The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Spiritual Science as Preparation for the New Etheric Vision

[ 1 ] We would make little progress in our branch lectures if we did not occasionally also speak about the more intimate processes of humanity’s spiritual life. What we are to acquire in our branches is, after all, a preparation for grasping higher spiritual truths, and in this preparation we must not think merely of learning theories or ideas; rather, what we call preparation for the higher truths should actually consist more in a certain emotional and perceptual disposition of our soul. Through life in the branch, by gathering, so to speak, week after week in our groups, our soul is to gradually mature to the point of developing a receptivity even for those aspects of Spiritual Science that descend—or, if you will, ascend—from the general truths that we can already proclaim today to a wider audience in our exoteric lectures, to the concrete facts of life.

[ 2 ] Therefore, let this evening in particular be one that counts on such preparation of our soul—on an emotional preparation of our soul. Certain things are to come before our souls today—things that we will, admittedly, only come to understand slowly and gradually, but which we can sense and intuit as we acquire the maturity to be attained through the life of the soul. It is assumed that such truths will be received with the appropriate sensitivity—received in such a way that we regard them as a precious treasure of our soul, not as something we believe we can simply present to an unprepared audience. From the known, we will gradually ascend to the unknown.

[ 3 ] This is a question that naturally arises for anyone who becomes acquainted even with the basic principles of the anthroposophical worldview. The question is: Is there any meaning or purpose to the human soul appearing here on Earth in a succession of incarnations? One can grasp the abstract truth of reincarnation, but such abstract truths are, in essence, of little use in life. Truths only gain significance for our lives when they are capable of being transformed within our souls into the warmth of feeling, into the light that shines within us so brightly that it guides us forward along life’s paths. That is why the abstract truth of reincarnation only becomes meaningful to us when we, so to speak, have a more precise, more intimate understanding of the meaning and significance of the successive incarnations of the human being. That is the one question that will occupy us today.

[ 4 ] The other question is this: What significance does it have that, in our present incarnation, we are precisely in a position to introduce anthroposophy into our souls and to connect anthroposophical truths with our innermost lives? — We shall see that these two things will come together harmoniously for us today.

[ 5 ] You have often heard that two successive incarnations of a human being do not follow one another in any arbitrary way, but that when a person has passed out of an earthly life through death, they return to a new earthly life only when they have the opportunity in that new earthly life to learn new things on our Earth and to connect them with their soul. However, this can only be understood by those who view the evolution of our Earth not merely in terms of how it unfolds, so to speak, over a few centuries or millennia; only those who turn their gaze to the overall evolution of the Earth can truly grasp this. Even with regard to external physical conditions, if we limit ourselves to external sources, we will come to see how the face of the Earth changes over relatively short periods of time. Just read about what the regions where we are now looked like around the time Christ walked the Earth, and you will see how the entire landscape of this region has changed in relatively few centuries. And then ask yourself how moral and other cultural conditions might have changed over the course of these few centuries. Try to create in your mind a mental image of what a child learned around the time our calendar began, and what a child learns today. Make all of this clear to yourself, and then recall from the anthroposophical teachings that we can look back to time immemorial, when the face of the Earth looked quite different, when, for the most part, the continents that exist today were not yet there, but instead there was a vast, expansive continent in the place now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean. And think of all that must have taken place over the course of long, long periods of time to shape the face of the Earth in the way it is today. When you let all of this sink into your soul, you must tell yourself: It is possible that souls continually experience new things, continually absorb new fruits of life on our Earth, and then unite these fruits with their own lives, so that they may then pass through a spiritual life between death and a new birth. And when, in turn, conditions have changed to such an extent that new things can be learned and it is once again worthwhile to descend to our Earth, then the souls truly return to incarnation.

[ 6 ] It is not merely a game played by the entities and forces at work behind appearances that repeatedly brings human beings down into new incarnations; rather, each incarnation adds a new strength and ability as a new link in the divine plan, which is represented by the entirety of a person’s life. Only when we view life in this way does the law of repeated earthly lives take on real meaning. But then we must also ask ourselves: Could we not actually be missing out on something? Does it not depend on our using an incarnation—a physical embodiment—in the right way? If we were simply to have a repetition of our present life in a subsequent incarnation without further ado, then some might say, “I have plenty of time; I will live many more times.”

