The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Unity Through Christ in Us

[ 1 ] We have gathered here today, my dear friends, first and foremost to celebrate the establishment of the branch founded by our dear friend Professor Craemer, which, in the spirit of our Spiritual Science movement, seeks to dedicate its energies to the spiritual life of the present and the future. On such an occasion, it is always good to reflect on the true purpose of our association in its various branches, to ask ourselves: Why do we come together in working groups, and why do we cultivate within such groups the spiritual heritage to which we wish to dedicate our abilities? If we wish to answer this question correctly, we must be clear that we still separate the work we do here, in a certain sense—even if only in thought—from the way we organize ourselves with regard to our other work.

[ 2 ] Anyone living today who is not particularly interested in familiarizing themselves with certain more intimate truths regarding humanity’s spiritual progress might ask: Couldn’t you, even without forming separate, closed groups, simply practice this Spiritual Science by having speakers from these groups bring together people who don’t know each other particularly well in a completely free manner, summoning them to allow the spiritual substance you speak of to reach their souls? — Of course, we could proceed in this way as well. But as long as it is possible for us in any way to establish connections—in the broader and narrower sense—among people who know one another, who unite in these working groups in a most friendly and brotherly manner, we wish to do so out of a full awareness of our convictions in Spiritual Science. For it is not without reason that people come together among us to nurture the more intimate part of our spiritual heritage, people who earnestly pledge to be together in brotherly love and harmony. Not only does it have a certain significance for the way we relate to one another, for how we interact, that we can speak in a completely different way when we know we are speaking to kindred souls, consciously connected to us—not only is this the case, but there is something else as well. In fact, through such unity within the individual branches, we are accomplishing something that is intimately connected with the entire conception we must have of our spiritual movement if we are to understand it in our deepest being. Our spiritual movement must, after all, permeate us all with the awareness that it has significance not only for the existence that the senses can grasp, and for the existence that the human mind, directed toward the external world, can grasp; our spiritual movement must be clear that through it our souls seek a genuine and true connection with the spiritual worlds. We must, as it were, consciously tell ourselves again and again: By engaging in Spiritual Science, we in a certain sense place our souls into those worlds which are inhabited not only by earthly beings, but which are inhabited as their place of existence by the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the invisible worlds. That we are, so to speak, within them, and that our work has significance for these invisible worlds, that we are truly within these invisible worlds—this is what must come to our full consciousness in our work. Now it is indeed the case that within the spiritual world, the spiritual work we perform by working together in individual working groups, knowing one another, has a completely different significance than if we were to perform such work not within such working groups, but outside of them, scattered throughout the world. Thus, the work we perform together within our groups in brotherly harmony has a completely different significance for the spiritual worlds than work we might otherwise perform. To understand this in its fullest sense, we must recall significant insights that have come to meet our souls in manifold ways during our work in Spiritual Science of recent years.

[ 3 ] Let us recall that the development of our Earth, as it pertains to us humans, unfolded in such a way that, in the post-Atlantean era, this development was initially carried forward by the cultural community we refer to as the ancient Indian cultural period. This cultural period was then continued by what we call—using a more or less fitting term, though that is not the point here—the Proto-Persian cultural period. Then came the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian cultural period, followed by the Greek-Latin period, and then our fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. Each such cultural epoch must, on the one hand, particularly nurture that aspect of culture and spiritual life which is initially assigned to it for the outer, visible world. But each such cultural epoch must at the same time prepare—carrying within its bosom, as it were—that which is to come in the next succeeding cultural epoch.

[ 4 ] The first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the ancient Indian one, had to prepare within itself the primordial Persian epoch; the primordial Persian epoch, in turn, the Egyptian-Chaldean one, and so on. And our fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch must prepare the sixth cultural epoch of the coming age. It has often been said that our task in Spiritual Science is, through what we acquire—not only, as is quite right but not the only thing, to gain spiritual wealth for our individual souls—which is allotted to us for the eternal life of our soul— but it is also our task to prepare what the sixth cultural epoch is then to have as its content, as its particular external work. This was the case in each of the individual post-Atlantean cultural epochs. And those places where what was significant in the external world for the next cultural epoch was always prepared—these were the mystery schools. These were those communities of people in which something different was cultivated than what the external world cultivates.

