The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we would like to begin by reciting a Nordic poem that we have already presented in this series some time ago. The entire content of this poem is connected to Christmas and the season that follows it. The poem tells of the legendary Olaf Åsteson and relates how this Olaf Åsteson, a legendary figure, spent the thirteen days following Christmas—ending with the day of Christ’s Epiphany—in a very special way. And this reminds us of how the belief in primitive clairvoyance, once present in humanity, lives on within the world of folk legends. The content is essentially that on Christmas Eve, Olaf Åsteson comes to the church door, that he then enters a kind of sleep-like state, and now, during the so-called thirteen nights, experiences the mysteries of the spiritual world in his own way, as a simple, primitive child of nature.

[ 2 ] We know that during these days, when, so to speak, the deepest physical darkness reigns on Earth from without—when the slightest sprouting and growth of vegetation takes place, when, so to speak, everything stands still outwardly in the physical existence of the Earth—it is then that the Earth soul awakens, for it is precisely then that the Earth soul is in its full waking state. When the human soul merges in its spiritual core with what the spirit of the Earth is experiencing, then the human soul—if it still possesses the primitive states of nature within itself—can gain a vision of the spiritual world, which humanity will gradually have to regain through its striving into this spiritual world. And so we see how this Olaf Åsteson essentially experiences what we in turn draw out of the spiritual world. For whether we speak of Brooksvalin, or of Kamaloka or the soul world and the spiritual world, or whether we use different images than those used in the saga of Olaf Åsteson—that is not what matters. What matters is that we realize that humanity, in its soul development, originated from an original, primitive clairvoyance, from a connection with the spiritual world; but that this had to be lost so that humanity could acquire that thinking, that conscious standing within the world through which it must pass, but from which it must now in turn develop a higher vision of the spiritual world. I would like to say that it is the same spiritual world that primitive clairvoyance has left behind, into which developed vision is once again living itself. But human beings have gone through a state through which they live themselves into this spiritual world in a different way.

[ 3 ] It is now important to develop a sense that the transformation of the Earth’s condition over the course of the year is truly linked to an inner spiritual-psychic development of the spiritual-psychic being, which is connected to the Earth in the same way that the human soul is connected to the physical being of the human being. And anyone who regards the Earth as what geologists claim it to be—or as what the other natural sciences, in their materialistic mindset, would like to present it as today—knows as much about the Earth as any person knows about another human being when given a papier-mâché model of that person, without this model being filled with what the soul actually pours into the human being’s outer nature. What external natural science gives us of the Earth is truly nothing more than a papier-mâché impression. And anyone who is unable to realize that there is a spiritual difference between the Earth’s winter and summer states is like someone who sees no difference between waking and sleeping. The great beings of nature, within whom we live, undergo spiritual transformations just as human beings do, who are a microcosmic imprint of the great macrocosm. And this is also the basis for the fact that truly sharing in these experiences—including spiritual participation with nature—has a certain significance. And whoever can develop an awareness that precisely during these thirteen nights something is taking place with the Earth’s soul that one can participate in will have found one of the paths through which one can increasingly immerse oneself in the spiritual worlds.

[ 4 ] The sense of sharing in what is experienced in the great existence of the world has been lost to humanity today. People know little more about the difference between winter and summer than that one must turn on the light earlier in winter than in summer, that it is cold in winter and warm in summer. In earlier times, people truly shared in the life of nature, which was expressed in their stories—albeit in figurative terms—of beings that roam the land as snowflakes fall, and wander through the countryside as the storm rages. In its deepest sense, this is something that today’s materialistic human sensibility no longer understands. In the deepest sense, however, human beings can once again grow into harmony with this if they turn their gaze to what the old legends still tell, especially such profound legends as the Olaf Åsteson saga, which so beautifully illustrates how a simple, primitive human being, in a state of physical unconsciousness, grows into the bright light of spiritual vision. Let us now allow this legend to unfold before our souls—the legend that lived in centuries past, that was lost, and that has been recorded anew from the memories of the people. It is one of the most beautiful legends of the North, because it speaks in a wondrous way of deep world mysteries—insofar as these are world mysteries through which the human soul is connected to the world soul.

[ 5 ] (This was followed by a recitation of: “The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson,” see page 173)

[ 6 ] Since we are able to be together again today, my dear friends, perhaps we may discuss a few things that might be useful to some of you as you take stock of what we have gained over the years in the field of Spiritual Science.

