The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Festive occasions are those in which people can come together to reflect on important, meaningful matters of the soul and spiritual development. It is therefore fitting that, on the occasion of these days of mourning and celebration, we engage in precisely such reflections—reflections that may often arise in meditation or otherwise regarding the soul of the individual, but which, prompted by such festive days, can be discussed collectively.

[ 2 ] Yesterday I pointed out how the burial of Christ Jesus on Good Friday each year, and the Resurrection on Easter Sunday morning, serve as a sign of something particularly significant, both in human and cosmic evolution. These are the days when the human soul can actually experience—or at least deeply feel—the deepest of its innermost, most essential concerns. The symbol of the fact that the Christ Being—or, let us say, the incarnation of the Christ Being—rested in death on Earth for three days is, as we know from other considerations, connected with the deepest core of the human being. And perhaps today, before the friends gathered here, we may recall a profound mystery connected with this symbol.

[ 3 ] When one fully grasps the meaning of the symbolic burial of Jesus Christ on Good Friday, what it means to lie in the tomb, and the passing of Christ Jesus through death, when one immerses oneself in this symbol in a truly appropriate way, enriched by the achievements of Spiritual Science, then one truly experiences something—first through feeling and then through thinking—that is connected to the deepest mysteries of human nature on Earth. Once our building is completed, we will have, in a specific place—to be carved in wood—the victory of the Christ-being over Ahriman on one side, and over Lucifer on the other. This will then depict what took place of significance during the Christ Being’s passage through the Mystery of Golgotha, in relation to the earthly relationship between Christ, Ahriman, and Lucifer. And now it may be said: When one allows the sight of Christ Jesus lying in the tomb to sink very, very deeply into the soul—but with deep understanding—then a sense of the significance of Christ’s struggle against Ahriman and Lucifer comes to the human soul. To understand this, let us bring to mind some of what we already know.

[ 4 ] Especially in recent times, people have repeatedly alluded to the fact that something akin to the death and resurrection of God was already present in ancient religions, and they have believed they could conclude from this that the Christ event was merely a reworking—a reworking, let us say, of the death and resurrection of Adonis. But such assertions have only shown that one has not, in fact, gained a true understanding of the Christ event. For this Adonis event or other similar events, wherever they are found, are such that one perceives in them, so to speak, a natural existence—an existence that can repeat itself every year, an existence connected to natural phenomena and actually belonging to them. Just as what we described yesterday as the Baldur event is, in essence, also bound to the phenomena of nature—the observations that ancient people could make in nature. All ancient pre-Christian religions were, in essence, religions whose cult practices were connected to what the ancient clairvoyant human souls could perceive in the events of nature and its course. And the Eastern religions have, in essence, not yet progressed beyond this standpoint. Christianity has truly moved beyond this stage, for Christianity is, in the most eminent sense, what one might call a historical religion—that is, a religion in which what matters is what must be understood from the entire course of human history and human development in earthly existence. A history, an earthly history, truly exists only through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 5 ] That human development on Earth follows an ascending path and then a descending path, with the Christ event at the center, as has often been described — one could also put it the other way around, that humanity undergoes a descending path and then an ascending path, from a different perspective —, in the middle stands the Christ event, the event of Golgotha, and that through this Christ event history receives its true meaning; this is the essence and the true significance of Christianity. We must now answer a question: What, then, is this course of history that, I would say, runs like a continuation of nature from human deeds through the development of the earth? What is history, really? What is the process that unfolds through the progression of human actions, human feelings, and human thoughts—what is that, really? What this is only truly comes before the soul when, with a spiritual vision sharpened by Spiritual Science, one stands before Christ Jesus, resting in the tomb, during the days of Holy Week.

[ 6 ] Then one comes to realize what history truly is. For once one has sharpened one’s spiritual vision through Spiritual Science, one becomes aware that what is history here on Earth will one day be nature on the world body that will appear as a new incarnation of the Earth. The history of the Earth is a preparation for nature on Jupiter. Just as a prophetic foreshadowing of what will be natural phenomena on Jupiter, what we call historical events occur in earthly existence. How is this so?

