The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] We recall the saying that resounds from the depths of the mysteries of the Earth's evolution:

Revelation of the Divine in the heights of being,
and peace to people on earth,
who are filled with good will.

[ 2 ] And as Christmas approaches this year, we must reflect in particular: What feelings do we associate with this saying and its profound meaning for the world? That profound meaning of the world, which countless people feel so deeply that the word “peace” resounds through it—the word “peace” in a time when this peace eludes us in the broadest sense of our earthly existence. How do we reflect on the words of Christmas in this season?

[ 3 ] Yet there is one thought that, in connection with this maxim resounding throughout the world, must touch us even more deeply in the present than in other times. One thought! Nations stand hostile toward one another. Blood, much blood, saturates our earth. We have had to witness countless deaths around us, to feel them in this time. Infinite suffering weaves the atmosphere of sensation and emotion around us. Hatred and aversion permeate the spiritual realm and could easily show how far, far removed the people of our time still are from that love which the one whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve sought to proclaim. One thought, however, stands out in particular: We consider how enemy can stand against enemy, opponent against opponent, how people can bring death upon one another, and how they can pass through the same gate of death with the thought of the divine guide of light, Christ Jesus. We reflect on how, across the earth—over which war, pain, and discord spread—those who are otherwise so divided can be united, in that they carry within their deepest hearts their connection to the One who came into the world on that day which we solemnly celebrate on Christmas Eve. We reflect on how, through all enmity, through all aversion, through all hatred, a feeling can press its way into human souls everywhere in these times, can press its way forth from the midst of blood and hatred: the thought of intimate connection with the One, with the One who has thus united hearts through something higher than anything that humans will ever be able to separate on earth. And so this is indeed a thought of infinite greatness, a thought of infinite depth of feeling, the thought of Christ Jesus, who unites people, however divided they may be in all that concerns the world.

[ 4 ] If we grasp this idea in this way, we will want to understand it all the more deeply, especially in our present time. For then we will sense how much of what must become great, strong, and mighty within human development is connected to this idea, so that much of what must now still be achieved in such a bloody manner may instead be attained by human hearts and human souls in a different way.

[ 5 ] That He may make us strong, that He may strengthen us, that He may teach us, across the earth, to truly feel—in the truest sense of the word—beyond all that divides us, the Christmas consecration prayer: this is what those who truly feel connected to Christ Jesus must vow anew each Christmas Eve.

[ 6 ] There is a tradition within the history of Christianity that recurs in later times and has been practiced in certain Christian regions for centuries. Even in ancient times, depictions of the mystery of Christmas were presented to the faithful in various regions, mostly by the Christian churches. Especially in those earliest times, the presentation of the mystery of Christmas began with a reading, and at times even with a reenactment of the story of creation, as it is described at the beginning of the Bible. It was first depicted, especially around Christmas time, how the Word of the World resounded from the depths of the universe, how creation gradually arose from the Word of the World, how Lucifer approached humanity, and how, as a result, human beings began their earthly existence in a different way than the existence that had originally been destined for them before Lucifer’s approach. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was presented, and then it was shown how humanity was, as it were, incorporated into the old pre-biblical story. Only later was added what had been depicted more or less in detail in plays that developed in the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in Central European regions into the kind of plays we have just seen a small example of.

[ 7 ] Of that which, arising from an infinitely great thought, united the beginning of the Old Testament with the mysterious story of the Mystery of Golgotha on the Feast of the Nativity—that which, arising from this thought, united the two sacred histories—very little remains of it today, only, so to speak, the one thing in the present: that in our calendar, the day of Adam and Eve precedes the onset of Christmas Day. This has its origin in the same thought. But in earlier times, even for those who, out of deeper thoughts, deeper feelings, or a deeper insight, were to grasp the Christmas mystery and the mystery of Golgotha through those who were their teachers, a great, comprehensive symbolic thought was repeatedly presented to them: the thought of the origin of the cross. The God presented to humanity in the Old Testament gives the people, represented by Adam and Eve, the commandment: They may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the fruits that grow on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Because they ate of it, they were driven out of the original setting of their being.

