The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Spiritual Science, the Gospel and the Future of Humanity

[ 1 ] Nuremberg will celebrate a wonderful centennial this fall. For it was in the fall of 1808 that this city welcomed within its walls one of the greatest German minds—one of those German minds about whom, admittedly, not much is said today, whose works are understood even less, but who, once he is understood, will mean a great deal for the future of human intellectual life. He is, however, difficult to understand, and for that reason it may take some time before people come to understand him again. In the fall of 1808, Hegel became director of the Royal Gymnasium in Nuremberg.

[ 2 ] Hegel made a statement that we might, especially today, place at the forefront of our reflections as a guiding principle. Hegel said: “The deepest thought is united with the figure of Christ—with the historical and the external—and that is precisely the greatness of the Christian religion: that, despite all this depth, it is easily grasped by the consciousness in an external sense, while at the same time inviting deeper penetration. It is thus suitable for every level of education and, at the same time, satisfies the highest demands.” — These are the words of Hegel, the German philosopher.

[ 3 ] The fact that the Christian religion—that the proclamation of the Gospel—is comprehensible to every level of consciousness has been demonstrated over a period of time that can almost be counted in millennia. To show that it calls us to the deepest thoughts, to the deepest penetration into the wisdom teachings of humanity as a whole—this will be one of the tasks of the anthroposophical spiritual movement, of spiritual science, when it is grasped in its true sense, in its innermost impulses, and made the master of human life. One would misunderstand today’s discussion if one believed that anthroposophy or spiritual science is, in any sense, a new religion, or that it seeks to replace an old religious creed with a new one. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, one might even say: Once spiritual science is properly understood, it will become clear that, while it is indeed the firmest and surest foundation of religious life, it is not itself a religion, and therefore will never contradict any religion as such. It is quite another matter, however, that it can serve as the instrument, the tool, for explaining and bringing to light the deepest wisdom and truths, as well as the most profound and vital mysteries of the religions.

[ 4 ] It may seem a bit of a stretch to draw the following comparison in order to describe the relationship between anthroposophy and the sacred texts of this or that religion—and today we will be dealing with the sacred texts of Christianity: Anthroposophy relates to religious texts in the same way that the study of mathematics relates to the texts that have appeared throughout the course of human history as mathematics textbooks or books in general. There is an old book that is really only examined more closely by historians well-versed in mathematics: Euclid’s Elements. It contains, for the first time in a systematic way, those elements of mathematics and geometry that children learn in school today. But how few of these children realize that everything they learn about parallel lines, triangles, angles, and so on is contained in that ancient book—that it was there that these concepts were first bestowed upon humanity! It is right to instill in children the awareness that they can grasp these things on their own—that when the human mind sets its powers in motion and applies them to the forms of space, it is capable of understanding these forms entirely without reference to that ancient book. But someone who may have known nothing at all about this book and has absorbed the mathematical and geometric teachings on his own will, once he becomes acquainted with it, appreciate and understand it in the proper sense. He will know how to value what was given to humanity by the one who first presented this book to their minds.

[ 5 ] This is how one might characterize the relationship between spiritual science and religious texts. The sources of spiritual science are such that, when understood in accordance with its true impulse, spiritual science should not be dependent on any texts or traditions. Just as humanity’s other forms of knowledge provide us with an understanding of the surrounding sensory world through the free use of human faculties, so too do the deeper spiritual and supersensory powers and abilities—which initially lie dormant in the human soul—provide us with an understanding of that which, as the supersensory and invisible, underlies all that is visible. Just as a person, when using their sensory faculties, is able to perceive what presents itself to the outer sensory appearance, and is able to connect and link what is perceived with their intellect, so too is a human being, when employing the methods handed down to them through spiritual science, able to look behind the scenes of sensory existence—to where the spiritual causes lie, where beings weave and work whom the sensory eye does not see and the sensory ear does not hear, but whom the supersensory does. Thus, in the free use of human powers—even if these still lie dormant as supersensory powers in a large part of today’s humanity—lies the source, the independent and free source of spiritual knowledge, just as the source of external knowledge lies in the free use of the powers directed toward the sensory world. But once a person has, in whatever way, acquired the insights that introduce him to the supersensible realm beyond the sensible, to the invisible beyond the visible—once he has gained knowledge of this realm just as he has sensory knowledge of external objects and events—then, equipped with this supersensible knowledge, approach the tradition, the books and documents, the records through which, in the course of human development, knowledge of the supersensible realm has come to people, just as a geometer approaches Euclid’s geometry. And then he examines them from a similar standpoint as today’s geometer examines Euclid’s geometry. Then he can assess and acknowledge these documents according to their true value. And for the one who follows this path—who truly approaches the documents of the Christian proclamation equipped with knowledge of the supersensible world—these documents truly do not lose their value. Indeed, on the contrary, they appear in a greater splendor than they first appeared to the merely believing mind. They reveal that they contain deeper wisdom than human beings had previously suspected before the advent of anthroposophical insight.