[ 7 ] Here on Earth, human life unfolds in physical embodiment in such a way that we are brought into this physical earthly existence through birth, and that we then undergo an ascending development of our physical existence until our thirties, followed by a descending development. At the beginning of this physical earthly existence stands our physical birth; at the end of this physical earthly existence stands our physical death—or what we call physical death. The middle of human existence—I would say, roughly the mid-thirties—passes more or less unnoticed for the earthly human being in his physical embodiment, at least as far as the self-awareness present in most cases is concerned, unless he takes a special interest in the significant, essential inner events of soul life.

[ 8 ] That will be different when humanity on Earth eventually goes through the Jupiter stage; it will be very, very different then. I do not wish to speak of this today—that can be done another time—namely, of the entirely different way in which the Jupiter human will enter physical existence, as opposed to through physical birth, as occurs in earthly existence. And the human will also depart from the Jupiter existence in a manner entirely different from that of physical death on Earth. But in a sense, that which corresponds to the middle of life—which for our earthly existence would fall in the middle of our thirties—will then be significant and meaningful for the human being’s Jupiter existence. I would like to say: what birth and death, if one were to mix them together, are at the beginning and end of earthly life—that would correspond to something that will occur in the middle of the Jupiter life for the human being who has then developed to this stage of Jupiter life. So consider that the human being will have to go through something in the middle of the Jupiter phase that you would arrive at if you were to mix earthly birth with earthly death, so to speak. Only you must not think that you can simply mix the two together as they appear as earthly phenomena; rather, birth and death must be brought together much like a chemical compound. If one . mix oxygen and hydrogen—when you mix two gases together—something arises that is not at all similar to either hydrogen or oxygen, namely water. So too will there be an experience in the middle of the Jupiter existence that is truly a kind of connection between earthly death and earthly birth, but entirely different from what an ideal, an intellectual mixture of the two phenomena of birth and death can produce.

[ 9 ] Yes, you see, existence progresses from stage to stage in such a way that, if we wish to move on to the Jupiter stage of existence, we must already have in our minds a mental image of a significant event that will occur for the Jupiter human being in the middle of the Jupiter stage—an event of the kind I have just described. As you know, the entire Jupiter consciousness of human beings will be quite different from Earth consciousness. To learn about the various stages of human consciousness, you need only read what is said in the *Akasha Chronicle* regarding the various stages of development of human consciousness from the Saturn to the Vulcan stage, and you will then be able to recall that on Jupiter a kind of higher, conscious visual perception emerges—an imaginative consciousness that represents a higher stage of consciousness than Earth consciousness. We will thus grow into a consciousness that will not proceed in the same way as earthly consciousness, but which will receive impressions from the outside in a completely different way than the earthly human being, yet which will then, through inner volition, form images like imaginations from these impressions, much as I, as an earthly human being, perceive something and then sketch or record it. This is how it will be in Jupiter consciousness, except that Jupiter perception is different from earthly perception. Then the human being will seek out images for themselves, visual representations such as those that arise through earthly existence; then they will, as it were, form something like paintings of that which flows into them as the content of imaginative consciousness.

[ 10 ] To attain this imaginative consciousness, human beings will enter the Jupiter stage of existence. And this imaginative consciousness, just as earthly consciousness undergoes a process of development and unfolding throughout childhood, will also undergo a process of unfolding and development. Then the middle of the Jupiter life will come, and in this middle of the Jupiter life, during a period that can truly be symbolized for us by three Earth days, something important will occur for the Jupiter human: namely, there will occur in the midst of Jupiter consciousness a repetition, a brief repetition—for the repetition lasts only a few days—of Earth consciousness. So this will be part of the experience of the Jupiter life: that Earth consciousness is renewed there for a short time, that the human being will feel themselves as an Earth human in the middle of their Jupiter life. Then, once the human being has passed through his imaginative Jupiter consciousness, a time will come when he will have only his Earth consciousness again, which will then truly relate to Jupiter consciousness as our present dream consciousness relates to our waking consciousness.

