The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventeenth Lecture

[ 1 ] In the present day, it is of some importance to explore the perspectives from which the various seekers of truth in earlier times set out—not merely because malicious and amateurish opponents of the spiritual science represented here claim that it has simply adopted all sorts of ideas from earlier times, but above all because an understanding of what can currently be discovered from the original spiritual source becomes clear when it is considered in conjunction with the powers that humanity possessed in earlier times, and with the various ways of seeking spiritual knowledge during earlier, instinctive stages of human development. And to draw your attention to this, I would like to speak today about a certain conflation that has often been made between Jesus Christ and one of his contemporaries, Apollonius of Tyana. The two have been conflated in a certain way, and there are even efforts that, in an ahistorical manner, compare the life of Apollonius of Tyana with that of Jesus Christ. When one compares Apollonius of Tyana with Jesus Christ, a number of external similarities do indeed emerge in their biographical details. Above all, we know that the Gospel accounts concerning Jesus Christ contain many things that today would be classified as miracles, and the biographers of Apollonius of Tyana also recount all sorts of miracle stories about him. The way such things are recounted today proves nothing other than that people are approaching human evolution in a thoroughly amateurish manner. What is recounted there regarding healings and similar events—which are called “signs” in the Gospels—corresponds to a stage of human evolution entirely different from the one in which we live today. The psychological influence of one person on another—and indeed, even the psychological influence of a person on the inanimate environment—has greatly diminished in everyday life over the course of time. And when we are told of such things from the time of the beginning of our Christian era, anyone who truly understands these matters from within knows that what a person could manifest in those times took a different form than what can happen in this regard today. Today we must proceed from different premises—premises that are to be reestablished precisely through spiritual scientific knowledge. And if we wish to understand the Gospels in the right way, we must by no means place the primary emphasis on the miracle narratives; rather, we must be clear that, for the times in question, miracle narratives concerning a person of outstanding moral character were something entirely to be expected. It was not even assumed that things could be any different in the case of a person such as Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ dwelt, or even in the case of a person such as Apollonius of Tyana.

[ 2 ] Let’s be clear on this point: I’d like to say that when people talk about what are called “miracles” in connection with such a person, that goes without saying. Such accounts are not meant to imply anything special. And if contemporary theology, for example, strives to deduce the divinity of Christ Jesus specifically from the fact that he performed miracles, then this very theology demonstrates nothing other than that it does not stand on a Christian foundation—aside from the fact that such a view is ahistorical. With Christ Jesus, it is never a matter of the performing of miracles, but always of what is revealed to us through the miracle narratives. It is always a matter of drawing our attention to the fact that, while people in earlier times, when they wanted to accomplish great deeds, acted with a lesser power of the “I,” Christ Jesus acted precisely out of the power of the “I.” Similarly, we would not understand the Lord’s Prayer if we tried to explain it by pointing out that we find the individual phrases in the speech of earlier peoples and therefore concluded that the Lord’s Prayer is ancient. Anyone who compares these earlier forms of the phrases found in the Lord’s Prayer with the Lord’s Prayer itself will realize that the Lord’s Prayer was intended throughout to convey—with a focus on the “I”—what had previously, so to speak, not been expressed with such a focus on the “I.”

[ 3 ] Nor should we, in any way, seek out the similarities that arose in connection with this biographical moment in the life of Christ Jesus. It is, after all, only natural that similar accounts will arise in a certain way when it comes to the performing of miracles—that is, the performing of what we now call miracles. We must look at something entirely different if we want to understand how a figure such as Apollonius of Tyana relates to Jesus Christ. And here, we must first point out the following.

