The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Karma of Materialism V

[ 1 ] Time and again—and quite rightly so—the question is asked: How can one even come close to the Christ impulse, the Christ being? —or the question is posed in some other form. One can approach the great question—which lies in the very fact that human beings feel such a need—in various ways, and indeed, in the course of our anthroposophical reflections, we have truly examined this question from a wide variety of angles. We know, of course, that no single set of concepts or collection of ideas can exhaust spiritual reality any more than a photograph of a tree taken from one side can capture the tree’s entire form, and so we can only hope, through considerations from the most diverse angles, to approach what we might call reality in the realm of spiritual life.

[ 2 ] Above all, everyone must realize that finding Christ is an intimate matter, and we know, after all, how it is connected to the nature of the human “I.” We know that this nature of the human “I” is already expressed in language in such a way that we can use any other word to denote something else, but we can never utter the word “I” in a way that refers to anything outside of ourselves. The intimate connection between the Christ-essence and this “I” gives this Christ-essence, for us human beings, a character as intimate as that of the “I” itself. Therefore, all the reflections, all the emotional impulses, and all the other inner forces that we stir within ourselves when dealing with the Christ-problem are precisely paths to the Christ. And we can hope—and indeed must hope—that we will find Christ through such reflections, such feelings, impulses of the will, and the like. In particular, however, it is of very special importance for the present to consider the historical course of human development, including with regard to the idea of Christ. We are standing at a momentous historical juncture—one so momentous that perhaps only a few people have yet grasped its full significance. For this reason alone, it is fitting for our time not to disregard the historical development of humanity when dealing with matters of the utmost importance.

[ 3 ] We now know that the development of the human soul—the entire content of the human soul—was different before the Mystery of Golgotha, that it is different after it, and we have also described in various ways how this difference manifests itself. In the time when there was still a greater sense among humanity of the significance of spiritual knowledge—one might say fifty to sixty years ago—more people were still grappling with the highest problems, and time and again we see how, in the period fifty to sixty years ago, people’s inclination to grasp great problems in their true depth has disappeared. If, for example, we take up the writings of a psychologist such as Fortlage, who was active well into the 1860s, we still find a remarkable characterization of human consciousness in Fortlage, the psychologist who worked in Jena and elsewhere. He offers a definition of consciousness which, I would say, today’s philosophers already find highly reprehensible.

[ 4 ] He once said—it was in 1869—that human consciousness is related to death, to dying, and that as we develop consciousness over the course of our lives, we are actually developing within ourselves—slowly, one after another—the powers that suddenly come upon us at the moment of death. Thus, for him, the moment of dying is an infinitely multiplied act of consciousness. Consciousness is for him, one might say, a slow life of dying. It is not life that is a life of dying, but consciousness in human beings is a life of dying, and death is consciousness condensed into a single moment.

[ 5 ] This is an immensely significant observation by a psychologist. It is an observation, as I said, that today’s philosophers already criticize as unscientific. And that is indeed what has happened.

[ 6 ] Now one might say: as significant as this remark is for the conditions of today’s human soul life—the life of consciousness—it is not entirely accurate for every stage of human soul development. This, too, is extraordinarily important. Thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha, one could not have spoken in this way with a deeper understanding. Our present-day consciousness, which in ordinary life is devoid of any atavistic clairvoyant power that once existed, truly still lives on the slow process of dying. But this was not the case with the atavistic clairvoyant consciousness of ancient times, which gradually faded away in the run-up to the Mystery of Golgotha. Although, of course, words can always express very little of the truth in such cases, one might nevertheless say: This ancient consciousness was an excess of spiritual life over organic human life, whereas we now find ourselves in a situation where organic human life—which is heading toward death—exceeds spiritual life. Now our consciousness arises from the fact that we are overwhelmed by the mortal body when we return to it in the morning upon waking; and because we are overwhelmed by the mortal body, we come to develop consciousness in the sense of today’s object-oriented consciousness. As I said, it was different for the ancient people before the Mystery of Golgotha. They had a surplus of spiritual life. This surplus was not entirely absorbed when they returned to the physical body in the morning, and it expressed itself in their atavistic clairvoyance. But as the Mystery of Golgotha approached, this surplus became less and less, and at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, a balance existed for the majority of people between their inner soul life and the organic life of the body. And then the organic life of the body began to take over. One might say: people before the Mystery of Golgotha knew through birth; people after the Mystery of Golgotha know through death. This shows us once again what a significant turning point the Mystery of Golgotha actually is in human development.

