The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Crossing the Threshold

[ 1 ] We haven’t seen each other here in the branches for quite some time, and I think I can safely say that it gives me an extraordinarily deep sense of satisfaction to be able to discuss a few matters with you again today after such a long time. We have gone through an extraordinarily difficult period, the challenges of which are certainly felt, but which are still not sufficiently understood in wider circles. It is true that one can say that anyone who lived through the second decade of the 20th century experienced, in terms of substance, more than can usually be experienced in centuries. And it is a kind of spiritual slumber not to sense how all matters relevant to human development are different today than they were, say, ten years ago. The full extent of the upheaval that has taken place will likely only gradually come to humanity’s full awareness. People will then see how what has unfolded in such a catastrophic manner on the outer surface of things actually reaches extraordinarily deep into the roots of the human soul, and how what has happened has, in essence, emerged as errors of the soul affecting the broadest circles of humanity. And only when people resolve to seek the true causes of humanity’s great misfortune within the soul will they develop a proper understanding of this time of trial for humanity; and it will then likely come to pass that a spiritual movement such as anthroposophy will be viewed in a different light than it has often been viewed thus far.

[ 2 ] This anthroposophical spiritual movement seeks to give humanity precisely what it has lacked over the course of the last three, four, or five centuries—a lack that is so intimately connected to what we have experienced and continue to experience as the misery of culture and civilization. The world has drifted away from the spiritual—from life in the spiritual—not only in terms of the great interconnections but also in terms of the development of what takes place in the smallest circles. Humanity today faces major global issues that can only be addressed in some way from the depths of spiritual life, yet they are being dealt with in the most superficial manner across the entire globe. There is no way to look into what is striving to emerge from the depths of human soul and spiritual life. But this is precisely what the anthroposophical worldview seeks to restore to humanity.

[ 3 ] Today I would like to discuss, from the perspective of this anthroposophical worldview, some intimate questions concerning human soul and spiritual life. Perhaps, from the perspective we gain through such a discussion, we can then briefly turn our attention to some current events. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to speak of those worlds that remain hidden, at first, from external sensory perception and also from the intellect, which is bound to this sensory perception. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to speak, first and foremost, of that with which the eternal aspect of the human soul is connected. The worlds into which this anthroposophical worldview seeks to penetrate are said to be accessible only when a person crosses the threshold of consciousness. This means that this threshold of consciousness must be consciously crossed in order to gain insights into these supersensible worlds. For unconsciously, human beings actually cross this threshold of consciousness every time they enter the state of sleep, and in connection with the transition between waking and sleeping—in connection with the threshold that human beings cross every day as they fall asleep— we also speak of the “Guardian of the Threshold” as a spiritual power that the spiritual researcher knows to be a truly real spiritual power, just as one comes to know other human beings as real human beings. We speak of the “Keeper of the Threshold” for the very reason that, in the present phase of humanity’s development, human beings must indeed, at first, be protected in their consciousness from an unprepared entry into the spiritual worlds.

[ 4 ] It might at first seem extraordinarily striking that what must be most valuable to human beings—the spiritual world to which they belong with the deepest roots of their existence, and without which they would not possess human dignity in the true sense of the word—must initially remain hidden from them. This is deeply connected to the very meaning of human evolution. After all, human beings would not be able to attain their true nature in the course of evolution if they did not have to acquire and develop the strength themselves through which they work their way toward the spiritual worlds. If he were to cross the threshold merely as an undeserved gift of grace, he might be able to become a high spiritual being, but he would not be able to be human in the true sense of the word—a being who brings about his own worth through his own efforts; for this is the essence of the human being in the context of the universe: that he must make himself into that which constitutes his true dignity. It would be like a kind of burning away of the human being, like a kind of extinguishing of the human being, if a person were to cross the threshold into the spiritual world unprepared. Nevertheless, what spiritual research has to say about the relationship to that world can certainly be grasped by sound reason. One can see through to the essence of what must be said in this regard from the depths of spiritual research. Just consider how, when a person falls asleep, they first sink into a kind of unconscious state. From this unconscious state, individual waves emerge into the world of dreams, as if from the depths of the sea.

