The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Christ and the Human Soul IV

[ 1 ] Humanity constantly needs truths that cannot be fully understood at all times. For to take truths into oneself means not only something for the intellect; truths as such contain life-force. And as we imbue ourselves with truth, we imbue our soul with an element of the world, just as we must continually imbue our physical body with the air we take in from the outside so that we may live. This is the reason why profound truths are expressed in religious texts, but in such a form that people are often only able to recognize their true inner meaning much, much later than when they are revealed.

[ 2 ] You see, the New Testament was written; the New Testament lies there, one might say, spread out before humanity as a document; but the entire course of Earth’s development that is yet to come will be necessary in order to fully understand this New Testament. In the future, we will learn much more about the outer world, and we will also learn much about the spiritual world, and all of this will contribute to our understanding of the New Testament, provided we view it in the right light. Understanding comes gradually, but the New Testament is written in a simple form so that it can be received and later understood bit by bit. For it is not meaningless when we imbue ourselves with the truth that lies in the New Testament, even if we do not yet understand this truth in its deepest essence. Later, the truth becomes a power of knowledge, but beforehand it is already a life force, in that it is absorbed, one might say, in a more or less childlike form. And precisely the questions we began to consider yesterday require, if they are to be understood as they are communicated in the New Testament, an ever deeper and deeper insight, a looking into the spiritual world and its mysteries.

[ 3 ] If we wish to continue the reflections we began yesterday, we must today take a brief look into certain occult mysteries, for they can serve as a guide to help us understand the question—the enigma—of sin and guilt even more deeply, and thus shed some light, from this very perspective, on the relationship between Christ and the human soul.

[ 4 ] Above all, a certain perspective has frequently come to mind in the course of our work in Spiritual Science—a perspective that we can frame as a question, and one that we have often framed in this way: Why did Christ die in a human body? This question, which essentially expresses the mystery of Golgotha: Why did Christ die? Why did God die in a human body?

[ 5 ] God has died because the course of world history made it necessary for God to take up residence within human beings on Earth, so that a God from the higher worlds could become the guide of Earth’s development. For this to happen, Christ had to become akin to death. Akin to death, my dear friends! One would like this word to be understood very deeply, deeply by human souls.

[ 6 ] Death generally confronts a person only when they witness another person dying, or in connection with other phenomena in the world that resemble death, or in the certainty that they themselves must pass through the gate of death once their present incarnation has come to an end. But this is, in essence, only the outer aspect of death. Death is present in a very different way in the world in which we live, and attention must be drawn to this. Let us take a very ordinary, everyday phenomenon as our starting point. We inhale the air and exhale it again. But the air undergoes a transformation within us. Once it has been exhaled, this air is death-air; as exhaled air, it cannot be inhaled again; the exhaled air is deadly. I only want to hint at this so that you may understand what is expressed by the occult statement: “As the air enters the human being, it dies.” Truly, that which is alive in the air dies as it enters the human being. Death enters with every breath for the air as the human being breathes it in. But this is only a phenomenon. The ray of light that enters our eye must likewise die, and we would have nothing in the world of light rays if our eye did not, like our lungs to the air, face the ray of light. And every light that enters our eye dies in our eye, and it is through the death of the light in our eye that we are able to see. Thus, that which is alive in the light dies as it enters our eye. In our eye, the ray of light is killed. We kill it so that we may have the perceptions of the eye. We are so filled with that which must die within us so that we may have our human earthly consciousness. Physically, we kill the air; we also kill the ray of light that enters us, and thus we kill in many ways.

[ 7 ] When we call upon Spiritual Science, we distinguish between the earth element, the water element, the air element, and the heat element. We then enter the world of the light ether; we speak of the heat ether and the light ether. Up to the level of the light ether, we kill whatever penetrates us; we constantly slay it so that we may maintain our earthly consciousness. But there is something we cannot kill through our earthly existence. We know that above the light ether there is the so-called chemical ether and then the life ether. These are the two types of ether that we cannot kill. But in return, these two types of ether have no particular part in us. If we were able to kill the chemical ether as well, then the waves of spherical harmony would constantly resound within our physical body, and we would constantly kill these waves of spherical harmony within ourselves through our physical life. And if we could also kill the life ether, we would constantly be killing within ourselves the cosmic life that flows to the Earth. We are given a surrogate in earthly “sound,” but this cannot be compared to what we would hear if the chemical ether were audible to us at all as physical human beings. For physical sound is a product of the air, and it is not spiritual sound; it is only a surrogate for spiritual sound.