[ 7 ] Now came the decline of the old clairvoyant consciousness, of conscious life from the moment of birth. Slowly and gradually, the spiritual contents of a spiritual world faded from human consciousness. And a time came—lasting nearly a millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha—in which, in fact, only those who had been initiated into the Mysteries could still experience anything of the spiritual world that everyone had once experienced. From this one can understand what was stated in my work *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*—that Plato, who knew of this mystery, remarked: Only those people who are initiated into the mysteries are human beings in the true sense; the others live with their souls in the mud. — A remark that is actually extremely cruel, but which stems from what I have just stated, and it does not stem from arbitrariness, but rather from a necessity of human development.

[ 8 ] Now let us imagine for a moment what would have happened if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place. Had it not taken place, evolution would initially have continued in the same way; that is to say, there would have been more and more people in the outer world for whom all direct connection with the spiritual world would have faded away, and ultimately it would have come to pass that human beings would no longer be spirit-filled at all, but would merely be larvae—merely organic, etheric, and similar structures. We would long since have reached the time when human souls would be incapable of truly living in bodies; we would long since have reached the time when souls would merely hover above their bodies in the spiritual world; we would long since have reached the time when it would only be possible for more highly developed souls from earlier times to work inspiringly down into humanity from above. Only through this—by individuals being inspired within the Mysteries—could a consciousness of the spiritual world still arise in human beings. The human spirit itself would not dwell on Earth at all. Mystery sites would be the places where inspiration would occur; but Ahriman would always fight against this, would fight against the inspirations; he would always prevent human beings from acting in accordance with the inspirations, or rather, he would turn the intentions inspired in them into their opposites.

[ 9 ] Therefore, it had to be made possible for the human soul to dwell once again, in general, within the human body—which comes into being through birth and passes away through death—because this human body, in the course of its life as it approaches death, overcomes the soul’s weakened life. This became possible only because a being from the spiritual world—namely, the Christ Being—united with the earthly forces that have now become dominant in human consciousness. With which forces, then? Precisely with the forces of which we are now conscious: the forces of death! Consider how comprehensive the Rosicrucian saying becomes as a result: In Christo morimur, in Christ we die! It expresses, in a sense, our entire being; it expresses that which entered into the development of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha, that which has united with the death-bringing forces so that these death-bringing forces might form the newer consciousness.

[ 10 ] The question of how it is that, under such circumstances, so many people on Earth still do not recognize the Christ is linked to so many mysteries—and such profound mysteries—that it is generally not yet possible to speak about them at the present time. But what I have just said is true for the development of humanity.

