The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy and Christianity

[ 1 ] First and foremost, I would like to apologize for not being able to address you in the local language this evening. However, the friends who are members of our Anthroposophical Society—among whom I have had the privilege of giving lectures on Spiritual Science these past few days and this week—felt that I could also speak publicly in German in this city on a subject related to Spiritual Science. The topic that will form the basis of our discussion this evening also arose from the wishes of our esteemed members in this city. I am to speak about the relationship of Spiritual Science—or, as the Spiritual Science meant here may also be called—about the relationship of anthroposophy to Christianity. In doing so, however, it will be necessary for me to preface my remarks with some remarks on the nature and significance of what is meant here by Spiritual Science, and on the perspective from which I shall be speaking.

[ 2 ] Spiritual Science, as understood here, does not seek to establish any new religion, religious sect, or the like. Spiritual Science seeks to be—or believes it is permitted to be—that which is imposed upon our present culture in spiritual terms.

[ 3 ] If we are currently in a field where we need to make progress in the cultural development of humanity—progress similar to that made in another field three, four, or five centuries ago, when modern science first dawned upon human cultural life—then we must say: What this natural science has become for humanity in terms of the knowledge of external nature, and in terms of life through the knowledge of the laws of external nature—that is what Spiritual Science would like to become through the knowledge of the laws of our soul and spiritual life, and through the application of these laws of soul and spiritual life in ethical, social, and the broadest cultural life; that is what it would like to become for our present and for the near future. And however much one must necessarily still misunderstand the Spiritual Science—must quite understandably misunderstand it—it draws its confidence in its truth, and also its confidence in its effectiveness in human culture, from the observation of the fate of natural science at the dawn of modern spiritual life. The natural scientist, too, was confronted with prejudices centuries, indeed millennia old; but truth possesses powers that, in the manner appropriate to human life, always help it to triumph over all opposing forces.

[ 4 ] And so, having said a few words about the spiritual scientist’s confidence in the truth and effectiveness of his work, let us now turn immediately to the nature and method of the research that underlies the Spiritual Science referred to here.

[ 5 ] The mode of thinking in Spiritual Science is indeed entirely in the spirit of the scientific mode of thinking. But since Spiritual Science extends into a completely different realm than natural science—namely, not into the realm of what can be perceived by the senses, the realm of external nature, but into the realm of the spirit, it must surely be evident that precisely a scientific way of thinking, when it comes to exploring the realm of the spiritual, must undergo a fundamental modification, must become something other than what it is in the realm of natural science. And although the method, the mode of research in the Spiritual Science, is entirely in the spirit of natural science—so that anyone educated in natural science who approaches it today without prejudice can stand on the ground of the Spiritual Science—it must nevertheless be said that, as long as one takes the methods of natural science in their one-sidedness, as is often the case today, prejudice upon prejudice can arise against the application of the scientific mode of thought to spiritual life. For scientific thinking—one might say scientific logic—must be applied to what is perhaps closest to human beings, yet also the most difficult to investigate; this mode of thinking must be applied to the very essence of the human being. For in Spiritual Science, the human being must examine himself, and he must also resort to the only tool available to him for this examination, namely himself. Spiritual Science proceeds from the premise that human beings, by becoming instruments for investigating the spiritual world, must undergo a transformation within themselves; that they must undertake something within themselves that enables them to look into the spiritual world—something they do not do in everyday life.

[ 6 ] Let me start with a comparison—a scientific comparison that is not intended to prove anything, but merely to illustrate how the Spiritual Science’s mode of thought is entirely grounded in the scientific way of thinking. In nature, for example, we encounter water. When we look at water as it appears to us in the outside world, it first presents itself through its properties. But the chemist comes along with his methods and applies them to the water; he breaks the water down into hydrogen and oxygen. Indeed, what does the natural scientist make of water? As is well known, water does not burn. The chemist extracts hydrogen from the water, and this is a gas that burns. No one who looks at the water from the outside can tell that there is hydrogen and oxygen inside it, which have properties entirely different from those of water.

[ 7 ] Nor, as Spiritual Science shows, can a person, when faced with another person in life, recognize what that person is like on the inside. And just as the chemist, the natural scientist, comes and breaks down water into hydrogen and oxygen, so must the person who practices Spiritual Science—though now through an inner soul process that must be prepared in the deepest depths of the soul—come and break down what presents itself in outer life. And the spiritual scientist can, through the methods of Spiritual Science, break down the human being into the outer-physical and the spiritual-soul. First of all, it is of interest to examine the spiritual-soul, separated from the physical, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. No one can perceive the true reality of the spiritual-soul aspect from the external-physical, any more than the nature of hydrogen can be perceived unless it is extracted from water.

[ 8 ] It is very often the case today that the moment one begins to speak in this way, one is told: “But that goes against monism, which we must hold fast to at all costs.” Well, monism must not prevent the chemist from breaking water down into its two components. Monism is not at all challenged by the fact that what can actually happen does happen: that through spiritual research, through the methods of spiritual research, the spiritual-soul aspect is separated from the physical-bodily aspect. Now, however, these methods are certainly not of the kind that can be carried out in the laboratory, in the physics lab, or in the clinic; rather, they are processes that must be carried out within the soul itself. Yet these are not processes of the soul that constitute miracles, but merely intensifications of what a person can observe in ordinary life. They are not miraculous qualities, but rather qualities that human beings possess to a certain extent in everyday life, which they need only intensify to the infinite degree if they are to become spiritual researchers. And since I do not wish to speak in generalities, I shall proceed directly to the consideration of the matter itself.