[ 5 ] Even for a person who is free from all superstition and nebulous mysticism, this dream world has something thoroughly mysterious and enigmatic about it, and one must sense how it is connected to the innermost essence of both the world and human existence itself. Thus, we can regard the time a person spends from falling asleep until waking up as a subdued state of consciousness from which the imagery of dreams reveals itself. And even if we observe dreaming only superficially, we must acknowledge: Dreams contain pictorial echoes of the life we have experienced—not only through sensory perception, but also through the intellect and through feeling. But they present this world, otherwise familiar to us, in a different way. Not only does the dream generally not produce abstract thoughts but instead shapes everything into images—not only is this the case, but also the following: While we have before us a certain coherence of the world in the sensory realm—one that is internally ordered in a certain way, so that we are intellectually satisfied by the world when things appear to us as ordered in space and time—the dream seemingly throws everything into disarray. It interweaves events that took place yesterday with events that occurred decades ago. It introduces an order into what we know that is different from the spatial order—or the spatiotemporal order—that we otherwise perceive while awake.

[ 6 ] And when we study the dream in this way, we find that it is precisely what emerges from the dream that constitutes our power of thought. When we wake up, we sense how we re-enter, from dreamless sleep, the world in which human ideas and human thoughts develop. We feel: We pour the imagery of the dream into our physical being. And as we pour it in this way, the body in turn sends us the power of thought, through which order is restored to what the dream has thrown into disarray. Our body claims us upon waking, and our body gives us the power of imagination, through the exercise of which we actually become truly awake. Then the world of dreams fades away, and in its place the world of ideas returns in the proper order of space and time.

[ 7 ] Anyone who pays even a little attention to these phenomena can observe, even in ordinary life, this slipping in of something initially indefinable into the physical body, and can also advance to the point of understanding that says: The power of thought is given to me through my body when I immerse myself with my soul-spiritual being into this physicality. And through this everyday observation, they will indeed find confirmation of what anthroposophy must say: that what we initially know as a concept from ordinary daily life is bound to the outer physical body, which remains in bed at night when we cross the threshold into another world with our spiritual-soul being. As our consciousness fades away in this process, it leaves behind at the threshold the power and ability to form thought-worlds in the usual sense, and what crosses the threshold from the human soul is that which constitutes the content of moods or feelings and the content of the will. And this content of moods and this content of the will already resemble the state of sleep even during ordinary waking hours. We are actually only truly awake in our imaginations. Just consider how dark that which lives in our feelings is, and how utterly dark that which lives in our impulses of will is. If one tries to imagine how one will carry out even the simplest decision of the will: It remains as dark as the state during sleep—what is actually happening in the muscles and bones, what is actually happening when the thought is realized. First we have the thought: “I am raising my arm”—then we see how it rises. We have only impressions. What is mysteriously taking place there remains hidden from consciousness, just like the state of sleep itself. Essentially, we carry across the threshold that which is already, even in the waking state, like sleeping and dreaming. For the images are no clearer than the feelings associated with our world of imagination. It is simply different forms in which the life of the soul expresses itself—through feelings in the waking state and through dreams in the sleeping state—but the life of feeling is no clearer than the dream image. If it were brighter, then we as human beings would lead an extraordinarily abstract life. Just think of the right with which people speak of cold, sober thoughts in contrast to what is inflamed by emotion! But what lives in emotion remains, in a certain sense, as dark as the images of dreams.

[ 8 ] And when we fall asleep, we carry our feelings across this threshold, and it is these feelings that, in a certain sense, even brighten into dream images during sleep. We carry our will into this world, though it is already as dormant during waking life as it is during sleep. And so we can say: What a person carries across the threshold of consciousness is the emotional and volitional element of their soul being. Feeling and will belong to the consciousness of sleep. The life of imagination—and, indeed, because the dream becomes clearer, the life of feeling as well—a part of the life of feeling belongs to waking life; these still lie on this side of the threshold of consciousness. This is why we speak of the Guardian of the Threshold, because it is necessary for human beings, in their present state of consciousness, not to consciously cross the threshold unprepared—a threshold they cross every time they fall asleep as their consciousness subsides. When one learns to recognize the forces within which a person finds themselves beyond the threshold of consciousness, one also comes to understand why a person must be prevented—by a guardian, by something that watches over them—from crossing the threshold into the spiritual world unprepared.