[ 7 ] As we know—and as has also been emphasized in recent public lectures—underlying what is visible to the external senses as the human exterior lies a spiritual core of the human being, which is, so to speak, composed of two parts. We have come to know one of these elements as that which appears before the spiritual eye when this spiritual eye undergoes the experience commonly referred to as “stepping before the gates of death”; the other element of inner life appears before the human soul when the human being becomes aware that there is an inner observer present in all their volitional experiences, an observer who is always there. So that we can say: Human thinking, when we deepen it through meditation, reveals that within the human being, at the very core of his spiritual being, there is always something present that, in relation to the outer physical body, contributes to the breakdown of the human organism—that breakdown which ultimately leads to death. We know from these observations that have been made that the actual power of thinking does not lie in something constructive, but in something that is, in a sense, destructive. Because we are able to die, because we develop our organism in the course of life between birth and death in such a way that it can dissolve, can disperse into the elements of the world, we are able to create the organ through which we develop the noblest flower of physical human existence: thinking. But within human life—this life between birth and death—there exists, like a kind of seed of life for the future, like a seed of life particularly suited to passing through the gate of death, that which develops within the stream of the will and can be observed precisely as the characterized spectator.

[ 8 ] As I have said, it must be repeated again and again that what spiritual vision brings before the human soul is not something that develops only through spiritual vision, but rather something that is always present, always there, and which people—especially in our present age—are simply not supposed to see; one might even say: are not supposed to see. For the development of spiritual life has, particularly in recent decades, advanced to such an extent that} whoever truly surrenders to what is today, in the materialistic age, called “spiritual life,” spreads a veil over precisely that which lives within the human being. The concepts and ideas most developed in our present age are precisely those that most strongly conceal what is spiritually present within the human being. We may, in order to strengthen ourselves in the right way for our particular task—insofar as we stand within Spiritual Science—point out, especially at this significant time of year, the particularly dark side of today’s spiritual life, which must indeed exist, just as darkness must exist in the external natural world, but which one must perceive, and whose existence one must bring to consciousness. We are, in a sense, living through a dark cultural era with regard to spiritual life. We do not necessarily need to keep drawing attention to this, for we certainly know how to appreciate the great achievements of which humanity in this dark age is so proud; but when it comes to spiritual matters, the fact remains that the concepts and ideas created in our time obscure most of all—precisely for those who immerse themselves most eagerly in these concepts—that which lives in the human soul. And so the following may also be mentioned:

[ 9 ] Our age takes particular pride in its clear thinking, which it claims to have acquired through rigorous scientific training. Our age, I say, takes particular pride in this. However, it is not so proud that this would lead, for example, to everyone wanting to think a great deal. No, that is not the result; rather, the result is that people say: Well, in our age, one has to think a great deal if one wants to know anything about the spiritual world. Thinking about it oneself, however, is difficult. But the theologians—they do that; they think about it! So, since our age is a very advanced one, which is indeed elevated above the dark age of belief in authority, one must listen to those who can think about spiritual matters—the theologians. And our age is advanced with regard to concepts of justice, the concepts of what is right and wrong, what is good and evil. Our age is the age of thought. But the fact that this mental image has moved so far beyond blind faith in authority has not led everyone to want to engage in deeper reflection on right and wrong; rather, it is the lawyers who think about these matters. And since we have already moved beyond the age of belief in authority, we must leave it to enlightened lawyers to think about what is good and evil, what is right and wrong. And with regard to physical conditions, to physical cures: Since one really does not know what might be beneficial or harmful in this age, which wants to be so free from belief in authority, one goes to the doctors. This could be applied to all fields. Our age does not have many inclinations, after all, to despair like Faust, for example, in the manner of:

Alas, I have now studied
law and medicine,
and, alas, theology as well!
I have studied them all with great effort.
And here I stand, poor fool that I am!
And I am just as wise as I was before...

[ 10 ] It follows from this only that it actually wants to know nothing about what led Faust astray, but all the more wants to know what others know clearly in the most diverse fields, where decisions are made about human welfare and misfortune.

[ 11 ] Our age takes such immense pride in our thinking—so much pride, in fact, that those who have managed, let’s say, to read even a single philosophical text in their lives—well, I won’t go so far as to say they’ve read Kant, but perhaps some excerpt from Kant—are well aware that anyone who asserts anything about the spiritual worlds in the spirit of Spiritual Science is sinning against the irrevocably established tenets of Kantianism. After all, it is often said that the entire nineteenth century was devoted to developing this human thinking, to examining this human thinking in a critical manner. And many today call themselves “critical thinkers” who have heard only a little about these things. For example, there are people today who say that human beings have limits to their knowledge because they perceive the external world through their senses; but the senses can only provide what they themselves produce, so human beings perceive the world as it acts upon their senses and therefore cannot get behind the things of the world, for they can never transcend the limits of their senses: human beings can obtain only images of reality! And many say, precisely from the depths of their philosophy, that the human soul possesses only images of the world, and therefore can never in any way reach the “thing-in-itself”; what we receive through our senses—through our eyes, ears, and so on—can only be compared to mirror images. — Certainly, when there is a mirror and it produces images—the image of a person, the image of a second person—and we look at these images, we have a world of images. Now the philosophers come along and say: Just as the person who does not look directly at a second person but at the mirror image has a world of images—since they do not look at the “thing-in-itself” of human beings but at the images—so, in fact, we have only images of the entire external world. As the rays of light and color enter our eyes, the sound waves enter our ears: images, all images! — This is what the critical age has revealed: that human beings form only images in their souls and therefore can never reach the “thing-in-itself” through these images. Infinite acumen—and I say this in all seriousness—was brought to bear by philosophers in the nineteenth century to prove that human beings have only images and cannot reach the “thing-in-itself.” Where, then, does this critical resignation actually stem from, this insistence that it leads to what are called “limits of knowledge,” when one thus reveals the pictorial nature of our perception? This stems from the fact that, in many respects, the thinking of our time, in our Enlightened age, has become a neglected form of thinking, a short-sighted form of thinking, a form of thinking that imposes a concept upon itself in the most pedantic manner and cannot go beyond this concept, holding this concept up before itself like a wooden puppet, and can no longer find what this wooden puppet does not provide. It is, one might say, almost unbelievable how much thinking in our time has hardened, has become wooden.