[ 5 ] Now you also know that during the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the ancient Indian cultural epoch, the primary focus was on nurturing the human etheric body through this ancient Indian culture; during the pre-Persian epoch, the astral body; through the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch, the feeling soul; and through the Greek-Latin epoch, the intellectual or emotional soul. Our cultural epoch nurtures and will bring to full development, until its end, what is called the soul of consciousness. But what must be prepared is that which will then, in the sixth cultural epoch, so to speak, constitute the content and character of external culture. Oh, this sixth cultural epoch—it will bear within itself various traits, various characteristics that differ greatly from the characteristics of our time. Above all, we can highlight three characteristics, of which we must know that we must already carry them in our hearts as our ideals for the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, that we must prepare them for this sixth cultural epoch.

[ 6 ] There is currently something missing in human society that will be present in the sixth cultural epoch among those people who will be regarded as having attained the goal of the sixth cultural epoch—those who have not fallen short of this goal; that is, not among those who, in the sixth cultural epoch, are savages or barbarians. Among these inhabitants of the Earth in the sixth cultural epoch—that is, among those who will then be at the height of civilization—one of the most important traits will be, in a sense, a moral trait. At present, little of this trait is yet discernible within humanity. People today must already be more finely attuned for it to cause them pain in their souls to have to look upon, observe, and see other people in the world—besides their own existence—who are faring worse than they are. Certainly, more finely attuned individuals already feel sorrow today over the suffering that has been poured out upon many people in the world—but they must indeed be more finely attuned individuals. In the sixth cultural epoch, those human beings who will stand fully at the height of this culture will not only possess that feeling which we today experience as pain in the face of the misery, suffering, and poverty that are widespread in the world, but the human being will then, at the height of the culture of the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, feel every other person’s suffering as his own. When they see a starving person, they will feel that hunger so vividly—right down to the physical level—that the other person’s hunger will be unbearable to them. What is indicated here—that in the sixth cultural epoch things will no longer be as they were in the fifth, but rather that in the sixth cultural epoch the well-being of the individual will depend entirely on the well-being of the whole—is a moral trait. Just as now the well-being of a single human limb depends on the health of the whole body, and if the whole person is not healthy, the individual limb does not feel inclined to do this or that— so in the sixth cultural epoch a sense of community will take hold of the then-civilized, the then-cultivated humanity, and the individual will, to a much greater degree, as a limb of the whole, share in the suffering, the entire distress, the entire poverty, or the wealth. This is the first, primarily moral trait that will characterize the civilized humanity of the sixth cultural epoch.

[ 7 ] A second fundamental feature will be that everything we today call the tenets of faith will depend to a much, much greater extent on the individuality of each person than is the case today. Spiritual Science expresses this by saying that in every religious sphere during the sixth cultural epoch, complete freedom of thought and a longing for freedom of thought will take hold of people, so that everything a person wishes to believe—that is, everything a person wishes to be convinced of, particularly in a religious context—will be placed within the power of their individuality. The religious context as it still exists in so many places today—the religious context that prevails in the most diverse ways among individual human communities—will no longer prevail among that part of humanity in the sixth cultural epoch that will then be the civilized one. Everyone will perceive as a necessary characteristic of humanity that complete freedom of thought prevails in the religious sphere.

