The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Father Consciousness and Christ Consciousness

[ 1 ] What I have to say today will be related in a certain way to the remarks I was able to present here last time, and will therefore also build upon some of the familiar points from those remarks. Today I would like to speak about the materialism inherent in contemporary religious beliefs, but I would like to do so in connection with a certain aspect of the Christ problem. It is precisely with regard to the Christ problem that a whole series of misunderstandings regarding anthroposophical research arises; and while we cannot expect these misunderstandings to be dispelled—even among those who express a certain interest in them—much may nevertheless depend on others.

[ 2 ] In the most recent phases of the development of Western civilization, we have witnessed all manner of tendencies toward distinctly atheistic worldviews. It is not my task today to point out the various nuances of atheism as it has manifested itself; but I would like to draw attention to one thing that serves as a common foundation for any atheistic worldview. This is a failure to consider the very source from which the content of the consciousness of God actually arises. The consciousness of God cannot arise solely from the observation of external nature, but rather from the entirety of human coexistence with external nature, with the sensory world. It may seem paradoxical that I say the consciousness of God must arise from the human being’s coexistence with the sensory world. However, this consciousness of God must not be understood, so to speak, as the fulfillment of a single moment, but rather as the content of earthly life from birth to death. In this earthly life, we initially feel a sense of belonging to nature through heredity. Through purely natural processes, we have entered this earthly existence as physical human beings. As we pass through this earthly existence, we perceive a certain development of what has come into this existence through our birth. The question now is whether we are careful enough—and of course I do not mean this in an intellectual sense alone, but also in terms of feeling and the impulses of the will that we also possess and must experience—to attain a certain fulfillment of our consciousness in our coexistence with the external sensory world in the course of our earthly existence. If we summarize, purely on the basis of common experience, all that the sensory world can offer us, we will certainly never come to fully sense our human nature unless we think about the sensory world—and what it can be to us—in a spiritualized way. Even if we were to examine with the utmost care all the mysteries that the external sensory world can reveal to us through sensory perception, we could never come to understand that human beings are also placed within this sensory world. But since we, as physical beings on Earth, have nevertheless emerged from this sensory world, yet can never comprehend ourselves as human beings from its constituent elements alone, it follows for a healthy consciousness that this consciousness must simply be filled with the divine being—or rather, with the vision of the divine being.

[ 3 ] This is precisely what modern science, despite its great and far-reaching achievements, has brought to humanity: because it refuses to recognize the spiritual as such within the sensory world, it effectively excludes human beings from the totality of existence that it seeks to encompass. I have already expressed this to you by saying: If we consider, for example, the theory of evolution of modern times—which is formidable in many respects—we find that it does not actually treat human beings as “human beings,” but rather as the culmination, so to speak, the crowning achievement of the animal kingdom. When we ask natural science, as it stands today, about the nature of the human being, it does not actually answer us—if we understand it correctly. It answers only the question: Which is the highest of the animals? That is to say, it considers the human being solely in relation to his or her animal nature. In many respects, it is correct in what it has to say on the matter, but in doing so, it places human beings, so to speak, outside the sphere of its consideration. With its current methods, it cannot answer the question of the nature of human beings at all; indeed, it can only truly understand itself if it declares this question to be outside its realm.

[ 4 ] This is, of course, merely a reference to the feeling that arises from the wholeness of a healthy human being—namely, that precisely because he views himself in connection with all of nature, he must ultimately arrive at an awareness of God, but initially only at an awareness of God, not at an awareness of Christ.

