The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we spoke of two spiritual currents, carried by different peoples, that moved eastward from ancient Atlantis. We discussed how they developed in different ways and thereby prepared themselves to bring about what was to happen in later times; how, in particular, the southern wave of peoples delved deeper into the spiritual world that lies beyond the human soul world; and how the other spiritual current directed its gaze outward toward the human environment on Earth in order to perceive the spiritual world hidden behind the veil of the sensory world. It has been discussed how, in the southern stream of peoples, precisely those qualities developed that led upward toward those spiritual beings belonging to the Luciferic principle; how, on the other hand, one might say the royal, ruling spiritual being who stood behind the solar world, drew ever closer and closer to the Earth, in order to finally appear incarnated in a physical body as an individuality who, through a series of incarnations, had so spiritualized this physical body that the Divine not only had an image within it, but could incarnate itself within it. That was the great event that can be called the incarnation of the Christ, the Sun Spirit, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, who developed within the characteristic northern stream of peoples. Attention has also been drawn to the fact that, while these two streams of peoples were moving in direct opposition to one another—only to then mutually enrich each other—the Indian people arose in southern Asia in the early period following the great Atlantean catastrophe; this people, in a certain sense, represents the human soul that can both look out into the outer sensory world as well as look inward to find the spiritual—a people who from the very beginning sensed the unity of the spirit out in the world and the spirit within the human being. If one wishes to characterize even more precisely how these different views and feelings related to one another—both those of the peoples and those of the initiates—one can do so as follows.

[ 2 ] One can imagine how the ancient Indian soul felt when it looked out into the sensory world of the Earth—into all that exists on Earth: mountains, forests, the carpet of vegetation, the world of animals and humans, and so on. When the soul of the ancient Indian looked out—a soul that was still, to such a high degree, spiritually perceiving—it looked through all of that and on to a spiritual world whose beings appeared to it as ethereal forms that did not descend to the density of physical life. Out there, where one saw the mountains, the trees, and the stars, there were not only the dense elements but also the finer ethereal elements, and one saw all of this shaped into the outer world of the gods. Of course, one should not imagine that these spirits consisted solely of ether; rather, just as a human being has a physical body and within it the etheric, astral, and ego principles, so these spirits did not have the physical body as the densest element at the bottom, but rather they had the etheric body as the lowest member and the other higher principles ascending toward the higher worlds. The Indian soul thus gazed into this world. How did it feel when it gazed into it in this way? How did the fundamental feeling toward this entire world impress itself upon the soul? This feeling can be characterized in the following way. The Indian felt: I stand here on Earth; I, as a human being, have developed over long, long periods of time, from the first human seed of the ancient Saturn right up to the present Earth era. I had to descend into dense physical matter in order to attain self-consciousness within it. When I speak to myself, I speak of myself as an “I”-being. I was a companion to all the spiritual beings that are visible around me to the beholder’s gaze, from the ethereal world upward. From among them I grew downward and densified myself accordingly. All—all the perfections of human beings—are found in these worlds into which I am now gazing; and not only those that human beings possess; there are also perfections and qualities there that human beings must first attain. But there is one thing no being can attain unless it descends to the physical plane. After all, there are other lofty perfections in the universe besides the memory of a human consciousness; there are other kinds of consciousness. But in order to develop that unique quality of consciousness that humans develop on Earth, a being must descend to this Earth and be embodied in dense matter through a series of incarnations, “May it be, then,” the Indian consciousness said to itself, “that these spiritual beings, into whose world I am looking, possess infinitely higher perfections than the human beings who stand upon the Earth: yet there is one thing they lack in their world, for the Earthly world existed to bestow it upon one species—humanity; there is one thing they lack: human ‘I’-consciousness.” To say “I” to oneself, as humans do, is not native to these worlds into which I am looking. I myself am from this world; everything that lives out there in this spiritual world also lives within me, only it coalesces within me into my human sense of self. Therefore, it makes no sense to say: Out there in the spiritual world, there is a human sense of self. To apply the word “I” in the human sense to what exists in these worlds has no meaning, no substance. Only a word that excludes this “I” can be applied to everything that extends spiritually in the environment—a word that is not touched by this “I,” one that is used in such a way that one can say: In this world is everything that is within me, but I must not designate what is out there with my “I”; I must designate it with a word that excludes the “I.”