[ 8 ] And the third will be that, in the sixth cultural epoch, people will believe they possess knowledge only when they perceive the spiritual, when they realize that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must connect with the spiritual. What is called science today, and what bears a materialistic tinge as science, will no longer be called science at all in the sixth cultural epoch. It will be regarded as an old superstition that can be characteristic only of those people who have remained behind at the level of the fifth, then-surpassed post-Atlantean cultural epoch. Today we regard it as an old superstition, for example, when the Negro believes that no part of his body may be separated from his body after his death, because then he cannot enter the spiritual world as a whole human being. Even today, the Negro still links the idea of immortality with pure materialism—namely, with the belief that some imprint of his entire form must enter the spiritual world. Just as he, in essence, thinks materialistically yet believes in immortality, whereas we today—knowing from our Spiritual Science that we must separate the spiritual from the body and that only the spiritual enters the supersensible world—must regard that materialistic belief in immortality as superstition, so all materialistic belief, even in science, will be regarded as old superstition in the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. And as science, only that which, as Spiritual Science says, is based on the spiritual—pneumatology—will naturally be accepted by people.

[ 9 ] As you can see, our Spiritual Science is entirely dedicated to preparing the things just mentioned for the sixth cultural epoch. We strive to cultivate Spiritual Science in order to overcome materialism and to prepare what must exist in science during the sixth cultural epoch. We establish human communities in which nothing at all may prevail that stems from any belief in authority, from acceptance of a doctrine simply because it is delivered by one personality or another. We establish human communities in which everything, absolutely everything, must be built upon the soul’s free assent to the teachings. In this way, we prepare what Spiritual Science calls freedom of thought. And by joining together, by uniting in brotherly associations to pursue our Spiritual Science, we are preparing what is to permeate the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch as culture and civilization.

[ 10 ] But we must look even deeper into the course of human development if we are to fully understand what our fraternal associations are really all about. In the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, even within communities that at that time had a mystical character, people cultivated what would later prevail in the second cultural epoch. That is to say, even within the special associations of the first post-Atlantean, the primordial Indian cultural epoch, people cultivated what would later prevail as the cultivation of the astral body. It would take us far too far afield to describe today what was cultivated in these special associations of ancient India—in contrast to what constituted the external ancient Indian culture—in order to prepare for the primordial Persian cultural epoch. But this much should be said: when these people of the ancient Indian cultural period united to prepare what needed to be prepared for the second cultural period, they felt: This has not yet been attained; what will be with us when our souls are reincarnated in the next cultural epoch is not yet here. It still hovers, as it were, above us. — And so it is. In this first cultural epoch, what was to descend, one might say, from heaven to earth only in the second epoch still hovered above the souls. And the work was arranged in such a way that the spirits of the higher hierarchies, through the work that human beings on Earth performed in close-knit associations, in mystery societies, had forces flowing upward through which they could nurture that which was then to flow down into the souls of human beings as the content of the astral body in the second, the ancient Persian cultural epoch. One might say that these forces were still present as small children, which then, having grown somewhat, descended into the souls incarnated in ancient Persian bodies. Up in the spiritual world, they received the forces from human labor that flowed upward from below, preparing the next cultural period, and through these forces were nurtured those forces that were then to flow down. And so it must be in every subsequent cultural period.

[ 11 ] In our cultural epoch, we must come to realize that what has developed within us through ordinary civilization and ordinary culture must be the conscious soul; that must be what began in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, when science and external materialistic consciousness began to take hold of people, what will continue to spread ever further, and what will have developed fully by the end of the fifth cultural epoch. But that which must take hold of the sixth cultural epoch must be the Spirit-Self. The Spirit-Self must then be developed within the souls themselves, just as the consciousness soul is now being developed. But this is the peculiarity of the Spirit-Self: it presupposes these three characteristics, of which I have spoken, in human souls, as Spiritual Science states: fraternal social coexistence, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. A human community within which the Spirit-Self is developed in the same way that the consciousness soul is developed in our souls during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch through external culture requires precisely these characteristics. Therefore, we may form a mental image of what hovers invisibly above our work, namely that which is like the child of the forces that are the forces of the Spirit-Self, which is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies so that it may then flow down into our souls when they are present again in the sixth cultural period. We perform work in our brotherly working groups that flows upward to the forces being prepared for the Spirit-Self.