[ 5 ] Thus, by using their common sense and sound judgment, people cannot possibly be atheists. I have already expressed this here by saying: Even though, of course, not every minor illness can be diagnosed by ordinary means, it is nevertheless clear to anyone who can distinguish a healthy person from a sick one that, first of all, atheism can find its place only in a pathological predisposition of human nature as a whole. Therefore, one can say: Denying God is actually the result of being sick. — But now the point is this: In the present epoch of human development, we arrive at this awareness of God—I would say, only in a wavering, doubtful way—if we take everything into account; for here attention must be drawn to a significant shortcoming in our current educational system, the very shortcoming that the Waldorf school movement, for example, seeks to correct. When one speaks of the decline of today’s civilization, one cannot really overlook the current youth movement. This youth movement means much more than is usually thought, and I actually regard it as something extraordinarily significant that, particularly at a number of recent events of our anthroposophical movement, including the most recent Stuttgart Congress, a considerable number of members of the youth movement have gathered and actually made the very positive decision to unite—from the perspective of the youth movement as well—with what is intended by the anthroposophical spiritual current. One may think what one will about the details of this youth movement, but one must nevertheless recognize that, for a large portion of our youth, authority has faded in relation to the older generation, which is supposed to be their guide. Even if one may have many critical things to say about today’s youth, one cannot ignore this insight: If young people say that they can no longer recognize authority as it currently exists, the blame cannot be placed solely on the youth; rather, it must be attributed to the older generation, which is supposed to guide them. Recently, during a lecture I gave in Aarau, Switzerland, this very issue of the lack of authority among today’s youth was discussed. After the lecture, a religious leader took the floor and railed at length against today’s youth. But such ranting actually accomplishes very little in the face of something so fundamentally evident. One must understand the issues. It was interesting when, afterward, a very young student from the cantonal school itself—the cantonal school there is definitely a secondary school—stood up and, in my opinion, delivered the best speech in the discussion. He spoke with great passion and said: “We do want authority—we actually crave authority—but when we look at the older generation, do we see anything other than the fact that no authority can come from them at all?” We see how they quarrel at every opportunity, how they’re at each other’s throats.” — And then he listed all sorts of things that young people today notice about the older generation, and in conclusion he said: “We do crave authority, but we can’t have it!”

[ 6 ] But if one looks closely at what this is all about, one finds that today’s civilization has become highly intellectualistic, that virtually everything that considers itself influential and authoritative today has become intellectualistic, purely rational. Fundamentally, the natural sciences and intellectual culture belong together. Natural science is the objective, intellectual culture the subjective. But intellectual culture—intellectualism—naturally emerges only at a certain age. As a child, one cannot be intellectualistic at all. Children are not intellectualists. Intellectualism can actually only emerge after sexual maturity. And since humanity has now fully grown into intellectualism, everything today is dominated by it. Those who today often reject intellectualism and rail against it do so all the more from the perspective of yet another form of intellectualism. Today, everyone who lays claim to intellectualism is an abstract thinker. But one actually only grows into intellectualism at a later age, and because we are overwhelmed by it, children no longer understand us and can no longer relate to the forms of thought we adopt under the influence of intellectualism; and we ourselves no longer feel at all what we absorbed when we were children. Childhood is no longer fully alive within us. We have become so terribly intellectually clever that the child no longer plays any role in us at all. Yet we cannot be teachers or educators if we have been thoroughly abandoned by what we ourselves experienced as children. Thus, we no longer know what to say to children, and they grow up without any special care for their very being. We proclaim that we must be concrete, but concreteness is, after all, merely the objective side of intellectualism. In this way, we create a chasm between ourselves and young people, and this comes back to haunt us in the youth movement. But again, nothing is accomplished by merely railing against intellectualism. For it has, after all, entered Western civilization as a necessary phenomenon over the last three to five centuries—actually, from the 13th to the 15th century. It had to emerge so that humanity could truly immerse itself in the impulse of freedom. Thus, the point cannot be merely to criticize the intellectualist impulse; rather, the point must be to understand it in the right way, so that, precisely through this understanding, we can then strive for further development toward a direction other than the intellectualist one.

[ 7 ] And now we must ask: What is the essence of this intellectualism? It is, in fact, already implied by the fact that one points to the connection between this intellectualism and the sense of freedom. And the sense of freedom, in turn, is inconceivable without the full development of the human “I.” It is actually the development of the “I” that has emerged in a certain way among humanity in recent times and that seizes the “I” from the perspective of the conscious soul. This is the essential element that provides the impetus for modern Western civilization. But this “I,” of which human beings have become fully conscious over the past three, four, or five centuries, can initially arise only from human physicality. The experience of the “I” between birth and death can come only from human physicality; this can be verified, in particular, through anthroposophical spiritual research.