[ 6 ] But there is one more question we must clarify in order to adopt the correct stance regarding the relationship between anthroposophy and religious texts. Let us ask ourselves: Who is the better interpreter of Euclid’s geometry—the one who can translate the words of the book literally and, without first having penetrated the spirit of geometry, seeks to reveal the book’s content, or the one who first understands geometry and therefore also knows how to find geometry in that book? — Let us imagine a mere philologist facing Euclid’s book on geometry—one who understands nothing about geometry: how many inaccuracies would result if he sought to reveal the book’s meaning! This is how many have approached the religious texts, even those who were supposed to be called upon to fathom their true meaning. They have approached these texts without first—independently of them—knowing anything about what is to be explored regarding the supernatural. Thus, today we have quite meticulous explanations of religious texts—explanations that draw on all available historical context, such as how these texts came into being—but these explanations come across just as they would if a non-geometer were to explain Euclid’s geometry.

[ 7 ] An understanding of religion—let us keep this in mind—is something that can only be attained by viewing it through the lens of insights gained through spiritual science, even though anthroposophy can be only a tool of religious life, never a religion in and of itself. Religion is best characterized by the content of the human heart, the human soul—that sum of sensations and feelings through which a person sends the best of his or her soul’s receptivity upward to the supersensible beings and forces. The character of a person’s religion depends on the fire of this inner life, on the strength of these sensations, and on the nature of these feelings, just as one’s approach to a work of art depends on the warm pulse in our chest and on our sense of beauty. The content of religious life is certainly what we call the spiritual, the supersensible world. But just as aesthetic and artistic sensibility is not the same as what we call the spiritual grasp of the inner artistic laws—although the spiritual grasp of these laws will elevate one’s understanding of art—so too are that wisdom and that science which introduce us to the spiritual worlds not the same as religion itself. This science will make religious sentiment and religious feeling more serious, more dignified, greater, and more comprehensive, but it does not claim to be religion itself, if understood in the proper sense, although it may lead to religion.

[ 8 ] If we now wish to understand the power and significance, the meaning and the spirit of the Christian proclamation of the Gospel from this spiritual-scientific perspective, then we must reach far back into spiritual life. We must cast our gaze into times of the distant past; in other words, we must go back to humanity’s pre-religious era, and we must try to grasp the origins of religion. Is there a pre-religious era of humanity? Yes, there was once a time on Earth when there was no religion. Spiritual science, too, must answer such a question in the affirmative, although in a completely different sense than materialistic cultural wisdom does. What does religion mean for humanity? Religion was, and will long remain, for humanity exactly what its very word expresses. The word “religion” means: the connection of the human being with the divine, with the spiritual world. And essentially, religious eras are those in which human beings longed for union with the divine—whether from the sources of knowledge, out of a certain feeling, or because they sensed that their will could only be strong if it were permeated by divine power. Such times—in which human beings, so to speak, sensed more within themselves than they knew of the external world; in which they sensed the supersensible world more than they had seen it or experienced it around them—these are the religious eras of our Earth. And before these times there were other times when human beings did not need such an intuitive, yearning connection with the spiritual-supernatural world—they did not need it because they knew about this supernatural world, this spiritual world, just as people today know about sensory things. Does a person need to be convinced that there are stones, trees, and animals? Do they need some kind of document or teaching that attests to their existence or allows them to sense that stones, plants, and animals exist? No, for they see them; they perceive them all around themselves; and therefore they have no need for such a religion of the sensory realm. Let us imagine a person who lived in entirely different worlds, equipped with entirely different sensory organs and organs of cognition, who would not see stones, plants, or animals because they would be invisible to him; let us imagine such a person who, through writings or by some other means, were given knowledge of stones, plants, and animals: What would that which is for you perception, experience, and direct knowledge be for him? — It would be religion for this person. If it were written somewhere in a book that there are stones, plants, and animals, then that would be religion for this person, for he has never seen them.