[ 8 ] When the Luciferic temptation came, the evolving gods were compelled to place humanity in a sphere where death dwells, descending from the ether of light into the physical body. But at that time these advancing gods said—and the words are indeed recorded in the Bible—: “Man has acquired the distinction between good and evil, but life—that he shall not have. He shall not eat of the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:22) And another word may be added in the sense of occultism; the continuation of this word “Man shall not eat of the tree of life” would be: “And of the spirit of matter he shall not hear.” Man shall not eat of the tree of life, and of the spirit of matter man shall not hear! These regions are those that have been closed off to man. Only through a certain procedure in the ancient mysteries were the sounds of the music of the spheres and the cosmic life pulsing through the world revealed to the initiates, as they were permitted to see Christ in advance outside the body. Hence the ancient philosophers speak of the music of the spheres.

[ 9 ] By drawing attention to this, we are at the same time pointing to those regions from which Christ came to us at the baptism of John in the Jordan. Where did Christ come from? He came from those regions that have been closed off to humanity through the temptation of Lucifer, from the region of the music of the spheres, from the region of cosmic life. Humanity had to forget these regions at the dawn of Earth through the Luciferic temptation. But at the baptism of John in the Jordan, Christ entered a human body, and what permeated this human body was the spiritual essence of the music of the spheres, the spiritual essence of cosmic life—that which still belonged to the human soul during its first earthly existence, but from which the human soul had to be banished through the Luciferic temptation. Thus, in this sense, the human being is also spiritually related. With his soul, he actually belongs to the region of the music of the spheres and the region of the Word, the living cosmic ether. But he was driven out of it. And it was to be restored to him, so that he might gradually become permeated once more by that from which he had been banished. That is why, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, the words of the Gospel of John touch us so deeply: In the beginning, when humanity had not yet succumbed to temptation, the Logos was there. Humanity belonged to the Logos. The Logos was with God, and humanity was with the Logos with God. And through the baptism of John in the Jordan, the Logos entered human evolution; he became human.

[ 10 ] Here we have the connection, the meaningful connection. Let’s leave this truth as it is for now and try to approach the question from a different angle.

[ 11 ] Life reveals itself to us only from the outside, my dear friends. If it did not reveal itself solely from the outside, human beings would constantly be aware of how they draw the body of light into their eyes as they see.

[ 12 ] What, then, did Christ have to take upon Himself in order to make possible the fulfillment of Paul’s saying, “Not I, but Christ in me”? It had to be possible for Christ to permeate human nature; but human nature is filled with that which is killed by human nature in earthly existence, from the light ether downward, which dies in the eye. Human nature is filled with death; only that which lies in the two highest types of ether has been withdrawn from it, so that their death might not also fill human nature. But in order for Christ to dwell within us, he had to become akin to death, akin to all that is spread out in the world, beginning with light and extending down into the depths of materiality. Christ had to be able to enter into that which we carry within us as the corpse of light, the corpse of warmth, the corpse of air, and so on. It was only by becoming akin to death that he could become akin to humanity. And we must feel in our souls that God had to die so that he could fill us—who have conquered death through the Luciferic temptation—and we can say: The Christ within us.