[ 12 ] I would like to explain the whole story of the pictorial nature of our worldview and what so-called critical thinking—advanced thinking—has done, using the analogy of a mirror image. For it is quite correct, as people assume, that the world, as human beings experience it here in their thinking existence, exists only insofar as it makes an impression on them, creating images in their souls, and it is good that humanity has come to this realization through critical philosophy, through Kantianism. We can therefore certainly say: The images we have of the external world are such that we can compare them to mirror images: There is a mirror, two people stand before it, but we do not look at the people, rather at the images. Thus we have images of the world through what our soul creates as images of the world; we have images that we compare to two people whose mirror images we are looking at. But only someone who had never seen people, only images, would be able to philosophize: “I know nothing of people, but only the dead mirror images.” Yet this is how the critical philosophers conclude. They stop there. They would immediately find themselves refuted within themselves if they could move just a little further from their jumping jack of thought, from dead thinking into living thinking. For if I stand before the mirror, and there are two people inside the mirror, and I see that one person is landing a solid slap on the other, so that the other is even bleeding, then I would be a fool if I said: One reflection has struck the other. — There I no longer see merely the reflection, but through the image I see real events. I have nothing but the image, but I see a highly real event through the reflection. And I would be a fool if I believed that this had taken place only in the reflection. That is to say, critical philosophy grasps the one idea: we are dealing with images—but no longer the other idea, that these images express something, that something lives within them. And when one grasps these images in a living way, then this yields more than the images; then it points to what the “thing-in-itself” is, what the real external world is.

[ 13 ] Can one still say that people are capable of thinking, given such a “critical” philosophy? Thinking, to a certain extent, has fallen into disrepair in our time. It has truly fallen into disrepair. But we have come to a standstill at the stage of the criticism of thinking. I have often mentioned that this criticism, this critical philosophy, has even advanced in our culture, and that a man in earnest pursuit—they are all “honorable men,” and their pursuit is certainly earnest—has arrived at a “critique of language”: Fritz Mauthner has written a “Critique of Language,” three thick volumes, and a philosophical dictionary from this standpoint, which comprises two even thicker volumes. And a whole journalistic herd is following in the wake of the journalist Fritz Mauthner and naturally regards this as a great work. And in our time, when belief in authority “has no significance,” very many who hold precisely that partisan viewpoint—such as the newspapers for which Fritz Mauthner was a journalist—consider it a significant work; for “there is, after all, no belief in authority today.”

[ 14 ] Well, you see, Mauthner goes on to explain that humans form nouns and adjectives, but these do not signify anything real. In the external world, one does not experience what the words mean. One becomes so immersed in the words that one actually has no thoughts or mental images of one’s own, but only words, words, words. — Human beings find themselves within language; language provides the vocabulary. And because they are accustomed to adhering to language, human beings arrive only at the signs of things that are given in the words. — This is supposed to be something quite significant. And if one reads through the three volumes by Mauthner—if you have ever done something for which your soul reproaches you, my dear friends, then it is a good punishment for you to condemn yourselves to reading at least half of these volumes—then one finds that their author is convinced of this to the highest degree—indeed, one cannot put it any other way—that he is smarter than the smartest other people of the age. After all, the one who is currently sitting at his book is always smarter than the others, of course!

[ 15 ] This is how Fritz Mauthner finally realized that humans always have only signs. He even went further. You see, he came to say the following: Humans have eyes, ears, a sense of touch—well, humans simply have a number of senses. Yes, but humans could, for example, according to Fritz Mauthner, have not only eyes and ears and a sense of feeling and a sense of smell, but also entirely different senses. They could, for example, have a sense other than sight. Then, just as they perceive images through their eyes, they would perceive the world quite differently with their other senses. So there would be many things that do not exist for humans today. And now the critical thinker even feels a little mystically inspired and says: The immeasurable richness of the world is thus given to us only through our senses. And he calls these senses “accidental senses,” because he believes it is a historical coincidence that we happen to have precisely these senses. If we had other senses, the world would look different. So it is best to say that we have random senses. Thus, a random world! But the world is immeasurable. — It sounds beautiful! One of those who follow Fritz Mauthner has written a pamphlet: “Skepticism and Mysticism.” This pamphlet draws particular attention to how one may even become a mystic from the depths of one’s soul if one no longer believes in what the random senses can provide. There we find a beautiful sentence; on page 12 of the book, it says:

[ 16 ] “The world flows toward us; with the few meager openings of our random senses, we take in what we can grasp and attach it to our old vocabulary, since we have nothing else with which to hold it. But the world continues to flow, and our language continues to flow as well, only not in the same direction, but according to the vagaries of linguistic history, for which no laws can be established.”