[ 8 ] One of the most significant moments for the entire life after death is the moment of dying itself. This moment of dying is, of course, known to the earthly human being only in its outward aspect. Its inner aspect must be understood from the perspective of the consciousness that the deceased person himself possesses between death and a new birth. Whether this occurs more or less immediately after death is not our concern here. Today we wish to consider, in general terms, the consciousness that a person possesses between death and a new birth. This consciousness is entirely dependent on the person having an extraordinarily significant experience at the moment of death. Just consider that throughout the entire life between birth and death, a person emerges from their physical and etheric bodies only with their I and their astral body—and only during sleep; thus, during the life between birth and death, there is a constant, uninterrupted connection between the physical body and the etheric body. At death, a person emerges from the physical body with their etheric body—as you know, they remain connected to their etheric body for days afterward—so that they experience their full physical body only at the moment of death. If one wishes to gain knowledge of something, one cannot do so except by having the object of knowledge outside oneself. You do not see what is inside your eye; you see only what is outside the eye. In the same way, you do not see anything spiritually or soul-wise that you have within yourself. You must first step outside yourself with the spiritual and soul aspects of your being; only then do you see the outer aspect of your body. This occurs at the moment of death in connection with the separation of the etheric body from the physical body. When falling asleep, a person never actually has a conscious, complete perception of their physical body and etheric body. These two remain behind when one falls asleep. This is why, when one attains a perceptive consciousness during sleep, one can see only the human head and part of the torso, and why one cannot actually see the human being as a collection of limbs during ordinary sleep. It is only at death, in the process of dying, that the moment arrives when a person has their physical body completely before them as an object, and throughout the entire period from death to the new birth, this impression remains—I would say—as the end of the perspective upon which one looks back after death. One sees this moment of dying, for one would not recognize an “I” for oneself—one would be lost—if one did not have the “I” as an object through the fact that what one brings to consciousness here in the physical world, namely the full physical body, is present before one as an object of cognition at the moment of dying. This immense impression—that one can say to oneself: “What your ‘I’ consciousness has given you—your entire, your total physical body—that is what you beheld at the moment of death!”—remains and forms the content of ‘I’ consciousness between death and the new birth, where everything becomes temporal, where spatiality, in a certain sense, is no longer present. From that point after death, one looks back and sees that moment of dying as a significant point, as the end of the perspective—the direction then continues, but the rays intersect at the moment of the final death. This is what I would call the “time-link,” which continues to function after death just as the physical, spatial organism provides the sense of self between birth and death. So that we can say: The sense of self here in earthly life actually comes from the physical body.

[ 9 ] Now, the situation is as follows. You look out through your senses into the external natural world. You see the three kingdoms of the external natural world—the mineral, the plant, and the animal kingdoms—as well as the physical human kingdom. You see clouds, rivers, mountains, stars, and so on. Everything you can take in with your senses can be regarded as “nature,” and what you overlook there also continually supplies the elements that penetrate the human organism—both the physical and the etheric. Through food, you take in the substances of the physical-sensory world. These substances unfold their physical-chemical forces and activities even when they are within the human organism. Human beings are, so to speak, in their physical organism, what they take in from external nature. Minerals, plants, and animals are, if I may put it that way, permitted to be “nature.” They have a right to be nature. But when what is present in them enters the human organism through food, respiration, and so on, it becomes something other than nature. Then, within the human organism, the situation is such that one can say: What lives in nature must not, if the human being is to remain a “human being,” actually allow itself to remain nature. Natural beings have the right to be nature only outside of human beings; within human beings, nature becomes a destructive element. There it becomes that which constantly seeks to dissolve the human being, and which also instills in the human being spiritual forces that work toward destruction.

[ 10 ] The older, instinctive forms of human consciousness had a much more accurate understanding of this matter than today’s intellectualism. Today’s intellectualism proceeds from concepts, not from facts, and when the facts do not align with the concepts, it reinterprets the phenomena to fit its concepts. Today, people do not speak of plants, animals, and humans coming to an end; instead, they say that death should be investigated. No one today considers that the end of plants, the end of animals, and the end of humans might be something entirely different—something that cannot be subsumed under the common concept of “the dead.” In today’s world, one is regarded as grotesque, even paradoxical, when one draws attention to such things. But in this regard, it is certainly true. Today, someone says: “A knife is a knife”—and then he takes a razor and wants to carve up his own flesh with it, because—well, a knife is just a knife! Today, when people believe they have both feet firmly planted in reality, the point is to realize that reality cannot be grasped through abstract concepts. Intellectualism, which proceeds solely from concepts rather than facts, fails to take this into account. It therefore does not realize how justified it was, from earlier stages of consciousness, to speak of nature—in its effects and processes, as it continues its existence within the human being—no longer having the right to remain nature, but rather that it must be transformed, and that within the human being, if it wishes to retain its validity as nature, it becomes “sin.” The concept of sin in connection with natural phenomena no longer exists at all. One no longer sees the bridge between the natural and that which is rooted in the human being as spiritual and soul-related. Animals, plants, and minerals have the right to be nature in the external world; that which enters into human beings from them must be transformed by human beings, for if it were to remain nature, it would be transformed into something destructive. That is to say, if it is mere nature and human beings lack the power to transform it, it becomes illness, and as it communicates itself to the soul, it becomes sin.