[ 9 ] At first glance, when one enters it, the world beyond the threshold truly looks different from what one might like to imagine. However, if one enters sufficiently prepared, it gradually transforms, and one comes to have experiences different from the very first ones—experiences that can be somewhat unsettling even for those who enter the supersensible world fully prepared. For what exists in the supersensible world in the initial form in which it presents itself? In this world dwell, first and foremost, forces and entities that—one must put it this way—are extraordinarily hostile toward the ordinary sensory world. When one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world, it feels like scorching and burning, like a consuming fire for everything the sensory world has to offer. One truly enters a world of destructive forces. That is the first sight that presents itself on the other side. And I would like to give you, based on the facts, an idea of what it is like in the realm one first enters:

[ 10 ] Consider the human physical body that envelops us from birth until death. Consider the moment when a person approaches death, when they pass through the gate of death—first with regard to the physical body. After passing through the gate, this body still appears, outwardly at least, in the same form as it was before death, if we consider only the purely spatial aspect for the moment. But very soon you will realize: This physical body, which can retain this form for decades—for which this form is its natural state—is dissolved and destroyed by the forces of the external world, of the external cosmos. It is the fate of this body to be dissolved and destroyed by these cosmic forces. Simply by observing impartially that the body, as soon as it is disembodied, is destroyed and dissolved by the forces of nature, one must be convinced that something lives within this body between birth and death that continually preserves the body from destruction—something that does not belong to this world of the senses. For if it belonged to this very world, it would destroy the body, not preserve it. If people would only take this self-evident fact into account, they would not find it so difficult to penetrate into anthroposophical spiritual science. We have the corpse; the external forces of nature destroy it. If what we carry within us were of the same nature as the forces of nature, it would constantly destroy this body. These simple thoughts are constantly overlooked. But note that a world surrounds us, one that is always around us, one that destroys our body.

[ 11 ] The moment this soul leaves the body, the body is destroyed. And when we leave this body as we fall asleep, we enter the world that destroys our corpse. We must come to know this world [Gaps in the postscript.] We enter the world of destructive forces when we fall asleep, and yet this world is the spiritual one—but why? Anyone who expects to find something beyond the threshold that is similar to what exists here in the physical sensory world is, in fact, expecting only another physical sensory world beyond the threshold. If there is to be spirit there, then the physical sensory world cannot exist there. What we experience there will be forces that constantly tend to destroy the physical sensory world. And we experience this thoroughly when we consciously cross the threshold. We experience firsthand that in this spiritual world we find that which constantly tends to destroy the physical world. If a person were to cross this threshold unprepared and unprotected, then—if I may put it in trivial terms—he would find this world extraordinarily pleasing. Low instincts, in particular, would initially be extraordinarily satisfied, and the human being, in the world into which he first enters, would become one with the world of destructive forces and would become an ally of these destructive forces. He would not want to become a collaborator in what surrounds us as the physical world. One must first come to love this physical world as a world of wisdom as well, so that one is well prepared to enter the spiritual world. In a sense, before one is allowed to stand at the side of the Creators, one must have come to love creation, and one must have thoroughly understood that the world, as it is created, was not brought into being senselessly by the divine creative powers. One must have fathomed the meaning of earthly life if one wishes to enter the spiritual world well-prepared; otherwise, one would return every morning upon waking with a terrible hatred for the sensory world, driven by the urge to destroy it. Simply due to the necessity of human existence, a person would wake up filled with hatred and anger if they spent the time between falling asleep and waking up in such a state of consciousness.

[ 12 ] You can still follow this if you look at the dream with an open mind. The dream possesses terribly destructive forces. What you bring up there as “dream images”—it destroys all logic. The dream says: Nothing—away with logic; I don’t want logic. Logic is for the external sensory world, where it dogmatically orders things. Away with logic—a different world order must reign there! — That is what the dream says, and if it were strong enough not merely to caress the brain but to plunge deep into the whole person, then it would seize not only the logical instincts but also the other instincts and emotional life, and just as it destroys logic, it would also destroy all life within the physical human being. The person would not want to return to his body, but on the way back he would slowly destroy his physical body. Only because what lives in the dream is overwhelmed by what comes toward him from the body is logic destroyed—if only for a few moments. This can be traced down to the finest details. What continues during sleep are precisely the forces that belong to the human rhythmic system. Breathing continues; the heartbeat and pulse continue; thoughts cease; the will ceases. That which belongs to the average human being continues, only it is subdued. At the moment when the pulse still beats somewhat more weakly in the brain, the dream takes hold; it appears to be destroying the body’s strength and logic, until the body’s forces once again overwhelm the dream, until the pulse grows stronger again.

