The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Anthroposophy as a Quest to Infuse the World with the Spirit of Christ

[ 1 ] I must first preface today’s reflection with a few introductory remarks. For many of our older members, it will undoubtedly be a painful realization that, within the anthroposophical movement, many things have changed in recent years. I would just like to briefly point out what this transformation looks like from the perspective of many of our older members.

[ 2 ] Years ago, we used to gather in similar circles—which were smaller back then than they are today—and it was possible, so to speak, to speak in a way that assumes the members and audience are familiar with the fundamental elements of anthroposophical thought and, in particular, anthroposophical feeling. By this I do not mean that this familiarity must consist specifically of certain concepts or dogmatic ideas; rather, this familiarity consisted—and continues to consist—in the fact that people within the anthroposophical movement come together in closer circles, driven by a heartfelt longing to live within the spiritual world. And that is the essence of esoteric speech: that one always has the prerequisite of having people with such longings as listeners before one. Even when so-called public lectures were held in earlier years, they were structured in such a way that this esoteric character was, at least in a certain sense, thoroughly preserved. Certainly, in public one had to speak in the forms of thought and language that are characteristic of the present age, as this age presents itself from the outside; but our older members will nevertheless have sensed that even at the larger events, it was always a continuation of what is customary in esoteric circles. Today, however, when these older members attend our larger events, they experience—with a certain sense of pain—that, at least on the surface, a different language is being spoken than was the case in the past. What used to be spoken directly from what I would call the “esoteric-elemental,” so to speak, is now heard cast into the forms of contemporary scientific life. And I know full well that there are many among our older members who say: “Yes, we used to be on a much faster path to the insights and impulses of the spiritual world; we entered into the experience of this spiritual world much more quickly and in a way that was more authentic from within, and, deep down, we’re not really interested in whether what can become so dear to the heart can be justified in every respect through rigorous lines of thought.” — Many of these older members say: “That is, fundamentally speaking, something that interests us less.” And they feel, in a sense, that it is a loss that the anthroposophical movement has not remained in its older form.

[ 3 ] But that didn't depend on the anthroposophical movement. It’s fair to say: This anthroposophical movement—at least as far as I’m concerned—has never sought to say what needs to be said in such a way that, so to speak, everyone hears what they already know anyway, and to seek a certain popularity in that. The anthroposophical movement has never pursued this goal. It has always spoken as it had to, out of the innermost character of its being. And it has always given me particular satisfaction when people said that one certainly cannot accuse anthroposophy of trying to capitalize on people’s preconceived notions, or of somehow arousing an insincere enthusiasm by speculating on their prejudices. For it actually speaks in a much more detached manner than do those movements that strive to make themselves popular in some way.