[ 9 ] Everyone is familiar with what is known in the life of the human soul as the power of recollection, or memory. Everyone knows, after all, how much fundamentally depends on memory. Just imagine if we were to wake up one morning and have no idea what used to be around us and within us. We would thereby lose our entire human being. Our memory, which has been coherent from a certain early point in childhood onward, is an essential part of our human life. Now, even contemporary philosophers are becoming skeptical regarding the study of the power of memory. They already have figures among them who, precisely by examining memory, are departing from a materialistic-monistic worldview, finding through careful investigation that, even if one finds sensory perceptions—insofar as one can speak of them as activities of the soul—externally bound to the body, one can never acknowledge memory as being bound to the body. I need only draw attention to this. For a man who truly has no inclination to delve into Spiritual Science, the French philosopher Bergson, has pointed to this spiritual aspect of memory.

[ 10 ] But how does memory, the power of recollection, present itself to us in life? Events long past enter our soul in images. The events are long gone, but the soul is engaged with itself. It is engaged in conjuring up the past experience from the depths of inner life. And one can compare what emerges from the depths of the soul with the original experience. Memories are pale in comparison to the images offered to us by sensory perception. But they are connected to the integrity of the soul’s life. And we could not find our way in the world if we did not have memory. Underlying this memory, however, is the power of memory. The soul can bring up what is hidden in its memories through the power of memory. But this is precisely where Spiritual Science comes in. Not memory as such—I ask you to consider what I mean— not memory as such, but rather the power that underlies the bringing forth of spiritual content from the depths of the soul—this power can be strengthened, strengthened to the infinite, so that in the life of the soul it is not merely used to bring past experiences up from the soul, but can be used for something entirely different. It is not external methods that can be pursued in a laboratory, nor what can be perceived through the external senses, that underlies the methods of spiritual research, but rather intense soul processes that everyone can undergo. What constitutes the value of these intense soul processes is the boundless intensification of attention in human life, or as it is called: the concentration of the life of thought.

[ 11 ] What is this concentration of mental activity?

[ 12 ] Today, I can only briefly outline the principles of what this is all about in a one-hour lecture. You can read more details in my books *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in the second part of my *The Secret Science*; these books have also been translated. Furthermore, in the book *The Threshold of the Spiritual World*. But based on these principles, I wish to discuss the soul’s first endeavors, which constitute an unlimited expansion of what is necessary for human life: an expansion of attention. Attention must be expanded in an unlimited way so that spiritual research may enter the soul.

[ 13 ] What does a person usually do when facing the outside world? They perceive things; they process them through the mind, which is connected to the brain. Then they form mental images of what they have perceived. And generally, they are satisfied when they retain these external mental images in their soul. Where everyday life ends, there the methods of Spiritual Science begin; there begins what one might call the concentration of thought. Anyone who wishes to become a spiritual researcher must take up the thread of soul life where it is usually left behind in external life. Mental images that we form ourselves, which we can clearly grasp—ideally symbolic mental images where we do not need to verify their correspondence with the external world—we place within the horizon of our consciousness; Mental images that we either find arising from the practice of Spiritual Science, or that the spiritual researcher may advise us to use, we place at the center of our entire consciousness, so that for a prolonged period we divert the soul’s attention from everything external and concentrate solely on a single mental image. Whereas one would not normally dwell on a single mental image, one now gathers all the powers of one’s soul, concentrates them on a single mental image, and remains wholly absorbed in this mental image within oneself. When one observes a person engaged in such an exercise, they are essentially performing something that is, in a sense, similar to sleep, yet at the same time radically different. For if such concentration is to bear fruit, the person must indeed become like one who is asleep.

[ 14 ] When we fall asleep, we first feel the forces of the will in our limbs growing calm, a certain twilight descending around us, and our senses gradually ceasing their activity. Then we slip into unconsciousness. In concentration, everything external must become just as it is during sleep. The senses must be completely freed from all impressions of the external world. The eye must see as little as in sleep; the ear must hear as little as in sleep, and so on. Then the entire life of the soul is gathered together and concentrated upon a single mental image; this is the fundamental difference from sleep. One could call this state a conscious sleep, a fully conscious sleep. While in sleep the darkness of unconsciousness expands within the soul life, the one who wishes to become a spiritual researcher lives in an elevated soul life. He strains all the powers of the soul life and directs them toward a single mental image. It is not the point that we contemplate this mental image; it merely gives us an opportunity to gather our soul powers together, to concentrate them. It is this gathering of the soul’s powers that matters. For through this we gradually come to—I must again refer to the details in my books—truly tear out of the physical-bodily what is spiritual-soul-like within us, just as hydrogen is in water, and free it from the physical-bodily. What I have just described cannot be achieved, so to speak, in a single burst. Most people need years of working in such states of concentration, provided that daily life does not distract them from these states; for one can maintain them for only a few minutes, at most for parts of an hour, but one must repeat them over and over again until one truly succeeds in strengthening the forces that otherwise lie dormant in human nature—forces that are indeed present in everyday life but remain dormant—to such an extent that they become effective in our soul and tear the spiritual-soul aspect out of the physical-bodily realm.