[ 4 ] However, the story is told of Apollonius of Tyana: how he showed great aptitude even in his childhood; how he grew up with this great aptitude; how he received the finest education available at the time—such as the teachings that had evolved from the Pythagorean school. But the story continues by recounting that Apollonius of Tyana undertook great journeys specifically to acquire knowledge, and we are told of his travels—first the shorter ones, and then the long journey he made to the Indian sages. We are told how he came to revere and admire the Indian sages there, and how, through them, he gained access to certain sources of knowledge. We are then told how he returned, and how—one might say—inspired by what he had witnessed among these Indian sages, he went on to teach in various ways throughout Southern Europe. But we are also told how he went to Egypt, how he first absorbed in northern Egypt whatever he could there, and how it seemed insignificant to him—very insignificant—compared to the marvelous wisdom he had found among the Indians. We are then told how he traveled up the Nile toward its sources, but also to the settlements of the so-called Gymnosophists; this was the community of sages who, after the Brahmins and the Indian sages, enjoyed the greatest prestige in those days. But it is also recounted how Apollonius of Tyana was already so steeped in Indian wisdom that he could distinguish between it and the lesser wisdom of the Egyptian Gymnosophists. And then it is recounted how he returned once more, how he then undertook his various wondrous journeys to Rome, where he was persecuted, where he was imprisoned, and so on.

[ 5 ] But what interests us most is the fact that these great journeys are attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, and that these journeys are clearly linked to the constant expansion of his own wisdom. Apollonius becomes wiser and wiser through his encounters with the wisest people of his time. He wanders, so to speak, from place to place. He seeks out those who possessed the greatest wisdom of that era.

[ 6 ] In this way, he differs from Christ Jesus, who spends his time on Earth in a relatively small area and who speaks what he has to say to humanity entirely from within, who does not have to speak of the wisdom to be found within the Earth’s own sphere, but rather has to impart to humanity what he has brought down to Earth from extraterrestrial worlds. Indeed, attempts have even been made at times to attribute all sorts of journeys to India to Christ Jesus as well, but that is sheer dilettantism. The very point at issue here is that two beings stand in opposition to one another in the same era: on the one hand, Christ Jesus, who speaks solely from the super-earthly realm, and on the other hand, Apollonius of Tyana, who gathers what can be found on Earth, even though, thanks to his great gifts, he is able to absorb it into his own soul. This is the fundamental, significant difference, and whoever fails to see it fails to recognize precisely what the existence of these two personalities reveals to later times.

[ 7 ] But now, what is specifically associated with the person of Apollonius of Tyana points us to certain peculiarities of earlier times. I am referring to times that lie far beyond the Mystery, that is, very ancient times in human history. Some of this has indeed been preserved in later human history, and we shall see how Apollonius of Tyana encounters what has been preserved in this way among the Indian sages, the Brahmins, as well as among the Gymnosophists in Egypt. But one recognizes quite clearly what is at stake when one goes back to earlier times through spiritual-scientific historical research, and Apollonius of Tyana himself—according to his biographer—points out in strong terms what is important here. He points out how the almost immeasurable wisdom he encountered among the Indians is linked to the extraterrestrial influences that flow down upon human beings in a specific part of the Earth. We are reminded here that human beings are not exposed solely to earthly influences. These earthly influences are easy to study, although even today they take a back seat to other influences in human beings. Certain lower organic beings take on the character of what they consume, purely in terms of metabolism. In certain lower organic beings, we can see exactly how the metabolic products they absorb give them their color and other characteristics. I have drawn your attention to how, drawing on Scholasticism, Vincenz Knauer—my old friend from the Benedictine Order (which does not mean that I was ever in that Order, but that he was)—pointed out that what lies in the spiritual content of a concept is indeed something real in contrast to the merely sensory existence of the material. He said, in the spirit of the Scholastics: If one could lock up a wolf and feed it nothing but lamb for a long time, the wolf would still not become a lamb, even though it would then consist entirely of lamb. For Vincenz Knauer, this demonstrates that in the wolf—in the form, in the configuration of the wolf, that is, in what the concept of “wolf” encompasses—there is still something other than the material, for, in purely material terms, the wolf would indeed be a lamb if it had eaten nothing but lambs. But it does not become one. So, in a sense, this is already different for higher animals than for the very lowest organic beings; the latter clearly reveal the influences of their metabolism even in their color. In the case of humans, this is even more true than with the wolf: they do not display the effects of their metabolism; otherwise, in regions where a lot of paprika is consumed, there would be nothing but yellow-skinned people, and we know that, at most, when humans consume certain things, jaundice-like conditions may occur and the like. Even now, human beings remain to a high degree independent of earthly metabolic influences. But even today, in the materialistic age—which, after all, has not only a theoretical but also a thoroughly real foundation—they are less exposed to the influences of the extraterrestrial world, the cosmos, than was the case in the past. And ancient Indian wisdom can essentially be traced—to put it succinctly—to the particular angle at which the sun’s rays strike the Indian regions. There, the sun’s rays strike at a different angle than elsewhere. This means that the extraterrestrial, the cosmic influences on human beings are different there than elsewhere. And if such an ancient Indian had spoken entirely from his own consciousness—assuming he had even known what Europe was and so on—he would have said something like this: “Oh, over there in Europe, people can never attain any wisdom; the sun does not strike them in such a way that they can attain any wisdom; they can only be bound to what their metabolism churns up from the earthly realm. There can be no question of wisdom over there in Europe. There are only people of a lower sort—they are half-animals—for they do not have the kind of sunlight one must have if one wants to become a wise person.”—That is what the old Indian would have said, if he had spoken about these things at all. Because of his special relationship to the rays of the sun, he would hardly have spoken much differently about what passes for human vermin in Europe than modern people speak of their domestic animals. Not that he would not have loved these people of a lower order—after all, a person can love their domestic animals very much—but he would not have considered them his equals in terms of spiritual capacity.