[ 9 ] There was a time when human beings already lived amidst those spiritual beings and realities of which religions and the teachings of wisdom tell us today.

[ 10 ] The word “evolution” has become a magic word in many areas of worldview today, but in the natural sciences it is applied only to external, sensory facts. For those who view the world through the lens of spiritual science, everything—absolutely everything—is in a state of evolution, above all human consciousness. The state of human consciousness in which you live today—in which, when you wake up in the morning, you perceive and comprehend the sensory world through your sense organs—this state of consciousness has evolved from another. In spiritual science, we call this state of consciousness “clear waking consciousness.” But this clear daylight consciousness has evolved from another, very ancient form of consciousness, which we call the twilight pictorial consciousness of humanity. This, of course, takes us back to early stages of human development of which external anthropology makes no mention—not because it fails to recognize them, but because it relies solely on the instruments of the senses and the methods of the intellect. It believes that in the distant past, human beings went through states that are essentially the same as those experienced today by our animal beings.

[ 11 ] In earlier lectures, we have already pointed out how we must conceive of the relationship between human beings and animal beings from a spiritual-scientific perspective. Human beings were never beings like today’s animals. They do not descend from beings that were like today’s animals. The forms of development from which human beings emerged would, if we were to describe them, prove to be very dissimilar to today’s animals. Today’s animals are, as it were, beings that have remained stuck at earlier stages of development, having preserved these earlier stages and allowed them to become rigid. Human beings have outgrown their earlier stages of development; animals have regressed below them. Thus, in the animal kingdom, we see something like humanity’s “retarded brothers,” who, however, no longer bear the form of these earlier stages of development. Those earlier stages of development took place at a time when the Earth had different living conditions, when the elements were not yet distributed as they are today, and when human beings, though still human, were not yet endowed with bodies such as we have today. Figuratively speaking, within the course of evolution—with his descent into the flesh—he was able to wait until the time when this physical materiality had become such that he could develop the power of today’s spirit. Animals could not wait; they became fixed at an earlier stage, having taken on flesh sooner than was appropriate. Therefore, they had to remain behind. Thus, we can imagine that human beings lived under different conditions and in different forms of consciousness than they do today. If we trace these forms of consciousness back thousands and thousands of years, we will find them constantly changing. What we today call logical thinking, intellect, and reason only developed later in human history. Human faculties that are already in decline today—such as memory—were much stronger in the past. In earlier times, memory was vastly more developed than it is today. As humanity’s culture of reason has increased, memory has receded significantly into the background.

[ 12 ] Anyone who looks at the world with a reasonably clear, practical eye can still see today that what is said in spiritual science does not float in thin air. One could say: If this is true, then people today who have fallen behind for whatever reason should demonstrate that it is precisely in their memory that they have fallen behind the least. They should also demonstrate that, when one attempts to teach intellectual skills to people who have been artificially held back, their memory suffers as a result. Here in this city, one could observe a characteristic case of this kind.

[ 13 ] Professor Daumer, whose contributions cannot be overestimated, has closely observed this case in the person who remains such a mystery to many—a man who was once mysteriously brought to this very city and who met his death in Ansbach in an equally mysterious manner; the very same man of whom a writer says—to hint at the mystery of his life—that when he was carried out, it was a day when, on one side at the edge of the sky, the sun was setting and, on the opposite side, the moon was rising. You know that I am speaking of Kaspar Hauser. If you set aside all the arguments for and against that have been put forward regarding this case, and focus only on what is proven beyond doubt, you will know that this foundling, who simply appeared one day on the street—and who, because no one knew where he had come from, was called the “Child of Europe”—could neither read nor do arithmetic when he was found. At the age of twenty, he possessed none of the skills acquired through the intellect, yet, strangely enough, he had a marvelous memory. When they began to teach him, when logic entered his soul, his memory faded. This transition in consciousness was also connected to something else. An incomprehensible, almost innate truthfulness was originally within him, and it was precisely this truthfulness that led him further and further astray. The more he was allowed to sample intellectual pursuits, the more it faded away.