[ 11 ] When the human being enters this Jupiter-earth consciousness, this repetition of earth consciousness, it will occur to him that he will want to make a kind of inner summary, a kind of review of everything he has acquired as an earth human, everything he has acquired throughout his entire past. As I said, we will have Earth consciousness for only a short time during a Jupiter life, but during this Earth consciousness we will feel the need to look back intensely on our entire human past. That is what this renewal of Earth consciousness will be for. And when we look back, we will be overcome by the need to ask ourselves the questions: What have you actually achieved through your entire past? What have you achieved through becoming what you are as an earthly human being? — One will have to ask oneself this question out of cosmic necessity. Just as one must eat and sleep on Earth in order to survive, so during this renewal of Earth consciousness one will have to ask oneself: What have you achieved by becoming human? Why did you become a free human being? — One will, as it were, take stock of the result, the sum total of one’s entire earthly existence. And by asking this question, by taking this stock, what one has truly achieved through it will appear before one’s soul in a powerful Jupiter dream. But this Jupiter dream will possess a reality just like all our real earthly perceptions. It will not appear before us as a dream image, but it will all have the same reality as the earthly human being who now stands before us. And then it will happen that a figure will step before us who clearly gives the answer to our question. And the being who will then appear before us as the answer to the question we have had to ask ourselves—do you know who this being will be? It will be Lucifer, and Lucifer will say: Recognize now that you belong to me through all that you have become as a human being in your past. And one will know for certain—just as one, as an earthly human being, recognizes another human being when he enters one’s physical perception—that this is Lucifer and that one has worked for him through all that one has sought to become as a human being. Then one will recognize the full significance and power of Christ, for one will realize that, through one’s own efforts, one is incapable of making any decision other than to follow Lucifer into his realm.

[ 12 ] Only through the emergence of the Christ event—the Christ being—from Earth’s history, including in our memory, will we know that this Christ being has entered into Earth’s evolution, and that this Christ being had gifts to give us—gifts that are now being realized during our Jupiter phase, that is, transforming into a true Jupiter being, through which alone we will be able not to follow the path with Lucifer, but rather to follow the path of the regularly developing cosmos. For what will Lucifer want from us? What will he want from us then? He will say to us: The state you are now going through, this repetition of Earth consciousness, means a great deal to you. — For on Jupiter it is different than on Earth, quite different. On Earth, it is the case that once we have reached our mid-thirties, in the second half of life we do exactly the same things in regard to certain matters as we did before. We eat and drink to sustain our physical existence, after the age of thirty-five just as we did before the age of thirty-five. On Jupiter, this will be different, quite different. On Jupiter, we will not need to eat and drink in the same way that we must do so in our earthly bodies on Earth, but we will be connected in a similar way to the effects of the Jupiter physique through a body appropriate to Jupiter, just as we are connected to the effects of the Earth physique through food and drink. From the moment of life one has reached, when Earth consciousness has been renewed, one will no longer be able to relate to the Jupiter environment in the same way as before. If I may put it trivially, I would say: it will no longer have an effect. It will be something like this, so that I might use the comparison: If that were the case on Earth, then by the age of thirty-five we would reach such a state of our stomach and our organs that we would no longer be able to breathe the Earth’s air or tolerate Earthly food. Imagine what it would be like if, at the age of thirty-five, we had to undergo such a development of our bodies that, although our inner being would still be quite capable of enduring Earthly years, our bodies would be unable to tolerate anything that grows on Earth. It will be the same on Jupiter. Of course, the conditions are quite different, but this is how it will be: We will no longer be able to be in direct physical contact with Jupiter during the second half of our life on Jupiter. That will be a law of nature on Jupiter then; it will certainly be a law of nature then.

[ 13 ] But through the power of this natural law, Lucifer would be able to take our soul—which would still be quite viable but unable to sustain its body for existence on Jupiter—with him, unless Christ could then show us that he has accumulated treasures within us during the first half of our existence on Jupiter, which will now sustain us through the second half of our existence on Jupiter. On Jupiter, Christ will by no means merely display outwardly the ethical character he shows during earthly existence, but he will be the inner sustainer for the second half of human life on Jupiter, and this sustenance will simultaneously be of moral significance. He will be able to free us from Lucifer solely by having accumulated sustenance treasures during the first half of our existence on Jupiter. If this were not to happen, if the Christ were not able to free us from Lucifer on Jupiter, then Lucifer would take our soul away. Our body, which would then have no possibility of entering into a relationship with the Jupiter physical realm, would disintegrate, would fall away from us, and Lucifer would show us: Behold, I take your soul, but your body falls away from you into the treasury of Ahriman. He will now have it; he will continue to live with it.