[ 12 ] As you can see, it is essentially only through the wisdom of our Spiritual Science that we can understand what we are actually doing in relation to our connection with the higher, spiritual worlds when we come together in such working groups. And the thought that we do this—that we do the work we perform in our working groups not merely for the sake of our own egos, but that we do it so that it may flow upward into the spiritual worlds—the thought of this work in connection with the spiritual worlds gives a working group its proper consecration. And by cherishing such a thought, we imbue ourselves with the consecrating thought that establishes such a working group within our spiritual movement. Therefore, it is of particular importance that we grasp this fact in a truly spiritual way. We come together in working groups which, in addition to pursuing Spiritual Science and pneumatological science, in addition to being founded on freedom of thought and knowing nothing of dogma or compulsion to believe, immerse their work in brotherly cooperation. What matters is that we truly take this idea of community into our consciousness in the right way, that we say to ourselves, as it were: “Apart from the fact that, as present-day souls, we belong to the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch and develop there entirely individually, drawing more and more of our individuality out of community life, we must in turn perceive a higher community—one founded on free, brotherly love—as the magical breath we inhale in our working groups.”

[ 13 ] This is the very essence of Western European culture: that the soul of consciousness must be sought within the fifth post-Atlantean culture. It is the task of Western European culture, and especially of Central European culture, for people to develop more and more an individual culture, an individual consciousness, within their souls. That is what matters in the present. We can compare our cultural period with the Greek and Roman periods. In the Greek cultural period, we see this particularly strikingly: a group-soul character still prevails, a consciousness of group-soul character especially among the civilized Greeks. Anyone who lived in Athens and was born there felt, above all, that they were an Athenian. This community of the city, with all that it entailed, had a different significance for the individual than a human community does today. Today, human beings want to grow out of the community, and that is the true task of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. In Rome, a person was, above all, nothing other than a Roman citizen; that was what he was first and foremost. But the time has come in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch when we want, above all, to be human beings, human beings and nothing but human beings in our innermost being.

[ 14 ] What we are witnessing today with such pain—how people on Earth are pitted against one another—is, after all, merely a reaction to the fifth cultural epoch’s ceaseless striving for the free development of what is universally human. Through the hostile isolation of individual countries and peoples today, the very forces that allow human beings, above all else, to be fully human—the forces that enable them to grow beyond any kind of community—are to be developed all the more in resistance. To this end, however, he must in turn prepare communities built upon full consciousness, into which he will freely enter in the sixth cultural epoch—a community he imposes upon himself entirely of his own volition. Like a lofty ideal, this community hovers before us, one that will so encompass the sixth cultural epoch that civilized human beings will naturally, from the depths of their souls, regard one another as brothers and sisters.

[ 15 ] We now know one thing from the numerous lectures that have been given in recent years: that in Eastern Europe there lives a people who are called upon, in particular, to bring the elemental forces within them to full expression only in the sixth cultural epoch. We know that the Russian people will not be ready until the sixth cultural epoch to bring to expression the forces that are present within them today in an elemental form. Western and Central Europe are called upon to bring into human souls that which can be brought in through the consciousness soul. The East is not called upon to do this. Eastern Europe will have to wait until the Spirit-Self descends to Earth and can permeate human souls. This has often been mentioned; we must understand it in the right sense. If understood in the wrong sense, it can very easily lead to arrogance and haughtiness, especially in the East. The height of post-Atlantean culture is already to be reached in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. What will follow in the sixth and seventh cultural epochs will be a descending development. Nevertheless, this descending cultural development in the sixth cultural epoch will be inspired by, and permeated with, the Spirit-Self. Today, the people of the East—those whom the spirits of the East themselves call “the Russian people”—instinctively sense this, though one might say their instinct is often quite misguided; they feel that this is their condition, yet they are usually only vaguely aware of it. It is already characteristic that the expression “the Russian people” has emerged so frequently. A certain genius prevails in the language when such a concept is drawn from it, and one does not say, as in the West: the Briton, the Frenchman, the Italian, the German, but rather “the Russian man.” And many Russian intellectuals attach great importance to the fact that one always says “the Russian man.” This is deeply rooted in the entire genius of the culture in question. One already means that which extends as humanity, as it were, as brotherhood over a commonality. One intends to imply this by using the very concept of humanity in the expression. But at the same time, one shows that one has not yet reached the full height that one must attain in the distant future, by adding something that is, in essence, glaringly contradictory to the noun. The “Russian” human being: one, as it were, takes back in the adjective what one expresses in the noun. For if humanity is to be attained, it must not have such an adjective, which in turn makes this humanity something exclusive.

