The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Christmas Celebration II

[ 1 ] The great modern mystic Angelus Silesius once said these beautiful words:

Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem
But not in you; you remain lost forever.

[ 2 ] There are two sides to this saying. One is that it serves, as it were, as a declaration: the true, authentic Christmas season must be celebrated in the inner heart of the human being, and all external Christmas celebrations must serve as an inspiration to strive for the inner reality that, on this sacred winter night, draws up from the depths of our soul—from the darkness that reigns within the soul just as the winter darkness does outside—the deepest forces the soul can find within itself. And these deepest forces feel connected to that Being of whom the human being can sense how it surges and ripples through all earthly becoming and gives it meaning. We find in the depths of our soul something with which Christ is present, if only we descend deep enough into the depths of our soul life, to that place where we still unfold our consciousness with our sense of devotion to the spiritual powers of the world.

[ 3 ] And the other side of Angelus Silesius’s saying is that the human being who today, in the process of becoming human on Earth, truly feels himself to be human, can bring to consciousness how true humanity—not being lost as a true human being—is linked to the soul feeling, in its innermost being, a connection with the essential substance of Christ Jesus. But through manifold reflections over the years, it has become clear to us that, as earthly development progresses, Christ-consciousness itself must continually deepen; that, in other words, as human beings pass from incarnation to incarnation, they come to understand ever more deeply what Christ actually is. And in recent times we have sought to deepen this knowledge of Christ by creating a source through which we can celebrate Christmas Eve, the winter solstice, and the feast of the Nativity of Jesus in a deeper sense. Let us see from our reflection today what this means.

[ 4 ] A great modern historian was asked by a person interested in world events why his books omit the events that took place following the Mystery of Golgotha, and why there is no mention anywhere of the intervention of the forces and powers of Christ Jesus in the course of human history. The great historian was asked why he explains how the popes, the kings, the armies, the various administrative bodies, and even natural events have intervened in history, yet nothing can be found in his writings about how, since the Mystery of Golgotha, the forces that have passed into humanity through this Mystery of Golgotha have permeated human events. The historian fell into thought. Then, after some time, having thoroughly consulted with himself on the matter, he said: For the study of history, I must stick to the approach I have taken so far; for those Christ-forces that ripple through and flow through world events belong to a kind of primordial world into which the human soul is unable to look. One can certainly observe the effects that have emanated from the Mystery of Golgotha and from the deeds of Christ, but one cannot describe the unique nature of these deeds of Christ within history itself.

[ 5 ] Well, this is just one of the illustrations that can be given for the fact that, even when it comes to something like the study of history, the most illustrious figures of recent times cannot say of themselves that their souls have already celebrated Christmas; for the living figure, the living essence of Christ Jesus, had not yet dawned in the soul of this historian, so that he might have seen her passing through, year by year, week by week, indeed hour by hour, all that takes place in human becoming. Even today, one can look into the historical unfolding as a thorough historian and perceive nothing of the fact that the power of Christ has been present everywhere in this historical unfolding since the Mystery of Golgotha. We can seek and indeed find various reasons for this—namely, that in a sense, the winter festival dedicated to the Christmas mystery is not yet celebrated in the souls of many, many people.

[ 6 ] Some insight into this can be gained from the man who portrayed this fact, as it were, from the depths of his being, where he truly felt the Christian mystery: Goethe. He has Wilhelm Meister—whom Goethe so lovingly depicted throughout his entire human journey—enter a castle. Wilhelm Meister is shown around by the lord of the castle, and then he is shown the castle’s picture gallery. This gallery is a peculiar one; for it contains, in succession, the most significant scenes of historical development: how world history has unfolded among the various peoples of antiquity, and also among the ancient Hebrew people, from the times of Paradise, from the Fall of Man onward, through to the further epochs of historical life. Historical development is depicted in significant scenes, and then the narrative ends with the destruction of Jerusalem—and there is not a single picture containing any scene from the life of Jesus Christ, even though the story extends beyond the Mystery of Golgotha to the destruction of Jerusalem. Then Wilhelm asks: Why is there nothing in your gallery of images about the divine man who brought so much salvation to human development? I find a gap in this historical narrative; I see the Temple of Jerusalem destroyed without the man being depicted, the one whom they had refused to listen to just a short time before. — And Wilhelm is answered: To do this, as you demand, would have been a mistake. The life of this divine man has no connection with the world history of his time. It was a private life; his teaching was a teaching for individuals. What the masses and their members encounter publicly belongs to world history, to the world religion, which we consider the first. What the individual encounters inwardly belongs to the second religion, that of the sages. Such was the one that Christ taught and practiced as long as he walked the earth.