[ 14 ] We could learn a great deal if we delved deeply into this soul, which had been artificially confined. And for those grounded in spiritual science, it is not at all unfounded to believe the folk tradition—which today’s scholars do not believe—that reports how Kaspar Hauser, when he knew absolutely nothing, had not the slightest inkling that beings of various forms existed outside himself, exerted a strange influence whenever he was brought into contact with furious animals. The wild animals cowered and became completely docile. Something radiated from him that caused such an animal—which would otherwise attack anyone else with fury—to become gentle. As I said, because such a case presents itself—one that can be understood through spiritual science—we could delve deeply into the soul of this remarkable and, for many, so enigmatic personality, and a case would unfold before you from which you could see that everything that cannot be explained by ordinary life is traced back by spiritual science to spiritual realities. Of course, such spiritual facts cannot be arrived at through speculation, but only through spiritual observation; yet they are comprehensible to all-encompassing and logical thinking.

[ 15 ] All this is said simply to show you how you can arrive at the idea that today’s state of consciousness has evolved from another, ancient state of consciousness, in which human beings were not in direct contact with sensory objects as we understand them today, but were instead in relationship with spiritual realities and beings. At that time, human beings did not see the physical form of others—which, after all, did not yet exist in its present form back then. When another being approached them, something like a dream image arose in their soul. Depending on its form and color, it indicated whether the being was sympathetic or unsympathetic toward them. Such a consciousness perceived spiritual realities and, through them, the spiritual world as a whole. Just as human beings today live among physical beings, so did they live in that time—when they directed their gaze inward and were themselves soul and spirit—among spiritual beings. These beings were present to them. They were a spirit among spirits. Even if he possessed only a kind of dream-like consciousness, the images that arose within him were in a living relationship to his surroundings. That was the ancient time when human beings still lived in a spiritual world, from which they later descended to create for themselves a sensory, physical existence suited to their present-day consciousness. Animals already existed as physical beings when human beings still perceived the world from spiritual realms. Human beings lived among spiritual beings in those days, and just as you do not need proof to be convinced of the existence of stones, plants, and animals, so too did human beings in those primeval times need no evidence of any kind to be convinced of the existence of spiritual beings. They lived among spirits and gods; therefore, they had no need for religion. That was the pre-religious era.

[ 16 ] Then humankind descended, and the earlier form of consciousness transformed into the one we have today. Human beings no longer see colors and forms floating in space; rather, the colors are superimposed upon the surfaces of sensible objects. To the same extent that human beings learned to direct their external senses toward the external sensory world, to that same extent did this external sensory world draw over the spiritual world like a veil, like the great Maya, and human beings had to receive knowledge of the spiritual world through this veil. Religion became necessary.

[ 17 ] However, there is also a state between the time that precedes religious consciousness and that of actual religious consciousness; such an intermediate state does exist. It is from this state that the mythologies, legends, and stories of the peoples about the spiritual worlds originate. It is an armchair scholarship, which has no inkling of the actual spiritual processes, that claims the figures of Norse or German mythology, of Greek mythology, and all the accounts of the gods and their deeds are fabrications of the popular imagination. These are not fabrications of the popular imagination. The people do not imagine things in such a way that they say, when they see individual clouds drifting by, that these are little sheep. That the people imagine things this way is a fabrication of our modern scholarship, which is full of vivid imagination in such matters. The truth is quite different. Everything contained in the ancient myths and stories of the gods are the last remnants, the last memories from pre-religious consciousness. People have retained knowledge of what they themselves have seen. These people, who describe Wotan, Thor, Zeus, and so on, did so because they harbored a memory within them that such things had once been experienced. Fragments—in some cases, torn-off pieces—of what had once been experienced: these are the mythologies.

[ 18 ] This intermediate state existed in yet another respect. Even in the time when intelligent people—let us say—were already very intelligent, there were still those who, at least in exceptional states—call them a state of rapture or even madness, as you will—could glimpse into the spiritual worlds, who could still perceive what the majority of people used to see. They recounted that they themselves had still seen something of the spiritual world. This became so intertwined with memories that a living faith thrived among the peoples. This was a transitional state leading to the truly religious state.