[ 11 ] Consider this in the context of how the Mystery of Golgotha unfolded. Consider this in connection with the fact that Christ incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—that is, in a body that was, of course, subject at that time to the same conditions to which human bodies in general were subject. According to the laws of heredity alone, the body of Jesus of Nazareth was subject to conditions that gradually developed to the point where consciousness was now to arise from the death of the body. What, then, had to happen so that a corresponding impulse—a force that permeated human evolution—might arise through a powerful jolt in the course of development, stemming from a consciousness that owes its existence to death? It was necessary for the Christ Being, who lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years, to say something to that body—something that can only be said at the moment of death, for only at the moment of death can everything that constitutes the mystery of human consciousness be condensed into a single moment. So, in order for the entire impulse of consciousness—which had to come and be instilled into humanity—to be realized, did Christ not have to bring Jesus to his death? He had to! And when are we ourselves in that very moment in which we can hope for a concentrated understanding of Christ? We are in it at the moment of dying! For at that moment all those forces are present from which our consciousness will be sustained throughout our entire life. At the moment of death, we are capable of receiving what is, in essence, the mystery of our consciousness—and thereby receiving the Christ impulse. Thus, by seeking understanding, feeling, and sensation for the Christ impulse, we are actually preparing ourselves to receive the Christ impulse. However, we can only gain an understanding of what befalls us in death if the organ of our understanding is liberated; that is to say, while the moment of death provides us with the conditions to unite with Christ, it is only when we are freed from the etheric body that our “I” and our astral body—which are the organs of understanding—are capable of perceiving what has united with us.

[ 12 ] In order for the conditions to be created so that this could come to pass, something else had to occur within the Mystery of Golgotha. After Christ, so to speak, had entrusted to Jesus—as he lay dying on Golgotha—the mystery of the coming human consciousness, the momentous event had to occur in which Jesus, who contained Christ, rose to a new life out of that power which is death; that is to say, the Resurrection had to take place so that we might understand the Resurrection when, a few days after death, our etheric body—in the sense of our anthroposophical science—separates from us. In this inner process of dying, of the separation of the etheric body a few days after death, we relive, in a certain sense, the Mystery of Golgotha. For it was necessary that life—namely, consciousness—should emerge from death. But this consciousness itself had to live; thus, life had to arise from death. This had not been the case before the Mystery of Golgotha. Previously, life had arisen only from life. In the past, it was not necessary to understand how life arises from death; rather, it was only necessary to understand how life arises from life. Therefore—and this is yet another of the many perspectives through which we approach these mysteries—Christianity took its origin in the Resurrection; and for this reason, no Christianity that calls itself such is a true Christianity unless it is fully permeated by the idea of the Resurrection in all its vitality: that Christ, who enters into the forces of death, is a living being! This must be understood. Anything else fails to provide a true understanding of Christianity, and a modern form of Christianity that seeks to do without the idea of the Resurrection is not Christianity. The accompanying phenomena, too, are such that they harmoniously follow on from what has just been said regarding the Mystery of Golgotha. What humanity needed was death and resurrection.

[ 13 ] However, among the ideas that can be linked to the Mystery of Golgotha, the idea of the death of Christ Jesus remains a very, very questionable one, for the simple reason — as I have already hinted at here on several occasions — that, on the one hand, one is actually compelled to condemn the fact that there were people who put the innocent one to death, and, on the other hand, the fact remains that if this death had not occurred, the entire benefit of Christianity would not exist. So the benefits of Christianity came about through a crime. This questionable idea is indeed imposing itself more and more on people. People must ask themselves: if there had not been those who were so criminal as to kill Christ back then, Christianity would not exist. But people do want Christianity, after all.

[ 14 ] This is precisely one of those points where we must appeal to what I called, in one of my recent reflections, the necessity—the ironclad necessity. In their earthly lives, people think according to their own thoughts. They organize the social structure of life according to their thoughts. What we have in the form of national, state, and other institutions is, after all, human thought. We live as human beings have arranged things, quite naturally, and regardless of the fact that the human thoughts according to which the social structure is brought about may come either from God or from the devil. In general, however, we look back to times lying far beyond the Mystery of Golgotha. It will therefore readily become clear that in those ancient times, through their atavistic clairvoyance, people also received the thought-inspirations for the creation of the social structure; but that, precisely from the perspectives discussed today, people—in their development leading up to the Mystery of Golgotha—became more and more like larvae, and thereby became increasingly susceptible to Ahrimanic influences. Consequently, Ahrimanic elements have necessarily been able to permeate the institutions of life more and more. For example, a conception of legal life such as we have today was bound to emerge, and it was precisely such a conception of legal life—one thoroughly permeated by Ahriman—that had to concentrate, so to speak, at a single point on Earth. Not everywhere, but at one point on Earth, the entire Ahrimanic permeation of the social structure became concentrated. The consequence of this was that, for this social structure, the opposite—the divine opposite of the coming of the Divine—was not the most lovable thing, but rather the most hateful, that which had to be expelled. This is a concomitant phenomenon that is necessarily linked to it.