[ 15 ] Since, as I said, I do not wish to speak in abstract terms but rather to share facts with you, let me state right away that if the spiritual researcher succeeds, through energy and perseverance, through devotion to his exercises, in truly reaping the fruits of his efforts, he then arrives at an experience that could initially be called an experience of purely inner consciousness. In short, from a certain point onward, one is able to attach meaning to a word that was previously meaningless: I know myself to be outside my body; I am, perceiving my inner self, experiencing my inner self, outside my body.

[ 16 ] I want to tell you about this experience in detail. At first, one senses that the power of thought—which is otherwise only active in the tasks of daily life—is detaching itself from the body. The experience is vague at first, but it occurs in such a way that one recognizes its nature once one has had it. One first realizes—and this is what I would like to characterize at the outset—when one returns to one’s body, what it is like to immerse oneself in the brain life offered by physical matter, and how this brain offers resistance. One knows: In everyday thinking, one thinks in such a way that the brain is the instrument; but now one was outside of it. Then one gradually comes to associate a meaning with the words: You experience yourself in the soul-spiritual realm. One experiences how one’s own head is, as it were, clothed in one’s thoughts. One knows what it means to have separated the soul-spiritual from the outer, physical-bodily life. First one becomes acquainted with the resistance offered by bodily life. Then one learns to recognize the independent life outside the body. It is truly as if hydrogen were to perceive itself outside of water. So it is with the human being when he undergoes such exercises. And then, if he faithfully continues such exercises, the great, the momentous moment arrives at which one has, so to speak, the starting point of actual spiritual research. A moment that is deeply moving, that intervenes in one’s entire life with immense significance. This moment can arise in the most varied ways. It can be a thousand times different. But I want to characterize it in a typical way, as it will most often be in its characteristics.

[ 17 ] Once you have practiced this for a certain period of time, once you have, so to speak, treated your own soul in accordance with a scientific way of thinking, then the moment arrives—which can occur either in everyday life or even in the middle of sleep—when you wake up from sleep and know: you are not dreaming; you are experiencing a new reality. You can experience this, for example, by saying to yourself: What is happening around me? It is as if I were in an environment that is breaking away from me, as if the elements were striking in a flash, and as if my body were being destroyed by the elements, yet I remain standing in relation to this body. One learns to recognize what all spiritual researchers throughout the ages have described with a figurative expression: reaching the threshold of death. For one experiences this: through the image—that is, not through reality, which one experiences only in death—one experiences through the image that one now knows what a human being is like in the spiritual-soul realm when he perceives himself and the world not through the instrument of his body, but when he lives solely in the spiritual-soul realm.

[ 18 ] This is what is so shocking at first; one knows: you have detached yourself from your body through the power of your thought. And in the same way, other powers can be detached from the body, so that a person becomes ever richer and more inwardly focused in relation to their spiritual life.

[ 19 ] But the single exercise I have described as “concentration” or “unlimited intensification of attention” is not enough. Through this exercise, one attains the following: When one reaches the point where the soul experiences itself, images then arise that can be called “real imaginations.” Images arise, but images that differ vastly from those of ordinary memory. While ordinary memory holds only those images of what has been experienced externally, images now arise from the gray depths of the soul that have nothing in common with what one can experience in the external sensory world. All objections—that one could easily be deceived, that what rises from the gray depths of the soul might merely be reminiscences of memory—all these objections are invalid. For the spiritual researcher truly learns to distinguish between what memory can evoke and what is radically different from anything that can be found in memory. However, one thing must be borne in mind when speaking of this point of entry into the spiritual world. It is this: those who suffer from hallucinations, visions, or similar pathological mental constructs and states of mind are ill-suited for spiritual research. The less a person is inclined toward what is, after all, merely a reminiscence of daily life, the more surely they advance in the field of spiritual research. And a large part of the preparation for spiritual research consists in learning to distinguish precisely between everything that might impose itself unconsciously from the human soul in such a pathological manner and that which can enter as a new element, as a spiritual reality, through the training in Spiritual Science of the soul.

[ 20 ] I would like to point out a radical difference between the visionary, the hallucinatory, and what the spiritual researcher perceives. Why is it that so many people believe they are already in the spiritual world when they are merely experiencing hallucinations and visions? Yes, people are so reluctant to get to know something truly new! They are so fond of clinging to the old, to what they are already immersed in. Basically, in hallucinations and visions, pathological soul formations confront us just as external sensory reality confronts us. They are there; they stand before us. We do, so to speak, nothing to bring them there when they stand before us. The spiritual researcher is not in this position with regard to his new spiritual element. I have spoken of how the spiritual researcher must concentrate and work up all the powers of his soul that lie dormant in ordinary life. But this requires that he apply a soul energy, a soul strength, that is not present in external life. But he must always hold on to this strength when he enters the spiritual world. The person remains passive; he does not need to exert himself: that is the characteristic of hallucinations and visions. The moment we become passive toward the spiritual world, even for an instant, everything vanishes immediately. We must be constantly active, engaged. Therefore, we cannot be deceived, for nothing from the spiritual world can appear before our eyes in the same way that a vision or hallucination appears. We must be present with our activity everywhere, in every atom of that which comes toward us from the spiritual world. We must know how this works. This activity, this continuous engagement, is necessary for true spiritual research. Then, however, one enters a world that is radically different from the physical-sensory world. One enters a world where spiritual beings and spiritual realities surround us.