[ 7 ] But when one looks at the most important facts of life and realizes that what the Earth can give us during a specific period cannot be experienced at any other time, then one will begin to realize that one can indeed miss out on something—that one can take on an inner obligation and responsibility to make the most of every incarnation, every embodiment, in the appropriate and correct way. And we gain an even clearer understanding of how we can make use of these incarnations when we now take a brief look back based on spiritual research. I will speak in part about something already familiar to us, but then I will have to expand on something that will still be unknown to most of those seated here. What is known to you is that our own souls possessed entirely different abilities in earlier incarnations. The abilities through which humanity lives and acts today were not always present. If we ask ourselves what it is through which the human soul acts in a particularly distinctive way today, we must conclude that it acts by precisely perceiving the external facts of the world through the senses, and that human beings possess a self-conscious intellect and a self-conscious power of judgment, which they can apply to sensory perceptions and through which they can combine these perceptions to form a picture of the world through their cognition. We know, then, that when a person continues to develop their soul further and further through the methods described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, they can come to have yet another, spiritual environment around them. We know that there is an opened spiritual eye, an awakening of supersensible, higher abilities that lie dormant in the average person today; we know that there was a time when the spiritual world was perceptible to all people, but also that there will be a time when the spiritual world can once again flood into our souls—just as light and color flood into the world of a person born blind who has undergone surgery; these were present in his surroundings even before, but could not enter because he lacked the open faculties to receive them.

[ 8 ] Thus, today we have a humanity that can glimpse into the spiritual world only through abnormal development and through very special methods. The normal state of modern human beings is, after all, that they perceive the things of the world through their external senses and combine their perceptions with their intellect, which is bound to the physical brain.

[ 9 ] Humanity is not always the way it is today. We can look back to earlier times in human evolution and find—if we open our clairvoyant eye to the records we call the Akashic Records—that entirely different spiritual abilities were, so to speak, the normal human ones. In ancient times, all people possessed a kind of clairvoyance. Not the kind acquired today through the methods mentioned, but a clairvoyance of a different nature—one that we must describe as a dim, dull, almost dreamlike clairvoyance. But it was there; it was present especially under certain unusual circumstances. It simply arose of its own accord and did not require any special training. Admittedly, we would have to go back a long way if we wanted to find a humanity with constant clairvoyance, but in fact, a certain degree of clairvoyance was always inherent in humanity during certain intermediate states between sleeping and waking. The further back we go, the more and more we find this clairvoyance. You will recall that as we go back through various cultural periods, we pass through different epochs of human development. We now live in a cultural period that was preceded by another. We refer to this other cultural period as the Greco-Latin era. This, in turn, was preceded by another, which we designate, after the leading peoples, as the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian epoch. That, in turn, was preceded by another, which we designate as the Proto-Persian, and going even further back, we come to what we call the Proto-Indian. That was a culture to which only the clairvoyant eye can look back, for the culture that produced the Vedas arose in much later times as a faint echo of that high wisdom which the seven holy Rishis themselves bestowed upon the world in the original, ancient Indian culture. And when we go back beyond that period, we find the great Atlantean catastrophe, which, through powerful forces of water and air, altered the face of our Earth to such an extent that, little by little, the Atlantean continent disappeared and was replaced by what is today, on the one hand, Africa and Europe, and on the other, America.

[ 10 ] And we could go back even further, and the records of the Akashic Records would show us how the people of the ancient continent of Atlantis possessed entirely different spiritual abilities—abilities that would seem almost unbelievable to people today because they are far too distant from everything modern humans know.