[ 8 ] But the tree—and this has been depicted in a variety of ways—somehow entered the lineage of the original generations, from which the physical body of Christ Jesus also emerged. And it came to pass that—as was depicted in certain times—when Adam, the sinful man, was buried, this tree, which had been removed from Paradise, grew out of his grave. Thus we see the idea presented: Adam rests in the grave, he, the human being who has passed through sin, he, the human being who has been led astray by Lucifer, rests in the grave; he has united himself with the earthly body. But from his grave the tree sprouts—the tree that can now grow out of the earth with which Adam’s body has been united. The wood of this tree passes on to the generations, to which Abraham also belongs, to which David belongs. And from the wood of this tree, which thus stood in Paradise, which has grown up again from Adam’s grave, from the wood of this tree the cross was made, on which Christ Jesus hung.

[ 9 ] This is the idea that was repeatedly made clear by their teachers to those who were meant to understand the mysteries of Golgotha from a deeper foundation. There is a profound significance in the fact that in earlier times—and the significance will soon show us that this is still valid for the present—profound thoughts were expressed through such images.

[ 10 ] We have become acquainted with that aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha which tells us: The being who passed through the body of Jesus poured out upon the earth—into the earth’s aura—all that he could bring to it. What Christ brought into the Earth has since been connected with the entire physicality of the Earth. The Earth has become something different since the Mystery of Golgotha. What Christ brought down from the heavenly heights lives within the Earth’s aura. When we visualize that ancient image of the tree in connection with this, the image reveals the entire context from a higher perspective: The Luciferic principle entered into human beings when humanity first came into being on Earth. Humanity, as it now is, in its union with the Luciferic principle, belongs to the Earth; it forms a part of the Earth. And when we lay its body into the Earth, this body is not merely what anatomy perceives it to be, but this body is at the same time the outer imprint of what humanity is within the earthly realm, even in its innermost being. It can be clear to us from spiritual science that what belongs to the human being is not only that which enters the spiritual worlds through the gate of death, but that the human being is connected to the Earth through all his activity, through all his deeds; truly connected in just the same way as those events are connected to the Earth that the geologist, the mineralogist, the zoologist, and so on find to be related to the Earth. When a human being passes through the gate of death, what binds him to the Earth is, for the time being, concluded only for the human individuality. But our outer form—we surrender it in some way to the Earth; it enters into the Earth’s body. It bears within itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer’s entry into Earth’s development. What the human being accomplishes on Earth bears the Luciferic principle within it; the human being brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth’s aura. From human deeds, from human activities, springs forth and blossoms not only what was originally intended for humanity; from human deeds springs forth that which is mingled with the Luciferic. This is in the Earth’s aura. And when we now see, at the grave of Adam—the human being seduced by Lucifer—the tree that, through Luciferic temptation, has become something other than what it originally was, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we see everything that humanity has brought about by leaving its original state, by becoming something other through Luciferic temptation, and thereby introducing into Earth’s evolution something that was not previously determined for it.

[ 11 ] We see the tree growing out of what the physical body is to the Earth—what has been imprinted in its earthly form—which causes human beings on Earth to appear in a lower sphere than they would have been had they not undergone the Luciferic temptation. Something grows out of the whole of human existence on Earth that has entered human development through the Luciferic temptation. In seeking knowledge, we seek it in a different way than was originally intended for us. But this makes it appear that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it could be according to the gods’ original plan. We are shaping an earthly existence that is not as it was intended for us according to the gods’ original plan. We are mixing something else into it, about which we must form very specific mental images if we are to understand it correctly. We must say to ourselves: I am placed within the development of the Earth. What I contribute to the Earth’s development through my actions bears fruit. This bears the fruits of the knowledge that has come to me through the fact that the knowledge of good and evil has been bestowed upon me on Earth. This knowledge lives in the development of the Earth; this knowledge is there. But as I look upon this knowledge, it becomes to me something other than what it was originally meant to be. It becomes to me something that I must change if the Earth’s goal and the Earth’s task are to be achieved. I see something growing out of my earthly deeds that must become different. The tree grows forth that becomes the cross of earthly existence, the tree that becomes that to which humanity must establish a new relationship—for the old relationship is precisely what allows this tree to grow. The tree of the cross, that cross which arises from the Lucifer-tinged development of the Earth, grows out of Adam’s grave, out of the humanity that Adam became after the temptation. The tree of knowledge must become the trunk of the cross, because humanity must reconnect with the correctly recognized tree of knowledge, as it is now, in order to achieve the Earth’s goal and the Earth’s task.

