The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture One

[ 1 ] It has not been long since public lectures on occult truths began to be given. In the past, these truths were revealed only within secret societies to those who had passed through certain degrees of initiation and had promised to observe the laws of the brotherhood for the rest of their lives.

[ 2 ] Today, humanity is entering a profound crisis. Efforts have begun to reveal these truths to the public. Within twenty years, a number of them will already be common knowledge. Why is this happening? The reason is that humanity has entered a new phase. Explaining this phase in more detail will be the focus of this lecture.

[ 3 ] In the Middle Ages, the secret truths were primarily preserved by the Rosicrucians. But every time these truths were revealed to the outside world, they were misunderstood or distorted. In the 18th century, they took on an amateurish and sensationalist form. At the beginning of the 19th century, they were completely supplanted by the sciences based on sensory observation. Only now are they reemerging, and in the coming centuries they will play an important role in the future development of humanity. To properly understand this role, one must go back to the centuries that preceded Christianity and consider the path that has been traveled.

[ 4 ] Even a rudimentary knowledge of the Middle Ages is enough to appreciate the difference between people of that era and people today. Though far less advanced than today in the realm of science, people back then were superior in the realms of feeling and intuition. They lived less in the visible world than in the spiritual world, which they were still able to perceive. Among the people of that time, there were still individuals who could truly enter into direct contact with the astral and spiritual worlds. No matter how inadequately the people of the Middle Ages may have established themselves on Earth, their focus was still on Heaven.

[ 5 ] Even if cities were uncomfortable back then, they still reflected people’s inner worlds much more faithfully. Not only the cathedrals, but also the houses and gates reminded people—through their symbols—of their beliefs, their feelings, their longings, and the world of their souls.

[ 6 ] Today we know many things, and the connections between people have multiplied infinitely; yet we live in our cities as if in noisy factories, in a terrible Tower of Babel, where nothing reminds us of our inner world anymore. Our inner world no longer speaks to us through contemplation, but through books. We have gone from being people of unencumbered inspiration to intellectuals.

[ 7 ] One must go back beyond the Middle Ages to find the origin of this intellectual movement. The era when human intellect was still in its infancy—the era when this transformation was taking place—dates back to around the first millennium B.C. It is the age of Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and Buddha. It was then that philosophy and science first emerged—that is, truth was presented to reason in logical form. What existed before was truth presented in the form of religion and revelation, perceived by its proclaimers and received by the masses. Now truth is passing into the realm of individual intelligence; it demands to be clearly explained and understood.

[ 8 ] What was going on inside a person at that time to justify this shift, which, so to speak, moved his consciousness from one level of existence to another—from the intuitive to the logical plane?

[ 9 ] Here we encounter one of the fundamental laws of history, a law that is not yet known to contemporary consciousness. It can be formulated as follows: The evolution of humanity proceeds in such a way that it allows the soul elements of the human being to emerge from it one after another and to develop. What are these elements of the human being?

[ 10 ] Human beings have, first and foremost, a physical body. They share this with the mineral kingdom. The entire mineral kingdom is found in the body’s chemistry. Human beings also have an etheric body, which is, so to speak, their life force and which they share with plants. From it arise the continuous processes of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. They also possess an astral body. Within it arise feelings, passions, and the capacity to enjoy and to suffer. Human beings share this body with animals. The Rosicrucians and some of their successors, such as Paracelsus, called it the astral body because it is in fact related to the stars through a certain force of attraction.

[ 11 ] Finally, there is something within a human being that can no longer be called a body, but which represents his innermost being and distinguishes him from all other beings—from stones, plants, and animals alike—and that is what he calls his “I.” It is the divine spark within him. The Indians call it Manas. The Rosicrucians call it the Inexpressible. In fact, everything physical is merely a fragment, a part of another physical reality. In contrast, the human “I” belongs only to itself. “I am I”—only it can say this of itself. It is what others call “you”; it is what cannot be confused with anything else in the world. Through this “I”—which cannot be expressed by anything else or exchanged for anything else—human beings rise above all other earthly beings, above the animal kingdom, and above all of creation. And it is also the only thing that connects them to the infinite “I,” to God.