[ 4 ] What has come about today is, in fact, something that was not sought after. For even though I have often had to respond when people came and said, “You could popularize your theory, rephrase it so that everyone understands it and people wouldn’t have to go to such great lengths”—: That is something I consider detrimental, for it is part of the process that one must make an effort to grasp what is being presented here—and I have never actually sought to create a movement of the kind often pursued in places where the aim is to say what people already know and toward which they therefore very easily incline with their hearts and their whole being. Nevertheless, the anthroposophical movement has, in the latter part of its development, spread more rapidly than such movements usually do. The literature was readily accepted, and one can hardly find books as difficult to read as the anthroposophical ones that have spread as rapidly as these. But this meant that, as people came into contact with our literature, they judged it from their own perspective. Scientists compared what had come into the world with what they were accustomed to regard as their rigorous science. No wonder, then, that the need arose to engage with science. And it is no wonder, furthermore, that a large number of friends—who, being scientifically trained—set themselves the special task of demonstrating that, with every degree of scientific rigor, anthroposophy can indeed present itself to the world in all fields today and appear to be justified. It is, therefore, reality itself that demanded this. And if you hear today, in scientific terms, the very things that were once proclaimed in a different form, this is not the fault of the anthroposophical movement, but its destiny. This is what the world demanded of it. We had to, so to speak, present anthroposophy to a wider audience, and that could only happen through a genuine engagement with the leading figures in the scientific community. The point is not to bring anthroposophy closer to science, but to permeate science with anthroposophy. And so, on the other hand, we have experienced—to our deepest satisfaction—that friends with specialized training have come forward who are capable, in every respect, of scientifically representing what is already present in anthroposophy in its embryonic form. But precisely because of this, a certain rift has emerged in recent years that has not yet been bridged. One cannot, however, say that, even when we now come together in such smaller circles, the esoteric has ceased to live on. Anyone who has participated in our smaller gatherings will surely say to themselves: What once lived within our esoteric movement continues to live on. In particular, anyone who comes to Dornach will see how much new spiritual substance has been added to the old, even in the realm of esotericism. Nevertheless, there remains a gulf between what one hears today in the public sphere and what is cultivated more within the closer esoteric circle. And we have not yet been able to bridge this gap, because we lack the time and the manpower to do so. On the one hand, we must devote ourselves to the further development of esoteric work; on the other hand, our younger colleagues in particular have an immense amount of work to do in expanding the anthroposophical worldview across all areas of social knowledge and life. Yet it is certainly possible to accomplish what is needed to bridge the gap that exists between what must be imparted within the esoteric sphere and what then presents itself in a wholly exoteric manner at external events. It is, however, necessary to bridge this gap. It must be bridged, and everyone must be able to sense that a bridge can be built between what is spoken purely from the spiritual world and what is taught in harmony with external science—provided that the necessary time and manpower are available within our movement.

[ 5 ] Well, this will give you an idea of how I myself must view the situation within the current work of the anthroposophical movement. I would like to say: in a certain sense, the anthroposophical movement has grown beyond our capacity to handle it; but that, after all, is only an outward, apparent reality, and it is to be hoped that more and more people will emerge from among our friends who are capable of building the bridge I have alluded to.

[ 6 ] I had to preface this because tone and language within the esoteric realm must, after all, be quite different—at least in form—from what must be presented to the general public in a way that speaks precisely in the forms of contemporary culture. For what is strictly esoteric would be completely unable to reach the hearts of our contemporaries, who, time and again, approach the movement as complete newcomers. But our concern must be to make this accessible—as best we can, without seeking popularity—to all who have been participating in this movement for decades, and to all those who wish to hear about anthroposophy. This is something we should all take to heart to a greater or lesser extent, for anyone can generally become such a collaborator.

[ 7 ] Now that we are, so to speak, moving from the exoteric to the esoteric, I would like to discuss today something that is exceptionally relevant to our other sessions. After all, we are compelled today to speak of what external science—external physics, external chemistry, external biology, and even external psychology—can become when imbued with anthroposophy. Only in this way is a bridge built between what constitutes knowledge and the religious life of humanity. But as we immerse ourselves in this way in contemporary scientific life, we lose, in a certain sense, our connection to that which spiritually permeates, surges through, and interweaves the world. We must also look at the material forms of life; but in all material forms there is, at the same time, the spiritual. And human beings cannot exist in the most diverse forms of life without participating in this spiritual aspect. Today we must understand that this spiritual realm does not merely seek to speak to the world from within human longings, but that it is something that seeks to flow into our earthly world from another world. We must understand that everywhere, as it were, windows have been opened—not by us humans alone, but by a spiritual world surrounding us—through which this other world seeks to flow into our lives. Things were different in the nineteenth century. A number of spiritual powers in the extra-earthly realm made the superhuman decision to allow a wave of spiritual life to flow into the Earth. We must also be able to view our contemporary history in such a way that people, if they are only willing to receive the spiritual world, can receive it today. Thus, the task of cultivating the spiritual is today a superhuman task, a task that belongs entirely to spiritual life itself. Just as a longing awakens in the depths of human beings to reach, somehow, toward the spiritual, so too—which was often not the case even in the last third of the past century—does a revelation from the spiritual worlds meet this longing of humanity when it expresses a genuine will. If we can develop this feeling, then we have the right fundamental attitude toward anthroposophical life.