[ 11 ] If a person who objectively examines his relationship to the sensory world reflects on the matter and takes into account everything that can be considered, he must conclude the following: When I look out into nature and first consider my origin from it, I cannot be an atheist. But on the other hand, precisely as a person of the present, as a person of the modern era, I cannot help but attribute my sense of self to the mere physical body, to the natural existence within me. What I am expressing here in thought is certainly present, in terms of sensation and feeling, in every healthy person who is not afraid today to arrive at self-knowledge. If they do not avoid looking into their own inner being out of fear or convenience, they come to this conflict, saying to themselves: If I regard myself as a natural being, emerging from nature, then a divine being must underlie the entire world, which also contains me. — But in fact, modern ego development contradicts this healthy intuition, for it can only arise from the natural existence of the physical body and—as I have even shown you—through the impression that dying makes on a person. Thus, nothing less follows from this than that modern human beings must, quite instinctively, actually come to doubt the awareness of God—not because anything in the observation of nature has led them away from this awareness, but because, in the present epoch, when one considers their entire being—body, soul, and spirit—human beings, due to their sense of self, cannot be completely healthy. For: nature within the human being, if it remains as it is and exerts an influence on the soul, is a source of illness, and it leads the soul astray and into sin.

[ 12 ] Of course, one must not view this in a philistine way, but must keep in mind the facts as they are revealed by existence itself. In other words: If we go back to ancient times, when self-consciousness did not yet exist, people always conceived of the divine being—regardless of whether they imagined it with one modification or another—in terms of the concept of the Father. One could not conceive of the divine being other than as a unified divine being that more or less encompassed the world, which one sought to grasp through the concept of the Father; and since self-consciousness did not yet exist—for it can arise only from the natural realm—nothing disturbed this sense of the Father. Modern human beings can actually possess this “Father-consciousness” only if they—perhaps through moral fortification—nevertheless subdue their “I” and withdraw somewhat from it; yet this must arise through the development of freedom, alongside the development of modern humanity. Therefore, human beings, as they live today, cannot truly find satisfaction in this single consciousness—the “Father-consciousness.” They must say: I would have this father-consciousness if I could still be instinctive like the humanity that existed before the heightened sense of self developed. But as a person of the present, this sense of self prevents me from fully confronting this father-consciousness.

[ 13 ] This is what modern human beings can very well experience by reflecting on their “I,” when they realize that the “I,” if it does not have a body, ceases to exist. It ceases to exist when one falls asleep; in death, it sustains itself only through the perception of the dying body. Human beings know that it is precisely through their “I”-consciousness that they are led away from the divine Father-consciousness. Yet they must perceive this as a pathological condition, and if they perceive it correctly as such, the impulse arises within them that leads them to the Christ who is present today. The consciousness of the Son must emerge from inner spiritual experience as a complement to the Father-consciousness. This consciousness of the Son can enter us only through an “act of freedom.” And we must bear this firmly in mind: If atheism is in fact a symptom of illness, then what might be called agnosticism toward the Mystery of Golgotha—agnosticism above all toward the present Christ—is a misfortune, a stroke of fate! One need not be perfectly healthy to be deprived of the Father-consciousness—though in this regard, modern humanity is indeed not entirely healthy—but one does need an act of freely discovering the Christ Spirit if one wishes to come to Christ.

[ 14 ] Two experiences are indeed necessary: first, an awareness of the Father; but I would say that, in the current stage of human development, this awareness of the Father is clouded. If I had not acquired self-consciousness in the course of human development, the divine Father-consciousness would be present; but since self-consciousness actually springs—and must spring—from that which, left to itself, is diseased in the human being, therefore the divine Father-consciousness is clouded at present, and one must come to the consciousness of Christ through a free act that is distinct from the discovery of the Father.