[ 11 ] In all these periods, our souls already existed—in other bodies—but always possessed different abilities. And if we could go back, we would find that our souls were endowed at that time with a high degree of clairvoyant receptivity; especially in certain states between sleeping and waking, we were witnesses to a spiritual world and could look into it. If you could go back, you would discover how you yourselves saw the facts and beings of the spiritual worlds. Back then, there was no temptation—indeed, no possibility—for human souls to deny the spiritual world, for they had seen it; they were turned toward the physical world only during a few hours of the day. The objects of the outer physical world were not yet arranged in the visible order they would take on in later times. Therefore, when people entered this intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness, they were surrounded by a world that they had to perceive as the spiritual world—a world that had to give them the conviction: Humanity originates from this world. Humanity descended from it in order to acquire something in the physical world that it could not have acquired in the spiritual world alone. What, then, was humanity able to acquire in this outer world that it could not have already possessed in the spiritual world? What the spiritual world lacked was the possibility of developing self-consciousness—the possibility of saying “I” to oneself. Humanity did not possess this. Human beings were, so to speak, outside of themselves precisely during the most important moments of their lives, as if in a state of detachment, where they did not even know that they were independent inner individuals. They were devoted to the spiritual world. To perceive oneself as “I”—this is something human beings could only learn here in this physical world; true self-consciousness could only be attained here. And inseparably linked to this self-consciousness is what we call the power of judgment, our present-day thinking, and our capacity for perception. Thus, human beings had to relinquish their former connection to the spiritual world—their old, twilight-like clairvoyance—in order to acquire the ability to distinguish themselves as “I” from their surroundings and thereby attain the “I,” or self-consciousness, at all.

[ 12 ] In the future, human beings will once again reclaim this gift—the clairvoyant ability to look into the spiritual world—as part of their self-awareness. The gate to the spiritual world has, as it were, been closed to humanity so that human beings might become self-aware, inner spiritual beings; so that they might ascend to self-awareness; and so that they might then re-enter the spiritual world as independent beings.

[ 13 ] So there were ancient times when humans, so to speak, looked out upon an environment that was completely different from today’s. When we look out at our physical surroundings today, what do we see? We see the world of minerals, plants, animals, and our fellow human beings with physical senses. This is what surrounds us and to which we primarily belong—the world that is open to us between birth and death.

[ 14 ] We can penetrate that world from which this originates—and which lies beyond it—only through clairvoyant gifts, which, as mentioned, are not the normal abilities of modern human beings today, but were available to all people in certain states in those ancient times. Back then, people immersed themselves in the spiritual world; there they perceived those spiritual beings and spiritual realities of which we hear in Spiritual Science—realities that exist and cannot be dismissed as nonexistent simply because ordinary modern perception cannot see them, just as light and color exist around a blind person even though he cannot perceive them. These spiritual beings were, at that time, the companions of human beings, and a person could say to himself: I belong to a spiritual world; as a spiritual-soul being, I belong to a world in which, just as my own spiritual-soul nature, there are such beings as I have around me in such states of consciousness. - In those times of the distant past, human beings were companions of spiritual-soul entities. Those insights into the world and those epiphanies that have looked into these conditions have always been able to distinguish precisely—and can still distinguish today—the various stages that human beings have passed through in different eras. First, there was the stage when human beings were still completely immersed in the spiritual world, where they had scarcely descended with consciousness into the sensory-physical world, but felt themselves to belong entirely to the spiritual world, drawing all their powers from it. This stage distinguished spiritual insight from the subsequent stages, in which this power gradually waned, giving way increasingly to the perception of sharply defined objects in the external world, the processing of these impressions through logical thinking and judgment, and the development of the “I,” or self-consciousness.

[ 15 ] In Eastern philosophy, which was still able to gain insight into these conditions because it had retained remnants of the ancient sacred teachings of the Rishis, there were still terms for these various periods of human development. For the most ancient times—the periods of clairvoyant human development in which this clairvoyance reached, so to speak, into the highest regions of the spiritual world, up to those beings whom we must have in our mental images as the highest beings connected to our world—the term Krita Yuga was used, which later came to be called the Golden Age. Then came another era in which people could see much less of the spiritual world, and in which the effects of the spiritual world were no longer quite so vivid within them. This era was called the Treta Yuga, later known as the Silver Age. In a different way, the people living between birth and death gained a certainty about the spiritual world. Although they now had only very vague, immediate experiences of the spiritual world, they remembered the times before their birth when they, too, had lived among spiritual beings. Consequently, this was a time when human beings were still as certain of the spiritual world as an elderly person today cannot deny that they once had a youth. In those circles of knowledge where such things are understood, this age was referred to as the Treta Yuga, for which the term “Silver Age” was later used, albeit somewhat imprecisely. All these ancient terms, however, have profound meanings, and it is downright childish of modern science to treat them as it does, because it has no inkling of the realities from which these terms sprang.