[ 3 ] And Indian consciousness called what spreads out there the “Tat,” the “That,” in contrast to the “I.” And to express that human beings are of the same essence as this “Tat,” as this “That,” as this “It”—that they have developed into the “I” only through their descent to Earth—he uttered this judgment: I am this “Tat”—you are it [Tat twam asi]. That which is out there—that is yourself. - Thus, humanity has summarized its relationship to the spiritual environment—to this contemplative penetration of our world in the highest sense—in the words: It is, but that out there—that is yourself.

[ 4 ] But this ancient Indian soul knew at the same time that the very same entity that extends outward—and which it designated as “action”—can be found by looking into one’s own inner self; that it appears only sometimes from the outside and sometimes through the inner self. So when I descend into my soul, I find the same primordial spiritual essence that I designate as “action” out there. But then I establish the proper relationship to what lives within me as my source—which is veiled by the physical life of the soul—when I now express the judgment differently, when I say, instead of “That is yourself”—“I am Brahman,” I am the Universe [Aham brahma asmi]. — And these two statements—‘I am the It’ and ‘I am the Universe’—essentially meant, when taken together: When I look out into the world of “Tat,” I find a spiritual world; when I delve into my own soul experience, I find a spiritual world; and the two are one. - That was the fundamental sentiment of the first epoch of post-Atlantean spiritual culture. People perceived the two spiritual worlds as entirely unified.

[ 5 ] This is one aspect; the other, however, developed in a different place. In ancient India, on the one hand, the sense of the unity of the outer and the inner took shape in the soul’s fundamental disposition; and one must assume that the other extreme will consist in the gaze turning outward, seeing through the veil of the sensory world, and looking toward what lies hidden behind it as the spiritual world. And this is indeed the case with people of another nation. They perceive the external spiritual world; yet they are so constituted that they cannot determine from the outset that this external spiritual world is the same as the inner one. It will therefore come as no surprise when religious views and philosophical ideas emerge that fervently turn upward toward the gods and spirits beyond the sensory world; when the people are given mythical or other names for such divine-spiritual beings that exist out there beyond the veil of the sensory world; when, in the corresponding mysteries, the initiates are led into that very spiritual world that lies beyond the sensory world. Nor will it be surprising if, alongside such mysteries and such folk deities, something else still exists—if, at the same time, there are mysteries that guide people through the inner life of the soul, the path to the depths of this inner life of the soul. And indeed, one finds a cultural region in the post-Atlantean era where these two types of mysteries coexist, where, on the one hand, the so-called Apollonian circle of belief and the Apollonian mysteries, and on the other hand, the Dionysian circle of belief and the Dionysian mysteries, have developed. One finds this dichotomy in ancient Greece.