[ 19 ] And how did the truly religious state actually come about in humanity? It came about because human beings found the means and ways to develop their inner lives in such a way that they could once again see—and behold—the worlds from which they had emerged, the worlds they had once perceived in a dim state of consciousness. This brings us to a topic that may seem quite implausible to some modern people: the topic of the initiates. What are the initiates of humanity? Initiates were those people who, through certain methods, developed their own soul and spirit to such an extent that they grew back into the spiritual world. Initiation does exist! Supersensory powers and abilities lie dormant in every soul. There is—or at least there can be—such a great, momentous moment for every human being when these powers awaken. We can bring this moment before our soul if we imagine what human development was like in the past. To speak in Goethe’s words, we can say: We look back to times in the distant past when the physical human body of today did not yet possess such physical eyes or such physical ears as we have today. We look back to those times when, in the places where these organs are now, there were inert organs that could neither see nor hear. There was a time for physical human beings when such blind organs developed into points of light, gradually unfolding more and more until light appeared to them. Likewise, there was a point in time when the human ear had reached a stage where the previously silent world revealed itself in sounds and harmonies. — Just as the sun worked with its forces to form the eyes from within the human organism, so too can human beings today live in a way that corresponds to their spirit, so that the spiritual and soul organs—which are often indifferent to them today—develop in a similar manner. The moment is possible—and has already come for many—when their soul and spirit are transformed in the same way that their outer physical organization was once transformed. New eyes and new ears arise, through which light shines in and sounds resonate from the spiritually dark and silent surroundings. Development is possible, including living into the higher worlds. This is initiation. And in the mystery schools, the methods of this initiation are provided to people just as, in the outer world, the methods of, say, the chemical laboratory or biological research are provided. The difference between the methods of outer science and those of initiation is only that outer science must make use of instruments and external apparatus. For the one who wishes to become an initiate, however, there is only a single instrument that he must develop, and that is himself in all his powers. Just as magnetic force can lie dormant in iron, so the power to penetrate the spiritual world of light and sound lies dormant in the human soul. Thus came the time when only the physical and sensory were regarded as normal, and when the leaders of humanity consisted of such initiates who could look into the spiritual worlds, who could communicate and provide explanations regarding the realities of the spiritual world in which humanity had once lived.

[ 20 ] The first stage of initiation—where does it lead? How does it present itself to the human soul? Do not believe that this development consists solely of philosophical speculation, of spinning out concepts, or of refining concepts. The concepts a person has about the external sensory world are transformed within the person who grows into the spiritual world. It comes to pass that the person no longer comprehends through sharply defined concepts, but through images, through imaginations. For the person grows into the spiritual, world-creating process. As definite and clearly defined as the objects of the sensory world are, they are precisely only these sensory objects. In the world-creating process, you do not have the animal with its fixed contours. There, you have taken something like an image as a foundation from which the various external forms can arise—a living, internally structured reality. One must stand firmly on the ground of Goethe’s words: “All that is transitory is but a parable.” It is through images that the initiate first learns to recognize and comprehend; it is through them that he learns to ascend into the spiritual world. Here, his consciousness must become more flexible than the consciousness we use to comprehend the sensory world around us. That is why this stage of development is called the imaginative consciousness. It leads the human being back into the spiritual world, but not in a twilight-like manner. This initiatory consciousness to be attained is clear and bright, just as the human being’s consciousness is in bright daylight, just like this daylight consciousness itself. The human being is enriched by gaining, in addition to daylight consciousness, an awareness of the spiritual world. Thus, in the first stage of initiation, they live in imaginative consciousness. And what those who were thus initiated experienced in the spiritual worlds has been communicated in the records, in the documents of humanity, just as the elementary science of geometry was communicated to humanity by Euclid. We know what is written in these records; we recognize it when we go back to the source, to the vision of the initiates.