[ 16 ] But even deeper still, especially among the members of the Russian intelligentsia, is the conviction that a certain idea of community—an idea of brotherhood—which will be understood in the future, must prevail. In this regard, the Russian soul already senses: The Spirit-Self is destined to descend one day, but it can only descend into a human community that is permeated by brotherhood. It can never spread within a human community that is not permeated by brotherhood. That is why the Russian intellectuals, as they call themselves, level the following accusation against Western Europe and Central Europe. They say: You pay no attention at all to what genuine community life is; you cultivate only individualism. Everyone wants to be their own person; everyone wants to be nothing but an individual. You push the personal—through which every single human being feels themselves as a self, as an individual—to the very highest degree. — This is what resounds from the East in so many accusations regarding barbarism and the like directed at Central and Western Europe. And those who wish to become aware of what is actually at stake say: All of Western and Central Europe has already lost all sense of human connection. And by confusing the present with the future, they say: True human connections, where everyone feels like a brother to the other, where the one who stands above the other feels like their “little father” and “little mother”—true human community life exists only in Russia. — So says the Russian intelligentsia. And they say that this is why Western European Christianity has failed to cultivate a genuine human community. The Russian, they say, still knows what community is. And such an outstanding Russian intellectual as Alexander Herzen, who lived in the 19th century, came to the ultimate conclusion that: Happiness can never arise in Western Europe. No matter what attempts may be made in Western European culture and civilization, happiness will never arise there. Humanity will never be able to find contentment. Only chaos can reign there. The only blessing lies in the Russian spirit, where people have not yet severed themselves from community, where they still possess something akin to a group soul in their village communities, to which they cling.

[ 17 ] What we call the group soul—from which humanity has gradually emerged and in which animal nature still lives on in its entirety—is precisely what Russian intellectuals revere in their people as something particularly great and significant. They cannot rise to the idea that future community should be held up as a high ideal—an ideal that must first be asserted. They cling to the thought: Let us look at what remains to us as the last remnant in Europe! The others have already emerged from group-soul-boundness; we have still preserved it; we must preserve it. — In reality, this group-soul-boundness must not be allowed to exist for the future, for that is the old group-soul-boundness. It would be nothing but a Luciferic group-soul-boundness, a group-soul-boundness that has remained at an earlier stage, whereas the true group-soul-boundness, the one to be striven for, is that which we seek within our Spiritual Science. But it is precisely in the urge and longing of the Russian people, especially the intellectuals, that one can see how the spirit of community is needed for the descent of the Spirit-Self. Just as it is sought there only in the wrong way, so must it be sought in the right way within our Spiritual Science movement. And we would like to call out to the East: It is precisely what you seek to preserve in an external way that we must overcome to the utmost: the old Luciferic-Ahrimanic community. — The community of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic kind will have a compulsion to believe as firm as that which the Catholic Church, which has remained orthodox, had to establish in Russia. This sense of community will not understand what freedom of thought is, and it will be least of all able to rise to complete individuality and yet to social, brotherly coexistence. Therefore, it wishes to preserve what has remained in blood brotherhood, in mere kinship through blood. A community founded not on blood but on the spirit, on the communion of souls—that is what must be strived for through the path of Spiritual Science. And that is what we strive for when we say to ourselves: We must strive for communities in which blood no longer speaks. Of course, blood will continue to exist; it will play out in family contexts—what must remain will not be eradicated, but something new must arise! What is significant in the child will be preserved in the powers of old age, but the human being must acquire something new in later life.