[ 8 ] I simply wanted to point out how the ancient wisdom that was characteristic of human beings at that time depended on their location on Earth. This is also connected to something else. In earlier periods of Earth’s development, humanity as a whole became much more differentiated through this dependence than was later the case. The differentiation among people occurred immediately whenever sedentary people left their place of settlement and moved to other regions. They changed; they became different spiritually, and indeed physically. This is how the differentiation across the Earth is connected. It was, in essence, what the ancient human being received from the Earth’s atmosphere—and what he in turn embodied when he absorbed these influences of the Earth’s atmosphere in an appropriate manner. Thus we can say: in earlier times, a true sage was one who lived in that place on Earth where one could indeed become wise. For this reason, however, these ancients also looked toward this place with a certain justification. If one were to believe today, for example, in the same way that wisdom is confined somewhere in Asia, one would thereby only provide proof that one is not living in one’s own time—namely, not in the present age. There are, of course, strange people who still speak today of such particularly favorable places on the Earth’s surface; but in a higher sense—in the sense of true spiritual knowledge—these notions must be called thoroughly amateurish. Yet when we go back to the earliest times, we must indeed conceive of the wise person as inseparably connected to his or her place.

[ 9 ] What kind of person, then, is Apollonius of Tyana? Apollonius of Tyana seeks to become wise on earth, even though he does not live in such places—even the region near the headwaters of the Nile, where the Gymnosophists lived, was such a place where one could attain wisdom to a truly exceptional degree. He simply had within him the urge to attain such wisdom. Therefore, he set out on a journey, just as Pythagoras had done long ago, who was in the same situation.

[ 10 ] And so we see how Apollonius of Tyana is, in a certain sense, a person who seeks across the vastness of the earth that which is meant to fill human beings with inner satisfaction, that which leads them to attain inner spirituality. For those times in which what I have just said about humanity’s attachment to a particular place on Earth held true in a very special way were, by the time of Apollonius of Tyana, more or less merely a fading echo. Something of what ancient India once was still remained, and Apollonius of Tyana came to know it. But he already represented a newer era—the kind of person who is compelled to seek, in every corner of the earth, that which can be human wisdom in the highest sense. He is, however, compelled to seek it on long journeys.

[ 11 ] Here, the Mystery of Golgotha stands before us as the guiding force for the recent development of humanity—it stands before us in such a way that we can say: because the Christ dwelt within Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus of Nazareth simultaneously became the very being on Earth that has set the tone for this quest, regardless of its specific location on Earth itself. Consequently, Apollonius of Tyana and Christ Jesus are the greatest opposites. Apollonius of Tyana is, in a sense, a contemporary of Christ Jesus, who, in terms of his human constitution, no longer lives in the old era but already in a new one. But in this new era, one can only live with the Christ impulse. The Christ impulse comes from Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth and Apollonius of Tyana are the two poles of humanity at the beginning of our era.

