematical certainty—the period in which Christ lived and must have lived.

[ 47 ] If, then, one approaches Christ with this spiritual-scientific understanding—which also leads to an understanding of his historical nature—one will only [fully] comprehend the Christ Mystery when one considers spiritual vision in terms of its historical necessity, when one regards it as an event of that period in human development which becomes necessary for the individual at the age of thirty-five. Spiritual science will be able to bring the knowledge of the spiritual essence of Christ to the world, and this will come at the right moment, because science itself has already begun to doubt that there was a historical Jesus—and that is where spiritual science will lead to Christ. If Christ is understood in this sense, in his connection with human development, then the story of the historical Jesus will also be understood, and then people will find in the Gospels not merely historical documents, but something that pours into their souls. And so, by empathizing with what is written in the Gospels and Epistles, they will have the opportunity to find what has been alive in the Earth’s aura since the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 48 ] In summary, I may say: A new understanding of Christ Jesus seems to be necessary for our time! Spiritual science not only aims to, but must—by virtue of its very premises—lead to Christ; [it arrives at] a Christ-being viewed purely through the spiritual contemplation of human development, and through this roundabout path, precisely to a somewhat different understanding. Just as the existence of our eyes seems possible to us only because they were brought forth from the organism by sunlight, by the power of the sun, so, when we penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha through spiritual science, everything will increasingly appear to us, in its historical form, as that which established itself as the focal point in human development—just as the power of the sun gave rise to that which human beings can experience as their deepest and most sacred reality in the present age. [When Christ becomes human, then spiritual science can learn to understand Christ; it can lead to the experience of Christ, so that people may find Jesus through Christ:] From Christ to Jesus!

[ 49 ] Therefore, in our discussion today, I have attempted to take human development as my starting point in order to shift the focus from the Jesus whom so many already view with disbelief to the Christ—because in the future, Jesus will be rediscovered on the path that can be indicated by the words: through spiritual knowledge of the Christ—to historical knowledge of Jesus!