[ 8 ] But it is precisely because of this that humanity today faces a momentous decision—a decision that touches the heart of every single person. Over the centuries, humanity has developed its intellectual life. This intellectual life has gradually led it away from spirituality. The intellect is spirit—indeed, the purest spirit of all—but it no longer has a spiritual content; instead, it seeks its content in external nature, in external natural existence. Thus, the intellect is spirit, yet it fills itself with something that cannot appear to it as spirit. This is the great tragedy, the tragedy of today’s world: that human beings can look within themselves and must admit: “When I am intellectually active, I am spiritually active, yet at the same time I am powerless to take the spiritual directly into this spirit.” I fill this spirit with natural existence. — This fragments and desolates the human soul today. And even if one does not wish to admit this fragmentation and desolation, it is nevertheless present in the spiritual realms of the human soul, and it constitutes the fundamental evil and the fundamental tragedy of our age. And if we are to express what I have just said in a form familiar to us, we must do so by pointing to all those spiritual forces that do indeed reign in all of nature, which enter into us as we fill our spirit with this natural existence. We can call these forces Ahrimanic forces. And so the intellect is exposed to the great danger of falling prey to the Ahrimanic forces. These Ahrimanic forces—as the intellect developed over the past centuries, when it still possessed the legacy of the old spiritual world—did not yet have the great power over human beings that they possess today. Outwardly, natural existence seems to spread out around us. But this is only an illusion: Ahriman lives within this nature. And as we take in nature, believing it to be governed solely by neutral natural laws, we are in fact, without realizing it, taking in spiritual forces—Ahrimanic spiritual forces—those Ahrimanic forces that have set themselves a specific task within the existence of the world, within the entire development of the world.

[ 9 ] But when one speaks of such a task of spiritual powers, people are quick to ask: Yes, why does the divine government of the world allow such powers to exist? And one must reply: That which is within the earthly realm can be grasped by ordinary reason; but when it comes to spiritual science—which seeks to comprehend that which transcends the earth—this must be done through intuition. — We must therefore reply: These forces are there, but how they relate to what we call the divine-spiritual forces that belong to us is something that human beings will only come to understand over the course of long ages—something that may, in fact, elude human understanding altogether—and which must be grasped precisely by those forces that belong to the superhuman. — So that we can only say: These powers are simply there, revealing themselves to spiritual knowledge.

[ 10 ] But these Ahrimanic forces have this as their task: to prevent the Earth from continuing to develop—as I have described in my Occult Science—in the way it must develop in accordance with the divine-spiritual forces with which we, as human souls, have been connected from the very beginning. In my Occult Science, I have described the future development of our Earth as the Jupiter and Venus phases. The Ahrimanic forces have set themselves the task of preventing this development. They want to harden the Earth within itself, to let it freeze within itself, to shape the Earth in such a way that, along with this Earth, humanity too remains merely an “earthly human being”—that it becomes, so to speak, hardened within earthly materiality and continues to live into the future of the world as a kind of statue of its past. These forces have certain cosmic goals, which make this appear to be an integral part of their own endeavors. Thus, the Earth would not reach its destination if the Ahrimanic forces were to prevail, and humanity would become estranged from its origins, from those very forces that were the very condition of its development in the beginning. Humanity would, in a sense, undergo an external transformation that is still fully appropriate to the earthly realm, but which would suppress its inner potential, which must transcend the earthly. As long as our intellect, as in the last three to four centuries, was still rooted in the spiritual through an ancient heritage, these Ahrimanic forces could not gain a foothold in humanity. But this has changed precisely since the beginning of the twentieth century. Ancient Indian wisdom had already foreseen this and dated the end of the dark age, the Kali Yuga, to the end of the nineteenth century, thus foreshadowing a new age. This new age, however, is meant to signify nothing other than that, from the beginning of the twentieth century onward, it has been placed in the hearts of human beings not to cling to the old heritage, but to truly take in the new light—the pure light—into our earthly lives.