[ 12 ] And it is precisely this that draws our attention to what has come into humanity through Christ Jesus. What I mentioned yesterday—that, above all, what has come into humanity finds expression in the idea of the Resurrection—is, above all, important for us to grasp. The idea of the Resurrection tells us that human beings need not perish because of what binds them to the earth, but that they can find within themselves something that rises above what is bound to the earth when they receive the Christ impulse. Everything that drags him down, everything that torments the Man of Sorrows hanging on the cross—these are, in the end, the forces that have been instilled into the human body—and thus into humanity as a whole—from earthly existence. When we look up at the Crucified One with His face steeped in suffering and His body ravaged by pain, we find the deepest expression of what earthly existence can imprint upon human beings. But if we look up to that which I drew your attention to yesterday—which, in essence, we are to behold above the cross as the Risen One—then we become aware of what can always rise up within the human being, what can rise above that which is merely contained within the forces of the earth, and what shows us how the human being is a cosmic being, how the Earth imprints its forces on only a part of him, but how what is actually the cosmic essence of the human being can rise from these forces.

[ 13 ] These are the things that must be considered in connection with the idea of the Resurrection, and these are the things that must be understood, especially in our time, when we are striving for spiritual insight into the Resurrection. What we must grasp above all else about the idea of the Resurrection is that in earlier times, an instinctive wisdom existed. What existed then was something great, thoroughly connected with the eternal essence of the human being. But when we look back to those ancient times, this wisdom was always at the same time something suggestive, something that came over a person, something in which a person did not live in freedom. The human will was less fully expressed in all those earlier times. It is the human will that must develop particularly during that period of Earth’s evolution that follows the Mystery of Golgotha. With regard to their will, ancient human beings lived entirely in a dull state. But the will must be permeated by wisdom, by the power of ideas, by spirituality. That is what matters. Therefore, it is necessary above all else for the Christ impulse to take root in the human will. This must simply be understood in the right sense. The development of the will is of particular importance from the present into the future. Human beings must become ever more conscious of their will. Today, in general civilized life, we experience only the reaction born of a complacent clinging to old prejudices—the reaction against the development of the will. People today simply do not want to develop their will in any way. They downright hate developing their will. How does humanity behave in this regard?

[ 14 ] When he is asked to be a whole person, a complete human being, whose will is also guided by wisdom, he says: “I won’t go along with that; let the Church guide my will.” The Church has its ancient commandments; the Church will tell me how to deal with my will. Or if he does not say this, people today say something else; they say: Oh, why should I give my will a direction—I have the state. The state has its laws; the state has its institutions; the state does everything. The state takes charge of the child. It already takes charge once the child has somehow overcome the greatest difficulties. The time will also come when the state will manage to take over the care of the child even at an age when these difficulties are still linked to all sorts of other issues. But why shouldn’t there also be officials in charge of land reclamation and a Ministry of Land Reclamation! That would certainly offer all sorts of interesting possibilities for the future structure of various government agencies and the like.

[ 15 ] But then, in later times, when things are no longer so uncomfortable, when they are more orderly in terms of child-rearing, the state no longer interferes by trusting anyone to make judgments, and people are, on the whole, quite satisfied with this. They don’t need to think about what is best for their children, for example, because—admittedly, the state doesn’t really think about that either, but at least people believe that it does. Well, I could go on with this line of thought for a long time. Where a person is supposed to strive to put their will into action and imbue it with wisdom, there the person today becomes precisely the kind of being who appeals to something else—something that certainly does not sit at the center of their will and radiate some light from there. But that is precisely what matters: that the will takes in these luminous impulses, and that is exactly what lies at the heart of the correctly understood idea of Christ.