[ 15 ] As I have already indicated here, these two experiences are not distinguished from one another in Western civilization. It is precisely in Soloviev that one finds him—drawing from a different mode of consciousness—strictly distinguishing the consciousness of the Father from that of the Son. In the West, the two are so little distinguished that a description of the essence of Christianity—one that is authoritative for many—could even state: It is not the Son who belongs in the Gospels, but the Father alone; the Son, in fact, appears there solely as the Father’s teacher. — Thus, there is no awareness that one can have two distinct acts of experience: one in relation to the experience of the Father—which, however, is clouded today—and the other in relation to the Son. Now, if one has this experience in relation to the Son, one would initially arrive only at a present encounter with Christ, and anyone can arrive at this present encounter with Christ—the eternal Christ, so to speak—through the subjective relationship of the present. But whoever rejects the present encounter with Christ and lives in a dull manner, as in the earlier days of humanity, will not attain that inner constitution that leads him to the encounter with Christ. Yet whoever truly feels what the modern age can offer him will arrive at this inner act of encountering Christ and thereby prove that Christ is present.

[ 16 ] However, the historical Christ still remains to be explored. To do so, one must also be able to view history from a different perspective than is possible for the outer consciousness today, in this age of materialism. I must draw your attention to something that should be strictly observed. This “shining upward” into higher worlds is usually taken too superficially. People still pay too little attention to the fact that someone who speaks of the higher worlds must actually speak in a different style than one used when speaking of the physical world—and not only in a different outward style, but in a different inner style as well. When we live here in the physical world and allow this world to influence us, we distinguish—for the consciousness of today—logically, I would say, between right and wrong; we also call it true and false. And we examine, based on logical or external criteria of reality, whether something is right or wrong, true or false. But this is precisely how we enter into abstraction, into intellectualistic life. For all logical distinctions regarding whether something is true or false operate within abstract concepts if one relies solely on external sensory perception—whether through observation or experiment. Nevertheless, our cognition still operates within abstract concepts. We cannot retain this same abstractness of concepts when we ascend into the higher worlds. There, everything becomes much more alive, and it appears similar to the living, not merely to the thought. Therefore, anyone who perceives the higher worlds must not merely speak of true or false, right or wrong—though of course one must do that as well!—but must, for example, speak of something that is right here in its reflection in the physical world as something healthy, and of something that is false here in its reflection as something unhealthy. Even for the next higher world, it is not entirely accurate to speak of true and false; there, one is dealing everywhere with healthy and sick, wholesome or unwholesome. Therefore, anyone who speaks of the higher worlds in terms of abstract logic, just as they do of the physical world, thereby demonstrates that they do not have a true insight into the higher worlds.

[ 17 ] Now, however, something very peculiar occurs in relation to the historical development of humanity. If one views it impartially, it indeed reveals to us ancient epochs filled with wisdom, and if one possesses sound judgment, one will feel deep reverence for the primordial wisdom of these earlier epochs. If one traces the origins of what, for example, has found an echo in the Vedas and in Vedanta philosophy, one will find that it has been drawn forth and revealed from such profound sources of wisdom that one cannot help but feel the deepest reverence for it. One approaches this very primordial wisdom of humanity differently than the abstract scholarship of our time is capable of doing. But this primordial wisdom is, so to speak, becoming increasingly dulled the further humanity advances in its development, and we see that the greatest dulling of this most original, this primordial-wisdom-filled human consciousness occurs in the very age in which the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. One need not take any account of the external sources, insofar as these sources—such as the Gospels—speak literally of the Mystery of Golgotha. One need only observe the historical development of humanity with an open mind—but now from a higher perspective—to find that, the further back one looks, the darker and darker this primordial wisdom becomes in the human soul. What then found full expression in the fifteenth century was already hinted at in the Greek and Latin-Roman eras. Humanity, in essence, now possesses only traditions of this primordial wisdom; it no longer experiences it, and what is slowly emerging is what will later arise as full ego-consciousness. In this regard, our external science has actually made little headway in studying precisely this epoch, into which, on the other hand, the Mystery of Golgotha falls. Enormous problems arise, for example, when we consider the Greek alphabet today—where the letters still have names, such as Alpha, Beta, and Gamma—and trace the path to the later Latin alphabet, where they no longer have names. These transitions, which point deeply to historical stages of development, are completely overlooked. For example, no attention is paid to what our word “alphabet”—which is still derived from Greek—actually means. If one investigates this—and a true linguistics will be able to investigate these matters—it will become clear that the Greek “alpha” essentially expresses the same thing that is stated in the Old Testament with the words: “The living breath was breathed into man”—so that in the breath, in the breath itself, one will see that which first and foremost constitutes the human being. Once the word “alpha”—which is, after all, just a word—is properly examined, one will find: This is the human being! The first letter of the alphabet is nothing other than the expression of the human being. And Beta is the “house,” and the beginning of the alphabet means: the human being in his house. — This view of the alphabet was completely lost in later times, as intellectualism developed more and more. The letters came to be used solely to distinguish external things. What lay in the revelation of primordial wisdom was severed; the “Word” of primordial revelation was externalized, and people no longer understand at all what was revealed to humanity in the letters—and specifically in the words. In today’s traditional lodges and orders, people speak everywhere of the “hidden Word”; yet humanity knows very little about what this hidden Word represented as a reality, how the alphabet itself spoke of the hidden Word, and how it has been atomized and fragmented.