[ 12 ] Let us ask ourselves—and here we touch upon a significant mystery of spiritual science—: What is the actual nature of these members that we have come to know as the members of human nature? Well, we recognize our “I” as the highest member of human nature. We learn to articulate our “I” at a certain point in our childhood. We develop a relationship with this “I” from the time we can recall in later years. We know from various observations of Spiritual Science that up to that point, the “I” itself has been shaping and forming us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relationship with our “I.” In the child, this “I” is also present, but it works within us; it first forms the body within us. At first, it works with the supersensible forces of the spiritual world. After we have gone through conception and birth, it continues to work on our body for some time—years, in fact—until we have our body as an instrument in such a way that we can consciously grasp ourselves as an “I.” There is a profound mystery connected with this entry of the “I” into human physical nature. We ask a person when they approach us: How old are you? — They tell us their age as the number of years that have passed since their birth. As I said, we are touching here upon a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become increasingly clear to us in the coming time, but which I wish only to mention today, to share, as it were. What a person tells us as their age at a certain point in their life, therefore, refers to their physical body. They are telling us nothing other than: their physical body has been in development for such and such a length of time since their birth. The I does not participate in this development of the physical body. The I remains stationary.

[ 13 ] And this is the elusive mystery: that the self actually remains fixed at the point in time as far back as we can remember. It does not change with the body; it remains fixed. It is precisely because of this that we always have it before us, for it reflects our experiences back to us as we look at it. The “I” does not accompany us on our earthly journey. Only after we have passed through the gate of death must we retrace the path we call Kamaloka back to our birth in order to encounter our “I” again, and then take it with us on our further journey. The body moves forward through the years—the “I” remains behind; the “I” remains stationary. It is difficult to grasp for the reason that one cannot form a mental image of something remaining stationary in time while time itself moves on. But that is indeed the case. The I remains stationary, and it remains so because this I does not actually connect with what comes to the human being from earthly existence, but rather because it remains connected to those forces that we call our own in the spiritual world. The I remains there; the I essentially remains in the form in which it is bestowed upon us, as we know, by the spirits of form. This I is held in the spiritual world. It must be held in the spiritual world; otherwise, we could never, as human beings during our earthly development, regain the Earth’s original task and original goal. What the human being has gone through here on Earth through his Adamic nature—of which he carries an imprint into the grave when he dies as Adam—is attached to the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body; it comes from these. The I waits, waits with all that is within it, throughout the entire time that the human being spends on Earth, looking only toward the human being’s further development—how the human being will reclaim it once they have passed through the gate of death by retracing the path. That is to say, we remain—in a certain sense this is what is meant—with our I, so to speak, in the spiritual world. Humanity must become aware of this. And it could only become aware of this through the fact that, at a certain time, from those worlds to which the human being belongs—from the spiritual worlds—Christ descended and prepared, in the body of Jesus, in the manner we know—doubly—that which was to serve him as a body on Earth.

[ 14 ] If we understand each other correctly, we always look back to our childhood throughout our entire earthly life. There, in our childhood, lies what constitutes our very spiritual essence. We always look back to it, if we understand the matter correctly. And humanity should be educated to look toward that to which the Spirit from on high can say: “Let the little children come to me”—not the human being who is bound to the earth, but the little children. Humanity should be educated to do this by the gift of the Feast of the Nativity, which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha—a Mystery that otherwise only needed to be bestowed upon humanity in relation to the last three years of the Christ-life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This feast shows how the Christ prepared the human body during childhood. This is what should underlie the Christmas sentiment: to know how the human being has actually always remained connected, through what remains behind in his growth—what remains in the heavenly heights—with what now enters. In the form of the child, humanity is to be reminded of the human-divine from which it had distanced itself by descending to Earth, but which has now returned to it; humanity is to be reminded of this childlike quality within itself. He should be reminded of the One who has restored this childlike quality to him. It was not exactly easy, but precisely in the way this festival of the World Child, the Christmas festival, has developed in the Central European regions—precisely in that one can see the wonderfully effective, sustaining power.

[ 15 ] What we saw today was just one small example of the many Christmas plays. From the old days, from the type of Christmas play I mentioned briefly, a number of so-called “Paradise Plays” have survived; these were also performed at Christmas and actually depicted the story of creation. What has survived is the connection with the Shepherds’ Play and the play of the Three Kings presenting their gifts. Much, much of this lived on in numerous plays. Most of them have now disappeared.