[ 16 ] This Silver Age was followed, however, by an age in which clear knowledge—a kind of genuine insight into the spiritual world—still existed, but in such a way that human beings had already descended so far into the physical-sensory world that they could, so to speak, choose between the two worlds in terms of their convictions. In this third, Iron Age—the Dvapara Yuga—the ancient clairvoyance grew darker and darker, yet it still persisted to a certain degree in a twilight-like form, and human beings could, out of their own inner conviction, connect more or less closely with the spiritual world. For them, this spiritual world had once been an experience; they still knew this even in this age.

[ 17 ] Then, little by little, the age we refer to by the Eastern term Kali Yuga—the dark age—began to dawn. This is the age in which, slowly and gradually, the gateway to the spiritual world closed completely for the human soul’s faculties. And as human beings became increasingly reliant on perceiving only within the physical-sensory world, they were also able to develop their sense of self, their sense of “I,” and their self-awareness more and more within this world. This age began at a relatively late time, around the year 3100 B.C., and has continued up to the present day.

[ 18 ] We are considering this today in the sense that we must learn to distinguish between these ages so that we can understand the most important tasks of our own present incarnations.

[ 19 ] We would actually go back to the Atlantean era if we traced the Krita Yuga back to its very beginning. In contrast, the Treta Yuga still falls within the era of the holy Rishis—that is, within Indian culture, but also, to some extent, within ancient Persian culture. The Dvapara Yuga, on the other hand, coincides with the later cultural epochs: the Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian periods. At that time, a certain degree of ancient, twilight-like clairvoyance still existed. And the point in time when the gate to the spiritual world began to close slowly and gradually, more and more thoroughly, confining humanity, so to speak, to the physical plane—the beginning of this age falls in the year 3101 B.C., that is, before Jesus Christ walked the earth. Thus, a little over 3,000 years before the Christ event, we see the dawn of an age that has gradually shaped us into what we are today. When we realize that the most significant event in the entire history of Earth’s evolution—the deed of the Christ—occurred within this age, we can fully appreciate the significance of that deed. What were human beings like in that age, the Kali Yuga, when Christ descended to Earth? They had already spent more than 3,000 years in a phase of development that confined them to the physical world—a phase that limited them, between birth and death, to taking in only what was offered to them in this physical world, only what presented itself to them in this physical world. Had this development continued in this way, human self-consciousness would indeed have grown stronger and stronger, but only in an egotistical direction. Human beings would have become nothing more than hedonists, beings driven by desire, who would have coldly enclosed everything within their own “I.” They would have completely lost the awareness that a spiritual world exists, had nothing else intervened. What did intervene? The full significance of what did intervene becomes clear to us once we understand that there truly are transitional periods in Earth’s evolution. Some people who merely speculate, who merely engage in abstract philosophy or cultivate some other ideology, often call every age a transitional period; and one can find almost every period—as far back as one can go in time since the invention of the printing press, since so much has been printed—referred to as a transitional age. Those who stand on the ground of Spiritual Science will not be so generous with this term, for transitional periods are only those times in which something truly more essential and decisive happens than in other eras.

[ 20 ] There is a saying commonly used in science that is taken for granted—anthroposophists should learn that it is nonsense: “Nature does not make leaps.” - It sounds very objective, and yet it is nonsense, for nature takes nothing but leaps. Observe how a plant develops, how a leap occurs every time something new works its way into the course of development, how a leap occurs from the regular formation of leaves to flowering, from the calyx to the petals, from the petals to the stamens, and so on. Nature makes nothing but leaps after proceeding gradually for a time, and all existence makes leaps. This is precisely the essence of development—that crises and leaps occur—and the statement “Nature does not make leaps” belongs, so to speak, to the clichés of the most appalling comforts of human thought—for nature really does make many leaps.