[ 18 ] Of course, I could also start from a different point to show what a profoundly transformative impulse for development existed during the era of Greek and Latin culture. How Greek culture sought, through a unique art, to help itself overcome this—I would say—illness that had arisen in humanity is plain to see for anyone willing to look; I would just like to draw attention to one thing here.

[ 19 ] Today, when people talk about drama, for example, they think of it as something to watch—a luxury of life. You watch it and then call it, say, beautiful. The Greeks, however, saw the most important aspect of drama as the idea of catharsis—purification, cleansing. This was not merely an external, fantastical process, but one that clearly points to its medical origins. Catharsis is the crisis that one overcomes, and through Greek tragedy, the soul was brought into this crisis so that, in experiencing fear and pity, it underwent a purification by being surrendered to the effects of these opposing forces as the drama unfolded. The Greeks did not conceive of their art in a vulgar sense at all, but rather as something healing. For they still perceived in it the workings of a primal wisdom. For them, a healthy primal wisdom still existed, though it had been dulled over time, and a kind of pathological process then set in. The Greeks wanted to express the following through their art—Nietzsche sensed this; one can read about it in his book The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music: There is something in humanity that needs to be healed. — And the therapists, the Essenes, everywhere assumed that there was something in humanity that needed to be healed. And if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place within humanity, we would be living today in such a way that I would have to say: had the Mystery of Golgotha not occurred, we could only point to a process of disease within humanity. So, with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha, something becomes clear to us when we apply the concepts of “healthy” and “sick” to human history. This is what is significant: You can apply all concepts related to “right” and “wrong,” but you reach a point in the course of evolution where you must begin to view things differently. For when you enter the Greek epoch, you enter a time when a state of illness has set in within humanity, and from the Mystery of Golgotha health emanates. The therapists have pointed this out and said: This is where the great Therapist, the Savior, arises—one who, in the literal sense, is tasked with healing humanity. — It is simply a matter of delving deeply enough into the course of human development and not stopping at the usual abstract concepts, but rather grasping historical life through medical concepts, according to the categories of health and illness. Then one will understand the necessity of a healing process and will also understand how the “Savior” — which is nothing other than the “therapist” — intervenes in humanity. One will then understand how something must intervene in the development of earthly humanity that could not intervene through the forces that previously existed within humanity. A new impulse from beyond Earth had to come to heal humanity.

[ 20 ] This is how one can view historical development—and this is how one must view it—if, without delving into the content of historical documents, one looks only at the overall pattern of how humanity has developed. This leads one to the concept of the extraterrestrial Christ, who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, connected himself to Earth’s evolution from extraterrestrial regions. This insight must take hold if one wishes to understand history. Anyone who refuses to apply this insight—based on the concepts of “healthy” and “sick”—to historical development should simply admit that history remains incomprehensible to them. They cannot understand how what once lived in the East made its way to Africa and then became the Greco-Roman civilization. We rightly regard Greek development as an extraordinarily healthy one. And why? Because the Greeks felt that illnesses must be fought, and they wanted to shape their lives accordingly. And there is a particularly remarkable consensus among the individual Greek figures in this regard: they felt that there was something here to be fought against. And this loss of feeling, and the ever-increasing drift into the abstract—which turns even the gods into abstractions—is the distinctive feature of Romanism and remains its defining characteristic. Europe was shaped by Romanism until the 15th century, when it finally came to incorporate the cosmic Christ into its consciousness; prior to that, Christ was brought to the West through Romanism.