[ 21 ] But a second thing is necessary for this. The separation of the soul from the body occurs in the manner described. The second aspect, however, can be clarified through a scientific analogy. When we separate hydrogen, it is at first on its own; but it forms compounds with other substances, becoming something entirely different. The same must occur with our spiritual-soul aspect after its separation from the body. This spiritual-soul aspect must unite with beings that are not in the sensory world. It must become one with them; through this, it perceives them.

[ 22 ] The first stage of spiritual research is the separation of the soul-spiritual from the physical-bodily. The second stage is establishing connections with beings that exist beyond the sensory world. The latter is something one is not forgiven for in the present day, far less so than speaking of a “spirit in general.” There are, after all, already many people today who know that they feel compelled to accept something spiritual. But they speak of a spirit that lies beyond the world and are happily content when they can be pantheists. But for the spiritual researcher, pantheism is precisely the same as if one were to lead someone into nature and say to them: “Just look, everything that surrounds you here is nature!”—if one does not tell them: “These are trees, these are clouds, this is a lily, this is a rose,” but rather: “This is all nature!” So if one leads a person from one process to another, from one being to another, and says to them: “It is all nature!”—that says nothing at all. In the particular, in the concrete, one must address the facts. Today, one is forgiven for speaking of a spirit that is present in everything. But the spiritual researcher cannot be satisfied with that. After all, he enters a world consisting of spiritual beings and spiritual facts that are differentiated just as the external world is concretely differentiated, in that it consists of clouds, mountains, valleys, trees, flowers, and so on. But to speak of the fact that not only are natural processes differentiated into the plant, animal, and human kingdoms, but that when a human being enters a spiritual world, one speaks there as well of concrete details and facts—this is not accepted today. But the spiritual researcher cannot help but point out that, when he enters the spiritual world in this way, he enters a world of real, concrete spiritual beings and spiritual processes.

[ 23 ] The second thing that is then necessary is an intensification of devotion—that devotion which a person feels in ordinary life, or in an intensified form of ordinary life, within religious piety. But this must be developed to the point of infinity, so that a person truly comes to rest devotedly in the flow of world events, as if in sleep. In sleep, one forgets every sensation of one’s own body; so too must a person forget every sensation of one’s own body in contemplation or meditation. This is the second exercise, which must alternate with the first exercise. The practitioner completely forgets his body, not only in a mental sense, but in such a way that he is also able to separate himself from all emotional and volitional stirrings, just as he is able to separate himself in sleep from every bodily activity. But this state must be brought about consciously. By adding this devotion to the first exercise, the person comes to truly place themselves within a spiritual world through the awakening spiritual senses, just as they enter the world of sensuality that surrounds us through the external senses. A new world then appears before the person—the world in which the person is always present with their spiritual-soul aspect. But then something becomes a fact for the human being. It becomes a fact, as I said, for inner observation—something that is still thoroughly rejected today by the prejudices of our time, but which is just as much a result of rigorous scientific research as the modern theory of evolution is: the human being comes to know the core of his soul-spiritual being, and indeed he comes to know it in such a way that he knows: Before I entered this life—which clothed me in a body—prior to conception and birth, I existed spiritually and psychologically in a spiritual realm. As I pass through the gate of death, my body will fall away, but that which I have now come to know as my spiritual-soul core—that which can live apart from the body—will pass through the gate of death. Once it has passed through the gate of death, it belongs to a spiritual world; it enters into a spiritual world. - In other words, one comes to know the immortal soul already in this life between birth and death. One comes to know that which one knows is not dependent on the body. One comes to know the world into which the human soul enters after death. But one learns to recognize this spiritual-soul core of the human being in a way that can in turn be described scientifically and vividly.

[ 24 ] When we observe the plant—how the seed develops, how the leaves and flowers emerge, how the fruit forms, from which a new seed then emerges—we realize that the life of this plant culminates in that seed. We see the flowers and leaves fall away; we see that the seed remains, carrying within itself a new plant. Thus we become aware: in this plant before us lives the seed, the core of a new plant. Thus, by observing life between birth and ‘death,’ one learns to recognize that what develops in the spiritual-soul realm is that which passes through the gate of death, yet is the seed, the core of a new life. Just as surely as the plant seed has the potential to become a new plant, so surely does that which is hidden in everyday life as the soul-spiritual, but which reveals itself to Spiritual Science, have the potential to become a new human being. And through such contemplation, one arrives at the concept of repeated earthly lives in full harmony with the scientific way of thinking. We know that the entire human life consists of the life between birth and death and of the life that unfolds between death and a new birth, from which the human being then enters a new earthly life. The only objection that could be raised against what has just been said is that the plant seed could also perish if the conditions necessary to bring it forth as a new plant are not present. This objection is resolved in Spiritual Science by the fact that, while the plant seed—because it is dependent on the external world—can indeed perish, In the spiritual world, however, where the core of the human soul matures toward a new earthly life, there is no obstacle preventing that which matures as the soul core in one earthly life from emerging again in another earthly life. I can only briefly hint at how the spiritual researcher, adhering to the scientific method of inquiry, arrives at the concept of repeated earthly lives.