[ 21 ] This was the state of humanity until the appearance of the greatest being who ever walked the earth: Christ Jesus. With his appearance, a new element entered the course of human development. If we wish to understand what constitutes the essentially new element bestowed upon humanity by Jesus Christ, we must note that in all pre-Christian places of initiation, a person was initiated in such a way that a complete withdrawal from the rest of human development was necessary—a working on one’s soul in places of the deepest mystery. And above all, we must realize that there was still something present in human consciousness—a remnant—of that old, purely dreamlike pictorial consciousness whenever a person rose up again into the spiritual world. Human beings had to hasten away from this world of the senses in order to enter the spiritual world. The fact that this is no longer necessary today was brought about by the appearance of Christ Jesus on Earth. Because the Christ principle has entered into humanity, the central being, the focal being of the spiritual world, has historically historically, once existed on this Earth in a human being—the very same Being for whom all those who have developed a religious life have longed, who have gazed into the places of initiation, who have turned away from the sensory world in order to enter the spiritual world. The Being of whom it has been proclaimed that humanity stands before Him as its highest reality—this Being entered human history with Christ Jesus. And anyone who understands anything of genuine spiritual science knows that all religious proclamation prior to the appearance of Christ Jesus is a foreshadowing of Christ Jesus.

[ 22 ] When the ancient initiates sought to speak of the Most High—that which was accessible to them in the spiritual world, that which they were able to perceive as the source of all things—they spoke of Christ Jesus by a wide variety of names. We need only recall one example from the Old Testament, which is also a foreshadowing. We remember how Moses, when he was to lead his people, received the command: “Tell your people that what you are to do, the Lord, your God, has told you.” — Then Moses says: “How will the people believe me? How will I be able to convince them?” What am I to say when they ask me, ‘Who sent you?’—And he is given the instruction: ‘Say, “I Am” has sent you.’—Look it up and compare it, as closely as you can, with the original text. You will see what this is all about. “I Am”—what does that mean? The “I Am” is the name for the divine essence, the Christ principle within the human being—for the essence that a person senses within themselves, even if only as a drop or a spark, when they can say, “I am.” A stone cannot say “I am,” a plant cannot say “I am,” and an animal cannot say “I am.” Human beings are the crown of creation because they can say “I am” to themselves, because they can utter a name that applies to no one else but the one who speaks it. You can only call yourself “I.” No one else can call you “I.” Here the soul speaks to itself, in that word to which only a being has access who comes to the soul through no external sense and by no external means. Here God speaks. Therefore, the name “I Am” was given to the Deity who fills the world. “Say, ‘The I Am has told you this!’”—so Moses was to say to his people.

[ 23 ] People are only slowly learning to fully understand the deep meaning of this “I am.” It was not immediately that people came to see themselves as individuals. You can still find evidence of this in the Old Testament: back then, people did not yet see themselves as individuals. Even the members of the Germanic tribes, even in the days of the Christian Church, did not feel themselves to be individuals. Think back to the Cherusci, the Teutons, and so on—the Germanic tribes whose land is now modern-day Germany. The individual Cheruscan felt more a sense of the tribal “I,” of which he saw himself as a member. An individual would not have said “I am” in the sharp, definitive way we do today. He felt himself to be part of a single organism comprising those who were related by blood.

[ 24 ] This blood kinship is most widespread among the followers of the Old Testament. The individual feels secure within the entire people. For him, this people is governed by a single “I.” He knows what it means when it is said, “I and Father Abraham are one,” for he traces this blood kinship through the generations all the way back to Abraham. He knows he is secure when he wishes to transcend his individual self, finding security in Father Abraham, from whom all the blood—which serves as the outward vehicle for the collective national self—flows down through the generations.

[ 25 ] Now, if we compare what Christ Jesus accomplished with the saying that holds such great significance for every believer in the Old Testament, then the entire progress brought about by Christian development is illuminated as if by a flash of lightning. “Before Abraham was, was the ‘I Am’? What does that mean: ‘Before Abraham was, was the “I Am”?’—For that is, in fact, the correct translation and interpretation of the relevant Bible passage. It means: Go back through all the generations, and you will find something within yourselves, in your individuality, that is even more eternal than what flows through all the generations bound by blood. Before the forefathers existed, there was the ‘I Am’—that Being which draws into every human being, and of which every human soul can feel something directly within itself. Not I and Father Abraham, not I and a temporal father, but I and the spiritual Father, who is bound to nothing transitory—we are one. “I and the Father are one.” The Father is found within each individual human being. The divine principle lives within him—something that was, that is, and that will be.