[ 12 ] This is why, in the hidden sanctuary of the Hebrews, the minister would address the high priest on certain days, saying: “Schem-Ham-Phorasch,” which means: “What is His name, the name of God?” - And the high priest replied: Yod-He-Vav-He, or in a single word: Jehovah, which means: God, nature, and man, or: the ineffable human-divine Self.

[ 13 ] The essential aspects of the human being that we have just described were all bestowed upon humanity in distant epochs of its immense evolution, but they developed only slowly and one after another.

[ 14 ] The specific purpose of the period that began approximately one thousand years before the Christian era and continued throughout the two thousand years following the birth of Christ was thus to accelerate the development of the human “I” in the sense of intellectuality.

[ 15 ] But above the intellectual plane lies the spiritual plane. This is the one that humanity will attain in the centuries to come. It is also the one toward which the current world epoch is tending. And it is indeed Christ and Christianity through which the seeds for this future development have been sown.

[ 16 ] But before we speak of this spiritual plan, we must still recall one of the means, one of the forces, through which the vast majority of humanity has advanced from the sphere of astral vision to the sphere of intellectuality. This came about through a new form of marriage. In the past, marriages took place within the same tribe or clan, which thus represented merely an extension of the family. Sometimes they even took place between brother and sister. As time went on, people felt the desire to seek their wives outside the clan, the tribe, or the civic community. The stranger, the unknown, became the beloved. Love, once a natural and social function, became a personal desire, and marriage became a matter of free choice. This is already evident in certain Greek myths, such as the Abduction of Helen, and even more so in the Scandinavian and Germanic myths, such as the Saga of Siegfried and the Song of Gudrun. Love became an adventure, and the woman a conquest from afar.

[ 17 ] This transition from patriarchal to free marriage corresponds to the new development of intellectual faculties, of the human ego. It took place at the same time as the temporary dimming of the astral faculties of clairvoyance and direct perception in the astral and spiritual worlds.

[ 18 ] This is where Christianity makes its mark. Human brotherhood and the worship of the One God are undoubtedly essential features of Christianity, but they constitute only its external and social aspects, not its inner and spiritual nature. Christianity’s new achievement in the realm of mysticism, inner life, and the supernatural lies in the fact that it has created spiritualized love—the leaven that transforms human beings from within, the leaven that lifts up the world. Christ came to say: Unless you leave your mother, your wife, and all earthly ties, you cannot be my disciple. — This does not mean the severing of all natural bonds, but the extension of love beyond the family to all people, the transformation of love into a living and creative force, into a force of transformation.

[ 19 ] This love, which the Rosicrucians made the foundation of their occult brotherhood but which was not understood in their time, is destined to transform the very essence of religion, worship, and even science.

[ 20 ] Humanity’s path leads from pre-Christian unconscious spiritualism—through intellectualism—to the present—and on to conscious spiritualism, in which the astral and intellectual faculties are united, concentrated, and strengthened by the power of love for the Spirit and of spiritualized love. And in the same way, theology is destined to become theosophy.

[ 21 ] What is theology, really? A message about God, imposed from the outside in the form of dogmas—like a kind of supernatural logic—but given to humankind from the outside.

[ 22 ] And what is Theosophy? The knowledge of God, unfolding like a flower at the very depths of the human soul. God, distinct from the world, reborn in the depths of the heart. Such Christianity, understood in the Rosicrucian sense, is likewise the most powerful unfolding of individual freedom and universal religion through the brotherhood of free souls. The tyranny of dogma is then replaced by the radiant splendor of divine wisdom, which is intelligence, love, and action all in one.

[ 23 ] The science that will emerge from this will find its standards neither in abstract reason nor in external submission, but in its ability to awaken souls and allow them to flourish.

[ 24 ] Therein lies the difference between logic and Sophia, between science and divine wisdom, between theology and theosophy.

[ 25 ] Thus, Christ is always the center of the esoteric evolution of the West. Certain modern theologians, especially in Germany, have attempted to portray Christ as a simple, naive human being. This is a very grave error. The highest consciousness, the deepest wisdom dwells within him, and at the same time, the highest divine love. How could he be a central revelation within our entire planetary evolution without such consciousness? How could he have possessed such power and transcended his entire age? And this entire consciousness, superior to his time—where could it have come from?