[ 25 ] Spiritual Science has been accused of being Buddhist because it speaks of repeated earthly lives. Well, Spiritual Science certainly does not derive its ideas from Buddhism, but is based entirely on modern natural science. However, it extends this modern natural science to the spiritual life. And it is not its fault that, without taking Buddhism into account in any way, it arrives at the view of repeated earthly lives. It is not its fault that Buddhism, in ancient times and based on old traditions, spoke of repeated earthly lives.

[ 26 ] In this context, I would like to point out that Lessing, drawing on his mature and experience-rich thinking, came to speak of repeated earthly lives. After a life of hard work, Lessing wrote his treatise “On the Education of the Human Race,” in which he advocates this doctrine of repeated earthly lives. He says something to the following effect: Should this doctrine be rejected simply because it arose in the earliest dawn of humanity, when it had not yet been clouded by the prejudices of the schools? Just as Lessing was not deterred by the fact that this doctrine of repeated earthly lives arose in the dawn of humanity and was later pushed into the background by the prejudices of the schools, so too does Spiritual Science have no reason to shy away from this doctrine simply because it also appears in Buddhism. It is entirely unfounded to accuse Spiritual Science of being Buddhist for this reason. Spiritual Science embraces the doctrine of repeated earthly lives from its own sources, and through Spiritual Science, humanity is reminded that it is connected to the entire history of human life on Earth. For these souls that live within us have been here many times before, and will be here many times yet. We look back on ancient cultural epochs, on times, for example, when people’s eyes looked up to the pyramids. We know: our souls have already lived back then, and they will appear again in the future; they participate in all epochs of humanity. It is still quite understandable today when people’s prejudices turn against such a teaching. After all, there are also people who arrange everything just as they like it. It is well known that Lessing was a great man. That he, at the height of his life, professed the doctrine of repeated earthly lives—this is uncomfortable for some people, and so they say: Well, Lessing just grew weak in his old age!” It is more comfortable for people to think this than to think: human beings are connected to the entire culture of the Earth.

[ 27 ] Now, in what sense does Spiritual Science intend to present what has just been discussed to the whole of human culture? In no other sense than modern natural science presents its findings to humanity. But in presenting itself in this way to human culture, Spiritual Science is exposed to the same prejudices to which the modern scientific way of thinking was exposed. Let us only recall Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno. What was the situation back then, when Copernicus put forward the view that the Earth does not stand still, but rather that it revolves around the Sun, and that the Sun, in truth, stands still relative to the Earth? What had people believed? People had believed that religion itself was at stake, that such advances in knowledge endangered people’s religious piety. It took certain church denominations until the nineteenth century to remove Copernicus’s teachings from the Index and to accept them within the framework of their worldview. Spiritual progress has always had to struggle against old prejudices. Just as the new scientific knowledge entered human culture in its time, so too does the new spiritual knowledge seek to enter human culture. That one can know something about the spirit, and that humanity is ripe to acquire this knowledge—this is what Spiritual Science seeks to emphasize, just as Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno emphasized that a new knowledge had become necessary, for which humanity was ripe, with regard to nature. And just as the Christian canon Nicolaus Copernicus was once accused of not being a Christian, so too is it easy, in certain respects, to accuse modern Spiritual Science in turn of being unchristian. Whenever I hear such an accusation, I am always reminded of a priest who, upon assuming his rectorship at the university, gave a lecture on Galileo and said at the time: “It was simply religious prejudice among people back then that led them to oppose Copernicus.” But the one who truly possesses religiosity within himself knows that the glory and light of the Deity are not diminished by the fact that one knowingly penetrates the mysteries of the universe; he knows that humanity’s conception of God has only grown greater through the expansion of human knowledge beyond sensory perception to the calculation of the orbits of the stars and the peculiarities of the celestial bodies. — That religion can only gain by deepening itself scientifically is something the truly religious mind can understand. And Spiritual Science does not seek to be anything to do with the founding of a new religion. It does not seek to found a new sect. It does not seek to produce prophets or founders of religions. The time of religious foundations, the time of the prophets, is over. Humanity has come of age. And people who, in the future, might wish to step before humanity with a prophetic nature will have a different fate than the ancient prophets. The ancient prophets were rightly revered as outstanding individuals in accordance with the peculiarities of their time. Prophets of the present who wish to be such in the old sense will meet their fate: they will be laughed at! Spiritual Science has no need of prophets, for Spiritual Science is, by its very nature, grounded in the principle that what it has to say belongs to the depths of the human soul—those depths into which the human soul cannot always shine its light. And what the spiritual researcher says, he seeks to investigate as a simple researcher. He wishes to draw attention to what is necessary. The spiritual researcher says: I have found it; if you seek, you will find it yourself! And the time will come, ever more and more, when the spiritual researcher will be recognized as a simple researcher, just as the chemist and the biologist are recognized as researchers in their fields; only that the spiritual researcher conducts research in the realm that is close to every human soul.