[ 13 ] But there is much more hidden behind the sensory existence of human beings. People turn their gaze to the plant world; they see how the light of the sun conjures plants forth from the earth. Science teaches us that light is necessary for plant growth. Yes, my dear friends, but that is only half the truth. Those who look at plants with a clairvoyant gaze see living spiritual elements rising from them. For the light sinks into the plants and rises again as a living spiritual element. The light enters the plants to be transformed within them, to be reborn in them as a living spiritual element. The chemical ether, which humans cannot perceive, enters the animals; it would resonate spiritually if humans could perceive it. And the animals transform this ether into water spirits. Plants transform light into air spirits; animals transform the spirit active in the chemical ether into water spirits. But human beings transform that which lies in the cosmic ether, in the life ether—that which enables them to live at all, and which they have been prevented from killing within themselves—they transform it into earth spirits. Yes, he transforms it into earth spirits.

[ 14 ] I once spoke about the human phantom during a lecture series in Karlsruhe. This is not the time to draw connections between what needs to be said here and what was said there about the human phantom, but such a connection does exist. You may discover it for yourselves if you compare what has been said today with what was said there. Today I must present the matter from a different angle.

[ 15 ] Something spiritual is also constantly being generated within the human being. That which lives as life within the human being flows, as it were, constantly out into the world. Human beings radiate an aura around themselves, a radiant aura, through which they continually enrich the earth’s spiritual element. Contained within this spiritual element of the earth—which human beings send out into the earth—is everything that human beings carry within themselves in terms of moral and other qualities acquired throughout their lives. It is true, absolutely true: to the clairvoyant eye it is evident how human beings continually send out into the world their moral, intellectual, and aesthetic aura, and how this aura lives on as earth spirit within the earth’s spiritual realm. Throughout our entire earthly life, we draw in our wake—just as a comet draws its tail through the cosmos—that which we, as it were, exude as a spiritual aura, which coalesces during our lifetime, phantom-like, yet at the same time radiates our moral and intellectual spiritual assets out into the world.

[ 16 ] Life is complicated, and this, too, is a manifestation of life.

[ 17 ] If we go back in our occult contemplation to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that people in those days simply sent this phantom-like being—which contained their moral qualities—out into the outer world, into the Earth’s outer spiritual aura. But humanity developed over the course of its earthly existence, and at a certain stage of this development—precisely with regard to this phantom-like being that the human being radiates—the time had come when the Mystery of Golgotha took place in the Earth’s evolution. One might say: In earlier times, the phantom-like being that the human being radiated was much more fleeting. It became denser, more form-like in the time when the Mystery of Golgotha came upon the Earth. And humanity added to this phantom-like being, as a fundamental character, that which it takes up within itself in death, by killing the ray of light that enters the eye, and so on, as I have explained. In a sense, these earth-spirit-like beings that human beings radiate from themselves are a stillborn spiritual child, because human beings imbue them with their own death.

[ 18 ] And let us imagine that Christ had not come to earth; then, while their souls were dwelling in their earthly bodies, human beings would constantly radiate beings marked by death. And connected to this death would be the moral qualities of human beings that we spoke of yesterday: objective guilt and objective sin—they would be there, lying within. Let us suppose that Christ had not come—what would have happened in the development of the Earth? From the time when the Mystery of Golgotha would otherwise have taken place, human beings would have spiritually created dense forms into which they would have instilled death. And these dense forms would have become that which would have had to pass over with the Earth to Jupiter. Humanity would have brought death upon the Earth. A dead Earth would have given birth to a dead Jupiter!

[ 19 ] For this is how it would have had to be, because if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come, human beings would have lacked the ability to imbue what radiates from them with what lies in the music of the spheres and with what lies in cosmic life. These would not have been present; they would not have flowed into what the human being radiates from within. But Christ brought these with the Mystery of Golgotha. And as we take Christ into ourselves, the “Not I, but Christ in me” is fulfilled; as we develop a relationship with Christ within us, that which radiates from us—which would otherwise be dead—is enlivened. Because we carry death within us, the living Christ must permeate us so that he may enliven what we leave behind as spiritual beings on earth. Into that which detaches itself from us as objective sin, as objective guilt—that which we do not carry forward in karma—the living Logos, the Christ, penetrates and enlivens it; and as he enlivens it, a living Earth will develop into a living Jupiter. This is the consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 20 ] But when our soul reflects on this, it can receive Christ in the following way. This soul can say to itself: Yes, there was once a time when humanity was in the bosom of the divine Logos. But humanity succumbed to the Luciferic temptation. It took death into itself. In doing so, it took in the seed that would have caused a dead Earth to give birth to a dead Jupiter. What remains is that which the human soul should have received before the temptation for its earthly existence. With Christ, it has returned to human earthly existence.