[ 14 ] Everything will depend on how our soul, during this review and in the restoration of earthly consciousness, can recall the way in which it was filled during its time on earth with the mystery of Golgotha, filled with the understanding that the Christ Being has entered into human evolution, into the historical development of earthly existence. For consider the terrible state of the human soul on Jupiter, which would then have to look back and say to itself: During my time on Earth, I denied the Christ. I wanted to know nothing of the Christ. I refused, at the right time, to learn about that which, as the Christ-being, entered into Earth’s development through the Mystery of Golgotha. I can remember nothing of what happened on Earth through the Christ. — Could there be souls in whom all memory of the Christ must be erased during their Jupiter existence, because during their Earth existence they never allowed themselves to be imbued with an understanding of the Christ event, then the terrible Day of Judgment would come for them: that Christ would not take them with him into the Jupiter existence to nourish and care for them in the second half of their Jupiter existence, but that he would point them with one hand toward where Ahriman takes the remnants of the Jupiter physical body, and with the other hand toward where Lucifer leads the soul along his paths.

[ 15 ] And now, when we approach the symbol of Jesus lying in the tomb with the understanding that Spiritual Science can give us regarding the Mystery of Golgotha—when we do not merely see an external symbol in it, but rather connect to this symbol everything we can know about the Mystery of Golgotha, and if one has already acquired some ability to perceive what Spiritual Science speaks of, then what I have just told you appears before the eye of the soul as a vision of the human-Jupiter future. In the ancient places of initiation, the students had to seek, under the guidance of their initiators, what was called in the ancient mysteries “the beholding of the sun at midnight.” Physically, one beholds the sun by day. At midnight, through the earth, the initiates beheld the sun, whereas for the physical eye the earth is opaque. Thus, by gazing at the sun through the earth at midnight, the sun’s physical existence was stripped away; in its place, however, the mystery of Christ, the Sun Spirit, was inscribed into the sun’s existence. And the disciples of the ancient initiates beheld in advance the mystery of Christ, the Sun Spirit. It was a higher vision of nature, a becoming clairvoyant within nature.

[ 16 ] What the Easter symbol can reveal to us is a kind of clairvoyance within the historical life of humanity on Earth; it is a realization that, in essence, by becoming free human beings on Earth, we have already truly entered into a covenant with Lucifer and Ahriman, and that Christ alone can redeem us from this covenant. What “seeing the sun at midnight” meant for the ancient disciples of the initiates can gradually become, for Christians, a prayerful reverence for the mystery of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. We have every reason to focus on this day on that which is connected with the inner tragedy, with the inner, justified grief of the deepest core of the human being. As earthly human beings, we could never have become free beings if we had not entered into such a relationship with Lucifer and Ahriman as is implied by what has been stated today, if we had not become capable of walking the path of Lucifer and the path of Ahriman. Human beings can indeed bring to consciousness the tragedy that lies at the foundation of their being by saying to themselves: My freedom would never have been possible without the possibility of following Ahriman and Lucifer. — And this awareness can dawn upon him as he beholds the symbol of Christ resting in the tomb, who, through what he accomplished with his deed, in turn undoes what had to come to pass for the sake of human freedom.

[ 17 ] That grief over the human condition is justified, that human beings have not only cause for joy but also a deep, true, and essential cause for grief over their very nature—this may whisper through the soul during the days dedicated to the burial in a festive manner. After all, there are still many days of the year when human beings may then think more about what has become of them—because earthly evolution has not been abandoned, because Christ has come into earthly existence as the Risen One. But what made this Mystery of Golgotha necessary, what can live as a cosmic sorrow in the human soul—all of that may be released during these days. And if one has developed a sense for what is connected to the human soul through its history, then these are days in which one can become sad about human development; or rather, one might say: days in which one is permitted to become sad about this human development.

[ 18 ] And if this feeling is alive, then the black drapery we must choose, especially in these days, to adorn this room is justified. That is why it bothered me so much yesterday when red still stood out from the black—the red that may be the color our eyes are allowed to behold again once the days of mourning are over, the mourning for that which is connected to the human being as a profound tragedy. It was thoroughly unchristian and artistically tasteless that red stood out here yesterday. One must learn these things as well; but once one has learned them, one will already sense how the outer forms have their deep meaning, and how they are essentially connected with what one might call the growing together of the human soul with the events of the cosmos.