[ 13 ] When it comes to truly understanding these forces, anthroposophy can be quite materialistic. Materialists do not really understand what it means to be materialistic, because they do not know how the spiritual interacts with the physical. They fail to notice anywhere how the spiritual submerges itself and continues to work within the physical. And one of the most interesting things is to observe how the spiritual subsides, since at first it seeks to assert itself and destroy logic. And then the forces of the physical—the powers of imagination—develop; [these] counteract it and overcome it. The dream is rendered harmless to physical life on earth. If you consider this correctly, it allows you to gain a deep insight into the relationship between waking and sleeping, for it shows how human beings must remain conscious of their spiritual origin—that, on the one hand, they must always sink back into sleep, but on the other hand, in their present development, they must pursue with full consciousness what takes place in the state between falling asleep and waking up.

[ 14 ] We live on our Earth. This Earth is, first and foremost, a physical cosmic formation. A time will come when this Earth will succumb to what is known as “heat death,” when the Earth will pass through actual physical fire, when the destructive forces will take hold of all earthly formations, not just the corpses. What is leading this Earth toward its fiery demise are spiritual powers connected to the Earth, which one comes to know in the first stage one enters when passing by the Guardian of the Threshold into the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] Let us consider what we have thus gained in view of passing through the gate of death. There, the physical body is completely shed. The spiritual-soul aspect now enters the spiritual world in such a way that it initially develops the desire to return to the physical body. And this spiritual-soul aspect, having shed the physical body, can now come to the fore again without the physical body. This spiritual-soul aspect was simply too weak at first, while it was embodied in the physical body, to withstand the destructive forces. Now, however, having passed through the gate of death, this spiritual-soul entity must be strong enough to no longer yearn for the physical body. Since it does not remain unconscious but enters into true consciousness upon crossing the gate of death, it must take up a certain life of thought, for it is only through the life of thought that one can truly become fully conscious. And this is also the enormous difference between crossing the threshold when falling asleep and passing through death. When falling asleep, the world of thought is simply dimmed and does not return until the person re-enters the physical body upon waking. At death, the person takes in the world of thought with the spiritual-soul aspect, without the mediation of the physical body. What is this?

[ 16 ] A person would never return to his physical body in the morning if he knew the spiritual world, had become one with it, and did not have the desire—which lies unconsciously within him—to return to the physical body, to the physical world. Desires, however, are not connected to full, clear consciousness; rather, they actually dampen and suppress this clear consciousness. A person desires to return to their body in the morning, and it is precisely this desire for the body that dampens their world of thought. And so they can only rediscover their life of thought once they are back in their body. In death, however, desires are extinguished. The human being enters the world of thought. As a spiritual-soul being, he now has a life of thought, but he would enter the same world he enters every evening when he falls asleep if he were to enter death truly unprepared. One might even say, if one wishes to express this in extreme terms: If a person enters death unprepared, then he is essentially exposed to a terrible situation; he is exposed to the situation of having to witness what is actually happening to his physical body. His physical body is pulverized within the cosmic context of the universe, for if the body is not cremated, then the cosmos will consume it. And a person would have to witness this if he were unprepared.

[ 17 ] What are the consequences of this, and what must now happen so that human beings do not merely see destruction after death, so that they do not merely live within destructive forces? What must happen is that, through the absorption of spiritual content and through consciousness rooted in a spiritual worldview, human beings carry an inner kinship with the divine-spiritual world as they pass through the gate of death. If a person has only an awareness of a physical-material world, then after death they indeed enter the world of destructive forces—like a scorching world of flames—utterly unprepared. If, however, a person imbues themselves with the concepts of a spiritual world and with an awareness of that world, then the flame becomes the birthplace of the spiritual after death; then one does not look solely toward destruction, but rather, as the earthly dust falls away from the human being, one sees the spiritual rising up. And no one may say that one can simply wait and see what happens when death occurs—as the ordinary materialistic view is so fond of claiming! No, one must carry the awareness of the spiritual through the gateway, so that the destructive forces of the world into which the corpse enters may be overcome by the spiritual-soul, and so that the spiritual-soul may rise anew, creatively, out of the destructive.