[ 16 ] Around the middle of the 18th century, they began to disappear from rural areas. But it is wonderful to see how they lived. That Karl Julius Schröer, whom I have often told you about, had collected such Christmas plays in western Hungarian regions in the 1850s, around the Pressburg area, and further down from Pressburg into Hungary. Others have collected such Christmas plays in other regions, but what Karl Julius Schröer was able to uncover back then regarding the customs associated with the performance of these Christmas plays can touch our hearts particularly deeply. These Christmas plays existed, in handwritten form, within certain families in the village and were regarded as something particularly sacred. They were performed in such a way that, as October approached, people were already thinking about the need to perform these plays for the local farmers during the Christmas season. Then the best-behaved young men and women were selected, and during this time, as they began to prepare, they stopped drinking wine and other alcoholic beverages. They were no longer allowed to fight on Sundays—something that is otherwise permitted in such places—nor were they allowed to engage in other acts of disorderly conduct. They truly had to, as they said, “lead a holy life.” And so there was a sense that a certain moral disposition of the soul was required of those who were to devote themselves to performing such plays during the Christmas season. Such plays were not to be performed out of the ordinary, mundane world.

[ 17 ] Then they were performed with all the naivety that peasants are capable of, yet the entire performance was imbued with the deepest seriousness, an infinite seriousness. The plays that Karl Julius Schröer, Weinhold, and others later collected in various regions are all characterized by this profound seriousness with which people approached the mystery of Christmas. But that was not always the case. And we need look no further back than a few centuries to find that things were different then, and to encounter something most peculiar. Precisely the way in which these Christmas plays became established, particularly in Central European regions—how they arose and gradually took shape—shows us just how overwhelmingly powerful the idea of Christmas was. It was not received right away in the way I have just described: that people would have approached it with holy reverence, with great solemnity, with an awareness of the significance of the event that lived in their sensibility. Oh no! In many regions, for example, it began by setting up a nativity scene in front of some side altar in this or that church—this was still in the 14th and 15th centuries, but it goes back even further; a nativity scene was set up, that is, a stable containing an ox and a donkey and the little child, along with two dolls representing Joseph and Mary. So at first, this was done with simple figurines. Then people wanted to bring more life into it, but initially from the clergy. Priests would dress up, one as Joseph, the other as Mary, and they would act it out—instead of the figurines, they played the parts. In the early days, they even performed it in Latin, for the early Church placed great importance on this, since it seems they saw a very deep meaning in the fact that those who watched or listened understood as little as possible of the matter, but saw only the outward gestures. But the people would no longer put up with this: they wanted to understand something of what was being presented to them. And so they gradually began to translate some parts of it into the local language spoken in those regions. But eventually, a desire arose among the people to participate, to experience it for themselves. Yet it was still foreign to them, quite foreign indeed. One need only consider that even in the 12th and 13th centuries, that familiarity with the sacred mysteries—for example, the Christmas Mass—which we today take for granted, did not yet exist. One must consider that people attended Mass year in and year out, including the Christmas Mass held at midnight, but that they did not hear the Bible—which was reserved for the priests to read—and that they knew only isolated fragments of sacred history. And it was truly also a matter of familiarizing them with what had once taken place, so that it was first presented to them in this dramatic way by the priests. They only came to know it in this way.

[ 18 ] Now there is something that must be said, and I must ask you most earnestly not to misunderstand it. But it can be described because it corresponds to the pure historical truth. It was not as though their participation in these Christmas plays had arisen from some kind of mystical mood or the like—that was not the case—but rather from the desire to take part in what had been presented to them, to be closer to it, to join in, to act: that is what drew the people to the matter. And one finally had to allow them to participate. One had to make it more understandable to the people. This process of making it more understandable proceeded step by step. For example, at first the people understood nothing at all about the little child lying in a manger. They had never seen such a thing—a little child in a manger. Yes, in the past, when they weren’t allowed to understand anything, they accepted it. But now that they wanted to be part of it, it had to be completely understandable to them. So they were simply given a cradle. And the people’s participation began as they passed by the cradle; everyone stepped up and rocked the little child for a while; and similar forms of participation developed. There were even regions where things went on in such a way that... they began quite seriously at first, and when the child was there, everyone started a tremendous racket, and everyone shouted and expressed their joy through dancing and shouting, the joy they now felt that the little child had been born. It was received in a mood that arose from the urge to move, from the urge to experience a story. But there was something so great, so powerful in the story that from this entirely profane mood—it was a profane mood at first—that sacred mood I just spoke of gradually developed. The story itself poured out its holiness upon a reception that could by no means be called holy at the outset. Especially in the Middle Ages, the holy Christmas story first had to win people over. And it won them over to such an extent that, while they were performing their plays, they wanted to prepare themselves morally in such an intense way.