[ 6 ] On the one hand, there is the path that is shown—both to the people and to the initiates—out into the spiritual world, toward that which lies beyond the senses, toward that which is summarized as the spiritual world that lies beyond the sun. To the extent that the Greeks could perceive it, they designated it by the name of the Apollonian beings. Apollo, the sun god, was the representative of these divine-spiritual beings who stand behind the veil of the sensory world. Then there was a type of mystery that pointed the way through the life of the soul into the spiritual depths of that soul life—which, as was already mentioned yesterday, a person should enter only after careful preparation and when fully mature. Therefore, this second type of mystery was more protected against immaturity than the Apollonian one. And for the broader masses, there was the Apollonian pantheon, while the spiritual beings that could be encountered on the path through the inner world were reserved, as it were, for those who first brought themselves to maturity through special intellectual and moral training of their inner life. This second type of belief system and mysteries was collectively referred to as the Dionysian Mysteries, and the being at the center of it all is Dionysus. No wonder, then, that in Dionysus—the spirit standing at the center of this inner circle of gods—people found a being who was close to the human soul, who was, so to speak, something like a human being, but who was perceived as a human being who does not ascend to the physical world; rather, he was found when one descended from the physical world to the foundations of soul life. Here lie the true, deeper causes for the division of Greek spiritual life into an Apollonian and a Dionysian aspect. In more recent times, a sense that such a thing existed in Greece has emerged in various quarters. In the circles around Richard Wagner, there was a sense that such a thing had existed, even if there was no clear awareness of where the spiritual foundations of the matter lay. And Friedrich Nietzsche, emerging from Wagner’s circle, based his first remarkable, brilliant work, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, precisely on this division of Greek spiritual life into an Apollonian and a Dionysian aspect. All of this consisted of intuitions of what can be recognized more and more through spiritual deepening. In many places today, it is as if the modern spirit is yearning for such deepening. Everywhere there is a sense that this deepening alone will provide the answer to what people so desperately crave. Thus we see how, in ancient Greece, these two—so to speak—divine-spiritual worlds coexist side by side. There, they appeared in their coexistence. In ancient India, they appeared in their interpenetration.

[ 7 ] And now let us turn our attention to the development itself. We said yesterday that only from the most advanced outpost of the northern flow of peoples—from the ancient Persian Zoroastrian culture—could the ideal emerge to create a body in which the essence approaching humanity and the Earth from without could be embodied. And Zarathustra himself ensured that he passed through incarnation after incarnation in order to be reborn in a body so imbued with spirit that it could later receive the high Sun God in his full form—the form of Christ—within itself, For Zarathustra was, after all, reborn as Jesus of Nazareth, and through his various incarnations he matured to the point of becoming, for three years, the bearer of the Solar Spirit. So how, then, does Apollo relate to the Christ? This question must surely be close to your heart, so to speak. When the Greeks uttered the name Apollo, they were indeed pointing to the realm of the spiritual that lies behind the sun. But one makes a certain distinction in one’s conception of a being or thing, depending on one’s capacity. The one who has cultivated a richer inner life is also capable of seeing the things that the other person also sees in a truer form, so that we must say that when the Greeks uttered the word “Apollo,” he was indeed referring to the being who was later to reveal himself as Christ, yet he perceived this being only in a kind of veiled form as Apollo. It is like a garment of Christ, whose form resembles the being within it, when we speak of Apollo and Christ. It was necessary, as it were, for layer upon layer to fall away from the figure that people held before their souls as Apollo, in order to make Christ comprehensible and vivid to humanity. Thus, while Apollo is indeed a foreshadowing of Christ, he is not Christ himself.