[ 21 ] And when a person takes Christ into themselves, so that they feel permeated by this Christ, then they can say to themselves: That which the gods had allotted to me before the Luciferic temptation, but which, because the Luciferic temptation occurred, had to remain behind in the cosmic universe—that enters my soul with Christ. The soul only becomes whole again by taking Christ into itself. Only then am I fully a soul; only then am I once again what I was destined to be by the divine decree from the very beginning of the Earth. — “Am I truly a soul without Christ?” one asks oneself. One feels that it is only through Christ that one becomes the soul one was meant to become according to the decree of the guiding gods. This is the wondrous sense of home that souls can experience with this Christ. For from the soul’s ancient cosmic home, the cosmic Christ has descended to restore to the human soul that which it had to lose on Earth through the Luciferic temptation. Christ leads the soul back up to its ancient home, which has been assigned to it by the gods.

[ 22 ] This is what brings joy and bliss in the true experience of Christ within the human soul. This is what, for example, had such a joyful effect on certain Christian mystics of the Middle Ages. They may have written some things that were, in and of themselves, too sensual in their mental image, but there was a spiritual foundation underlying them. Such Christian mystics, who followed in the footsteps of Bernard of Clairvaux and others, for example, perceived the human soul as a bride who had lost her bridegroom at the dawn of time; and when Christ entered their souls, living through them, animating them, spiritualizing them, then they perceived Christ as the Bridegroom of the soul, who united with the soul and whom they had once lost in the ancient homeland of the soul, which they had left in order to walk, through Lucifer, the path of freedom, the path of discerning good from evil.

[ 23 ] When the human soul truly immerses itself in Christ, when it perceives Christ as the living being who flowed out of death on Golgotha into the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth and who can flow into the soul, then it truly feels inwardly enlivened by this Christ. It feels a transition from death to life!

[ ] We cannot—because we must live out our earthly lives in human bodies until the end of our earthly existence—hear the music of the spheres directly, nor can we experience cosmic life directly within ourselves; but we can experience that which flows from Christ, and thereby have, by proxy, that which would otherwise come to us from the music of the spheres and cosmic life.

[ 24 ] The ancient Pythagoras spoke of the music of the spheres. Why did he speak of this, my dear friends? Well, he was an initiate of the ancient mysteries. He underwent that process through which the soul leaves the body. When the soul was outside the body, it could be carried away into the spiritual worlds; there it saw the Christ who was to come to Earth only later. Thus, after the Mystery of Golgotha, man cannot speak of the music of the spheres as Pythagoras did, but he can, even if he does not live outside the body with his soul, speak of the music of the spheres in a different way. As an initiate, he could speak today just as Pythagoras did; but the ordinary earthly human being in his physical body can speak of the music of the spheres and of cosmic life only if he experiences in his soul the “Not I, but Christ in me,” for that is what lived in the music of the spheres, that is what lived in cosmic life. But we must truly undergo this process within ourselves; we must truly take Christ into our souls.

[ 25 ] Let us suppose that a person were to resist receiving Christ into his soul; he would not want to receive Christ into his soul. Then they would reach the end of the Earth, and at the end of the Earth, within what has emerged from the Earth spirits that arose in the course of human evolution—within that spiritual nebula that will then have formed from the Earth—they would find all those phantom-like beings who have gone forth from them in earlier incarnations. They would all be there. What would be there would be a dead Earth, passing over to Jupiter in a state of death. A human being might have fully worked out his karma, might have atoned for it—that is, he might subjectively have made amends for all the imperfections he has committed by the end of the Earth era; he might have become perfect in his soul life, in his ego—but objectively, guilt and sin would remain in what is left behind. This is certainly a truth, for we do not live only for ourselves; we do not live to make ourselves more perfect through the balancing of our karma; we live for the world, and at the end of time the remnants of our earthly incarnations will stand there like a mighty tableau if we have not taken the living Christ into ourselves. For if we connect what we said yesterday with what has been said today—it is essentially the same thing, viewed from two different angles—we see how Christ takes upon Himself the guilt and sin of humanity on Earth, insofar as they are objective debts and sins. And if we have inwardly grasped this “Not I, but the Christ in me, the Christ in us,” then He takes upon Himself what draws out of us, and our remnants stand there enlivened by the Christ, lived through and radiated by the Christ. Yes, our incarnations stand there—that is, the described remnants of these incarnations. And what do they all add up to?