[ 17 ] A worldview, too! What does it want? It says: The world is immeasurable, but we have so many random senses through which the world pours in. What do we do with what flows in? What do we do with it, according to this gentleman’s talk of chance? We recall what these gentlemen call memory, attach it, affix it to the words we have received through language, and language, for its part, flows on again. So we speak of that which is contained in the word-signs, which has flowed into us through the random senses from the immeasurable existence of the world. — A subtle way of thinking! I say this again in all seriousness, my dear friends: it is a subtle way of thinking. One must, after all, be a clever person in our time to think such a thing. And one can certainly say of these people that not only are they honest people—they are all honorable—but also: they are significant thinkers. But they are entangled in the thinking that is the thinking of our age, and they have no will to break free from this thinking.

[ 18 ] I’ve developed a sort of “Christmas melancholy” — you can’t really call it joy; it has turned into a kind of Christmas melancholy — by having to look at some of these things again from this perspective, and I’ve jotted down a thought that is shaped exactly according to the model of that thinker who described what I just read aloud. Let’s take another look at it:

[ 19 ] “The world flows toward us; with the few meager openings of our random senses, we take in what we can grasp and attach it to our old vocabulary, since we have nothing else with which to hold it. But the world keeps flowing, and our language keeps flowing too, just not in the same direction, but according to the vagaries of linguistic history, for which no laws can be established.”

[ 20 ] I applied the idea to a different subject—exactly the same idea, the same form of thought—and this is what emerged: “Goethe’s genius flows onto the paper; with the few meager forms of its random letters, the paper absorbs what it can hold and allows itself to be imprinted with what it can take in from the old stock of letters, since there is nothing else there by which anything can be imprinted upon it. But Goethe’s genius also flows on, and the written expression on the paper flows on as well, only not in the same direction, but according to the random ways in which letters can group together, for which no laws can be established.” — It is exactly the same thought; I paid close attention to every word—it is the same thought! If someone claims: The immeasurable world flows toward us; we take it in with our few random senses as best we can, attaching it to our vocabulary; the world keeps flowing, language flows in a different direction, according to the vagaries of linguistic history, and thus human cognition flows away—this is precisely the same idea as when someone says: Goethe’s genius flows through the 23 random letters, because that is the only way the paper can capture the thing; but Goethe’s genius is never really in there; it is immeasurable! The random letters cannot contain it; they keep flowing. What is there on the paper also keeps flowing and now groups itself according to the formations in which the letters can group themselves, and whose laws cannot be discerned. — Now, when these very clever gentlemen conclude from such premises: So what we bring into the world is precisely the result of random processes, and one cannot arrive at what actually underlies the world at its very core, then this is exactly like someone pondering how a human being could ever grasp what actually lived within Goethe’s genius. For it is clear: There is nothing of this genius left but the grouping of 23 random letters; there is nothing else! These gentlemen have exactly the same thought; they just do not realize it. And as much value as it has when someone says: Nothing, nothing, nothing can a human being ever know of Goethe’s genius, for do you not see that nothing of it can flow to you? You can have nothing other than what the various groupings of 23 random characters provide—as much sense as that would have, so much sense does the talk these gentlemen engage in about the possibility or impossibility of knowing the world. This entire line of thought makes just as much sense—not the thinking of the fools, but the thinking of those who are truly the intelligent people of today, who simply do not want to step outside the thinking of our age.

[ 21 ] But there is truly another side to this matter. We must be clear about this: this way of thinking, which confronts us in such an example where it identifies the limits of knowledge, is our way of thinking in the present age. This way of thinking prevails today; it is everywhere. And whether you read this or that seemingly profound philosophical book today—which often seeks to solve—or obscure—the great mysteries of the world—or whether you read the newspaper, this way of thinking reigns everywhere. The nature of this thinking reigns. It also rules the world. People today sip it in with their morning coffee—not exactly today, though, because opinions aren’t allowed in the newspapers today, but otherwise, when opinions are allowed in the newspapers. They sip it in; after all, more and more daily newspapers are appearing that contain opinions. But this way of thinking also lives in the very fabric of our social coexistence. I have tried to elucidate this way of thinking through the development of philosophy, but one could elucidate it in the thoughts people form about all manner of life circumstances: this way of thinking lives today in everything people reflect upon. And the fact that it lives is the reason why people cannot develop the will to truly perceive what, for example, Spiritual Science seeks to offer. For it is not incomprehensible to a way of thinking that is true thinking. But of course, what Spiritual Science has to offer must always remain incomprehensible to people who are, so to speak, cut from the same cloth as Fritz Mauthner. Yet the majority of people today are cut from precisely this cloth. This way of thinking is truly and completely embedded in our contemporary science. This says nothing against the significance and the great achievements of this science; but that is not the point. What matters is how the soul lives in our time, in our entire culture. Our time is completely lacking the ability to be flexible with its thoughts, to truly follow that which one must follow if these thoughts are to grasp what Spiritual Science has to communicate.