[ 8 ] What, then, in a certain sense, is the very most fundamental characteristic of Christ for our cycle of development? When we consider all the divine-spiritual beings—the spiritual entities—to whom we have looked up as the higher gods who lie beyond the veil of the sensory world, the ancient people who saw them as the rulers and lords of the realms of the worlds and the workings of the worlds, we must say of all these beings: It is their characteristic that they do not, in truth, penetrate as far as the physical world; they become visible only to the perceiving consciousness that extends beyond the physical world, to the point of perceiving the etheric. Then Zeus, Apollo, Mars—all these beings, who are indeed realities—Wodan, Odin, Thor, and so on, became visible. But we could also say: These spiritual beings did not have the characteristic of descending into the physical world; at most, they temporarily manifested themselves in some physical embodiment, which is spiritually alluded to in the myths through momentary humanizations or other forms of Zeus or others who descended to humanity to perform this or that task. However, we must not speak of a permanent physical embodiment of these spiritual beings who stand behind the sensory world. We can therefore say: Apollo is a figure who is not capable of descending to the level of physical embodiment. That requires more power than Apollo possessed; it required precisely the Christ-force. Christ possessed the qualities of all the other beings in the outer world—all the qualities visible to the beholding consciousness—and, in addition, he possessed the one quality necessary to break through the boundary separating the world of the gods from the human world and to enter a human body, to become human in a physical human body that had been prepared for this purpose on Earth. In the divine-spiritual world, only the Christ possessed this gift. Thus, a being—note well, a being of the divine-spiritual world—had descended to the point where He took up residence in a human body within the sensory world, where He lived as a human being among other human beings. This is the great, momentous Christ event. This is how we must understand it. While all gods and spirits can be found only by the beholding consciousness above the physical world, Christ is found within this physical world, even though He is of the same nature and essence as the divine-spiritual beings. Externally, therefore, only the other gods can be found; He is the One who at the same time comes to life within the human being, who, so to speak, leaves the outer worlds of the gods and enters into the human inner being. With this, something very significant had taken place in the development of the world and of humanity. If one had sought a god within, one would previously have had to descend to the subterranean gods hidden behind the veil of soul experiences; in Christ, one has found such a god who can be found both externally and internally. This is the essential development that occurred in the fourth period of the post-Atlantean era, following the Indian, Persian, and Egyptian periods. What had been conceived and perceived more in the abstract in ancient India—that the divine-spiritual world is a unified whole, that the “Tat” and Brahman, which radiate from two sides of the soul, are one—became a living reality through the Christ event. Previously, one could say: The divine found on the path outward and the divine found on the path inward are one. Now one could say: One need only descend into the human inner being. When one partakes of Christ, one finds a being who is Apollo and Dionysus in one essence.

[ 9 ] But now another question arises. We have seen that the spiritual beings who exist in the outer world as divine-spiritual beings are, as it were, represented for human beings by the most powerful of their beings, by Christ, who, as an outer being, simultaneously becomes an inner being. What, then, of the other beings whom we described yesterday, in a certain sense, as Luciferic beings? Could one perhaps also say that the beings who were thus under the guidance of Dionysus develop in the same way into human soul life, and that, from the other side, some Dionysus—a Luciferic being—has incarnated as a human being? Can one say the same thing? No, one cannot say that. This is precisely the experience of spiritual development: that one cannot say the same thing about this world. And here we come to something that is fundamentally and essentially connected to the entire development of humanity and the worlds. If we were to go back to the very, very ancient times of human and cosmic evolution, we would find that the soul looks outward and sees the divine-spiritual world outside; that it looks inward and sees the divine-spiritual world within; that the soul finds the Apollonian world outside and the Dionysian world within itself, to use Greek terms. If we then proceed further in the development of humanity and the world, we see a different result. In the very earliest times, when the vast majority of people were visionaries, things were as I have just described. Outwardly, people saw the higher gods; inwardly, the lower gods; and they had these two paths into the spiritual world. When we consider later times, we find a humanity that has grown weaker in terms of its visionary abilities. People have increasingly lost the original, ancient, dim, twilight-like vision. But let us consider a time when few people still possessed natural vision. These people—we need not go very far back; we find such people even in the Chaldean-Egyptian world—saw the higher gods when they penetrated the veil of the sensory world, and the lower gods when they descended into their own inner being. These impressions were clearer and more powerful for those who were initiated to a certain degree. It should be noted that in every age there were also such initiates who fully recognized the unity of the two worlds. But these are the pinnacles of humanity.

[ 10 ] So, let us say, centuries before the appearance of Christ on Earth, there were people who had still preserved the ancient way of seeing, and initiates who could follow one path and find the higher gods, and others who could follow the other path and thus find the lower gods. But then came a time when the world—which we might call that of the lower gods—increasingly and more from human life, to the point where it was difficult to reach even for someone with a low degree of initiation—a time, however, in which what are called the higher gods, lying beyond the outer sensory world, were relatively easy to reach with even a low degree of initiation. Take, for example, an initiate in the ancient Jewish-Hebrew world. It was precisely the initiates in this world who, even if they were not initiated to a particularly high degree, could experience that, through their limited vision, they looked into the world in which Yahweh was not merely a concept or an idea to them, but an ethereal reality, a being who spoke to them like a human being to the beholder’s gaze. Thus, while for the people Yahweh was a proclamation—something of which one merely said it existed—for the initiate he was a reality. In contrast, it would have been more difficult for such an initiate in the ancient Hebrew world to find anything had he delved into his own inner life, had he sought the realm of the lower gods. There he would have had to say to himself: Yes, I cannot fathom that to the bottom; there