[ 26 ] Because Christ unites them all—Christ, who belongs to all humanity in the present and in the future—all these remnants of the individual incarnations merge into one another. Every human soul lives through successive incarnations. Let us take one incarnation: certain remnants remain there; we have described them. Let us take the next incarnation: certain remnants remain there; we have described them; further incarnations: certain remnants remain there, and so on until the end of earthly time. The individual incarnations leave their remnants behind until the end of earthly time. If these remnants are permeated by Christ, they press together, compressing themselves. But because the subtle compresses itself, it becomes dense—even the spiritual becomes dense—and all our earthly incarnations are united into a spiritual body. This belongs to us; we need it as we develop toward Jupiter, for it is the starting point of our embodiment on Jupiter. We will stand there with our soul at the end of the Earth era—whatever its karmic state may be—we will stand before our Earth remnants gathered by Christ and will have to unite with them in order to pass over to Jupiter together with them.

[ 27 ] We will rise again in the body—the earthly body formed from the essence of our individual incarnations. Truly, my dear friends, with a heart deeply moved, I say this here: We will rise again in the body!

[ 28 ] Today, sixteen-year-olds and even younger people are beginning to demand their own creed and to speak of how they are “glad to be free of such nonsense as—the resurrection of the body.” But those who delve deeply into the occult mysteries of the world gradually rise to an understanding of what has been told to humanity; for—as I explained at the beginning of this lecture—it first had to be told to them so that they might grasp it as a truth of life, and only then come to understand it. The resurrection of the bodies is a reality, but our soul must feel that it wants to rise up in relation to the earthly remains gathered by Christ, in relation to the spiritual body that is permeated by Christ. Our soul must learn to understand this. For suppose that, because we have not taken the living Christ into ourselves, we could not approach this earthly body with its guilt and sin and unite ourselves with it. If we had rejected Christ, then at the end of earthly time our individual remnants of incarnation would remain scattered; they would have remained, they would not have been gathered up by the Christ who permeates all humanity. We would stand there as souls at the end of earthly time, bound to the earth, bound to that which remains dead in our remnants. Our soul would indeed be spiritually liberated from egoism, but we could not approach our physical remnants. Such souls, my dear friends, are the prey of Lucifer, for he strives to thwart the very purpose of Earth; he strives to prevent souls from reaching their earthly goal, to hold them back in the spiritual world. And Lucifer will send over into the Jupiter era what remains of the scattered earthly remnants, as a dead inclusion of Jupiter, which will then be within Jupiter as a moon that does not separate from Jupiter, and will always drive these earthly remnants upward. And these earthly remnants will have to be animated on Jupiter by the souls above as by species souls.

[ 29 ] And now recall what I said years ago: that the human race on Jupiter will divide into two groups—those whose souls have attained their earthly goal and will have attained the Jupiter goal, and those souls who will form an intermediate realm between the human realm of Jupiter and the animal realm of Jupiter. These will be souls who are Luciferic, that is, present there merely in spirit; they will have their bodies down below, and these bodies will be a clear expression of their entire inner soul life, though they will be able to direct them only from the outside. Two races, the good and the evil, will differ from one another on Jupiter. — This was already explained years ago; today we shall consider it more deeply.