[ 21 ] But spiritual life, in particular, proceeds in leaps and bounds. In the course of spiritual development, great and significant leaps occur. Then life continues at a gradual pace, and then significant spiritual leaps occur once more. Such a tremendous leap for the life of humanity—not only for those who were around the Christ—took place precisely during the time when the Christ walked the earth. And in this sense, we may call the era in which the Christ lived and taught in Palestine a transitional era. Do not say that all people must easily notice such a leap, such a transition. Oh, the most essential things that happen in an age can be completely hidden from the eyes of contemporaries; they can pass them by without their noticing a thing. After all, we know that such an event once passed by millions upon millions without a trace. After all, we know that Tacitus, that eminent Roman writer, writes in one passage of his work about the Christians as if they were a hidden sect; that, for example, nearly a hundred years after Christianity had already spread throughout the southern regions of Europe, very strange stories were being told in Rome about Christianity. So there were social circles in Rome at that time who knew nothing more about Christianity than that there was a disruptive sect—a sect in a remote back alley, led by a certain Jesus, who incited them to all sorts of misdeeds. This is a story that was circulating in Rome—already a century after Christianity had come into existence. Thus, the most significant event not only of that time but of the entire course of human development passed by a large number of people without a trace. We must be able to create a mental image of what would happen if, in fact, while people notice nothing—absolutely nothing—the most important and significant events can take place. Therefore, when people say that we live in a time when nothing essential or important is happening, that is no proof that these people are actually correct.

[ 22 ] In fact, we are once again living in a transitional age in which the most important spiritual realities are unfolding—realities of which many of our contemporaries are unaware, yet which are very much present. This is what we must make clear to ourselves: on the one hand, that we can truly speak of times of transition, but on the other hand, that we should not use this term too freely. What, then, was the essence of the time of transition in which Jesus Christ appeared? The essence of this time of transition for all humanity is expressed in a meaningful phrase that simply needs to be understood correctly. It is expressed in the proclamation of John the Baptist, which Christ later took up again and which reads: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” An entire world lies within this statement—precisely that world which is intimately connected with the most important event that took place at that time for the development of all humanity.

[ 23 ] Through natural evolution in the Kali Yuga, human beings had gradually reached a point where they had attained discernment and self-awareness, yet had become incapable of regaining their connection with the spiritual world from within this self-awareness by their own power. John the Baptist said: The time has now come when your “I” must be trained in such a way that this “I” can become so deeply rooted in itself spiritually that it finds within itself the connection to the heavenly realms; for outside of itself, in states of clairvoyance, human beings can normally no longer ascend into a spiritual world. The realms of heaven had to descend all the way down into the physical world. They must reveal themselves in such a way that the “I” can recognize them through ordinary self-consciousness, through the sense of truth inherent in ordinary self-consciousness. Change your mindset, change your old state of mind, so that you may believe that your soul life can be so stirred within itself—within the “I”—that, through observing everything that is happening around you, you may comprehend: There is a spiritual world! You must learn to comprehend the spiritual worlds within your “I,” through your “I.” They have come down close to us. They no longer need to be sought in a world of raptures! — That is why Christ had to descend and appear in a human, physical body, for the human state of mind was attuned to a perception of the physical plane. God had to come to humanity on the physical plane because, through the development of their “I” and by closing the gates to the spiritual world, human beings were no longer able to approach the gods in the old way. This is the great event that took place at that time: on the one hand, through the natural development of human faculties, the old connection with the spiritual worlds had been lost and an “I”-consciousness had been attained; but on the other hand, this made it possible to attain awareness of these spiritual worlds within the physical world. Thus, Christ served as the mediator to the spiritual worlds for those people who had reached a stage of development where they could now, through an “I” living on the physical plane, establish a connection with the spiritual world. Change your spiritual outlook; no longer believe that human beings can normally ascend to the spiritual world through rapture, but believe that, through the unfolding of the potentials inherent in your own “I,” with the help of Christ, the path to the spiritual worlds can be found. For only in this way will humanity be able to find the Spirit at first.