[ 11 ] I find my spiritual life everywhere; I cannot penetrate through the dense crust of my spiritual life to reach the lower gods. Thus, the lower gods had withdrawn into a certain unknown darkness. It was the time of Christ’s descent to Earth, during which the Luciferic spirits had withdrawn into the darkness to a certain extent. And among outer humanity, all one could hear in those days was: “There are mysteries; those who are initiated into the mysteries acquire the ability to penetrate, through the powers of the soul life, into the Dionysian world.” - People had a vague inkling of something that could be explored by human beings in the deep secrets of the mysteries. But it was merely something spoken of in hints, something of which very few had a clear conception during the time of anticipation of the Christ. They had much clearer ideas about the external gods. There were many people who still had a living experience of these external gods. But now humanity is advancing in its development. And what is the result of this advancement?

[ 12 ] There will be a history for outer humanity, and there will also be a history for the Mysteries as we look into the future. Outer humanity will transform its spiritual culture; Christ will become increasingly integrated into outer humanity. But even within the Mysteries, people will come to recognize the nature and essence of the Christ, whom we have barely begun to understand today. Thus, the God who could be beheld in the time of Zarathustra—when the gaze turned toward the sun and became contemplative—and who descended to Earth, this God will be grasped ever more intimately by the human soul. The God who was the ruler of the outer world will become ever more inner. Christ thus walks through the world in such a way that, from a cosmic God who has descended to Earth, he increasingly becomes a mystical God whom human beings will be able to experience within the innermost depths of their soul life. That is why, at the time when Christ descended, it was possible to realize what his disciples later described when they said: “We have laid our hands on his wounds; we ourselves have heard his word on the mountain.” - One could refer to something external. The essential point was that Christ was present externally. At that time, one could not have experienced him inwardly in a mystical way; one could not have grasped his Dionysian nature; one first had to experience him as the external, historical Christ. But this is the progress in humanity’s Christ-consciousness: that he descends ever deeper into the soul, that people will be able to look inward more and more, that they will increasingly experience their own soul experiences mystically within, and will increasingly experience, alongside the external Christ, the Christ within their own souls—the mystical Christ. Consider how, in so-called mysticism—which emerged in the early period of Christian development through Dionysius the Areopagite, who was a friend and disciple of Paul—Christ is initially recognized through external occult abilities. And all descriptions of this early Christian occult school are framed in such a way that Christ is essentially described according to those qualities he manifests in the outer worlds—qualities that could be experienced through an outwardly directed, instinctively perceptive gaze. Now let us advance a few centuries in human development and see what has come of it. Consider the mystical development of the Middle Ages—that deeply inner experience of a Meister Eckhart, a Johannes Tauler, and so on, right up to our more recent mystics—these are people who look down into their own inner selves. Just as in ancient times people looked inward to see through that inner world and penetrate to Dionysus, so the modern mystics penetrate inward and can say, like Meister Eckhart: Although the historical Christ is a fact, although he developed within history, there is the possibility of descending into one’s own inner being and finding the inner, mystical Christ there. Thus the human soul evolves to find the Dionysian nature of Christ—the mystical Christ—not only in the outer world but also within. First there was the historical Christ; then, through the work of the historical Christ, certain effects took shape within the human soul, making a mystical Christ within humanity possible. Thus, in more recent times, we can also speak of an inner, mystical experience of Christ; but one must understand that Christ was a cosmic being before his entry into the Earth. If one immersed oneself in the inner life of the soul back then, one did not find Christ, but Dionysus. Today, if one has developed in the appropriate way, one finds an inner Christ-being. Christ has transformed from a divinity outside the soul into a divinity within the soul, one that will increasingly take hold of the human soul the more it approaches this Christ through its soul experiences.