[ 18 ] What the blood brings must not be misinterpreted as though it were to encompass the great human communities of the future. This is the great error that is being played out from the East into today’s bloody events: that a war has been ignited under the banner of a “community of blood” among the Slavic peoples. Everything that has just been discussed plays a role in our fateful times, yet at its core it contains the true essence: the instinctive feeling that the Spirit-Self can only emerge within a brotherly community. But it must not be a community of blood; rather, it must be a community of souls. What then grows as a community of souls—what this is meant to be—we nurture in its infancy within our working groups, within our branches. That which, like Eastern Europe, clings to group-soul identity—for example, by describing the Slavic group soul as something from which it does not wish to break free, but rather regards as the overarching principle for the formation of its entire state—is precisely what must be overcome.

[ 19 ] It stands there like a great symbol, like a monstrous symbol, that the two states from which the war originated cite, on the one hand, a brotherhood of blood as the reason for the war—Russia with all of Slavdom—and the other state, which stands opposed to it, has thirteen official ethnic groups and thirteen official languages. The mobilization order in Austria had to be issued in thirteen languages because thirteen ethnic groups are united in Austria: Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Romanians, Magyars, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes—plus a distinct Slovenian vernacular—Bosnians, Dalmatians, and Italians. Thus, thirteen different tribes, setting aside all minor distinctions, are united in Austria. Whether one recognizes this or not, it shows that this Austria consists of a community of people where commonality can never be based on blood kinship, for what prevails within this peculiar border springs from thirteen different bloodlines. One might say that the most composite state in Europe stands in contrast to the state that strives most for group-spirituality or conformity. |

[ 20 ] But this striving for group soulhood entails many other things as well. And this brings us to another point that we might do well to remember today. Yesterday, in my public lecture, I already mentioned the great philosopher Soloviev as one of the most significant minds in all of Russia. Soloviev is truly an outstanding mind, but a thoroughly Russian one. A mind that is extraordinarily difficult to understand from a Western European perspective. But anthroposophists should get to know him. Those who stand on the ground of Spiritual Science should get to know him; they should be able to rise to a certain understanding of Soloviev. Now I would like to present to your souls what I might call Soloviev’s main and central idea from our intimate perspective. Soloviev is far too much of a philosopher to be able to readily accept the concept of group soulhood for himself. The matter presents difficulties for him, and he finds himself caught up in various contradictions. But he is not entirely consciously dominated by one idea—so dominated that one must say: Ah, if only this Soloviev were fully clairvoyant, so that he could foresee what his soul will only come to understand on Earth when it is incarnated in the sixth cultural epoch!

[ 21 ] The idea, which is quite difficult for Western Europeans to grasp at first glance—and, of course, for Central Europeans as well—became a central and fundamental concept for Soloviev. It is as follows. We in Western Europe, precisely in what we regard as the preparation for the sixth cultural epoch, seek, among many other things, to comprehend death in its significance for life. We try to understand how death is the manifestation of a form of existence, how the soul is transformed in death into another form of existence. We describe how man lives in his body, and what kind of life he leads between death and new birth. We seek to understand death. We seek to overcome death by understanding it, by showing that it is only an illusion, that the soul in truth lives as it passes through death. But this is one of our main concerns: that we seek to overcome death through understanding.