[ 16 ] Christ is the Being who never takes possession of any group in any way, who never involves himself with any group. The greatest absurdity is to speak of a German, a French, a Scandinavian, a Dutch, or a Montenegrin Christ, or of a Christ, say, from Morocco or the like; rather, the Christ is the Being who knows no groups, who knows only individual human beings, and anyone who believes that there is any connection to the groups originating from the Christ-being.

[ 17 ] But this understanding of Christ—it has yet to come; it must come along with an understanding of human individuality itself. Then, when that happens, the idea of resurrection will also return, for the spirit can only rise again within the individual human being. The spirit can only rise again if individual human beings are given the opportunity to unfold. Of course, this can only happen if spiritual life is separated in its administration from the rest of the state structure, as intended by the threefold social order. To many people today, I would say, it may still seem like a forced connection to link the idea of resurrection with something like the concept of the threefold social order. But anyone who has a sense of and understanding for the unity of human civilization will also grasp how what is conceived for social life must necessarily arise from that understanding which leads the human being toward the highest that is accessible to him at all. The idea of resurrection must be grasped in a spiritual sense. This can only happen if one does not limit oneself merely to observation—that is, to the intellectual—but rather attempts to understand in the right way how the human will must be grasped.

[ 18 ] And spiritual science, as it is understood here, is indeed something that appeals to the human will. Spiritual science, as it is understood here, does not, however, understand all the rest of the talk. Take everything that is written in our literature. Where will people end up if they seek only to grasp the concepts and ideas in our literature with their intellect alone? Only in convoluted discussions! They will be able to engage in all sorts of mundane discussions about what spiritual science says. But the thoughts and ideas contained in spiritual science must be grasped by the will; they demand the whole person. One must truly want to comprehend if one wishes to understand spiritual science. And so the cultivation of the will in relation to spiritual science begins precisely with comprehension.

[ 19 ] I would like to say that this ought to truly permeate the entire human being of those who immerse themselves in what is here called the spiritual science movement. This spiritual-scientific, this anthroposophical movement has, of course, had to turn its attention to all manner of practical matters in recent times, first and foremost out of its very nature, but especially out of its relationship to the course of history. Not to characterize anything in a—I would say—inappropriate way—that is the last thing on my mind at this moment—but to draw attention to certain things that may or may not be the case, let the following be cited.

[ 20 ] You see, we have recently established all sorts of practical institutions. For these practical institutions, we need people; we must employ people in them. Naturally, we employ those who understand—or at least should understand—something of the intentions within the anthroposophical movement. Now, one might assume—this could be one way of looking at it; I’m just laying out possibilities—that anthroposophists will now take on these practical roles and, drawing on the full passion of anthroposophy, work in these practical roles while telling themselves: Now, when practical matters are being carried out, we must act from a different foundation; I am now, as I stand, truly part of the whole endeavor as an anthroposophist, and it does not matter to me whether I do much more than is customary in today’s world. I am one with what is intended through these practical endeavors.—That would be one possible perspective. The other possible perspective would be this: Well, there are all sorts of practical arrangements; there is an opportunity to be active as an anthroposophist in some way. But I am an anthroposophist, so I do not want to be treated the way it used to be customary in the old offices and the like. Yes, with the old offices, you had to arrive on time and leave on time—that’s no longer the case. Now I go in as I please, come out as I please; sometimes I don’t go at all, or I do something other than what’s supposed to be done, because in anthroposophy things must be different from the old philistine world. — That would be the extreme opposite view. I merely want to point out possibilities, for attention must be drawn to these possibilities even today, because what we are dealing with is indeed far too serious for us to allow what is spreading—entirely from the unquestioned underlying currents—among wider circles of anthroposophists who take pleasure in the old sectarian spirit of such things, to continue any further. These circles sometimes find it perfectly natural: Well, people have been drinking tea for so and so many ages, and people have talked over tea—well, let’s leave aside all the things people have talked about over tea or coffee or after their afternoon black coffee! But why shouldn’t we also talk over tea or coffee about Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon—why not also about reincarnations? Why shouldn’t we let our imaginations run wild about what this or that person might have been in a previous incarnation? In other words, why shouldn’t we engage in a bit of “salon anthroposophy” or something similar?