[ 22 ] But now we might ask ourselves: How is it possible, for example, that a book like the one I have here before me—*Skepticism and Mysticism* by Gustav Landauer—could be written, a book that is simply dripping with self-satisfaction? One is oneself, I would say, steeped in the whole atmosphere of self-satisfaction that is contained within it after reading it, just as one is steeped in it after reading Mauthner’s “Sprachkritik” or articles from the “Philosophisches Wörterbuch.” How is that possible? One does not learn how it comes about by following the line of thought. I can imagine very intelligent people who pick up such a book, read through it, and say: This is a fundamentally intelligent person! They are right, and Mauthner is also an intelligent person. That is not the reason, for intelligence is expressed precisely by the fact that one forms the concepts one can form in a certain logical way, dissects them, and forms them again in some way. That is not the reason. One can possess great intelligence in this or that field, a perfectly sound intelligence, but when one enters into a life sustained by the consciousness of spiritual knowledge, then with every step a certain relationship to the world develops in such a way that one has the feeling: You must go on and on. With every day you must perfect your concepts. You must develop the conviction that you can always go further with your concepts. With someone who has written such a book, one has the feeling that he is clever in this way: December 21, 1915. I am clever, and through my cleverness I have achieved something very specific. I am now writing this down in a book. What I am now, I am writing into a book, for I am wise on December 21, 1915! The book will then be finished and will reflect my cleverness! — One never has this feeling if one is truly a person of insight. Rather, one has the feeling of a continuous becoming, of a continuous necessity to purify all concepts, to develop them further. And as a rule, one does not then have the feeling: On December 21, 1915, I was wise; now I am writing a book inspired by my wisdom; it will be finished in months or years — but once you have written a book, you truly do not look back on the wisdom you had when you began writing the book; rather, through the book you have gained the feeling: How little have you actually accomplished in this matter, and how necessary it is for you, precisely through what you have written down there, to continue developing yourself. This setting out on the path of knowledge, this constant inner work—the materialistic age hardly knows it anymore; it often believes it knows it, but it no longer truly knows it. And, you see, the deepest reason is the one that can be put into words: these people are so uncontrollably vain. I said: such a book is dripping, it is actually dripping with vanity. The book is clever, but immensely vain. That self-effacement, that humility which arises from such a path of knowledge, as just explained, is entirely absent here. It is not there at all when one unconditionally attributes cleverness to oneself on December 21, 1915. That humility cannot be there.

[ 23 ] Now you might say: Yes, people would be foolish if they thought they were smart. — They don’t do that in their conscious mind, but they do it in their subconscious. They simply never learn to distinguish between what comes alive as truth in the subconscious and what they delude themselves into believing in the conscious mind. And so it is the Luciferic nature of the human being that actually drives today’s humanity to want to be clever, to stand on a certain level of cleverness, and from there to be able to survey all things, to be able to judge all things, as it were. But when one carries this Lucifer within, then by surveying the outer world with this Lucifer, one is led to Ahriman and sees this outer world, quite naturally for our age, as materialistic. Then, when one begins to view the world with Lucifer within, one encounters Ahriman when looking at it. For the two seek each other in humanity’s engagement with this world. Hence, such thinking, which is so fundamentally vain, does not even come to consider the following: When I use a word, one naturally has only a sign for that which the word signifies. — Mauthner made the grandiose discovery that nouns do not exist. There are none! They are not reality, of course not! Isn’t it true that we grasp certain phenomena that we think of as frozen for a moment, and name them with a noun. Certainly, nouns are not reality; neither are adjectives. Of course not. All of that is true. But when I now combine a noun and an adjective, when I set language in motion, then it expresses reality, realities. Then the image, within the nature of the image—in that it is precisely an image—transcends itself. Individual words are not reality, but we do not speak in individual words; rather, we speak in contexts of words. And in them we have an immediate standing within reality. Three volumes had to be written today, and a two-volume dictionary on top of that, to present all these things to people with thoughts of infinite cleverness, which simply overlook the fact that, because individual words are only signs, the connection is not merely something denoting, but stands within reality. Infinite wisdom, infinite cleverness is mustered today to “prove” the greatest follies, as they say.