[ 13 ] Here is an example of how a shift occurs in what develops throughout the world as principles. When people today speak of a mystical Christ within themselves, they should not forget that everything in the world has evolved, and that mystical consciousness is not the same in all ages, but has itself evolved, When the ancient holy Rishis looked up into the spiritual worlds, they spoke of Karma and, in doing so, had in mind the same Being—as a cosmic Being—as the later thinkers did, the same Being that Zarathustra referred to when he spoke of Ahura Mazda. It was the Christ Being. Today, as the mystical Christ, it can also be found within. That it is He is the very work of Christ Himself on Earth. This is how the cosmic, the astronomical Christ, truly relates to the mystical Christ. Thus, the external God gradually became an internal one.

[ 14 ] But since everything that happens in the outer physical world is an effect of the spiritual, this Christianization of the soul also has an effect on the life to come. First, this effect will manifest in the mysteries and has already manifested in part since the founding of the Western mystery schools of the Rosicrucians. When one had delved deep into the soul through the training of the ancient mysteries and ascended to the lower gods, one encountered Dionysus, which is merely another name for the vast world of Luciferic deities. But even the contemplative consciousness, if it had not ascended to the highest degrees, vanished into darkness as Christ approached the Earth in His glory; the Luciferic being vanished. Only the highest initiates were still able to descend to the Luciferic gods. To the rest of humanity it had to be said: If you descend while still impure and immature, these Luciferic beings will appear to you only as wild demons in their distorted forms, who, in their transformed nature, will lead you into all manner of evil. Hence all the terrible descriptions given of this subterranean realm; hence the fear of even the name of Lucifer that arose at a certain time. And because everything is inherited by people who do not keep pace with evolution, this fear still lives on today among those who have inherited these feelings—the fear of the name Lucifer. But the fact is that, for the person capable of spiritual vision, the Luciferic world reappears only after the Christ principle has permeated the soul for a time. Once Christ has been at work in the soul for a while, that soul—by being permeated by the Christ substance and through its Christianization—becomes mature enough to penetrate once more into the realm of the Luciferic beings. The initiates of the Rosicrucians were the first to be able to do this. They strove to comprehend and behold the Christ in such a way that He, as the mystical Christ, also entered their souls, that He lives within them, that they are, so to speak, strengthened by this Christ-substance within their own being, and that this Christ-substance within them serves as a shield and weapon against all temptations. Thus this Christ-substance within them becomes a new light that now illuminates them from within, an inner astral light. The historical experience of Christ in his truth illuminates our soul experiences in such a way that we become capable of penetrating once more into the Luciferic realm. At first, the initiates of the Rosicrucians were able to do this, and little by little these initiates of the Rosicrucians will carry forth what they are able to experience regarding the Luciferic principle, and will pour out upon the world that great spiritual marriage, which consists in the Christ—who has poured Himself as substance into the human soul—now being grasped through the spiritual faculties that are maturing in a new way within the spirit of each individual through the inflow of the Luciferic principle.