[ 30 ] The Jupiter phase will indeed be followed by a Venus phase, and a balance will be restored through the further evolution of the Christ; but it is precisely on Jupiter that humanity is to come face to face with what it means to seek perfection solely within one’s own ego, rather than making the entire Earth one’s concern! This is what humanity is to experience throughout the entire Jupiter cycle, so that everything they failed to live through in a Christ-filled manner during their earthly existence may then appear before their spiritual eye.

[ 31 ] Let us take all this together, my dear friends, and from this perspective reflect on the words of Christ with which he sent his disciples out into the world to proclaim his name and to forgive sins in his name. (John 20:23) Why forgive sins in his name? Because this forgiveness of sins is connected to his name; because sin can only be expiated and transformed into living life if Christ can be united with our earthly remains, if we have first carried him within us during our earthly existence in the sense of Paul’s words: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

[ 32 ] And whenever a religious denomination bases its outward practices on this saying of Christ in order to constantly remind souls of what is connected with Christ, then we must also seek this deeper meaning in it. When, in any religious denomination, one of Christ’s servants speaks of the forgiveness of sins, as it were on Christ’s behalf, this means nothing other than: the one who, through his words of forgiveness, connects the forgiveness of sins to the forgiveness of sins through Christ, is indicating to the soul that seeks comfort: Yes, I have seen that you have developed your living relationship with Christ; you unite what is objective sin and guilt—and which is to be taken into your earthly remains as objective sin and guilt—with that which Christ is to you. Because I have recognized that you have been permeated by Christ, I may say: ‘Your sins are forgiven.’

[ 33 ] It is always implicit that whoever speaks of the forgiveness of sins within any religious denomination has come to the conviction that the person in question follows his Christ; he wishes to carry his Christ in his heart and soul. Therefore, he may comfort him when the other approaches him with a guilty conscience: Christ will forgive you, and I may tell you that your sins are forgiven in his name.

[ 34 ] Thus, it is a beautiful connection to the only forgiver of sins—because he is the bearer of sins, because he is the being who animates the human remains on earth—when those who wish to serve him can comfort those souls, in whom they can be convinced that they feel inwardly connected to Christ, with the words: “Your sins are forgiven.” ” For it is, as it were, a new affirmation of the soul’s relationship to Christ when this soul hears: I have understood my debts, my sins, in such a way that it may be said to me that Christ takes them upon himself, that he permeates them with his being. There is always an underlying implication—if the word of forgiveness is to be a word of truth—that the sinner, the guilty one, even if he does not renew his covenant with Christ at this moment, is at least reminded of having made it. For such an intimate covenant must be formed between the soul and Christ that the soul cannot renew its awareness of this covenant often enough. And because Christ is connected in the manner described to the objective guilt and objective sin of the human soul, the soul can best bring its relationship to Christ to consciousness in daily life by repeatedly and again and again recalling, precisely at the moment of forgiveness of sins, the existence of the cosmic Christ in earthly existence.

[ 35 ] Those who truly embrace Spiritual Science—not merely in an external sense, but in the true spirit—will most certainly also be able to become their own spiritual guides. Certainly, through Spiritual Science, they will come to know Christ more and more intimately, to feel so intimately connected with him that they will directly sense his spiritual presence. And by renewing their vows to him as the cosmic principle, they will be able to make their confession to him in spirit and, in their quiet meditation, receive forgiveness of sins from him. However, as long as people have not yet imbued themselves with Spiritual Science in this deep spiritual sense, one must point out with understanding what prevails, as it were, as a sign of forgiveness of sins in the various religions of the world. People are indeed becoming more and more spiritually free, and as they become more and more spiritually free, their communion with Christ will also become ever more direct.

[ 36 ] And tolerance must be practiced!

[ 37 ] Just as one who, believing that he has been so deeply moved within by the spirit of the Mystery of Golgotha—Christ—that he feels he can one might say, can converse with this Christ, must look with understanding upon those who need the positive statutes of a creed, who need the servant of Christ who time and again gives them “comfort with the words: ‘Your sins are forgiven’”—so, on the other hand, those who see that there are people who can already cope with themselves should be tolerant. — All this may be an ideal in earthly existence, but at least the anthroposophist may look up to such an ideal.