[ 15 ] We see this social structure emerging in two ways. On the one hand, we see how forms arose out of Jewish law that were incapable of comprehending that the Divine could draw so close to humanity as it did in Christ Jesus, so that this law was necessarily compelled to exclude the Divine that had drawn so near, so thoroughly had it been permeated by Ahrimanic forces. The Romans, on the other hand, who also played their part in the death of Christ Jesus, were strong in terms of all external aspects of social structure-building. One cannot imagine anything stronger in terms of social structure-building than what the Roman Empire had already achieved precisely at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. But how weak Pilate—the representative of the strongest earthly power—appears in the face of spiritual power at the very moment the Mystery of Golgotha takes place! For Pilate appears here as nothing other than a weakling, utterly unable to take a stand against what is about to happen.

[ 16 ] Thus we see how what I mentioned in one of my recent reflections is also evident in the accompanying events of this occurrence: As the Mystery of Golgotha drew near, humanity was least prepared to understand it. It would have understood it in ancient times. When it drew near, humanity was least prepared to understand it, and understanding of this event must come only through other means. It is important to fully grasp this point.

[ 17 ] Now consider this: when one attempts to grasp the mystery of human death and of the human being’s awakening from the astral body and the “I,” and tries to relate it closely to the Mystery of Golgotha, one must draw near to this Mystery of Golgotha itself, in all its emotional life. One approaches this mystery through thoughts and feelings, not through the general, empty phrase: “I want to have Christ within me”—but through a concrete grasp of what the concrete manifestation of Christ in Earth’s evolution means for our own lives. It is no coincidence that the period between the death and the Resurrection of Christ Jesus is just as long as the period between leaving the physical body and leaving the etheric body. For people today, following the Mystery of Golgotha, there is a deep bond between them and the life of Christ on Earth. Christ came to Earth—as we can now say with even greater certainty—so that humanity on Earth might not be lost. Human beings would have become mere shells, their souls directed from above, had the Mystery of Golgotha not taken place. Death would have gradually removed human beings from the Earth. Humanity’s connection to the Earth was reestablished through the Mystery of Golgotha. The possibility of consciousness—which must arise from death—was created through the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 18 ] These things can be understood today; they already emerge from a contemplation of the spiritual world, and today they can become something that people take into their souls to deepen their inner lives. And one may truly ask: Is not this inner life deepened when, in relation to the most important events of life—which may confront us at any moment—it knows itself to be so intimately connected, not merely in a general sense with something called “Christ,” but with something that was concretely lived on earth and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha? Does this not create a flow from our very soul life to the historical events of Golgotha, when we view the matter in this way?

[ 19 ] It is therefore necessary to consider the crisis we are currently facing. Eight days ago, I sought to illustrate this crisis using a specific example. I wanted to show how a person who strives to reenter the life of Christianity seeks everything possible—but not Christ himself. It is indeed possible today to belong to a thoroughly recognized, perhaps even influential, and in the near future even more influential Christian community without seeking Christ. This is what must be emphasized again and again on the basis of spiritual science. And it must be further emphasized that it is the task of modern humanity not to shy away from the inner powers of the soul in order to discover such concrete spiritual-scientific ideas. A certain strength of the soul must be exerted to bring these ideas to life within. But without exerting this strength of the soul, we will not make any progress, for it is simply in the nature of modern human beings to exert such a strength. Yet a strength that is meant to be exerted but is not results in something pathological. Now, one does not become ill only from a deficiency; one can also become ill from an excess. Many people who are weak today are, in reality, strong today. Let me state this paradox: Many of these people are inwardly strong today. Some people who go about looking very weak, dissatisfied in their souls and not knowing how to, let’s say, “come into harmony with the Infinite,” are actually subconsciously strong; but because they cannot bring what is subconsciously strong within them into consciousness—because they do not know what is striving and working down there—this subconscious takes wrong turns and leads them into instability. Spiritual science seeks nothing other than to bring into consciousness that which strives and works within the human being of today—that which seeks to rise into consciousness. And above all, what seeks to rise into consciousness is a true understanding, a sufficient understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This sometimes presents itself to us today in a remarkable way.