[ 11 ] But how can a person lose this spiritual light? By failing to direct his will toward receiving this light. As long as the old genetic heritage still prevailed in the intellect, this could not be as harmful to him as it is today. In this age, humans have developed their view of the solid, the liquid, the gaseous, and also the ethereal. They have developed this view in such a way that they look upon the earthly realm and its elements as if these were not permeated by spirit at all. But as we look at hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on—at the physical laws handed down to us—it is precisely the Ahrimanic that finds the right point of attack within the development of the worlds. We do not take into account that Spirit is present in our entire surroundings; as a result, the Ahrimanic can creep into us without our knowledge and take possession of precisely that spiritual aspect of our surroundings about which we do not wish to know anything. Therefore, we must learn to recognize the spiritual in our surroundings. We must not merely speak of the solid elements—sodium, calcium, and so on—but of what is connected as the spiritual to all that is solid and earthly. We must say: That which we encounter in the external world as solid and earthly is of such a nature that spirit is connected with it—namely, a spirit that has a particular inclination toward multiplicity, a multiplicity so vast that we cannot even fathom it. Wherever we look at the solid, we also find—if we look at it in the right way—spirituality, namely many and manifold spiritual beings.

[ 12 ] An ancient, instinctive wisdom has spoken here of gnomes and the like. To avoid causing too much shock, we do not need to retain these old expressions at all; we can certainly speak in a language that is familiar to us, but we must nevertheless pay attention to what, in certain regions of the Earth, shines out at us as spiritual from every lump of materiality. And so, when we are gathered together in a somewhat more esoteric setting, as we are today, it may be expressed in this more concise form: The person who is endowed with spiritual insight today approaches this lump of earth in such a way that spiritual beings emerge from it—beings who are not embodied in the physical realm, so that we cannot see them with our physical eyes, but who can be perceived spiritually. And one could say that they are so oriented toward multiplicity that an immeasurable number of such beings can spring forth from even the smallest clump. They are of such a nature that they consist almost entirely of what is at work in the human mind; they are cunning, clever, and super-intellectual beings. Thus, all around us reigns—I would say—a spiritually alive cleverness, cunning, and a quicker spiritual grasp than in an intellectual, rational form, for this intellectual aspect, which has become as if a substance, lives in every solid earthly element. And until we know how these spiritual beings, which are present in the solid earthly element, work together, there will be no true chemistry. Anthroposophy can approach what we have today as chemistry with understanding, but the truth will only be grasped when what is accessible to supersensible perception—when the spiritual—can be found in all that is earthly. We must then have the will to set aside even the most solid pillars of intellectuality, while maintaining human prudence. When we face the earthly realm—whatever it may be that we are counting: 1, 2, 3, 4...—we are accustomed to seeing, once we have counted to four, that the sum of four lies before us. That which we extract from the solid as spiritual entities—that which confronts us in its eagerness for diversity—we can begin to count, but then it turns out that it is no longer three or four at all, but has already become seven: all our counting fails us on this occasion. Within what humanity knows as the atomistic world, one can count; within the real world, everything is set upon a much greater diversity; there, everything is alive, and there we must realize that even our counting is mocked by the higher intelligence. There, with our intellect—even as it remains level-headed—we must not succumb to flight of thought; there, with our intellect, we must fully confront what reality presents to us. Many will say: When something like this confronts you in reality, it’s enough to drive you mad! — That is precisely why it is of the utmost importance that, before a person enters this world, they have attained full composure and are capable of assessing earthly circumstances with complete objectivity.