[ 38 ] My dear friends, I have spoken to you of spiritual mysteries that are being revealed and that allow human beings—even those who have already absorbed much of anthroposophy—to gain an even deeper insight into the very essence of our existence. I have spoken to you of the overcoming of human egoism, of those things whose understanding also gives us a true understanding of karma. I have spoken to you of the human being insofar as he is not merely an “I”-being, but belongs to the whole of earthly existence and is called upon to help promote the divine goal of the Earth. Christ did not come into the world and pass through the Mystery of Golgotha merely so that He might be something to each of us in our selfishness. It would be terrible to think that Christ might be understood in such a way that the Pauline saying “Not I, but Christ in me” would merely promote a higher form of selfishness. Christ died for all humanity, for the human race on Earth! Christ has become the central Spirit of the Earth, who must save for the Earth all that is spiritual on Earth and flows from human beings.

[ 39 ] Today one can read works by theologians—and those who have read these works will be able to confirm what I am about to say—who state, for example: Yes, certain theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have finally eradicated the medieval popular belief that Christ appeared in the world to wrest the earth from the devil, to wrest the earth from Lucifer. — For there is indeed an enlightened materialism within theology today that simply does not wish to openly and freely profess itself as such and instead acts particularly enlightened. Yes, they say, in that dark Middle Ages, people spoke of Christ appearing in the world because he was supposed to wrest the earth from the devil. — True enlightenment leads us back to this simple, unadorned popular belief! For of the earth, all that is not liberated by Christ belongs to Lucifer. And everything human within us that is more than what is merely contained within our ego is ennobled; it is made fruitful for all humanity when it is permeated by Christ. And as I stand before you at the end of these days’ reflections, my dear friends, I would not wish to omit addressing these words to every single soul of those who were gathered here during these days:

[ 40 ] Hope for the future and confidence in the future of our cause can dwell in our hearts because, from the very beginning of our work, we have strived to imbue what we have to say with the will of Christ. And there is hope and trust in the fact that we may say: Ultimately, our teaching itself is what Christ wanted us to say, fulfilling His word: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) We have sought only to listen to what comes from Him. And what He has inspired in us according to His promise, we wish to take into our souls as our Spiritual Science. Not because we feel our Spiritual Science permeated by anything Christian-dogmatic do we regard it as Christian, but because, having been permeated by Christ within us, we regard it as a revelation of Christ within ourselves. That is why I am also convinced that what thus sprouts as genuine, true Spiritual Science in the souls that wish to take in this Christ-permeated Spiritual Science of ours together with us will bear fruit for all of humanity and, in turn, especially for those who are to receive these fruits.

[ ] Much of what is good—spiritually good—in our Spiritual Science movement, when viewed clairvoyantly, reveals itself to originate from those who have embraced our Christ-imbued Spiritual Science alongside us, and who, having passed through the gate of death, send down to us once more the fruits of this Christ-imbued Spiritual Science. What those who have taken up Christ-imbued Spiritual Science send down to us from the spiritual worlds already lives within us. For they do not keep it for their own perfection, within their own karmic current; they can allow it to flow into souls that are willing to receive it. Comfort and hope for our Spiritual Science blossom from the knowledge that even our so-called dead are working with us.

[ 41 ] In a certain context, such matters were already discussed here the day before yesterday. But today, as I come to the end of these reflections, my dear friends, I would like—I might say—to speak personally to your souls as well:

[ 42 ] As I spoke to this branch of our society here in Norrköping, I could not help but constantly feel the good spirit of those who were so deeply connected to what we here call our Norrköping branch. Like a guardian angel of this branch, Mrs. Danielsson’s spirit watches over all that this branch intends to undertake. And in the sense described, it was also a Christian spirit. The souls who recognize it will never feel separated from it. May it continue to reign over this branch as a guardian spirit. It will gladly do so; it surely wants to, if the souls working in this branch welcome it.

[ 43 ] With these words spoken from the bottom of my heart, my dear friends, I conclude these lectures and hope that we will continue to work together along the spiritual paths we have embarked upon.