[ 15 ] Let us first consider an initiate of the Rosicrucians. Such an initiate prepares himself, first of all, by directing the feelings, sensations, and thoughts within his soul toward the great central figure of Christ—for example, by allowing the Gospel of John to take effect upon him; that monumental, immensely significant figure described to us in the Gospel of John—and thereby refines and purifies himself. For everything truly changes within our soul when it gazes with all reverence upon the figure depicted in the Gospel of John. When we take into ourselves what radiates from the figure described in the Gospel of John, then our soul is permeated by Christ, and the mystical Christ comes to life within us. And if we further enliven this through other texts of Christian education, our soul will be increasingly permeated by the spiritual substance of Christ, purifying and refining itself through Christianization as it ascends into higher worlds. Through this, our mind in particular is purified and refined. One either learns to perceive Christ in such a universal way as Meister Eckhart and Tauler did, or one learns to experience Him in such a tender way as Ssso or others did; one feels at one with that which has flowed down from the great heavenly realms onto our Earth through the Christ Event. Through this, one becomes ready, as an initiate of the Rosicrucians, to be introduced with insight into those worlds that in ancient times might have been called the Dionysian worlds and are now called the Luciferic worlds. What effect do these initiations into the Luciferic worlds have on today’s Rosicrucian initiate? Just as the soul becomes warm and filled with enthusiasm for the Divine when it is Christianized, so, on the other hand, our other spiritual faculties—through which we understand, grasp, perceive, and comprehend the world—are illuminated, permeated, and empowered by the Luciferic principle. Thus the initiate of the Rosicrucians ascends toward the Luciferic principle. In doing so, his spiritual faculties are sharpened and refined through the initiation, so that he can not only feel Christ mystically in his soul, but also describe him, tell what he is like, and capture him in mental images, into spiritual images, so that Christ is not merely dimly felt and experienced within him, but stands before him in concrete contours, like a figure from the outer world, the outer sensory world. Experiencing Christ as a substance of the soul is possible by directing one’s gaze toward the figure of Christ as he appears to us in the Gospels. To describe and understand Christ in the same way one understands other phenomena and experiences of the world—and thereby to perceive his greatness, his significance for the world, and his causality in world events—is possible only if the Christian-mystical initiate ascends further toward the knowledge of the Luciferic realms. Thus, within the Rosicrucian Order, Lucifer gives us the ability to describe and understand Christ in the first place. ^{1One can imagine how ill will or a lack of understanding, based on the common usage of the word “Lucifer” (Light-Bearer), might slander what is presented here; this must not deter us from this presentation. Anyone who understands “Lucifer” in the sense intended here must see things differently.}

[ 16 ] What the centuries have been able to do is to pass on the Gospels, to convey the Word that flows from the Gospels, to allow hearts to be warmed by these Gospels, and to set souls ablaze with the warmth and enthusiasm that radiate from the Gospels. Today we face a stage in human development where it is no longer enough to merely preserve the Gospels in the old way; today, people demand something different. Those who do not want this something different will have to bear the karmic consequences of resisting the introduction of the Luciferic principle into the interpretation of the Gospels. May there still be many among us who say: Oh, come now, as Christians we want to accept the Gospels; we feel satisfied with them; Christ speaks through the Gospels, and he speaks through them even when we receive them as they have been handed down through the centuries within traditional religion. Such people may believe that they are Christians; they may, in their own way, repeat over and over again: “Stay away from us with your spiritual insights; we have Christ in the Gospels; we want nothing to do with the work you are doing on the Gospels.” — Let these people repeat it, let them imagine that they are good Christians; in truth, they are enemies of Christ; they are the ones who, out of their own selfishness—because they can still find satisfaction in everything offered by the traditional interpretation of the Gospels—wipe away what will bring true Christianity to its full glory in the future. Those who today often believe themselves to be the best Christians are the most zealous destroyers of true Christianity. Those who understand the development of Christianity today are those who think in a completely different way, who declare: “We do not want to be egoists and say, ‘The Gospels are enough for us; we want nothing to do with your abstractions!’” There is nothing abstract at all in what spiritual science offers.—The true Christians are those who know that humanity today needs something other than the Christianity of the egoists, those who say: “We know that the world can no longer exist with the old tradition of the Gospels; we know that it is necessary for the light from Lucifer’s realm to fall upon the Gospels.” — These people hear the teachings that emerge from the initiation centers of the Rosicrucians, where spiritual faculties have been sharpened through the Luciferic principle in order to penetrate ever more deeply into the Gospels. And for these initiates, it has become clear: Indeed, the Gospels possess such infinite depth that one must by no means believe one can exhaust them with this or that. — But the time has now come when the Rosicrucians must let their teachings flow out into the world, when the mysteries of the Rosicrucians are called upon to cast upon the Gospels what they have gained in the sharpening of their spiritual powers from the Luciferic world. It is a Western spiritual insight that the light which shines forth can be gained from the realm of Lucifer and shed upon the Gospels. Spiritual science must become an instrument for interpreting the Gospels; and the greatness, the power, and the substance of the Gospels will become visible when the light from the realm of Lucifer—as it has been gained through the mysteries of the Rosicrucians—is cast upon these Gospels. Thus, it is part of the work of spiritual science to introduce into the good news of the Christian essence that permeates the world the light gained from the realm of Lucifer through the path of initiation by the Rosicrucians, and to allow it to shine upon the Gospels. Thus we see that Christ, who from being a God who lived in the outer world became the mystical Christ, through His ennoblement of the human soul has brought it back into that realm which for a time had to remain closed off—the realm called the Dionysian in ancient times—and which will be reconquered in the times toward which humanity is moving in the future. The explanation of Christ through the spiritual faculties heightened and enlightened by Lucifer—this is the inner essence, the very core, of the spiritual current that must flow in the West. And what I have said is the mission of the Rosicrucians with regard to the future.^{2Compare the relevant discussions in my The Secret Science.}