[ 22 ] Here, however, we find ourselves at one of the key points—indeed, one of the most crucial points—where Spiritual Science endeavor differs entirely from the idea held by Soloviev, the great Russian thinker: There is evil in the world; there is wickedness in the world. Evil in the world—these evils are there. If we look at these evils with our senses, we cannot deny that the world is full of evil. This, says Soloviev, argues against the world being divine. For how can one, when looking at the world with one’s senses, believe in a divine world, since a divine world cannot possibly embody evil! But the senses see it everywhere, this evil, and the worst evil is death. Because death is in the world, the world reveals itself in all its wickedness, in all its evil. The original evil is death.

[ 23 ] This is Soloviev’s characterization of the world. He says—and I am quoting almost verbatim—: Just look at the world with your bare senses! Just try to comprehend the world with your bare intellect. You can never deny the evils in the world. And to try to understand death would be absurd! Death is there. It reveals itself. Intellectual knowledge can never recognize death. Therefore, sensory knowledge reveals an evil world, a world of evils. Can we now believe—says Soloviev—that this world is divine, when it shows us that it is full of evil? When it shows us death at every turn? Never can we believe that this world is a divine one that shows us death. For in God there can be no evil, there can be no wickedness, and above all there can be no original evil, no original wickedness. There can be no death in God. So if God were to come into the world—I am repeating almost verbatim what Soloviev says—if God were to come into the world, if he were to appear in the world, could we simply believe him to be God? No, we could not simply believe God to be God! He would first have to prove his legitimacy! If a being were to come and claim to be God, we would not believe him. He would first have to prove his legitimacy. He would first have to present something—so says Soloviev—like a world document, something by which we can recognize: This is God! And we cannot find such a thing in the world. God cannot legitimize Himself through what is in the world, for everything that is in the world contradicts the divine. By what, then, can He legitimize Himself? He can legitimize Himself only by this: that when He comes into the world, He shows that He is the victor over death, that death cannot harm Him. We would never believe that Christ is God if he had not legitimized himself. And he did so by rising from the dead, by showing that the original evil, death, is not in him. — So here we have a consciousness of God that is built solely upon a real, historical resurrection of Christ, which legitimizes God as God. Nothing in the world but the Resurrection allows us to recognize that there is a God. If Christ had not risen—it is mainly this saying of Paul that Soloviev repeatedly cites—then all our faith would be in vain. And in vain would be everything we can say about the Divine in the world.

[ 24 ] Hence Soloviev’s statement: When we look at the world, we see nothing but evil, wickedness, decay, and meaninglessness everywhere. If Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless. So Christ has risen! — Take note of this sentence! For this sentence is a cardinal statement by one of the greatest minds of the East! If Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless. Therefore, Christ has risen! — Soloviev said: There may be people who believe it is illogical for me to say: If Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless; therefore, he has risen! — But this is a far superior logic — Soloviev maintains — than any logic you can hold against me!

[ 25 ] I have shown you, specifically in connection with this peculiar demand for a document proving the divinity of God, as discussed by Soloviev, just how peculiar Eastern thought is; how peculiar the way these thoughts climb upward in an attempt to grasp that very thing through which God directly reveals that He is God. How different it is in the West, how different in Central Europe! To what end do we apply our spiritual scientific endeavors? Try to compare and survey all that we do in Spiritual Science! What is its goal, after all? What are we aiming for? We want to recognize in the world, out of knowledge and insight, so that we can see it, that the world has a meaning, that the world has significance, that there is not merely evil and decay in it. Directly through insight, we want to grasp that the world has a meaning. And we want to prepare ourselves precisely by grasping that the world has a meaning, so that we may experience the Christ-being. We want to grasp the living Christ. We want to receive all of this, however, as a gift, as a grace from Christ. We know that this is what can be given to us according to the saying: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” We want to receive all that which Christ continually promises us. For he speaks not only through the Gospels, but also in our souls. This is what he means by the saying: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He can always be found as the living Christ. Let us live in him, let us receive him into ourselves: “Not I, but Christ in me!” This is our most fundamental Pauline saying: “Not I, but Christ in me!” So that through him we may see: Wherever we go, there is meaning! Faust already wanted to say this when he expressed his entire worldview in the words:

Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
That I asked for. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me the magnificent natural world as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
do you permit me only to be a cold, marveling visitor,
but grant me to gaze into its deep bosom
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
past me and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and crackles in the forest,
The giant spruce, crashing down, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks, strikes down,
And the hill thunders hollowly at their fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Me to myself, and in my own breast
Secret, deep wonders open up.