[ 24 ] We are living once again in an age of a similar nature, for the Kali Yuga—the dark age—came to an end in 1899, and now, in a similar way, new states of mind and new spiritual capacities are slowly taking shape. It is entirely possible that our contemporaries, the people of our time, will miss this. Little by little, we will come to understand what will happen to all people in our age, which has now begun following the end of the Kali Yuga. Our task today is precisely to ensure that this event—this transitional event—does not pass us by unnoticed and without impact on the progress of humanity.

[ 25 ] The Kali Yuga has come to an end; it was just a few years ago. 1899 is the approximate date when it ended. We are now moving toward a time when, as a natural process, certain clairvoyant abilities will develop alongside our growing self-awareness. People will experience the peculiar and strange phenomenon that they will not actually know what is happening to them! People will begin to have premonitions that will come true, to foresee events that will affect them. People will, little by little, begin to truly see—albeit in a shadowy way and in its earliest stages—what we call the human etheric body. Today, people see only the physical body. The perception of the etheric body will gradually emerge as something about which people will either have learned that it is real, or which they will think is an illusion—that it does not exist at all. It will go so far that some, when experiencing such things, will ask themselves: Am I crazy?

[ 26 ] Even if, at first, only a small number of people will develop these abilities over the coming decades, Spiritual Science is something that must be disseminated because we feel a responsibility toward what is happening in reality—what must happen according to the natural course of events. Why do we teach Spiritual Science? Because phenomena will arise that can only be understood through Spiritual Science, and which will remain misunderstood if one does not have Spiritual Science... [gap].

[ 27 ] These abilities will develop relatively quickly in a small number of people. It is certainly true, however, that through esoteric training, human beings can already today rise far beyond what is being prepared in its early stages for all humanity. But what people can now artificially attain through appropriate training is being prepared—at least in its early stages—for all of humanity as something that will have to be discussed, whether it is understood or not, in the years 1930 through 1940. Only a few more decades separate us from the time when such phenomena will begin to occur more frequently.

[ 28 ] But then something else will happen for those people who have attained these abilities. These people will find proof of one of the greatest statements in the New Testament, which has a profound effect on their souls. For in these souls the statement arises: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world”—that is, if we translate it correctly: “until the end of the eons of the earth.” This saying tells us that Christianity is not merely what was once written in books, what was taught in certain times; it tells us that Christianity is not merely what is summarized today under this or that dogma, but something living that encompasses the seeing and experiencing of revelations, which will unfold ever more strongly. Today we are only at the beginning of Christianity’s impact, and anyone who has truly united themselves with Christ knows that ever new revelations will continue to flow from this Christianity. They know: Christianity is not in decline; Christianity is growing, evolving; Christianity is something living, not something dead.

[ 29 ] Anyone undergoing spiritual development today can already begin to experience the truth of the saying: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” Thus, He is with us, surrounding the Earth in spiritual form. Before the event at Golgotha, clairvoyants could not find the Christ in the Earth’s atmosphere. It is only after the event at Golgotha that the Christ becomes visible in the Earth’s atmosphere, because He has been there ever since. One who was trained in clairvoyance during the pre-Christian era knew that a time would come when the following would occur. He knew: At present, what is called the Christ cannot yet be found in the astral realm of our Earth, but a time will come when the clairvoyant eye will be open and will see the Christ within the realm of the Earth! He knew that a great change would one day occur with regard to earthly clairvoyance. He had not yet reached the point where he could be convinced by the events in Palestine that these events had already taken place. No physical events could convince him that the Christ had already descended to Earth. Only one thing could convince him: when he saw the Christ clairvoyantly in the Earth’s atmosphere. Then he was convinced that the descent of the Christ to Earth, as anticipated by the Mysteries, had truly taken place. What Paul had experienced—the presence of the Christ in the Earth’s atmosphere—is precisely what a clairvoyant person trained through esoteric schooling can experience artificially today; it is also what individual people will be able to experience through clairvoyance that has become natural, as has been described, beginning in the years 1930 to 1940, and then over longer periods of time as something that has become entirely natural. The event at Damascus will then be repeated for many, and we can call this event a Second Coming of the Christ, a Second Coming in the Spirit. Christ will be present for those who can ascend to the point of seeing the etheric body. For Christ descended into the flesh only once: back then in Palestine. But in the etheric body, He is always present in the etheric atmosphere of the Earth. And because human beings will develop the ability to see the etheric, they will behold Him. Thus, the Second Coming of Christ arises from the fact that people will ascend to the ability to behold Christ in the etheric realm. This is what we can expect during our transitional period. And what Spiritual Science must accomplish is precisely to prepare the souls so that they may receive the Christ who descends to them.