[ 20 ] I have already pointed out, on the one hand, the necessity of finding the kind of understanding I have just alluded to, and, on the other hand, the reluctance to embrace such an understanding. The fact that there is a longing to rediscover the spiritual—which today cannot be found without an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—is evident in many phenomena, and this is also sufficiently emphasized by all sorts of people, particularly writers, who are, however, as far removed from a true understanding as is humanly possible. And we must also familiarize ourselves with what, I would say, can be seen and heard daily in this realm, so that we may learn to understand life in the present. On the one hand, it must be the task of those who develop an interest in spiritual science to recognize for themselves the content of what the spirit seeks to communicate today; and on the other hand, to become acquainted with the life that today shies away from the approach of spiritual science, to get to know it precisely where it appears in a pseudo-form, where it appears as if there were a striving toward the spirit—which is indeed present, but only in the subconscious—yet where people do not want to allow the true form of spiritual science to emerge. That is why I do not hesitate to point out such immediate manifestations of contemporary life.

[ 21 ] I’ve just come across an essay from the present day in which someone recounts how he was made aware of such a contemporary pursuit. A writer—it is, after all, mostly writers who write today—was told by a gentleman he knows well that he absolutely must hear Johannes Müller, as they say today. What Johannes Müller is, the gentleman in question said, is something one simply must experience today. And he goes on to say: As soon as that gentleman had uttered the name Johannes Müller, he immediately added that Johannes Müller was the director of a spiritual sanatorium and had founded something like a new religion, an ethic; but as soon as the word “religion” was uttered, his mind was already elsewhere, and in a single sentence they found themselves in the realm of the most detailed Christology. With tremendous speed, the gentleman in question expounded his view of the life of Jesus; from there, the conversation moved on to liberal theology, the Marburg School, the Heidelberg School, and so on, then to the Alexandrians, the Left Hegelians, and so on. One witnesses, after all, the follies of many people in this field today—those who are particularly interested in whatever is currently in vogue, and who then, on such an occasion, rattle off as much as possible in a quarter of an hour. And with the result of this conversation—which proceeded so quickly that, according to the writer in question, to his knowledge only Kainz could speak that fast, and even then only when he wanted to catch the last express train to Berlin after a guest performance—with this result, he then went to a lecture by Johannes Müller. It was a lecture on the purpose of life.

[ 22 ] Now he believes that Johannes Müller spoke about the purpose of life in the same way one hears true saints speak: that one should sacrifice oneself, that one should not live for oneself, but for the common good, and so on. But, he goes on to say, there was one mishap. According to the account of the gentleman who spoke so quickly, he had formed a certain image in his mind. Had that image been accurate, he says, he would have believed what Johannes Müller said. But that image did not correspond to reality at all; he describes this image he found in Johannes Müller in the following way, which I do not wish to withhold from you, for it is truly something that can thoroughly draw one’s attention to the way things are handled today. He says:

[ 23 ] “However, a man of medium height and stocky build took the stage—with a short neck, a bushy mustache, and a rosy complexion—the very epitome of a robust, healthy German small-town resident. Throughout the entire lecture, I couldn’t shake the thought that this man would make a splendid head of a large, long-established Nuremberg toy factory. Nor does the way Johannes Müller interacts with the audience detract from this image in the least. His manner of speaking is clear, decisive, friendly, calm, and yet driven by strong inner conviction; he says everything in the most understandable way—and repeats it two or three times; he does not rest until what he wants to say has come across completely and unambiguously; he does not digress, always speaks “to the point,” and is filled with the most sincere and earnest desire to serve the good: in short, an ideal German city council should be composed of such personalities. And the same is true of the guiding principles: what Johannes Müller put forward were, in essence, the festive sentiments of the German citizen.”