[ 21 ] We’ve moved beyond these things, though. That’s no longer possible. Our attention can no longer be drawn to them. Today, our attention can only be drawn to the other two possibilities. I merely wish to characterize the situation, and I am certainly not saying that I want to propose anything that already exists; rather, I am simply pointing out that these two possibilities would be, roughly speaking, such that one could make good progress with one of them, while with the other—where the anthroposophists are currently seeking a different, new tone, something quite special, and no longer wish to appear at eight o’clock, but rather at half past ten, perhaps because they have to meditate until then and so on—that this scenario would certainly not be compatible with a true culture of the will, as it had to be characterized just now. The times are too serious not to take these two polar opposites of the anthroposophical approach to things into account. I do not wish to comment on this myself, but I advise you to look around a little to see if these two possibilities exist, and then to form a judgment, and, if necessary, to act in some way in accordance with that judgment. It is very fine to profess one’s commitment to anthroposophy; but that is not enough in today’s world. Today’s world demands of human beings that which appeals to the will, that which also intervenes in the very development of humanity in a way that is absolutely conducive to it.

[ 22 ] It is, after all, perhaps extraordinarily uplifting to say: Here or there, somewhere hidden and inaccessible, this or that “Master” resides. — From a certain quarter, a specific location was once indicated for Hungary, and some naive Budapest residents then had the police records searched but found no trace of this master’s abode at the location in question! When one is told something like this—that the great spiritual powers of the earth were investigated in this way—one can do nothing but smile a little at such things, for it was naive on the part of those who investigated them in this manner, who were, so to speak, searching for the mailing addresses of humanity’s spiritual leaders; just as it was sometimes naive on the part of those who alluded to these matters as if one could simply ask for postal addresses. But I’d rather not go into that! People do, however, have all sorts of views on these matters. For example, a certain man once hung around among us—yes, what did he call himself back then? In his books he called himself Max Heindel, but here he had a different name; he called himself Grashof. This man had initially absorbed everything here that he could from public lectures and books. From this, he compiled—in a somewhat mystical way—a book titled *Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception*, and then, in a second edition, he also included what is found in the cycles and whatever else he had copied down. He then told his followers over in America that he had indeed absorbed the first stage here, but that in order to attain the second, he had journeyed deep into Hungary to a Master. He then claimed to have received from that master what was, in fact, merely transcribed from the cycles he had received—and specifically from all those lectures he had eavesdropped on—and transcribing them was nothing but plagiarism! Some of you will know that something truly hilarious then happened: this material was translated back into German, with the remark that while such things might indeed exist in Europe, it was better to receive them in the form in which they could have originated under the free sun of America.

[ 23 ] Humanity is all too willing to accept whatever it is allowed to take in without exercising its will. The cultivation of the will, when truly put into practice, ensures that such a thing cannot be possible. If the will remains weak, it will grow ever weaker and weaker in its ability to judge what confronts it from the outside world. We must learn to connect the highest truths to what we experience in everyday life. We must not, so to speak, keep these things in separate accounts. We must be clear that when we grasp the spirit, we also rise above the superficial judgment of ordinary life. And when we express certain things emotionally, then—as strange as it may seem when put this way—we are close to the element of faith in the Resurrection that we need most of all today. We need the first element, I would say—the very first beginning—which consists in taking into our will that which can come from spiritual science. Then, in the path we take there, in the direction in which we are guided, lies the way to true faith in the Resurrection. Today we must arrive at an expansion of the Easter concept. We must bring together what anthroposophy is meant to be for us as human beings with that which, for people in the wider world today, is actually just a word that no longer has any real content. And such a word is the word “resurrection,” the word “Easter,” for the vast majority of people. Meaning must once again be able to be connected to these things. We must gain insight into humanity—insight into human evolution—and we must learn once again, though from the full, clear light of human consciousness, what the Pauline words mean: “If Christ has not been raised, then your faith is in vain.” All knowledge and all human striving are also in vain if they cannot take the true Easter idea of the Resurrection into the very depths of the human soul.