[ 17 ] So what is actually happening in the evolution of humanity? What happened—and continues to happen—is this: that Christ and Lucifer, one as a cosmic God, the other as an inner human God, walked side by side in ancient times; that one was found, so to speak, in the upper regions, the other in the lower regions; that the world then moved on and, for a time, knew Dionysus—Lucifer—as being far from the Earth; but in place of that, people experienced the cosmic Christ penetrating ever more deeply into the Earth, permeating the soul ever more fully, while Lucifer is now becoming visible and recognizable once again. The paths taken by these two divine-spiritual beings are as follows: They approach the Earth from two different sides; Lucifer becomes invisible as he crosses paths with Christ; he is, as it were, outshone by the light of Christ as the “other light.” In the past, Christ was perceived as a cosmic being, and Lucifer as an inner human being. Their paths crossed. Christ enters the human soul; he becomes the planetary spirit of the Earth; he increasingly becomes the mystical Christ within human souls; he is deepened and recognized through inner experiences. As a result, the soul becomes increasingly capable of once again perceiving the other being who has taken the opposite path—from the inner to the outer. Lucifer transforms from an inner human being—a purely earthly being, sought in the mysteries that led into the lower realm—into a cosmic God. He will shine ever more brightly out in the world we behold when we look through the veil of the sensory world. The way people perceive things will be reversed. Just as one has seen Lucifer behind the veil of the inner world of the soul, and has seen Christ—like Zarathustra—behind the outer sensory world, so in the future one will be able to recognize Christ more and more through contemplation and internalization within one’s own being. One will find Lucifer when one directs one’s gaze outward into the cosmic region.

[ 18 ] Thus, we can observe a complete reversal in the nature of human knowledge over the course of human evolution: Christ has transformed from a cosmic God into an earthly God, who will be the soul of the Earth in the future. Lucifer has transformed from an earthly God into a cosmic God. And if, in the future, humanity wishes to ascend once more to the outer spiritual world hidden behind the veil of the sensory world—if it does not wish to remain at the level of what is merely external and grossly material—then it must penetrate through the things of the sensory world into the spiritual world; it must allow itself to be carried into the light by the “Bearer of Light.” And no abilities to penetrate there will arise in human beings unless they create these abilities from the forces that flow to us from Lucifer’s realm. Humanity would sink into materialism, remaining forever in the belief that everything is merely the outer material world, if it did not ascend to inspiration through the Luciferic principle. If the Christ principle is called upon to make our inner being stronger and stronger, then the Luciferic principle is called upon to sharpen and develop our abilities, which are meant to penetrate the world in its entirety. Lucifer will make us ever stronger and stronger in our understanding and perception of the world, while Christ will make us ever stronger and stronger within.