[ 19 ] What, then, captured the human emotions, the human soul? The vision of the child, the vision of that which remains sacred in the human being while its other three bodies become united with the earthly realm. Even if, in certain regions and at certain times, the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, it was in human nature to develop this sacred view of the nature of the child, which is connected to what entered into Christian development from the very beginning: the awareness that what remains within the human being when he begins his earthly development must enter into a new connection with that which has become connected with the earthly human being. So that he hands over to the earth the wood from which the cross must be made, with which he must enter into a new connection.

[ 20 ] In the early days of Christian development in Central Europe, the concept of Easter was actually the only one that was widely celebrated. And it was only in the manner I have described that the concept of Christmas gradually came to be added. For what is found in the *Heliand* or similar works was indeed composed by individual poets, but it certainly did not become part of popular tradition.

[ 21 ] The folk traditions of Christmas Eve arose in the way I have just described, and this truly magnificently demonstrates how the idea of connection with the childlike—the pure, genuine childlike quality that appeared in a new form in the infant Jesus—has won people over. If we combine this power of the idea with the fact that this idea is the only one that can initially live in our earthly existence—uniting all people—then it is the true Christian idea. And so the Christ-idea grows within us; the Christ-idea becomes that which must gradually strengthen within us if the further development of the Earth is to take place in the right way. Let us consider how far humanity in the present earthly existence is still removed from what the depths of the Christ-idea actually hold within them.

[ 22 ] A book by Ernst Haeckel is being published these days—perhaps you have read it: *Eternity: World War Reflections on Life and Death, Religion, and the Theory of Evolution*. A book by Ernst Haeckel is certainly a book born of a serious love of truth, certainly a book in which the most serious truth is sought. As for what the book is intended to convey, the following is said: It is meant to point out what is now happening on Earth, how nations live with one another in war, how they live with one another in hatred, how countless deaths occur every day. All these thoughts, which so painfully impose themselves upon humanity, are also mentioned by Ernst Haeckel, naturally always against the backdrop of viewing the world as he can see it from his standpoint—we have often spoken of this, for even if one is a scholar of Spiritual Science, one can acknowledge Haeckel as one of the greatest researchers—from that standpoint which, as we know, can also lead to other conclusions, but which leads to what can be observed in the later phases of Haeckel’s development. Now Haeckel is contemplating the idea of a world war. He, too, reflects on how much blood is now flowing, how much death now surrounds us. And he asks himself: Can religious ideas coexist with this? Can one somehow believe—so Haeckel asks—that some wise providence, a benevolent God, governs the world, when one sees that every day, through mere chance, as he says, so many people meet their end, dying through no such cause that could demonstrably be connected in any way to any wise government of the world, but through chance, as he says, that this or that bullet strikes one, that one suffers this or that accident? In contrast, do all these ideas of wisdom, these ideas of providence, have any meaning? Must not precisely such events as these prove that man must stop short, that he is nothing other than what the external, materialistically conceived history of development shows us, and that, fundamentally, it is not a wise providence but chance that governs all earthly existence? Can one, in contrast, have any other religious thought, Haeckel asks, than to resign oneself, to say: One simply gives up one’s body and merges into the whole universe? — But if this universe, one asks further — Haeckel no longer poses this question —, is nothing other than the play of atoms, does human life truly amount to a meaning of earthly existence? As I said, Haeckel no longer asks this question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: It is precisely such events as those that now touch us so painfully, precisely such events that show that one has no right to believe that a benevolent providence or a wise government of the world or anything of the sort weaves through and lives through the world. So resignation, coming to terms with the fact that this is simply the way it is!

[ 23 ] A Christmas book, too! A Christmas book that is very sincere and honest in its intent. But this book will be based on a significant prejudice. It will be based on the prejudice that one must not seek a meaning for the Earth in a spiritual way, that humanity is forbidden to seek meaning in a spiritual way! If one looks only at the outward course of events, one does not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel believes. And since this life has no meaning, it must remain so—that is what Haeckel believes. One must not seek the meaning!