[ 28 ] Today I was only able to outline the findings of research in this field. But if you look into it, you will see that this is the exploration of the questions most important to the human soul: questions of humanity and destiny—the two questions that can deeply move people, hour by hour, day by day—the very questions that strengthen the human soul for its work. And because the subjects of spiritual research have to do with the depths of the human soul, it is inherent in them that they move people, that they connect with the deepest inner being of the human being, and that they thereby deepen his religious feeling, making him more religious in his sensibility than he would otherwise have been.

[ 29 ] Spiritual Science does not seek to replace Christianity, but it aims to be a tool for understanding Christianity. And it is precisely through Spiritual Science that it becomes clear to us that the being we call Christ must be placed at the center of all earthly existence, that what we call the Christian creed is the final of the religions, the eternal religion for the future of the earth. This is precisely what Spiritual Science shows us: that the pre-Christian religions have outgrown their one-sidedness and have merged into the religion of Christianity. Spiritual Science does not seek to replace Christianity with something else, but only to help us understand Christianity more deeply and intimately.

[ 30 ] Can one say that Copernicus, when he devised a new astronomical system of the world in his quiet little room, wanted to reshape nature? It would be madness to say such a thing. Nature has remained what it was; but people have learned to think about nature in a way befitting the new culture. I took the liberty of naming my book, which I wrote many years ago about Christianity, “Christianity as a Mystical Fact.” One who is accustomed to reflecting on the things he bequeaths to the world does not choose such a title without careful consideration. Why did I choose this title? Well, to show that Christianity is not merely a doctrine that can be understood in one way or another, but that it has entered the world as a fact that can only be understood spiritually. Just as nature did not become any different because of Copernicus, so the fact of Christianity does not become any different when Spiritual Science becomes the instrument for understanding this fact of Christianity in a full sense, for understanding it better than was possible in times past.

[ 31 ] Allow me to highlight just one point from the study of Christianity in Spiritual Science. Although I have already exceeded the time allotted to me, I would ask you to permit me to draw your attention to this one specific aspect of Christian Spiritual Science research.

[ 32 ] When one examines ancient cultures—pre-Christian cultures—through the eyes of a spiritual researcher, one finds that these pre-Christian cultures everywhere possessed what are called the Mysteries: places that can be described as religious sites, artistic centers, and centers of science all at once. While external culture was such that in ancient times human beings never managed, as I have described, to penetrate the spiritual world through the methods of Spiritual Science—while external culture never allowed entry into the spiritual world—individuals could be admitted into the Mysteries. There were the disciples, who were also called the initiates. They were led to attain what has been described today, namely, to step out of their physical body. They were, so to speak, led through the art of the mysteries to develop a soul life free from the body. And what did they attain through this soul life free from the body? They attained the ability to experience the spiritual world and to experience this central event in the history of humanity on Earth, the Christ event. In mainstream scholarship, far too little attention is paid to what became of the students of the Mysteries, but one could cite many examples to illustrate this. Let me mention just one as a symptom: a statement by the Church Father Augustine. He said: There have been Christians not only since Christ appeared on earth; there were Christians even before that! If one says that today, one is accused of heresy; but a Christian Church Father was permitted to say that there were Christians before Christ, before Christ’s appearance on earth; and that is also Augustine’s own view. Why did this Christian teacher speak such words? One gains a certain understanding of why he said this when, for example, one reads in Plato how he values the Mysteries, how he speaks of the significance of the Mysteries for the entire being and life of humanity. A statement that may seem harsh to us has been handed down to us from Plato: Human souls live as if in mud, live as if in a swamp, as long as they are not initiated into the sacred mysteries. He said this because he was convinced that the human soul is, in its very essence, spiritual and soulful, but that only the one who withdraws his soul from the physical body becomes, through the mysteries, a beholder of the spiritual world. To Plato, a person who has not entered into the Mysteries appears as someone deprived of their true nature. And this is the essential point: in ancient times, the only way to pass from the physical-sensual into the spiritual was through the Mysteries.

[ 33 ] But that is no longer the case today. There is a vast difference in the relationship of the human soul to the spiritual world compared to pre-Christian times. What I have told you today, and what every soul can do for itself to gain entry into the spiritual world, has only been possible in the world since the founding of Christianity. Only since then has every soul who applies what I have described today and in the books mentioned been able to ascend into the spiritual world through self-education. Before the founding of Christianity, one needed the mysteries; one needed the authoritative instructions of the teachers. Self-initiation did not exist in ancient times. And when Spiritual Science is asked: On what does this transformation rest?—then it must answer, based on its research: This transformation has become possible through the Mystery of Golgotha. Through the founding of Christianity, a reality that can only be explored in the spirit has entered into humanity. Something that previously could only be found in the spiritual realm—when a person had left the body through the Mysteries—Christ himself—has, since the founding of Christianity, become accessible to every human soul through its own efforts. That which the Mysteries, as it were, brought into human souls has, since the Mystery of Golgotha, resided in every human soul; it has been bestowed upon all human souls. Where did this come from? Those known to have undergone the mysteries—Heraclitus, Plato—are called “Christians” by the Church Fathers because they saw the spiritual world through the mysteries.