[ 18 ] I will explain this to you from the perspective of anthroposophical spiritual science, but you have all certainly heard of the fear that people in earlier times had of death—an intuitive understanding that also aligns with the teachings of the Apostle Paul, who indeed speaks of the need for human beings to be saved from their souls succumbing to death. People were aware that one can die not only physically—in terms of the body—but also in terms of the soul. It is just that people do not like to speak of such things—that the soul can die along with the body. When Paul speaks of death, he is not actually speaking of physical death, but of what can happen when physical death threatens to bring about spiritual-soul death. People must become aware of this once again: that they must do something in their physical, sensory life to connect their consciousness with the soul-spiritual, so that through death they may carry with them something by which the spiritual rises up for them from the consuming flame that is always present after death.

[ 19 ] It must be clear from such contexts that life, in the context of the universe, is a matter of tremendous gravity. No human worldview is worthy of the human being unless it leads, through inner strength, to a moral conception of the world that presents the full gravity of life to the human soul. To speak of physical and chemical forces having formed the Earth, and of living beings—and ultimately human beings—having evolved from them, is not only a one-sided worldview; it is also a worldview that takes life lightly and, at its core, stems solely from human convenience. From a worldview that adopts the correct attitude toward the spirit, the gravity of life follows, because the possibility presents itself to human beings of becoming connected to the destructive forces when they pass through the “gate of death.” Throughout their physical life, human beings are given the opportunity to prepare themselves accordingly by being allowed, every evening as they fall asleep, to gaze upon the destructive world with which they are, after all, connected, and by being given time to absorb that which then guides them through the gate of death in such a way that they can perceive the spiritual within the destructive world. It cannot be emphasized enough that feelings and sensations must naturally arise throughout life from a worldview; that a worldview must not remain a mere abstract theory, but must become something living that grips the feelings and the will. And civilized humanity must once again bring itself to adopt such a view of the world. Then it will once again see the imperishable in all that is transitory; and then, too, it will advance from that which does not manifest itself in a more subtle, egoistic way within the human being toward the eternal, toward the immortal.

[ 20 ] Consider today’s way of life from this perspective. One really shouldn’t take it personally when the person who has to speak the truth also has to say such unpleasant things. Let’s take religious teachings, for example. What are they actually based on? On selfishness! People speak to others in such a way as to make clear to them their immortality and their conscious passage through death, because people want to live beyond death. People have this desire, and the aim is to satisfy it; and because it is inconvenient to appeal to knowledge, knowledge is set aside and one limits oneself to mere faith. But one is speaking only to human selfishness, which is interested in what lies beyond death, for that is what one must wait to see. What lies before birth does not interest them. That can only be known through insight. Through insight, one comes to know the eternal, which extends not only beyond death but also beyond conception.

[ 21 ] Even our language reveals that we have only a partial understanding of human eternity; we have only “immortality.” We should also have the word “unbornness.” Only when we grasp the connection between the two will we finally comprehend human eternity. Even in our language, people in our age have renounced their connection to the spiritual world. This connection must be rediscovered. Without this rediscovery, a genuine way of life is completely impossible, and the present culture would face complete decline.