[ 24 ] Will not the other person rather come and say: If we always view our current events merely from the outside, if we always point out that countless bullets are striking people at this very moment, and if we look at them in this way and find no meaning, then they are showing us precisely that we must seek this meaning more deeply. They show us that we must not simply seek meaning in what is now immediately taking place on Earth and believe that these human souls perish with the physical body, but that we must seek what they now begin when they pass through the gate of death. In short, someone else might come along and say: Precisely because no meaning can be found in the external, the meaning must be sought beyond the external; the meaning must be sought in the supersensible.

[ 25 ] Is this so different from the same issue in a completely different field? Haeckel’s science can lead those who think as Haeckel does today to reject any meaning in earthly existence. It can lead to the desire to use what is happening so painfully today as proof that earthly life as such has no meaning. But if one grasps it in our way—we have done this often—then precisely this same science becomes the starting point for showing what deep, great meaning can be unraveled in the vast phenomena around us. But for this, the spiritual must be at work in the world. We must be able to connect with the spiritual. Because people do not yet understand how to allow that power to work upon them in the realms of scholarship—a power that has so wonderfully conquered hearts and souls, so that a sacred conception arose from a downright profane one when looking upon the mystery of Christmas—because scholars cannot yet grasp this, because they cannot yet connect the Christ impulse with what they see in the outer world—it is impossible for them to find a meaning, a real meaning, for the Earth.

[ 26 ] And so one must say: Science, with all its great advances—of which people today are rightly so proud—is, in and of itself, incapable of leading to a worldview that satisfies humanity. As it follows its own course, it can lead just as easily to meaninglessness as to a sense of life on earth, just as in any other field. Let us take this external science, so proudly developed over the last few centuries—especially in the 19th century and up to the present day—with all its marvelous laws; let us take everything that surrounds us today: it has been brought forth by this science. We no longer burn our nightlights in the same way Goethe did; we burn light and illuminate our rooms in a completely different way. And let us take everything that lives in our souls today as a result of our science: it has come into being through the great advances of science, of which humanity is rightly proud. But this same science—how does it reign? It reigns beneficially when humanity develops beneficial things. But today, precisely because it is such a perfect science, it produces the unstoppable instruments of murder. Its progress serves destruction just as much as it serves construction. Just as, on the one hand, the science to which Haeckel adheres can lead to both sense and nonsense, so the science that achieves such great things can serve construction and serve destruction. And if it depended solely on this science, it would, from the very sources from which it builds, produce ever more and more terrible works of destruction. It does not possess within itself an immediate impulse that propels humanity forward. Oh, if only one could realize this just once, only then would one be able to assess this science in the right way. Only then would one know that there must be something else in human development besides what humanity has been able to achieve through this science!

[ 27 ] This science—what is it? In reality, it is nothing other than the tree that grows from Adam’s grave, and the time is drawing ever nearer when people will realize that this science is the tree that grows from Adam’s grave. And the time will come when people will realize that this tree must become the wood that is the cross of humanity, and that it can lead to blessing only when that which is crucified upon it is rightly united with what lies beyond death but already lives within the human being here: that which we look toward on the holy Christmas Eve, when we perceive this holy Christmas Eve in its mystery in the right way—that which can be depicted in a childlike manner, yet which harbors the highest mysteries. Is it not actually wonderful that it can be said to the people in the simplest way: In came that which reigns through human life on earth, that which actually must not go beyond childhood! It is related to that to which the human being belongs as something supersensible. Is it not wonderful that this, in the most eminent sense, the supersensible and invisible, could come so close to human souls in such a simple image—to the simple human souls?

[ 28 ] Those who are learned will also first have to walk the path that these simple souls have walked. There was also a time when the child was not depicted in a cradle or manger, but rather as sleeping on the cross. The child sleeping on the cross! A wonderfully profound image, expressing the entire thought I have sought to bring to life before your souls today.

[ 29 ] And isn’t this idea, when you get right down to it, quite simple to express? It certainly is! Let us search for the origin of those impulses that are so terribly at odds with one another in the world today! Where did these impulses originate? Where does everything that makes life so difficult for humanity today originate? In everything we have become in the world from the point in time back to which we can remember. Let us go back beyond that point in time; let us go back to the point in time when we are called as little children who can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That is where it originates; there is nothing in human souls of what is today in strife and discord. The thought can be expressed that simply. But spiritually, we must look today to the fact that there is such an original state within the human soul that nevertheless transcends all human strife, all human disharmony.