[ 34 ] Spiritual Science shows us that, as Jesus lived in the way you can find described in the Gospels, there comes a moment in his life—it is the baptism in the Jordan—when this Jesus was transformed, when something entered into him that had not been there before, something that then lived within him for three years. And that which entered into him at that time passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. Now is not the time here to describe the details of the Mystery of Golgotha. But Spiritual Science confirms what is written in the Gospels from its own perspective, from its entirely scientific perspective. Through what happens on Golgotha, something that was previously attainable only in the spiritual heights becomes connected with humanity itself. Since the time Christ passed through death on Golgotha, it has lived within every human soul. It is the power through which every soul can find the way into the spiritual world. The human race on Earth has become a different one in regard to its soul through the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ is, as he himself says, “from above,” but he has entered into the human world on Earth.

[ 35 ] Spiritual Science is accused of claiming that Jesus was not always the Christ, but that the Christ life on earth did not begin until Jesus was thirty years old. Superficiality upon superficiality, born of humanity’s prejudice, confronts Spiritual Science; as soon as one acknowledges the fact, one is immediately met with prejudice. And so it is with almost everything that is said by opponents regarding the position of Spiritual Science toward Christianity.

[ 36 ] Must we not say: It is only around the age of three that a human being can begin to remember. But does that mean we can say that what later lives within a person was not already there before? When we speak of Christ entering into Jesus, does that mean we deny that Christ was united with Jesus from birth? One denies this just as little as one denies that the soul is in the child before the soul, so to speak, arises in this child in the course of the third year. One need only understand what Spiritual Science says, and then one will no longer be its opponent.

[ 37 ] Furthermore, Spiritual Science is accused of turning Christ into a cosmic being. It does nothing other than expand the earthly human being’s gaze beyond mere earthly-physical matters into the vastness of the universe, so that he may also spiritually encompass the universe with his knowledge, just as Copernicus encompassed the outer world with his knowledge. That Spiritual Science feels the need to incorporate what is most sacred to it into this knowledge of its own corresponds only to a religious sentiment and, at the same time, to a deeply scientific sentiment. Before Copernicus, people judged the movements in the universe according to what they saw; they learned to judge independently of the sensory world. Is it reprehensible for Spiritual Science to do the same with regard to the spiritual affairs of humanity? People have, in a certain way, judged Christianity and the life of Christ Jesus as best they could until now. Spiritual Science seeks to expand the view into the cosmic-spiritual expanses. It adds to what has been known so far what it has to say about Christ from the perspective of Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science recognizes in the Christ a being who is eternal; a being who entered a human body only once, and who differs from other human beings in that he does not undergo repeated earthly lives. The Christ entered a human body only once and is now united with the souls of human beings.

[ 38 ] Those who oppose Spiritual Science from a Christian standpoint are making a curious mistake. One should ask Spiritual Science whether it opposes what it can find within Christianity! It says “yes” to everything to which Christianity says “yes.” But it adds something else to that. To forbid this other aspect does not mean to insist on one’s Christianity, but rather to insist on the limitations of Christianity; it means to act in the same way as those who spoke of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno as I have described. The logical error underlying this is easy to see. Those who come along and say: You are talking about a cosmic Christ who also lives in the vastness of the universe, therefore you are Gnostics—commit roughly the same error as someone who says: Yes, the man who just gave me money owes me 30 crowns, but he gave me 40 crowns because he is lending me 10 on top of that. If I now come and say: “The man didn’t pay me what he owed; he didn’t give me the 30 crowns, but 40 crowns”—am I not making a foolish mistake?! But when people come and say to the representatives of Spiritual Science: “You don’t just tell us what we say about Christ, but you add something else to it”—then people don’t realize what a tremendous mistake they are making, because they speak out of passion and not truly objectively. For my part, one may argue against the idea that what Spiritual Science offers regarding Christianity may or may not be of value to people. That depends on what people need. One could also reject Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno. But one must not say that Spiritual Science offers less regarding Christianity or that Spiritual Science opposes Christianity.

[ 39 ] And there is one more thing that must be said when discussing the relationship between Spiritual Science and Christianity: Humanity changes as it moves from one epoch to the next through individual human lives. Our human souls have lived through earthly lives in times when Christ was not yet united with the Earth, and they will live through even more distant earthly lives in which Christ is united with the Earth. Christ now lives within the human souls themselves. But then, as the human soul deepens more and more, as the human soul passes through repeated earthly lives again and again, it becomes ever more independent, ever more inwardly free. Therefore, it is the case that it needs ever new instruments to understand the old truths, that out of this inner freedom it must advance ever further and further. Thus it must be said: Christianity is recognized through Spiritual Science in such depth, in such truth, in such significance, that Spiritual Science may have confidence when it proclaims these old Christian truths in a new form. Let those who wish to remain stuck in their prejudices believe that Spiritual Science does Christianity a disservice. Whoever delves into contemporary culture will find that it is precisely those people who can no longer be Christians in the old way who are once again convinced of the truth of Christianity through Spiritual Science. For what Spiritual Science has to say about Christianity, it may say to every soul, because every soul can find within itself the Christ of whom it speaks. But it may also say that it finds the Christ as the being who once truly entered into human souls, into the earthly world, through the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. Faith has nothing to fear from knowledge, for the objects of faith, when they rise to the spirit, need not shy away from the light of knowledge. And so Spiritual Science will win over to Christianity those souls who cannot be won over in any other way than by speaking to them not as a prophetic founder of a religion, but as a simple scientist who draws attention to what can be found in the realm of Spiritual Science, and who causes the strings within every soul to resonate.