[ 30 ] Now, so to speak, we have already turned our attention to the second of the questions we posed. On the one hand, we have seen how it makes good sense to make good use of our incarnations; but we have also seen how we can best make use of our own present incarnation by preparing ourselves for that insight which will be ours for the future of Christ. And we must understand this Second Coming in the proper sense; then we will also understand the great dangers associated with it. That is what I still need to tell you.

[ 31 ] The greatest thing is what lies ahead for humanity in the coming times in the described return of Christ in the Spirit. But the materialism of our time will be so strong that even such a truth will be interpreted in materialistic terms. And these materialistic interpretations will become reality. People will reinterpret this truth as a return in the flesh. False Christs will walk the earth in the not-too-distant future—false Messiahs, people who will pass themselves off as the Christ who has descended once more. Anthroposophists, however, should be those who cannot sink so low into materialism as to believe that Christ will once again descend to Earth in the flesh, for they know that the dark age has come to an end—the age in which human beings needed life in the physical-material realm, without insight into the spiritual worlds, in order to develop their sense of self. Humanity must now evolve upward once more into the spiritual spheres, where it will be able to behold the Christ as a living and present being in the etheric realm.

[ 32 ] Humanity will be given a period of about 2,500 years to acquire these abilities. It will have 2,500 years to develop etheric vision as a natural, universal gift of humanity, until people must then ascend to another ability during another transitional period. During these 2,500 years, more and more human souls will be able to develop these abilities. And it will make no difference whether people live during this period here between birth and death, or reside in the spiritual world after death. The period of human life between death and a new birth will also be spent differently once the souls have experienced the Second Coming of Christ. That, too, will be transformed by this experience. Therefore, it will be of the utmost importance for the souls who are now incarnated to be well prepared for the Christ event that is coming in this century—both while they are still here in their physical bodies and for those who will have already passed through the gate of death and are between death and a new birth when this new Christ event takes place. It is important for all souls living today to be prepared for this event and thereby to be equipped to face the dangers as well.

[ 33 ] When we speak in this way, we sense what anthroposophy is meant to be and can be for us, and how it is meant to prepare us so that we can fulfill what will ensure that a momentous event does not pass humanity by without leaving a trace. For if it were to pass humanity by without a trace, humanity would lose an important opportunity for development, and it would sink into darkness and wither away. It can bring light only if people awaken to a new way of perceiving and thus open themselves to the new Christ event. This will be said again and again in the future. But it will also be said again and again that the false prophets could prevent the good and the great if they succeeded in spreading the belief that the Christ would appear in the flesh. If anthroposophists were to fail to understand this, they could fall into the error that would make it possible for false messiahs to appear. They will appear because they count on the weak souls—those weakened by materialism—who can only create a mental image of the Christ returning and him appearing in physical flesh. This misinterpretation of the proclamation is a grave one; it will arise as a grave temptation for humanity. Anthroposophy has the task of protecting people from this temptation. This cannot be emphasized strongly enough for all who are willing to listen. But in this you also see that anthroposophy has something important to say, that we do not pursue anthroposophy merely because we are curious about all sorts of truths, but because we know that these truths are needed for the salvation of humanity, for the steady perfection of humanity.

[ 34 ] Christ will continue to approach humanity in many forms. He chose the form he took during the events in Palestine because the people of that time depended on the ability to develop their consciousness on the physical plane and to master it. Humanity, however, is called upon to develop ever higher and higher abilities so that, time and again, evolution can take a new leap forward.

[ 35 ] Christ will be there so that He may also be experienced at these higher levels of knowledge. In this regard, too, Christianity is not at the end but at the beginning of its effectiveness, and humanity will ascend from stage to stage, and from stage to stage Christianity will be there to satisfy the deepest needs of the human soul throughout the future of the earth.