[ 7 ] Truly, a word that speaks deeply to our hearts! With regard to the reality of Christ, every human being stands alone, and in relation to the reality of Christ, stands as a direct individuality before all people who dwell on earth. That which can be described as national history creeps into the affairs of individual nations; for it concerns that which, if I may put it this way, takes place within the sphere of human destiny, within the human realm. What Christ Jesus brought into the world penetrates deeply, deeply inwardly into that which—whatever part of Earth’s development it may belong to—every heart, every human soul feels and experiences insofar as it feels itself, in the true sense of the word, to be human and merely human. One must once again realize that this feeling of being human only entered into the development of humanity on Earth with what was brought about by the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 8 ] And let us continue: The owner of the castle now leads Wilhelm Meister further and shows him another gallery that he had kept hidden. Now they enter another room, where the events of the New Testament are depicted. Thus, Wilhelm was not to see the events of the New Testament where the worldly events are depicted stage by stage—where the exoteric is shown—but in an esoteric room, for the contemplation of which the soul must first prepare itself, withdrawing from what pertains to world history and belongs to individual peoples. And the soul is to stand only on the esoteric foundation of the individual human being. Then it will cross the threshold where the images of the New Testament are set forth. Even in this space, the entire New Testament is not found, but only the scenes up to the Last Supper. Wilhelm asks: “Since you present the life of this divine man as a model and example, have you also highlighted his suffering and his death as a model of sublime endurance?” In response, he receives a meaningful answer, an answer from which one can discern the shudders with which one may feel the Most Holy, that which took place on earth with the Being who took up dwelling in a body whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Eve. Wilhelm is to be led, as it were, into the next esoteric realm to see the images up to the Last Supper. But then comes the most esoteric part, and it is thus expressed with holy shudders: “We draw a veil over these sufferings, precisely because we revere them so highly. We consider it a damning audacity to expose that scaffold of torture and the saint suffering upon it to the sight of the sun...”

[ 9 ] This is how one might have felt in an esoteric sense in the 18th century. It was good to feel this way, for we can certainly admit, from our own perspective, that in a certain sense the pictorial representations of the Passion—unless they were created by the highest, truly most significant artists—have brought the sacred Mystery of Golgotha down to the level of ordinary people. And we can understand the feeling that a person who deeply sensed the mystery of Golgotha at that time did not want to look at all the distorted images that were often made of this holy mystery, but wanted to draw a veil over it all, because he felt that only the soul’s most intimate, most sacred powers of the soul can be supersensibly connected with that which pertains to the mysteries of the Holy Communion.

[ 10 ] But what feeling, after all, lies at the heart of all this? What, then, are we actually to feel when we seek to grasp such a feeling in the context of esoteric spiritual experience? We must understand that there was a longing in human hearts when such a vision was beheld: there was a longing in the human heart for a conception, a vision of the Christ Mystery, that is greater than the one that could be held at that time. In all humility, in a humility even greater than that we have toward other aspects of Spiritual Science, we may admit to ourselves today—yes, truly admit: the finest souls have been yearning longingly for what is to become our knowledge of Christ through the secret science for a very, very long time.

[ 11 ] Today we may say to ourselves: What could previously only be known in another form will be beheld by souls when the time is soon fulfilled! The awareness that such knowledge will one day be able to pierce the human heart, and the longing for it, lived as a mystery of life within the finest of souls. It is a knowledge of Christ that people sought—one befitting the great event that took place on Golgotha, and one that may be beheld, even with the eye of the soul, when the veils are drawn back. Yesterday I explained to some friends how, in a certain sense, the knowledge of Christ had to recede; how, in the early days of Christianity’s development, this knowledge of Christ—still imbued with the old clairvoyance—was received; and how this later gradually faded away. And yesterday I read a little old Gnostic poem to our friends, which I would also like to share here, in order to point out just how a consciousness was present here in contrast to the old atavistic, clairvoyant knowledge: The Christ whom we behold when we see him coming into the world through the Christmas Child—this Christ is a cosmic being who grows ever greater the higher we turn our soul’s gaze into the spiritual spheres—for it is through these spheres that he descends. That is why a humanity that had outlived its time had to draw a veil over this event, because it was not yet capable of pointing out how, in the mystery of the child—which every child understands intuitively—lies at the same time the highest wisdom. In this child was born a being who had passed through the worlds before appearing on Earth.

[ 12 ] Jesus said:

Look, O Father,
How this being on earth

[ 13 ] — this refers to the human soul

The source and victim of all evil,
Wanders far from your breath.
Behold, it flees the bitter chaos,
At a loss as to how to find its way through.