[ 24 ] The fact that follies ultimately reveal themselves in a critique of language—or even in a critique of thought—would not be particularly bad. But the very same thinking that expresses itself in these follies—in these very clever, very astute follies—is present in all other forms of thinking that contemporary humanity possesses. And if we wish to take up the task inherent in our spiritual movement, it truly involves becoming aware that those who wish to be spiritual scientists must come to see their age in the right way, truly to face their age in the right way. So that, I would say, part of the practical aspect of our Spiritual Science worldview is that we try to move beyond the kind of thinking we have seen today, not to go along with it, but to approach thinking in a different way. We will come to an understanding of Spiritual Science with the greatest of ease, my dear friends, if we only clear away those obstacles that have entered into the spiritual cultural life of the present through rigid, fossilized thinking. In the face of everything, we should therefore thoroughly eliminate from our own souls that belief in authority which today appears under the guise of freedom from authority. This is part of the practical inner life of our Spiritual Science. And it will become increasingly necessary that there be at least a few individuals who truly see through the reality that can be characterized, as I did today, and not only see through it but take it seriously at every turn in life. That is what matters. One need not display this outwardly, but much will have been accomplished if there are a number of people who, as follows from these discussions, know how to stand firm in their place in life.

[ 25 ] We can see in a particular area just how—I would say—categorically our age demands that we return to a revitalization of thought. Let us just briefly place before our souls something we have often presented to them at length: At the beginning of our era, the being we have often described—the Christ being—passed through the life of a human organism and united with the Earth’s aura. Through this, the Earth—having lost its purpose through the Luciferic temptation—was actually only then given the right purpose for its further development. The event of Golgotha took place. Seers, who were for the most part seers of the old school, recorded this event as evangelists. Paul, in whom the seer nature had dawned in a different way—we have also described this—Paul, who through what is called the Damascus event spiritually beheld the Christ whom he had denied for so long as he had only heard of him on the physical plane, he recorded the Mystery of Golgotha. From these records, a number of people have found the connection of their soul with this Christ event. Through this connection with the Christ event in individual people, Christianity spread. At first it existed underground, so that the image can truly appear before our soul again and again: In ancient Rome, deep underground, Christians—those who had already grasped the Mystery of Golgotha with their souls—held their worship services. Above, what was at the height of the times was taking place, what constituted the very essence of the culture of the age. Several centuries passed. That which took place down in the catacombs, hidden and despised, fills the world. And that which was the essence of the age—the ancient Roman spiritual culture—disappears. Christianity spreads. But the time has now come when people have begun to think, when they have become intelligent, when they have become free from authority. Thinkers have emerged who have examined the Gospels: honest thinkers, intelligent thinkers. They are all “men of integrity.” They have discovered that there are no historical records in the Gospels. They have studied these Gospels for decades with serious critical work. They have concluded that there is no real historical evidence in the Gospels that Jesus Christ ever lived. There is nothing to object to in this critical work. It is diligent. Those who know it are aware of its diligence; those who know it are aware of its intelligence. There is no reason to lightly despise this critical wisdom. But what is actually the case? The case is that people do not see what really matters. Christ Jesus did not want to make it so convenient for people that historians could later come along and prove the existence of Christ on earth as easily as one proves the existence of Frederick the Great. Christ did not want to make it that easy for people—nor was he meant to. As true as it is that this critical work on the Gospels is intelligent and diligent, it is equally true that the existence of Christ is not to be proven in this way at all, for that would be a materialistic proof. In everything that is proven in an external way, Ahriman is involved. But Ahriman must never be involved in the proof of Christ; therefore, there are no historical proofs. Therefore, humanity will have to recognize: Christ, even though he lived on Earth, must be found through inner knowledge, not through historical documents. The Christ event must come to humanity in a spiritual way; nothing from materialistic truth-seeking must interfere. Nothing materialistic must interfere.

[ 26 ] The most important event in the development of the Earth will never be able to be proven in a materialistic way, as it were, because world history is meant to tell humanity: Your materialistic proofs—that which you still wish to accept as proof in this materialistic age—apply only to what exists in the realm of matter. You should not and must not have any materialistic proofs for the spiritual. In this regard, even those who pick apart the historical documents may be right. Precisely with regard to the Christ event, it must be understood in our age that one can only reach Christ in a spiritual way. One will never actually find him in an external way. One can be told that he exists, but one can truly find Christ only in a spiritual way. It is important to bear in mind that within the Christ event there is an event about which all those who refuse to allow spiritual insight must live in misunderstanding.

[ 27 ] It is strange: When one says what I have just said—that Christ can be known in a spiritual way, and that even what is historical can be known in a spiritual way—certain people rack their brains over it, thinking that this is actually not possible at all, and that if someone says it, it cannot be true! —I have said this repeatedly. Well, our esteemed anthroposophical members are still such that they let certain things slip out here and there in inappropriate places, because they still do not carry this in their hearts and do not pour what they have in their hearts into the right attitude. It reached a man to whom it was conveyed in a particular way that I had once said—this is admittedly a personal remark, but perhaps a personal remark may be made once in a while—: Personally, I did not start from the Bible at all with regard to my development in youth, but rather I started from the natural sciences, and I consider it of particular importance that I took this line of thought and was actually convinced of the inner truth of what is written in the Bible before I had read it; that I was clear about this when I then read the Bible externally, that I had thus tested within myself that one can find the content of the Bible in a spiritual way before finding it subsequently in an external way.