[ 22 ] We founded the Waldorf School in Stuttgart based on Waldorf pedagogy. When people talk about this, they associate all sorts of ideas with it. Recently, someone said: “Well, why does the Waldorf educational approach pay so little attention to children’s fatigue? Surely we need to study fatigue carefully today.” There is what is known today as experimental psychology. Researchers observe how a child can recite unrelated words, and after some time they note the child’s fatigue—which is also caused by the sequence of subjects taught—and take great pride in this. And now they remark: Waldorf education doesn’t talk much about children’s fatigue; therefore, it isn’t modern—it doesn’t take this into account. — Why is that? The Waldorf school speaks less of fatigue, but it emphasizes that, after children lose their baby teeth, they must initially be cared for and educated in such a way that education is primarily oriented toward the rhythmic system; that artistic activities stimulating rhythm must be cultivated, followed later by abstract writing, and even later by abstract reading. It does not appeal to the intellect, but to the artistic sense. Anyone who teaches as is done today—who always engages children only in activities that appeal to the intellect—must expect fatigue. But if one educates in such a way that one primarily draws upon the rhythmic and the artistic, then I ask you: Does the heart grow weary throughout life? The heart must beat, breathing must continue, and Waldorf education has no need to speak of fatigue because it works toward educating children in such a way that they become fatigued very little at all. Experimental pedagogy has, in fact, arrived at a system that is terribly exhausting, precisely because it has itself conjured up this terrible fatigue. [Gaps in the postscript.] Waldorf education takes into account the connection between body, soul, and spirit and pursues that which, from the spiritual-soul world, unites with physicality and leaves it again at death. When it comes to understanding the material world, it is precisely anthroposophy that can understand the material world.

[ 23 ] What is most active in a child? Brain activity, of all things! The plastic development of the entire body radiates from this. It is most active until the teeth begin to fall out. When the teeth begin to fall out, this capacity for development shifts to the respiratory-cardiac system, and this is what we are dealing with until sexual maturity. Here one can only work artistically, not theoretically. Between the ages of seven and fourteen, the muscles develop internally in a way that is attuned to the rhythmic system. And as the fourteenth year approaches, only then does the soul-spiritual aspect encompass the whole human being, and it is interesting to observe how, previously, the muscles had aligned themselves with the heartbeat, pulse, and breathing. Thus they begin to form a connection with the bones through the tendons—with the skeleton—and adapt to external movements. Just learn to observe carefully how the young person changes at this stage of life. [Gaps in the postscript.] It begins in the head; the soul grows ever farther and farther toward the surface of the human being, finally seizing the bones, then filling the human being completely and consuming him, becoming more and more at one with the forces of decay, until these forces of decay claim victory at the moment of death.

[ 24 ] Anthroposophical spiritual science traces, down to the smallest details, the spiritual processes as they permeate material life and how the spiritual-soul aspect, starting from the head, takes hold of the whole human being. Only on the basis of such insight will it be possible to educate people anew. The intellect is necessary for us to find freedom, but it dispels the security provided by instincts. I had a friend. When we were both young, he was a very nice person. Then I visited him again, because he had invited me. I had never before attended a luncheon where a scale with weights had been set up. A scale was brought out, and he first weighed everything he ate! The intellect had calculated how much was needed to sustain the body, and that amount was provided to the body. The intellect drives out the instincts in small matters, but also in large ones, and one must find the way back. Once again, the security of life—the self-evident foundation of life—is regained, for one finds temporal life in the right way precisely by discovering the eternal aspect within this temporal realm, by knowing how this eternal lives within the temporal, and that is what our present civilization needs.

[ 25 ] These issues must indeed be treated as global issues. Today, people pay no attention at all to the differences that exist between the people of the West and the East. They deal with external issues in a superficial manner, talking at conferences about resolving the difficult situation, but they fail to realize that East and West can only achieve economic balance if they trust one another. Asians will never be able to cooperate properly with the West if they cannot understand one another. But understanding can only come from the soul. Spiritual understanding is therefore essential to global economic life; yet this can only be attained through a deepening of the spiritual life. That is why the intimate questions of the human spiritual life are, at the same time, the great global issues of today. One will not be able to grasp what the world needs today—even in external public affairs—unless one is willing to listen to what the science of the supersensible has to say, for the world has changed in the course of historical development. The human race, in particular, has changed.

[ 26 ] When we look back over the course of human evolution, we see the event that gives meaning to the entire evolution of humanity and the Earth: the Mystery of Golgotha. This Mystery of Golgotha was, after all, the entry of a Divine Being into earthly conditions through an earthly body. Christ entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in order to begin working with the Earth at all. The Earth would have had to perish, would have had to decay within the context of the cosmos, had it not been for a new infusion of life brought about by the coming of Christ. Now you also know that in ancient times there was an instinctive science, a primal world wisdom; yet by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, very little of it remained in Western civilization. But enough still remained that the Mystery of Golgotha could still be grasped, at least instinctively, for four centuries. And anyone who truly understands how the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped in its supersensible significance during the first centuries of Christian development knows that, well into the 4th century, the leading Christian teachers were aware of the coming of the Christ-Sun Spirit into the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 27 ] Who today actually has a living awareness of what it means—whether there are two natures in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, one divine and one human, or just one? Yet this was very much a matter of life and death in the early Christian centuries, something that had real significance in people’s lives. People had a vivid awareness of how the Spirit of Christ had united with Jesus from the vastness of the cosmos. There we have two natures in one personality: God and man. [Gap in the postscript.]