[ 19 ] Is this not expressed in the very setting of the date for Easter itself? The date of Easter is determined cosmically: the first Sunday after the full moon following the beginning of spring, on March 21. The signs by which Easter is determined are to be found up there in the heavens. In recent years, a barbaric approach to science has demanded that the days of Easter fall on the same dates every year. If this comes to pass, it will become abundantly clear just how far people in our time wish to distance themselves from a truly spiritual life—a life that cannot be developed unless one becomes aware of how his soul does not merely live in what circulates on Earth in such a way that one might regard the taking in and spending of money as an external sign of this circulation. For that of which the taking in and spending of money is the external sign, for that indeed the fixing of the date of Easter would be a convenient matter. But for that which flows into the human soul from the life of the cosmos, it would be devastating if that barbaric scientific approach were to prevail, which would always fix Easter Sunday and Easter Monday on the same day of the year, and one would no longer look to the cosmic determination of these days.

[ 20 ] Details like these show how humanity is sailing headlong into Ahrimanic materialism. There will need to be people who, through their commitment to Spiritual Science, will have some understanding of such matters in the future.

[ 21 ] You are certainly familiar with Michelangelo’s monumental work in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, *The Last Judgment*, either from the original—which is, of course, already quite damaged—or from reproductions and engravings. When you look at the composition of this work, which depicts the Last Judgment, what must you tell yourself—now that you have drawn closer to Spiritual Science—about what this image of the Last Judgment actually is? I said earlier: For those who, equipped with what Spiritual Science can offer them, approach the symbol of Christ lying in the tomb on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the vision of the Jupiter-man described earlier—of Jupiter-human existence—can present itself to their soul, provided they have already attained the ability to see. If they have not yet attained the ability to see, then, once they have gained a feeling understanding of Spiritual Science, the thought will at least be able to arise within them—a thought that, at a certain level, is just as valid as the vision itself. This will be appropriate for the present age.

[ 22 ] And just imagine: a painter, equipped with the full range of contemporary artistic techniques, allowing the symbol of the mystery of Golgotha to take hold of him and seeking to answer the question through his art: What appears to me when I start from the symbol of Christ Jesus lying in the tomb and, with what I have gained through it, deepen my gaze into the inner world? What appears to me? — Christ appears to me in his Jupiter-like glory, in his future glory, binding Ahriman with the bonds of light in the underworld so that he cannot reach humanity, and overcoming Lucifer so that he cannot lead the human soul onto his paths.

[ 23 ] This is appropriate to what the human soul can acquire through Spiritual Science. Everything that can now appear to the human soul in this way was clothed, for the people who lived before us—that is, for ourselves in earlier incarnations—in the image of the Last Judgment, as Michelangelo painted it on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. That is merely a prophetic foreshadowing; the correct view is the one I have just described to you. People who have been instructed only by Christian sentiment, not yet by Spiritual Science, have perceived what can be perceived through the Good Friday Mystery in the form in which the Last Judgment has been painted. But we, we live in a time of transition, and the most advanced souls—even if they have not yet taken up Spiritual Science—can be most aware of how we are living in the present, in a time of transition, a time in which we must say to ourselves: “Just as people used to view the Last Judgment as the result of the Easter Mystery, or better yet, the Good Friday Mystery, so have the children of humanity lost their understanding of it. But a new understanding must dawn—an understanding gained through Spiritual Science, as has been described today, with which we, too, are celebrating here the feast of the Burial of Christ Jesus.”

[ 24 ] I have often spoken here in this room about various things that Herman Grimm so beautifully observed. In his *Life of Michelangelo*, he also discussed at length Michelangelo’s *The Last Judgment* in the Sistine Chapel. And since he was a personality who was not like the run-of-the-mill scholars who describe everything—I say this in quotation marks— “objectively”—but because he was a personality who, even after conducting thorough research, engaged with the results of that research with his soul, his sensibility, and his feelings—Herman Grimm, upon completing his beautiful treatise on “The Last Judgment” in his *Life of Michelangelo*, added the following words to his reflections on the Last Judgment: “It is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of such things.” By this, he meant what is supposed to be connected to what the Last Judgment represents for the nature of the human soul. In Michelangelo’s time, it was not yet difficult to speak of this, especially not in painting, for Michelangelo did indeed speak of it through his art. And those who were initiated into the mysteries of religion at that time were able to speak of these things. It has only become difficult through the further development of the times.