[ 26 ] To grasp the outer and the inner spiritually, to perceive meaning everywhere, to perceive death itself as meaningful—that it is the passage from one form of life to another! And so, as we seek the living Christ, then—in seeking the living Christ—we also follow him through death and through the Resurrection. We do not proceed from the Resurrection, as the Eastern European does. We follow the Christ from whom we draw inspiration, the Christ whom we take into our imaginations. We follow the Christ even unto death. We follow him not only by saying: Ex deo nascimur — but by saying: In Christo morimur. — We observe the world and know that the world is the document through which God expresses His divinity. In the West, we cannot say—by seeking to experience and grasp the spiritual weaving and working: “We need a document when God enters the world and is to reveal Himself”—but rather we seek God everywhere. In nature and in human souls we seek God.

[ 27 ] Therefore, this fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch also requires what we cultivate in our fraternal branch associations. It requires the conscious cultivation, as it were, of that spiritual aura that still hovers above us, which is nurtured by the spirits of the higher hierarchies and will flow into human souls when they live in the sixth cultural epoch. We do not wish to turn to what is dead, as the East does to group-soul attachment, to the remnants of communal life. We want to nurture the living from childhood onward, and that is the spirit of community in our branches. We do not want to seek what stirs in the blood down below, merely to gather together those in whom something common stirs in the blood, and to nurture that in some community. We want to bring together people who resolve to be brothers and sisters, and who have hovering above them what they wish to nurture by cultivating Spiritual Science and feeling the good spirit of brotherhood hovering above them.

[ 28 ] This is what we take to heart as a guiding principle when one of our branches is first established. It is with this that we dedicate a branch when we found it: unity and vitality! We seek community above all else—the living Christ within us, who needs no document, who does not first have to prove himself through the Resurrection, who is authenticated because we experience him within ourselves. Community above all else, the Christ within us: this is what we make our motto, our consecration motto, when we establish a branch. And we know: Whether two or three or seven or many, many are united in this sense in the name of Christ, Christ lives in them. And all those who, in this sense, acknowledge Christ as their brother are themselves sisters and brothers. And Christ wishes to acknowledge as his brother whoever acknowledges another human being as his brother.

[ 29 ] If we are able to take such a consecration motto to heart and carry out our work with such a spirit, then the true spirit of our Spiritual Science movement will prevail in this work of ours. Even in these difficult times, our friends in Spiritual Science from abroad have joined forces with those who have established their branch here. This is always a beautiful custom. For through it, the consecration thoughts and the consecration motto are carried forth even by those working in other branches. And they vow to always remember those who, within a branch, have committed themselves to working together in the spirit of our movement. And so grows and grows that which we seek to establish as our invisible community through the nature of our work. But then, when such a spirit, linking itself to our work, spreads ever more widely, then we will do justice to the demands placed upon us by Spiritual Science for the progress of humanity. And then we may believe that those who guide human progress and human knowledge as the great Masters of Wisdom are present among us in our work. And to the extent that you who work here work in this spirit of Spiritual Science, in the same sense I know that the high masters who truly guide our movement from the spiritual worlds will also be in the midst of your work.

[ 30 ] From this perspective, I call upon today the power, grace, and love of these Masters of Wisdom, who guide and direct the work we carry out in fraternal associations within our branches, I invoke the grace, I invoke the power, I invoke the love of these Masters of Wisdom, who are in direct connection with the forces of the higher hierarchies, upon the work of this branch as well. May the good spirit of you, O great Masters, and may the good spirit of our Spiritual Science movement be with this branch. May it reign and work within it!