[ 40 ] Anyone can become a spiritual researcher; you can find instructions on how to do so in the books mentioned. But even those who are not spiritual researchers can, if they allow the truth to take effect upon them in an unbiased way, be permeated by this truth. And if they do not do so, then they simply cannot free themselves from prejudices. All truths lie within the human soul. Perhaps not everyone has the opportunity to survey the truth of the spiritual realm as a spiritual researcher; but just as our thinking already takes us beyond the realm of the sensory world, so too does thinking accompany us when the scientist of Spiritual Science seeks to draw attention to what he explores on his spiritual paths. And he seeks only to draw attention to the fact that there are truths that can take root in every soul, because they are present in every soul.

[ 41 ] Since I would like to conclude by drawing attention to how Spiritual Science fits into cultural life, I would like to add the following: Spiritual Science truly corresponds to the scientific way of conceiving and thinking, and it seeks to present itself to contemporary culture in no other way than the church canon Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno presented themselves to their contemporaries. Let us recall Giordano Bruno. What did he actually do? Before he appeared and spoke his words, so significant for the development of humanity, people gazed into the universe. They spoke of the celestial spheres as they believed they saw them. They spoke of the blue celestial sphere that bounds the universe. Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno—they had the courage to break through the illusion of the senses and establish a new way of thinking. What was it, after all, that Giordano Bruno said to his listeners? He said: Look at the blue celestial sphere; the firmament—you yourselves create it through the limitations of your knowledge. Your eyes see only as far as that, and it is your eyes that create this boundary! Giordano Bruno expanded people’s vision beyond these boundaries. He believed he could point out that eternal starry worlds are embedded in the vastness of space.

[ 42 ] What must the spiritual researcher do? Let me put it modestly in the spirit of recent spiritual developments. The spiritual researcher must point to the firmament of time; he must point to the limits of birth and death in human life; he must say: The external view perceives birth and death as a firmament of time due to the limitations of the human intellect and powers of perception. But like Giordano Bruno, he must point out that this firmament of time does not exist, but rather that it arises solely from the limitations of human perception. Just as Giordano Bruno points beyond the limitations of space, just as he must point out how infinite worlds are embedded in the vastness of space, so must the spiritual researcher point out that behind the non-existent boundaries of birth and death lies the infinity of time, and that embedded within it is the eternity of the human soul, the eternal essence of the human being as it passes from life to life. Spiritual Science stands in full harmony with what has taken place in the natural sciences.

[ 43 ] And once again, allow me to point out, even in this city, that Spiritual Science does not seek to establish a religion, but rather that it makes the life of the soul more religious, and that it leads precisely to the being at the heart of religion, to Christ. Once again, allow me to point out how Spiritual Science, although it does not seek to establish a new religious community, nevertheless imbues the human soul with a deep sense of the religious; how, out of the science of the spirit, it brings about not a new religion, but a deepened religious consciousness. And anyone who fears Spiritual Science as if it could destroy religious consciousness is like a person who might have stepped before Columbus when he set sail for America—allow me to use this comparison—and said: Why are you discovering America? Here in our old Europe the sun rises so beautifully; do we know whether the sun will also rise in America and warm the people and illuminate the earth? But the one who has entered into the meaning of physical earthly existence will have known that the sun shines in all countries. But whoever fears for his Christianity is like such a person who fears the discovery of a new land because he thinks the sun might not shine there. Whoever truly carries the Christ-Sun in his soul knows that the Christ-Sun will shine in every land. And whatever territories may yet be discovered, whether in the realms of nature or in the realms of the spirit, the America of the spirit will never be discovered unless true religious life inclines toward the center of earthly existence, toward the Christ-Sun, and unless this Christ-Sun shining, illuminating the souls, warming the souls, and kindling the souls. Only those who are weak in their religious feeling may fear that this religious feeling might die out or wane in a newly discovered situation. But whoever is strong in his genuine Christ-feeling will have no fear of knowledge; he will not fear that faith might in any way be endangered by knowledge.

[ 44 ] Spiritual Science lives in this trust. It is through this trust that Spiritual Science speaks to contemporary culture. For it knows that it is true that genuine religious thought and feeling cannot be endangered by any research, but that only a weak form of religiosity has anything to fear. It knows that one may have confidence in the meaning of truth. And because the spiritual researcher, through the shattering events of his inner life, through what he has objectively experienced, knows what lives in the depths of the human soul, and because through his research he gains trust in the human soul, because he sees that the human soul has the most intimate kinship with truth, he believes, however much the signs of the present may speak against Spiritual Science, in the ultimate victory of Spiritual Science. And he hopes for it from the truth-loving and also from the genuine religious life of the human soul.