[ 26 ] Now that, after nearly two millennia, humanity has only just begun to sense the power of this cosmic impulse, people in the future will fully realize what this leap within Earth’s mission and development means for humanity. That which could only be understood by looking beyond the individual existence, beyond the single human being—by grasping the spirit of an entire tribe—was what the ancient initiates sought to achieve.

[ 27 ] If anyone in the ordinary world heard this, he would say: “The ‘I’ is something transient, beginning with birth and ending with death.” — But if he were initiated into the secret of the Mysteries, then he would see what the other person sensed and felt as the very same thing that flows through the blood of generations—that which is a true being—and he would see his ancestral spirit. He could behold what is accessible only in the spiritual realm, but not in external reality. He could behold a god who flows through the blood of generations. To stand before this god, spiritual eye to spiritual eye—that was possible only in the Mysteries.

[ 28 ] Those who, as his intimate disciples, were with Christ Jesus with full understanding were aware that a being of a spiritual-divine nature stood before them—enclosed within a physical-human personality invisible to the outer senses. They perceived Christ Jesus as the first—the first individual who possessed within himself a spirit of the kind that, otherwise, only cohesive masses of people felt within themselves, and that, otherwise, could only be beheld by the initiated in the spiritual world. He was the first among humankind.

[ 29 ] The more a person becomes an individual, the more he can become a bearer of love. Where blood binds people together, they love because the blood leads them to what they are meant to love. When a person is granted individuality and nurtures the divine spark within, then the impulses of love—the waves of love—must flow from person to person from a free heart. And so, with this new impulse, a person has enriched the old bond of love that is bound to blood. Love is gradually transforming into spiritual love, which flows from soul to soul and will ultimately embrace all of humanity with a common bond of universal brotherly love. But Christ Jesus is the power—the living power—through which, just as it was in history and as it appeared to outward eyes, humanity was brought together in brotherhood for the first time. And people will learn to understand this bond of brotherly love as the perfected, spiritualized form of Christianity.

[ 30 ] It is easy to say today: Theosophy should seek the unified core of truth in all religions, for all religions contain exactly the same thing. — People who say this, who compare religions only to seek abstract similarities, understand nothing of the principle of evolution. It is not for nothing that the world evolves. It is true that every religion contains the truth, but as it evolves from one form to another, it develops into higher forms. In terms of truth, however, if you are willing to delve deeply enough, you can find in other religions what Christianity teaches. Christianity did not bring any new teachings. But the essence of Christianity does not lie in its teachings. Consider the pre-Christian founders of religions. For them, what matters is what they taught. Imagine if these founders had remained unknown; what they taught would have endured. That would have been enough for humanity. With Jesus Christ, however, that is not what matters. What matters with him is that he was there, that he lived here on this earth in a physical body. It is not faith in his teachings, but faith in his personality that is decisive—that people looked to him, recognizing that he was the firstborn among those who are subject to death, and asked: “If you were in the situation I am in, would you feel as I do? Would you think as I now think, and will as I will?” — That is what is important: that he is the greatest example as a person, where what matters is not listening to his teachings but looking to him himself, as he did. That is why the intimate disciples of Christ Jesus say something quite different from the disciples and followers of other religious founders. The latter say: “The Lord taught this, he taught that.” But the disciples of Jesus Christ say: “We do not tell you elaborate myths or doctrines, but we tell you what our own eyes have seen and our own ears have heard. We have heard the voice; our hands have touched the Source of Life, so that we may have fellowship with you.” — And Christ Jesus himself said: “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, and to the ends of the earth.” — This conveys something very important: “You shall be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.” This means that there will always be those who, just as those in Judea and Galilee did, can speak from direct knowledge about who Christ was in the sense of the Gospel.