[ 30 ] We have often spoken of the ancient mysteries, which sought to awaken within human nature that which enables people to look up into the supersensible, and we have spoken of how the Mystery of Golgotha, accessible to all people, has brought the supersensible mystery onto the stage of history. Essentially, what connects us to the true Christ idea is present within us—truly present—because we can have moments in our lives, in the true sense now, not in a figurative sense, where, despite all that we are in the outer world, we can bring to life — by going back and feeling our way back to the child’s perspective, by looking at the human being as he develops between birth and death, by being able to feel within ourselves — that which we received there as a child.

[ 31 ] Last Thursday I gave a public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte. I could have added one more remark—though it would not have been fully understood at the time—that sheds light on much of what lived within this figure, who was pious in a peculiar way. I could have said why he actually became so very special, the way he did, and I would have had to say: Because, even though he grew old, he retained his childlike nature more than other people. There is more of that childlike nature in such people than in others. Such people grow old less! Truly, more of what was present in childhood remains in such people than in others. And that is, in fact, the secret of many great people: that they can, in a certain sense, remain children until the very end of their lives; even when they die, they die as children—though this is, of course, only partially true, since one must, after all, be united with life.

[ 32 ] The mystery of Christmas speaks to that part of us that lives as childlikeness; the contemplation of the divine Child, who was chosen to receive the Christ, speaks to us; to which we look as to that over which Christ already hovers, who in reality brought salvation to the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 33 ] Let us be fully aware of this: When we surrender the imprint of our higher self, when we surrender our physical body to the earth, this is not merely a physical process. Something spiritual is also taking place. But this spiritual aspect can only proceed in the right way if the Christ-being, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the Earth’s aura. We do not see what this whole Earth is in its entirety unless, since the Mystery of Golgotha, we see Christ in connection with the Earth—that Christ whom we can pass by as we do all the supersensible, if we feel equipped only in a materialistic sense; but whom we cannot pass by if the Earth is to have a real, a true meaning for us. Therefore, everything depends on our ability to awaken within ourselves that which opens the view into the spiritual world.

[ 34 ] Let us make the Christmas celebration for ourselves what it is meant to be for us in particular: a celebration that does not merely serve the past, but one that is also meant to serve the future—that future which is to bring about, little by little, the birth of spiritual life for all humanity. But let us connect with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic foreboding, that such a birth of spiritual life must be brought to humanity, that a ‘great night of consecration,’ a birth of that which gives meaning to the thoughts of the people of the Earth, must work upon the future of humanity. That meaning which the Earth has objectively received through the Christ Being’s union with the Earth’s aura via the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us remember on this Night of Consecration how, out of the depths of darkness, the light must enter human development—the light of spiritual life. That old light of spiritual life, which existed before the Mystery of Golgotha, gradually fading away, had to pass away; and it must rise again, must be reborn after the Mystery of Golgotha through the consciousness in the human soul: that this human soul is connected with what Christ has become for the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 35 ] If more and more people come to understand Christmas in this sense of Spiritual Science, then this Christmas will develop a power in human hearts and souls that will remain meaningful throughout the ages: in times when people are filled with feelings of happiness, but also in times when people must surrender to that sense of pain that must permeate us today when we think of the great misery of our times.

[ 36 ] Someone once expressed beautifully how looking up gives meaning to the spiritual essence of the Earth, and I would like to share those words with you today:

What has given my eye this power,
That all deformity has melted away before it,
That nights become for it cheerful suns,
Disorder order, and decay life?

What, through the tangled weaving of time and space,
Guides me surely to the eternal fountains
Of beauty, truth, goodness, and delight,
And into which all my striving is consumed?

This is it: since in Urania’s eye, the deep,
Clear to itself, blue, still, pure
Flame of light, I myself have gazed silently into it;

Since then, this eye rests within me in the depths
And is in my being—the eternal One,
Lives in my life, sees in my seeing.

[ 37 ] And in a second short poem:

Nothing exists but God, and God is nothing but life,
You know, and I know with you in unity;
But how could knowledge exist,
If it were not knowledge of God’s life!