[ 14 ] In a dialogue with the divine Father, Jesus is shown how he descends through the spheres of the world, how he looks down upon the human soul wandering in chaos yet longing for him, to whom he wishes to bring salvation. And so Christ continues to speak to the Father:

Therefore, send me, O Father!
Bearing the seal, I descend,

[ 15 ] — bearing the seals of heaven

I stride through the ages...

[ 16 ] In the spiritual realms, the spiritual worlds are layered one above the other, and the higher we ascend, the more we find that the older worlds are still alive today; what was once the oldest can be found today in the highest realms. What was once connected with the Saturn evolution can be found today in the highest spiritual spheres, and insofar as this sequence of spiritual spheres is brought into relation with the course of time, they are called eons.

Through countless eons I journey,
Every sacred message I interpret,
Then reveal the image of the gods.
And so I bestow upon you
The sacred path’s
Deeply hidden message:
“Gnosis” is its name for you now.

[ 17 ] To a certain extent, humanity has lost awareness of this cosmic Christ. It had to be lost because the old clairvoyance had to fade away; an interim period had to come—a sort of spiritless eon—so that a new kind of clairvoyant vision could emerge once more. But this vision must turn upward again toward the spiritual worlds; it must not merely characterize the being that enters human evolution through the Winter Solstice with what is merely external human perception, but must follow how this being ascends from sphere to sphere in the heavens, descends to Earth, and gives meaning to Earth—yes, gives meaning to Earth.

Behold, O Father,
How this being on Earth,
The target and victim of all evil,
Wanders far from your breath.
Behold, it flees the bitter chaos,
At a loss as to how to find its way through.
Therefore send me, O Father!
Bearing the seal, I descend,
Through the ages I stride,
Every sacred message I interpret,
Then reveal the image of the gods.
And so I bestow upon you
The deeply hidden message
Of the sacred path:
“Gnosis” is its name for you now.

[ 18 ] What, then, does this earth actually appear to us to be, insofar as it surrounds us, when we consider it in its true essence? Would you ever say, “This is a human being”—if someone were to bring you a corpse whose soul already dwells in spiritual worlds outside the body? Would you ever say: ‘This is still a human being in the full sense of the word’?—It is precisely the higher aspects of human nature that are no longer present in the soulless corpse. Yet in the very case of a soulless corpse, the Earth has been gradually evolving since the middle of the Atlantean epoch. The Earth around us, despite all its beauty, has been turning into a corpse since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, and it is becoming more and more of a corpse. And when one goes out and stands before the gigantic rocks, one might best say to oneself: This is the skeleton that the Earth has been forming since the middle of the Atlantean epoch! — And when you look upon what covers the rocks as earth, you see the dying parts of the actual Earth organism, which was alive only until the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Even geology is already clear on the fact that, as we walk across the earth or guide the plow through the clods of earth, we are walking across the earth’s corpse or guiding the plow through the corpse. Even our geologists have already stated this, and external science itself, when it begins to think, cannot help but acknowledge such things. Thus, in essence, surrounded by the Earth, we stand face to face with death, and we watch as our Earth gradually dies.

[ 19 ] And now let us imagine that the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, that the cosmic Being we call the Christ Being had never entered into Earth’s evolution through the Jesus children—then Earth’s evolution would have come to nothing; it would already be dying today. But the Christ Being passed through the two Jesus children and then, through the one Jesus child, over a period of three Earth years, through the Mystery of Golgotha, and the Earth received a new seed of life. And when the time is fulfilled, the Earth will not remain in the cosmos, and the soul—Ahriman and Lucifer—will perish! No, that would happen if Christ had not entered the Earth as a living seed. But since he has entered, the Earth will not decay into dust, nor will the soul fall prey merely to Lucifer and Ahriman, for a new life has entered Earth’s development with the Christ seed. Just as the Earth once separated from the Sun and became a son of the Sun, so, because Christ has given meaning to the Earth’s development, the Earth, permeated by this meaningful being, will develop anew.

[ 20 ] Thus, through Spiritual Science, we look into the mystery of Golgotha; thus, we stand trembling in the present age and feel called—precisely by pointing out those realms beyond the reach of sensory perception—to be permitted to lift the veil, for we do not wish to see behind this veil only that which an age, having developed in accordance with its own task toward materialism, was bound to see.