[ 24 ] But how did the person in question imagine that he would be the one to step onto the podium and speak of self-sacrifice and of becoming one with the collective? He says this as well:

[ 25 ] “If this Johannes Müller—whose image has become so firmly fixed in my mind that I am convinced he must truly exist somewhere—had rested his weary, pale head in his slender white hand and, gazing with his sad brown eyes off into the distance, somewhere else entirely, had said in a gentle, clear voice: ‘Yes, my esteemed audience, believe me: the meaning of life is sacrifice,’ then not only I, but everyone, at least in that moment, would have had to say the same thing to themselves.”

[ 26 ] In other words: the person in question would have believed him. Quite interesting. Why would the person in question have believed him? For a very simple reason: The person in question is not like the other listeners; he is, in today’s terms, a critical thinker who, with a certain shrewdness—or, as we’d say today, a certain cunning—sees through many things. And so he tells himself: if a man with a pale face and a melting gaze had emerged from deep within his eyes, he could have spoken of sacrifice; people would have believed him, because they would have seen that, for this man, self-sacrifice is not really a sacrifice at all—that it is the joy of his life, that he takes pleasure in making sacrifices. In Johannes Müller’s case, however, this was not immediately apparent from his outward appearance. For what actually occurred to the person in question was this: Yes, the way he now expresses himself, the way he reveals himself—it is certainly no sacrifice for him to speak this way; on the contrary, it delights him all the more to speak this way; he is doing exactly what he finds enjoyable at the moment. — That’s a trivial way of putting it, and somewhat paradoxical, of course. But he puts it differently. He means: This man actually always wants to do what corresponds to his ego, what gives his ego pleasure, but he doesn’t say that; for otherwise he would have to tell people: The meaning of life is to always do what one feels an impulse to do, what one is driven to do—in short, he would always have to speak in a manner similar to Nietzsche’s. But he doesn’t do that; instead, he always says the opposite of what is written on his forehead.

[ 27 ] Today, however, there is often a longing to hear the opposite of what one actually does. Let us consider this sentence in all its depth: There is, as I said, often a longing to hear the opposite of what one actually does. There is no doubt that those who are least inclined to devote themselves to the community in any way other than what corresponds to their own sense of self are particularly inclined to hear: “The meaning of human life is to sacrifice oneself, to devote oneself to the community.” People want to hear something other than what is reality.

[ 28 ] What exactly is this?

[ 29 ] It is indeed true: Anyone who studies life today, anyone who has a sense of what is happening around us, will find—if they pay attention to what people most like to see and hear—that they actually want to perceive things that are not in line with the innermost impulses of their lives. Of course, people are mistaken about this fact. But this fact is the most striking one for anyone who can observe life in the present. People want the sensation of the opposite of what actually is. However, there isn’t much understanding today to notice such things. One must certainly take this into account. After all, there are many ways today to avoid having to face a matter squarely. For example, someone might hear Johannes Müller say, “The meaning of life consists in sacrificing oneself for the common good”—and then go off to a gathering, which could be very large, and say there: “I’ve just heard an excellent speaker who said something to me that makes perfect sense to me, and I intend to act accordingly—I will uphold this for the common good: The meaning of life lies in sacrificing oneself for the common good, as I understand this statement.” — With such an addition, it is indeed easy today to gloss over certain harsh truths that reality would necessitate, and humanity today is very inclined to go along with such things. But the truth remains that for many people today—for the majority of people—it is a sensation to hear something other than what reality is. Where does this come from?