[ 25 ] “It is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of such things. Our feelings about them dwell in a depth that cannot be illuminated by clear light. Yet we do not dare to dismiss the physical images handed down to us as sacred legacies as mere shadows entirely …”

[ 26 ] So he says, we do not yet dare, in our time, to say: ‘What a Michelangelo conceived as real in connection with the life of the human soul and brought to the canvas is mere fantasy.’ Deeper minds, such as Herman Grimm, do not yet dare to say this. Others, who are more in the mold of Ludwig Feuerbach or David Friedrich Strauss, dare to say: That is a flight of fancy—or, if they wish to express it more elegantly and in a more modern way, they say: That is a fantasy—yet they mean a flight of fancy when they speak of Michelangelo’s works. But other, deeper minds do not dare.

[ 27 ] “Of course, we do not yet dare to dismiss the physical images handed down to us as sacred legacies as mere shadows; but as I see the course of spiritual development, these mental images must grow ever paler, and something else must take their place—something that serves as a symbol of eternal things.”

[ 28 ] He realizes that something else must take its place, but he searches in vain for this “something else” within the contemporary culture that is accessible to him. And I would say that his following words sound tragic:

[ 29 ] “For without symbols—whether visible images or thoughts—we cannot find peace, no matter how clear it may become to us that everything symbolic is merely a parable: empty for those who do not themselves imbue it with meaning drawn from their own souls. But just as the Last Judgment stands on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, it is no longer a parable for us, but a monument to the fantastical spiritual life of a bygone era and a foreign people, whose thoughts are no longer our own.”

[ 30 ] This is a confession, made in sincerity by the human soul to itself, as a spirit had to make it, one that cannot simply stop there: We can now live into the future, even though we have lost that which once had to stand before the human soul when it experienced the mystery of Good Friday. These are the words of a spirit that senses that the old has passed away and looks toward the present; that looks around in vain for something that can take the place of the old.

[ 31 ] Such a spirit has passed through the gates of death in our time with this thought: Where, where, O soul, O human soul, ‘you who once, at the sight of the Crucifix lying in the tomb, immersed yourself in your most sacred mysteries in the course of the world—where, O human soul, will you find that which your new thoughts and feelings must become regarding this mystery? Where, O human soul, do you find something that once again fills you when you look upon the Crucifix lying in the tomb, when you gaze upon the mystery of Good Friday? Where, O human soul, do you find that? — With these thoughts, such a spirit passes through the gate of death.

[ 32 ] Now you will understand what I meant when, a few days ago, I said here in this room: There have been souls who have passed through the gate of death and who received a feeling, a new feeling of what a human being truly is, when our friend Christian Morgenstern entered their company, with a consciousness enlightened and spiritualized by Spiritual Science, with a clear awareness of all that these souls had lost. Imbued with the awareness of the new proclamation of Christ, he carried the new thoughts about the development of Christ and its connection to the development of humanity up through the gate of death into the spiritual worlds. The souls who longed for these thoughts—because through their own gate of death they had been able to carry only that which appeared before their souls as unformed thoughts or faded images of times past—these souls found in our friend the companion who enlightened them.

[ 33 ] This is already the case after death, even though superficial people may believe that when a person passes through the gate of death, he automatically comprehends all mysteries. This is not the case, for just as life in the embryonic stage prepares a person for life outside the womb, so too must life here in the earthly body prepare a person for the life spent between death and a new birth. And for the souls who, without having received thoughts about the Mystery of Golgotha while in the earthly body, have passed through the gate of death, a Revealer was the human being who ascended, his soul illuminated by what the new proclamation of Christ can be to the soul.

[ 34 ] Let us, with all reverence, immerse ourselves in such thoughts during these days of the year. Let us take them in their concreteness, as they approach our souls in connection with our Anthroposophical Society; let us take them into our souls in their concreteness, and let us try, during these days, to allow the mysterious Good Friday and Holy Saturday festivities, which are drawing near to our souls, to give us the strength to understand such things ever more deeply. Let us use what these days—which are also sacred to us, these tragic-sacred days—can be for us, to allow that which can arise in our souls on such an occasion to truly take effect upon us, illuminating the deepest, deepest abysses of our entire human existence as it develops through the Earth, but also through those celestial bodies that will be reincarnations of our Earth. Let us try to allow the Easter event, in the deepest, the very deepest sense, to be a parable, an image of that which, from the Eternal, is connected with the nature of the human soul—and thereby with our self-knowledge.