[ 21 ] Thus, in our time, the possibility arises once again for those whose souls are filled with impulses from Spiritual Science to look up to Christ as a cosmic being. This truly does not—and this must always be reiterated—diminish the infinite devotion we can feel for the Child of the Christmas season. It does not diminish the simple Christian sentiment. It is deepened when we can thus perceive Christ as our dear friend Christian Morgenstern perceived him, when a poem blossomed from his soul that may appear to us as a resurrection of ancient sacred Gnostic ideas, in which the love of Christ reigned and cosmic wisdom was at work. And so we celebrate a new Christmas, as voices resound once more in the dark night of materialism—voices that are not those of the ancient Gnostics, but which are imbued with that spirit that is attuned to the living cosmic Christ-essence.

Light is love ... Sun-Weaving
The radiant love of a world
of creative beings

which, through ages beyond measure
holds us close to its heart,
and which finally gave us

its highest Spirit in the
form of a human being for three
years: for He came into His

Father’s inheritance—now the Earth’s
innermost heavenly fire:
that she too may one day become the Sun.

If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem,
And not within you, you remain lost forever.

[ 22 ] Let us allow the inner winter Christmas celebration to enter our souls; let our souls sense how a new understanding of Christ must be born in our time. What, then, is the nature of this understanding of Christ? It connects that which is most intimate to the human being—and which, as it were, draws together his entire being—to the simplest of all things: it connects the life of the child, not yet the fully developed human life, to the highest cosmic being and becoming. As we gaze upon the Christ Child, whom we commemorate on the Winter Solstice, we feel the most powerful winter consecration standing before our soul’s gaze, reaching through all the eons, and we connect all world-becoming, wherever we look, with all that is human, with the deepest human essence.

[ 23 ] Thus does the one who draws his inspiration from our Spiritual Science feel how victory over all death is achieved through the union of the soul with the Christ-being in our time—a point I alluded to today on a deeply moving occasion at the grave of our friend, who was taken from us by the war. But one could not sense how the highest Cosmic is connected with the most intimate Human until one could perceive history in its innermost essence in the mystery of Bethlehem. Yet this becomes clear to the human being when he contemplates the mystery of the two Jesus children. There we have the power of the wisest man of pre-Christian times, Zarathustra, in one of the Jesus-children. That which flows down from one side of human development, we have it in one of the Jesus-children. In the other, we have an aura permeated and illuminated by what emanated from Buddha. And we have the outer physical life, descending from the noblest strains of the ancient Hebrew people, and we have that which constitutes the soul of the Luke Jesus-child, traced back to the origin of the Earth. For we know that what was the deepest soul of the Luke-Jesus child remained behind when humanity first set foot on Earth in the ancient Lemurian era, and that it was preserved through the sacred mysteries and then guided, when the Luke-Jesus child was born, into the body that was born there. Hence that peculiar utterance of the Luke-Jesus child immediately after birth, which only the mother could understand, which resembled no language, and which the child immediately forgot as earthly consciousness arose within him. But it was the utterance of a mystery immediately after birth. In essence, much of what we have to reveal about the Christ Mystery is an interpretation of what the Luke-Jesus child spoke immediately after his birth.

[ 24 ] Thus, through our Spiritual Science, we have come to understand the Christ impulse as emerging entirely from the deeper process of human evolution—that evolution of the ancient pre-Christian era, where, in a sense, the distinctions that the initiates speak of also cease to exist. Once we have grasped everything that entered human evolution with the Mystery of Golgotha, we will also find the means to further promote these forces wherever human evolution occurs, including in history. But first we must know who Christ really was before we can speak of him, for example, in the context of history.

[ 25 ] But then, when within our spiritual movement there are souls—more and more souls—who seek the impulse to kindle within themselves the light that can be kindled when we descend into the deepest soul forces that human beings can possess today following the Mystery of Golgotha, then it will become evident that through such a descent, the Christ-light is truly kindled in every single soul. This Christ-light becomes the tree, the Christmas tree, which will shine forth in all human becoming in the future in such a way that what the soul looks toward in the revived Earth must be attained, so that in the life of this revived Earth, the soul finds Christ everywhere. That is what will happen. And the Christ message of Spiritual Science can be taken so seriously that among the adherents of Spiritual Science, that Christmas festival will one day truly be celebrated in every single soul, which represents the birth of that Christ-knowledge that comes from Christ himself, which is thus a true Christ-birth, a birth of Christ within us. But this Christ-birth within us must take place. True, true is the word:

Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem
But not in you; you remain lost forever.

[ 26 ] And let us add to this beautiful saying by the mystic Angelus Silesius: Therefore, let us find ourselves eternally by seeking forever the experience of the holy night of winter, the birth of Christ in the depths of our soul!