[ 30 ] It stems from a longing—a longing that truly exists today among many people—not to be satisfied with external reality, but to want something that is not encompassed by that reality. People do indeed want something that is not limited to external reality; it is a thoroughly genuine impulse to want to go beyond external reality. However, this impulse does not manifest itself in a healthy way—that is, by acknowledging the influence of the spiritual world—because people want a way out of everything. For the man, for example, whose writings I presented to you earlier, Johannes Müller naturally—as one might well assume—still appeals to him more than spiritual science, for the simple reason that Johannes Müller always says: The meaning of life is to sacrifice oneself for the common good—and so he can write an essay on this, only to conclude with the sentence: “But what the great general purpose of life as a whole is, we will never know, and ultimately it is not at all necessary for us to know it.” So the possibility still remains of being “spiritual,” “worldly,” and yet a philistine—a genuine, entirely ordinary philistine. This possibility does, after all, remain open in this way.

[ 31 ] However, this possibility does not hold if one is to seek a relationship with that worldview in which a statement such as “melting into the universal” becomes a mere phrase—if, in our time, one does not fail to recognize the spiritual world’s call and its demands for the present. The individual soul will discover to what extent it should advance in its own development, and to what extent it should also sacrifice itself for the common good right where it stands, if it listens to what the spiritual world wants from it at this very moment. Then it is not necessary to spin general platitudes; rather, it is necessary to develop within the soul the power that brings about concrete spiritual manifestations. A statement such as: “The meaning of life consists in sacrificing oneself for the common good”—against the truth of which, of course, no objection is raised, but which, for the reason cited, can never be particularly fruitful—such a statement remains merely a phrase unless we are able to carry spiritual reality into physical reality today. For the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled precisely so that new life might spring from death—in other words, so that the living spirit might be born out of our present consciousness, which is akin to death. And in this act of giving birth to the living spirit from a consciousness akin to death, we draw near to the Mystery of Golgotha. But here and there, all manner of signs are already appearing that people are beginning to recognize the necessity of listening to spiritual science. We live in difficult times, in a time of questions, in a time of conflicts, and everyone feels that a way out of these conflicts must be sought. But it is rooted in the depths of time that, in truth, the only way to emerge from these conflicts—anything else must be merely an apparent emergence—is through the grasping of the spirit, because everything else is not a full reality if it does not grasp the spirit.

[ 32 ] The Mystery of Golgotha was first grasped through direct physical experience. I have often described how, in the early days of Christianity, people spoke of the Christ because there were still people alive who had seen him; and how, later on, people spoke of the Christ because there were those who had known people who had seen him. I have pointed to concrete manifestations, such as how, for example, something of the language of Christ lived on in the language of the first apostles. Thus we can see that the first experience of Christ that humanity had was one of a physical nature. But this has faded away right up to our own day, and the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century was a time when the understanding of Christ had essentially faded away, so that it is absolutely necessary today for phenomena such as those I referred to last time at the end of my reflections to emerge—phenomena that seek Christianity but lack the impulse to seek Christ himself. And what is happening today is happening at the same time as an expression of a crisis in the understanding of Christ. It is important to realize that we are living in a time of crisis in the understanding of Christ, and a new understanding of Christ—which is necessary—can come through no other means than that of deepening spiritual science. Perhaps Ahrimanic forces are attacking this deepening of spiritual science with such intensity precisely because it is so necessary for the present. But this cannot prevent those who recognize the task of spiritual science from viewing this very task in connection with the great tasks of world history in the present. The solution to the great questions of the present—and it is truly not a one-sided propaganda idea for spiritual science to say this—must be one in which it follows from an understanding of contemporary life that the most important practical questions of the present can only be resolved if the insights of spiritual science are incorporated into that solution.