[ 28 ] This is a personal matter, but it may serve as an illustration. Well, this came across in an inappropriate way to a man who cannot understand that such a thing exists, for he is, forgive me, a theologian. He could not understand it. So he wanted to explain the matter to his audience in a lecture, and he did so in the following way: He read in a book that I had once served as an altar boy. Altar boys are, of course, boys who assist during Mass. So he said to himself: Anyone who has done that cannot possibly have been unfamiliar with the Bible. Steiner simply overlooks the fact that that is exactly where he got to know the Bible. Later on, these things came to him solely from that knowledge of the Bible. — Yes, but there’s a catch to this, one might say a snag. First of all, the whole story isn’t true, but that doesn’t bother people today—they’ll claim something is true even when it isn’t. Second, as an altar server at Mass, one never learns the Bible, but rather the missal; that has nothing to do with the Bible. But the important thing is to take into account: This man cannot even create a mental image of a spiritual relationship. He can only create a mental image of arriving at the spiritual through the letters, and by clinging to letters. It is very important that we know such things, but know them practically. For our spiritual movement will not be able to flourish until we truly—not merely outwardly, but down into the very core of our soul—find the courage to stand up for everything connected with the full meaning and significance of our worldview. And one can say that, with regard to this connection with the spiritual world, a real low point has indeed been reached, especially in our age. Today, it is precisely those people who consider themselves the most enlightened who feel least connected to the spiritual world. This is not meant as a reproach or criticism, but simply as a statement of fact. Therefore, it will be particularly important in our time to revive an inner understanding of such significant world symbols as we encounter in all of this—for they are real symbols, not mere symbols—such as those surrounding the Christmas mystery. For this Christmas mystery can connect deeply, deeply with human nature without being mediated by the letter of the law or by learning. We must, however, be able to bring the Christmas mystery to life in every situation of life, and especially within our own souls.

[ 29 ] We contemplate this by awakening the mystery of Christmas within our souls, and we tell ourselves: Christmas Eve reminds us of the descent of Christ Jesus onto the earthly plane, of the rebirth within humanity of that which was lost through the Luciferic temptation. This rebirth takes place in various stages. One of these stages is the one in which we now find ourselves. What had to be lost for the sake of further development is to be reborn; the human heart’s sense of union with the spiritual world is to be reborn; Christ is to be born within us—that is simply another way of saying it. Precisely what we desire, what we always strive for, is intimately connected with this Christmas mystery. And we should not view this Christmas mystery merely as something where, on one or two days of the year, we set up our Christmas tree and look at it, absorbing all manner of edifying things into ourselves; rather, we should see how it can truly appear to us throughout our entire existence, in everything that surrounds us.

[ 30 ] As a kind of symbol, I would like to conclude by sharing something that a renowned poet, long since deceased, wrote specifically inspired by the spirit of Christmas.

[ 31 ] “Our Church celebrates various feasts that touch the heart. One can hardly imagine anything more lovely than Pentecost, and hardly anything more solemn and holy than Easter. The sadness and melancholy of Holy Week, followed by the solemnity of Sunday, accompany us through life. One of the most beautiful feasts is celebrated by the Church almost in the middle of winter, when the nights are nearly the longest and the days the shortest, when the sun is at its lowest point in our region, and snow covers all the fields: the feast of Christmas. Just as in many countries the day before the Lord’s Nativity is called Christmas Eve, so here it is called Holy Evening, the following day Holy Day, and the night in between Christmas. The Catholic Church observes Christmas Day as the day of the Savior’s birth with its grandest liturgical celebration; in most regions, midnight itself is already sanctified as the hour of the Lord’s birth with a magnificent midnight service, to which the bells summon through the quiet, dark, wintry midnight air, to which the inhabitants hurry with lights or along dark, well-trodden paths from snowy mountains, past frost-covered forests, and through creaking orchards to the church, from which the solemn sounds emanate and which rises from the center of the village, shrouded in frost-covered trees, with its long, illuminated windows.”

[ 32 ] He goes on to describe what Christmas means to children. Then he describes how a cobbler lives in a remote old village, who takes a wife from the neighboring village, not from his own village, and how the children of this cobbler couple come to know Christmas—just as children come to know it: really only because they are told that Saint Nicholas has brought them this or that gift. And when they are tired enough from the gifts, they go to bed on this day especially weary and then do not hear the midnight bells. So the children have not yet heard the midnight bells.