“Oh, how gladly would I give myself to this!
But where shall I find it? If it ever flows
Into knowledge, it transforms into illusion,
Mixed with it, surrounded by its shell.”

The shell rises clearly before you,
It is your ego; let all that is perishable die,
And from now on, only God lives in your striving.

See through what survives this striving,
Then the shell will become visible to you as a shell,
And unveiled, you will see divine life.

[ 38 ] However, people do not always know what to do with those who point them toward the spiritual, which gives meaning to the earth. It is not only the materialists who do not know this. The others, who believe they are not materialists because they always say “God, God, God” or “Lord, Lord, Lord,” often do not know how to deal properly with these guides to the spiritual either! For what could one do with a person who says: There is nothing but God! Everything is God! Everywhere, everywhere is God! — He sought God in everything, he who said:

[ 39 ] See through what survives this striving, And the shell will become visible to you as a shell, And you will see divine life unveiled!

[ 40 ] He who seeks to see divine life everywhere—one could accuse him of rejecting the world, of denying the world—one could call him a denier of the world! His contemporaries called him an atheist and drove him from the university for that reason. For the words I have read to you are by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He, in particular, is an example of how—if what lives on in the human soul through earthly existence, what is contained in the Mystery of Golgotha, and what, in connection with this Mystery of Golgotha, can be struck as an impulse in the tones of the soul within the Christmas Mystery — a path is opened by which we can find that consciousness in which our own I merges with the Earth-I, for this Earth-I is the Christ, through whom we develop something of the human being that must become ever greater and greater if the Earth is to move toward that development for which it was destined from the very beginning.

[ 41 ] Let us, therefore, especially in the spirit of our spiritual insight and in the sense set forth once again today, allow the Christmas message to become an impulse within us; let us try, by looking up to this Christmas spirit, not to see the senselessness of earthly development in what is happening around us, but to see in suffering and pain, and even in strife and hatred, something that ultimately helps humanity move forward, that truly advances humanity a step further.

[ 42 ] More important than searching for the causes—which can so easily be obscured by party strife anyway—more important than searching for the causes of what is happening today, is to direct our gaze toward the possible effects, toward those effects that we must create as beneficial, as bringing salvation to humanity.

[ 43 ] The nation, the people, that will do what is right is the one that will be able to shape a future that is beneficial to humanity from what is capable of sprouting from the blood-soaked soil. But something beneficial to humanity will arise only if people find the path to the spiritual worlds; if people do not forget that there is not only a temporal, but that there must be an everlasting night of consecration, an everlasting birth of the Divine-Spiritual within the physical human being on Earth.

[ 44 ] Let us take this holiness of thought to heart today in particular; let us hold onto it throughout the season surrounding Christmas, which, even in its outward course, can serve as a symbol of the unfolding of light. Darkness—earthly darkness of the highest degree, as it can be here on Earth—will now prevail during these days, in this season. But even as the Earth lives in this deepest outer darkness, we know that the Earth’s soul is experiencing its light; it is beginning to awaken to the highest degree.

[ 45 ] The Christmas season is followed by a time of spiritual vigil, and this time of spiritual vigil should be linked to the remembrance of the spiritual awakening brought about by Christ Jesus for the development of the Earth. Hence the establishment of the Christmas Consecration Festival specifically during this time.

[ 46 ] In this cosmic and at the same time earthly-moral sense, we wish to connect the spirit of Christmas with our soul and then, strengthened and invigorated precisely by this spirit of consecration, look upon all things as best we can, wishing for what is right in the course of events, but also wishing for what is right in the course of what is developing in the deeds of the present.

[ 47 ] And as we begin to stir within our souls the strength we have just drawn from this Christmas, we turn once more to the guardian spirits of those who must step forward in difficult times to face the great events of our age:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians,
May your wings carry
The pleading love of our souls
To the earthly people entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power
Our plea may shine with helping light
Upon the souls it lovingly seeks!

[ 48 ] And for those who, in this time of difficult human trials, have already passed through the gates of death as a result of the great demands of our present age, let these words be spoken once more in the following form:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians,
May your wings carry
The pleading love of our souls
To the beings of the spheres entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power
Our plea may shine with aid
Upon the souls it lovingly seeks!

[ 49 ] And may the Spirit who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Spirit who has promised healing and progress to the Earth—as people will come to understand more and more, even through the Christmas Mystery—be with you and your heavy burdens!