[ 31 ] In the sense of the Gospel, what does that mean? Nothing other than that from the very beginning, He was the principle that lived in all creation. He says it: “If you do not believe in me, at least believe in Moses; for if you believe in Moses, you believe in me, because Moses spoke of me.” — We have already seen this today: Moses spoke of Him when he pointed out, “The ‘I Am’ has told me”—the “I Am,” who, however, had been perceptible only spiritually until then. The fact that Christ appeared visibly in the world as a human being among human beings—that is what distinguishes the Gospel of Christ from the divine proclamations of other religions. For in those religions, all spiritual wisdom was directed toward something that lay outside the world. Now, with Christ Jesus, something came into the world that was to be grasped as a sensory phenomenon in and of itself. What did the first disciples perceive as the ideal of their wisdom? No longer merely to understand how spirits live in the spirit realm, but how the highest principle could have been present on earth in this historical personality of Christ Jesus.

[ 32 ] It is much easier to deny the divinity of this figure than to feel it in this way. This is the difference between a certain doctrine from the early days of Christianity and what is called “inner Christianity”—the difference between Gnosticism and esoteric Christianity. Gnosticism does indeed acknowledge Christ in his divinity, but it was never able to rise to the realization that the “Word” became flesh and dwelt among us, as the author of the Gospel of John emphasizes. He says: You should not regard Christ Jesus merely as something to be grasped in the invisible realm, but as the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us. You should know that with this human personality a power has appeared that will continue to work into the distant future, that will weave true, spiritual love as a force around the globe, a force that works and lives in everything that lives into the future. — And if a person surrenders to this power, he will grow into the spiritual world from which he descended. He will ascend once more to the realm into which the initiate can already gaze today. A person will shed the sensual as he penetrates the spiritual world.

[ 33 ] Just as the initiate of ancient times could look back upon the old, bygone eras of spiritual life, so those who are initiated in the Christian sense gain, through their participation in the impulses of Christ Jesus, the ability to see what will become of our earthly world when people act in accordance with the Christ impulse. Just as one can look back on earlier states, so, starting from the point of Christ’s appearance, one can look forward into the most distant future. One can say: This is how consciousness will change again; this is how human beings will relate to the spiritual world in contrast to the sensory world. — Whereas the earlier initiation was an initiation into the past, into ancient wisdom, the Christian initiation aims to reveal the future to the initiate. It is essential that a person be initiated not only for the sake of their wisdom and their soul, but also for the sake of their will. For through this, he knows what he must do, so that he can set goals for the future. The sensory, everyday person sets goals for the afternoon, for the evening, for the morning. The spiritual person is able, based on spiritual principles, to set distant goals that pulse through his will and enliven his powers. To set goals for humanity in this way means, in the truest and highest sense—in the sense of the original Christian principle—to grasp Christianity esoterically. This is how it was understood by the one who wrote about the great principle of the initiation of the will, the one who wrote the Apocalypse. One misunderstands the Apocalypse if one does not see it as the source of inspiration for the future, for action, for deeds.

[ 34 ] All the things we have touched upon today must be understood from the perspective of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. I was only able to provide a rough outline today. When one comprehends, from the perspective of spiritual science, what lies behind the sensory world, one then also turns one’s understanding to what has been proclaimed in the Gospels and in the apocalyptic writings. And the further one proceeds in penetrating and delving into the supersensory worlds, the greater depth one will find in the Christian texts. The Christian texts appear to us with greater radiance, deeper truth, and richer content when we approach them with a spiritual gaze—one that can be cultivated through anthroposophy. It is true that even the simplest mind can sense the truths contained within Christianity. But consciousness will not always be able to content itself with a mere inkling; it will develop further and seek to know and understand. Yet even when it rises to the highest wisdom, there will still be profound mysteries within Christianity. This is true for the simplest mind, but also for the most highly developed intellect. The initiate experiences it once again as images. Therefore, while the naive consciousness may sense the truths that lie dormant within, the human being will yearn for knowledge rather than faith, and even then he will find satisfaction in Christianity. He will be able to find the full, satisfying content in Christianity when, through spiritual science, he is given the explanations of the Gospels. Therefore, spiritual science will take the place even of the highest ancient philosophies. It will bear witness to the beautiful words of Hegel presented to us at the outset: The deepest thought is linked to the figure of Christ Jesus—to his historical and outward form—and every kind of consciousness—this is the greatness of Christianity—can grasp Christianity in its outward form. At the same time, however, Christianity challenges us to grasp the most profound wisdom. Christianity is suitable for every level of education, yet it can meet the highest demands.