[ 33 ] The children often visit the neighboring village. Once they are old enough to go on their own, they visit their grandmother in the neighboring village. The grandmother is particularly fond of the children; as is often the case, grandparents tend to love their grandchildren even more than their parents do. That is why the grandmother is so happy to have the children with her, especially now that she is too frail to go out. On a Christmas Eve that promises to be a beautiful one, the children are sent to their grandmother’s. The children set off in the morning; they are supposed to return in the afternoon—as is possible in the countryside, traveling from village to village—so that they can find the Christmas tree waiting for them at home that evening. But the day turns out differently than planned. The children are caught in a terrible snowstorm. They wander through the mountains. They stray from the path, ending up in a completely impassable area, in a terrible snowstorm.

[ 34 ] It describes very beautifully what the children are going through; how they find themselves facing a natural phenomenon in the night. It would be best if I read this passage to you, because it’s impossible to retell it as beautifully as it’s described there; every word really matters. The children have just come upon a sheet of ice. They are inside the glacier. Behind them, they hear the glacier cracking in the night. You can imagine what an impression this makes on the children. — The story continues:

[ 35 ] “Something began to take shape for their eyes as well. As the children sat there, a pale light blossomed in the sky before them, right among the stars, and stretched a faint arc across them. It had a greenish glow that gently extended downward. But the arc grew brighter and brighter until the stars before it receded and faded. It also sent a glow into other parts of the sky, which flowed shimmering green, gently and vividly among the stars. Then beams of varying light rose at the height of the arc like the prongs of a crown and burned. It flowed brightly through the neighboring regions of the sky, it sparkled softly and moved in gentle tremors through vast spaces. Had the stormy fabric of the sky now become so taut from the unprecedented snowfall that it poured out in these silent, magnificent streams of light, or was it some other cause of unfathomable nature: little by little it grew weaker and weaker; the beams faded first, until it gradually and imperceptibly diminished, and once again there was nothing in the sky but the thousands upon thousands of simple stars.”

[ 36 ] The children sat there all night long. They heard no sound of bells from below. All around them was snow and ice, and above them, in the mountains, were the stars and the nocturnal apparition—of which they had heard nothing until then. — The night passed. People were worried about the children. The whole village was sent out to look for them. They found the children and brought them home. I will skip over everything else; I will only say that the children were nearly frozen stiff from the cold, that they were put to bed, and that they were told they would receive their Christmas presents. The mother went in to the children. This is how the story goes:

[ 37 ] “The children were dazed by all the commotion. They had been given something to eat, and someone had put them to bed. Late in the evening, after they had recovered a little, and some neighbors and friends had gathered in the parlor to talk about the events, while the mother sat in the bedroom by Sanna’s little bed and stroked her, the girl said: ‘Mother, last night, when we were sitting on the mountain, I saw the Holy Christ.’

[ 38 ] It is a beautiful scene. The children had grown up without any instruction about Christmas; they had to spend Christmas Eve in such a terrible situation, high up in the mountains, in snow and ice, with only the stars above them and this natural phenomenon. They are found, brought home, and the girl says: “Mother, I saw the Holy Christ tonight!” — Saw! Saw! She saw him! — that is what she says.

[ 39 ] There is indeed a profound meaning in the statement—which we have often emphasized in the context of our Spiritual Science—that we can find Christ not only where we find him in the course of Earth’s history, historically situated at the beginning of our calendar, where the religious tradition reveals him to us, but that we can find him everywhere, especially when we are confronted with the world in the most serious moments of life! We can indeed find Christ. And we, too—I would say, we students of spiritual science can find him, if only we are sufficiently convinced that all our striving must be directed toward the rebirth of the spiritual in human development, and that this spiritual, which must be born through the special activity of human souls and hearts, must be based on what has been born into Earth’s development through the fulfillment of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is something we wish to take to heart at this time. If you, my dear friends, can find a true inner sense of the unfolding and weaving of outer earthly existence—in its likeness to human sleeping and waking—during the days we have spoken of today and which are now approaching, and if you can experience a deeper empathy with outer events, then you will increasingly feel the truth of the words: “Christ is here.” As he himself said: “I will remain with you until the end of the age!”

[ 40 ] And it can always be found, if only one looks for it. That should be the thought that strengthens us, that gives us strength, especially during this Christmas season that we hold dear. Let us take this thought to heart and try, with this thought, to find what we must indeed regard as the true substance, the true depth of our endeavor in Spiritual Science. Let us use our time for this, especially a soul thus strengthened, to face this season in the right sense, as we now wish to do once more, by turning from the general contemplation we have undertaken of the spiritual world—strengthening our souls with the feeling that can arise from this contemplation—and now looking toward the spirits of those who stand in the great fields of events:

Spirits of your souls, active 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 forth in aid,
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 41 ] And for those who have already passed through the gates of death:

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 forth in aid,
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 42 ] And may the Spirit whom we have sought to remember during these days, the Spirit whose nature we wish to incorporate into our own being with humility and devotion, the Spirit who shows us how he chose his earthly existence through the Christmas festival, the Spirit who then passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, be with you and your heavy duties.