[ 28 ] You have probably heard many times that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lasted from approximately 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha to 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha. True intellectualism began in the first third of the 15th century. We now look into physical forces, do calculations, and practice physics, but we no longer know that spiritual forces are at work out there and that true Spirit exists out there—something that was known in the past. But take this period from 747 B.C. to 1413 [A.D.]. This is the period of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. If you take 747 and then go to 1413, and divide that span in half, you get a period that falls precisely within the fourth century A.D., which also coincides with the complete fading away of that wisdom which was still able to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual sense [see note]. Afterward, it was merely intellectual debate. And as the 15th century approached, human reason became the sole ruler of human civilization. As a result, however, what also represents a living connection between humanity and Christ was drawn more and more into purely material human thinking. And then, in the 19th century, we witnessed how Christ was completely lost, even to the most advanced theology, and how it was considered enlightened to speak of him merely as a “man from Nazareth.” When one feels the full gravity of this once again, one must come to a longing to rediscover the Christ-essence. And the anthroposophical worldview seeks to satisfy this longing to rediscover the Christ in addressing the great questions of the world, and for this, people in Central Europe in particular are especially well-prepared. You can see this from various signs.

[ 29 ] A great thinker of Western Europe, Herbert Spencer, wrote a treatise on education that greatly appeals to materialists, and in it he says that all education is worthless unless people are educated to, in turn, educate other people. How does he justify this? He says: The highest achievement a person can attain in life is to bring forth other human beings. Therefore, education must also be the highest good. — Western thinking is correct from one perspective. What, then, does an Eastern thinker say? In Vladimir Soloviev, something very ancient still lives on from the spirit of the East. For Western culture, primordial wisdom has completely vanished. In the East, it has been preserved as a feeling. Soloviev still possesses something of true Christian wisdom. Here in Central and Western Europe, people have only a consciousness of God; they have scarcely any knowledge of the Son. Harnack, for example, speaks of God as if Christ, the Son, did not belong in the Gospels at all, but only the Father. Only the awareness of the Father remains—the awareness of God. And whatever he says about the Son must be said about the Father. Soloviev still possesses something of this Christ-consciousness, and when he speaks, one sometimes has the feeling that the early Church Fathers before the Council of Nicaea are speaking. Soloviev has given his treatises quite different titles; for example, a treatise titled “On Freedom, Necessity, Grace, and Sin.” Try to find a treatise on grace or sin among Western philosophers—among Spencer, Mill, Bergson, or Wundt! Such a thing does not exist in the West; it is completely unthinkable; it does not even come up in that context there.

[ 30 ] The Eastern philosopher still speaks this way—and what does he say? A life granted to human beings on this earth that did not have to strive for perfection in truth would not be a true human life; it would be worthless. But perfection in truth, too, would be worthless if human beings did not share in immortality. Such a life would be a universal deception. So speaks Soloviev, the Eastern philosopher. And then he says: Man’s true spiritual task begins only when he has reached sexual maturity. [Gap in the postscript.] The complete opposite of Spencer! Spencer concludes development with the procreation of offspring, and the Eastern philosopher begins it only then. This is true in all matters, right down to the questions of economic life. This is how Western economists speak today, without understanding anything of the feelings of Eastern people regarding economic life. We need a world-historical perspective today even in the great questions of the world, and we must be clear that the great misfortune of humanity in the second decade of the 20th century is the great challenge, the immense test for humanity, to adopt this perspective. A completely different approach to life must rise up from the depths of the soul. The great questions of life, which lie beyond birth and death, must play a role in ordinary human life. The questions of the present must be illuminated by the light of eternity; otherwise, people will rush from conference to conference and sink deeper and deeper into misfortune.