[ 21 ] Today I just wanted to contribute a few thoughts so that we might gradually come to understand what is contained in the Mystery of Golgotha: how one cannot, in fact, stop at something that has developed from ancient times up to the Mystery of Golgotha. One then finds that, if one proceeds in this way, there is actually no longer any difference between what certain theologians present in their Jesus-ology and what a secular historian, such as Ranke, presents. One can no longer distinguish what certain theologians present regarding the story of Jesus from what, for example, a man like Ranke puts forward on the subject. But everything hinges on understanding how the Christ, as a supermundane being, united with Jesus of Nazareth, who was born as a human being in the course of time. It is precisely here that something occurs which has led to the greatest misunderstandings regarding this necessary path of anthroposophy toward the Mystery of Golgotha. It was characteristic of all ancient, instinctive wisdom that it did not separate the spiritual from the physical. For if one separates the two, one arrives at an impossible concept of matter in the physical realm and, in the spiritual realm—that is, in human spiritual experience—at abstraction, at a lifeless system of concepts. It is only in recent times that humanity has come to separate the material and the spiritual in this way. And so anthroposophy leads us back to understanding how we are to view all of nature—I would say, how we are to view a physiognomy. We view a physiognomy by thinking of it as imbued with spirit. We read the imbued-with-spirit nature from it. This is how it once was in primordial wisdom, and this is how the light-filled, newer wisdom of today also leads us back to a physiognomic contemplation of the world of the stars, for example. This leads to something that allows us to perceive the Christ as the solar being—though this does not mean that the Christ is the physical solar being any more than the human being is the physical bodily being. But only in this way can we recognize how something extraterrestrial could have lived within Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in Palestine. Yet this is shrouded in the most extreme misunderstanding, particularly among theologians. They even find it “offensive” that anthroposophy connects Christ with the sun and with the outer cosmic world in general. Why is this the case? It is extraordinarily characteristic. Anthroposophy says it leads from Christ back to the Sun. But for these people, the Sun is nothing more than that burning ball of nebula out there; therefore, it is offensive to associate this burning ball of solar nebula with Christ. But we know: Theology has become materialistic, and therefore it can see only the material world in the cosmos. Yet anthroposophy shows how this material world is permeated by the spiritual everywhere. Theology, however, is unable to detach itself from the material, and therefore it feels offended when anthroposophy speaks of Christ as a solar being. Out of materialism—out of the deepest materialism regarding the structure of the world—it is precisely this point concerning Christology that is found offensive. Here you can see how materialism is eating its way into everything. It has now taken hold of theology, and because theology has become materialistic, it leads to such misunderstandings about anthroposophy. From the ordinary world, we can only be materialists, and when someone from this world brings Christ down to earth, this can only be interpreted materialistically—and that is offensive. One must point out at these very points the growing materialism of the entire culture, which is simply afraid to acknowledge its own foundations. But we will not emerge from this decline to a new ascent unless we face these underlying foundations completely impartially, fearlessly, and without apprehension. We must break free from what has led European and Western humanity as a whole into this downward spiral—what has led to these terrible catastrophes. The only way to do this is through fearless insight into everything that human beings can experience in the world. It is also necessary to approach, in an unbiased manner, that which is truly of no use from the sphere of intellectualism when one enters the higher worlds.

[ 22 ] Many people still say today: “Yes, what is communicated from the higher worlds is strange; one must enter these worlds oneself, otherwise one cannot understand it.” — But that is not the case. People believe this to be the case only because they want to limit themselves entirely to the concepts that apply only to the physical world we inhabit between birth and death. For example, the prevailing belief today—precisely because everything is derived from these concepts, even though people believe themselves to be inductive and empirical—is that one can express oneself absolutely. Of course, one must say to oneself: when a person falls asleep, the “I” and the astral body step out of the physical and etheric bodies, and the person remains unconscious until awakening occurs again. This is certainly a sound statement for present-day humanity, but it does not apply to the entire development of humanity. If, for example, we look back to the very times from which Indian and ancient Persian cultures emerged, we find that a different conception lay at the foundation everywhere—namely, that when a person falls asleep, their “I” and astral body descend deeper into their physical and etheric bodies than is the case during waking hours. The ancient Indian did not say: “When a person falls asleep, their ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies.” — Only the Theosophists lead people to believe that the Indian would have spoken this way. Rather, he said: “When people fall asleep, they sink deeper into the physical and etheric bodies.” — And that is, in essence, quite correct, for the situation is actually like saying, in an absolute sense: for the Earth, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But that is not the case, for on the other half of the Earth, the process occurs in reverse. One can certainly still call them east and west, but the directions are different. Therefore, it is certainly true that for a certain period of time, the “I” and the astral body plunged deeper into the physical body and the etheric body, and that the impression was therefore quite different. This is also why the Indian speaks quite differently, because human beings were in a different state of consciousness—namely, in that of which modern humans, too, have no full awareness: their rhythmic and metabolic functions. They have no awareness of these, for in terms of consciousness, it is certainly the case for people today that they daydream through their rhythmic functions, while they sleep through their metabolic functions.

[ 23 ] That is why one can say: It must be understandable that, regarding something about which we believe we can speak with absolute certainty today, people at different times had to experience different things; and one can only understand the course of history if one allows the facts to speak for themselves regarding these matters, rather than the concepts one has constructed. Today, when the West and the East—the Occident and the Orient—are pitted against one another so fiercely that a balance must be found, humanity must be able to go back to these underlying contexts; otherwise, no matter how many Washington conferences you attend, they will all end in failure if the fundamental impulses of human development are not addressed. People still do not believe this today, but it is a truth that we must address what moves humanity from its very core if we wish to move from signs of decline back to signs of renewal. What is called for here seems impractical today. But people do not realize just how impractical that which is truly impractical—which has proven itself to be so, which developed to its extreme, became impractical from 1914 to 1918, and continues to have an impractical effect—actually is. But alongside all this, one must become familiar with how religious consciousness, too, can be illuminated and deepened through the anthroposophical perspective.

[ 24 ] Today I was able to outline only one of the paths leading to the cosmic, extraterrestrial Christ. But you will see how this can later develop into a deeper understanding of history—one that views humanity as a living being. And just as one speaks of a living being as being healthy or sick, so too must one speak of humanity as being healthy or sick if one does not wish to remain stuck in materialism. One cannot say that it is difficult to come to Christ when one sees how the corresponding paths have not been taken. A concrete, realistic view of history will attempt to approach the Mystery of Golgotha from a wide variety of angles. Today, however, since people cannot come up with valid arguments against spiritual science, they resort to every possible means to denigrate its proponents: they resort to personal attacks. And it is indeed—I say this truly without resentment—a terrible indictment of those who today oppose anthroposophical spiritual science that they actually refrain from engaging with it, that they always merely skirt around it from the outside, for example, by presenting the Christ event and the Christ experience as if anthroposophy were rationalizing the mysterious, as if it were dragging down into the sphere of ordinary rationalistic knowledge that which one ought to approach with shy reverence. But just consider this: When one stands before a person and looks at them, the mystery that every human being represents to us need not be lost simply because one not only hears about them but is also able to look at them. The individual human being cannot be measured by rationalistic concepts, much less that which stands before us as the highest meaning of Earth’s evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha! But the mystery is not lost through being brought into direct perception; and anthroposophy seeks precisely to lead from what is merely communicated or believed to what becomes comprehensible through direct perception. Nothing is taken away from what constitutes the mystery. The mystery remains, but it is not to be merely “spoken of”; rather, it is to be set before humanity for contemplation.

[ 25 ] This is how critics today beat around the bush instead of addressing what is stated so explicitly in anthroposophical literature itself. It is not necessary to engage with every argument coming from that side, but within anthroposophical circles there should be a strong awareness that hatred toward the anthroposophical movement will intensify the more it asserts itself. What has been done so far is already quite significant in terms of opposition; but you can be assured that this will be surpassed. And even when there is such railing—as has been the case once again in recent days regarding eurythmy—it seems to me that all one needs to do is say to oneself: It would only be cause for concern if praise were coming from that quarter. I would then begin to ask myself: What needs to be done differently now? — Anyone who wishes to be truly involved in the anthroposophical movement in the right way should definitely adopt this as a healthy attitude.

[ 26 ] My intention today was to present something that, in a certain sense, serves as a supplement to what I was able to speak about during my last visit here. Of course, this does not bring the matter to a conclusion. What I have touched upon today will also help you make further progress in Christology.