[ 13 ] If you consider that our waking life cannot be in order unless we sleep properly, and if you reflect on the fact that what we experience here on Earth is like a sleep compared to what is real upon entering the spiritual world, then you must say: Anyone who is not fully grounded here on Earth—who is given to fantasy, spiritualism, and the like—brings pathological elements into the spiritual realm. And when such a person moves through the spiritual world, it is as if a person were moving in the waking state with the nervousness resulting from a disturbed sleep. This, however, is what runs through the entire anthroposophical movement as a unified, harmonious striving: The anthroposophical movement can lead to greater healing for the human being, but not to a state of detachment from the fullness of human life between birth and death.

[ 14 ] But when we ascend to the liquid realm, we find yet another kind of spiritual being. While the elemental beings of the solid realm are similar to our intellect, the elemental beings that live in the liquid realm are more akin to our feelings. After all, with our feelings we stand outside of things. The beautiful tree is out there; I stand here, separated from it; I allow what it is to flow into me. The elemental beings that exist in the liquid state flow through the tree itself in its sap. They flow into every leaf with their own feeling. It does not merely perceive the red or the blue from the outside; it experiences these colors from within, carrying its sensations into the very core of the tree. Consequently, the life of feeling is much more intense in these spiritual beings than the highly intense intellectual activity found in the elemental beings of the solid realm.

[ 15 ] And in the same way, the airy realm contains a multitude of elemental beings. The more these beings approach the airy realm, the more and more they lose their longing for diversity. We have the feeling that even numbers no longer help us as we ascend into the airy realm. Unity is sought more and more. Nevertheless, the elemental beings of the air live in great diversity—and are related to the human will. The elemental beings of the solid are related to the human intellect—inherently related; the elemental beings of the liquid are related to human feeling; and the elemental beings of the airy element are related to the human will.

[ 16 ] But this entire chorus of beings, which surrounds us just as much as stones, plants, animals, and physical human beings—this entire chorus—can either approach us in a revelatory way, if we willingly receive the spiritual today, or it can remain closed off to our consciousness. If we want nothing to do with the spiritual world, then this entire host falls prey to the Ahrimanic forces, and the alliance between Ahriman and the nature spirits comes into being. This is what hangs in the spiritual world today as an overriding resolution: to bring about the alliance between the Ahrimanic forces and the forces of nature. It is, so to speak, the compromise taking shape between the Ahrimanic forces and the nature spirits, and there is no other way to prevent this than for human beings to turn their understanding toward the spiritual world and thereby become acquainted with the nature spirits, just as they have become acquainted with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, calcium, sodium, and so on. Therefore, a science of the spirit must be established alongside a science of the sensory and the physical. And we must take this science of the spirit absolutely seriously. By merely talking about the spirit in a pantheistic way, we do not come close to it. We must not succumb to the kind of despondency that holds us back from speaking of concrete spiritual beings. Where would human development have ended up if, for example, the people of the Old Testament and other peoples had been so despondent as to speak not of individual spiritual beings, but of a vague, general spiritual being in a pantheistic sense? The transition in human development was made possible when the Catholic Church turned to the saints, taking as the starting point of its veneration, so to speak, that which has remained as spiritual-soul substance from human beings themselves in the spiritual world. It interprets this in its own way, but a deep impulse underlies it. We must, however, put ourselves in a position not only to find in human beings what we can thus transfer into the spiritual world, but also to have the courage to seek the spirit in our entire surroundings, just as we seek the natural through the senses. When we do this, we ascend to that which meets us as light—as the life pulsing through the world—and there we ascend to the beings who strive for unity, who are precisely the ones who tempt human beings to perceive the world as merely unified. Monotheism has sprung from the revelation of the etheric world to humanity on Earth. But as we ascend to these beings of light—to the elemental beings of the ether—we enter another outer world. This world, however, is contained not only in physical light but also in that which flows down to us as the spiritual with every ray of sunlight: there we find beings such as those we find in the earthly elements. But in those etheric elements we find beings who, in turn, do not wish to bind humanity to the Earth in the way intended by the Ahrimanic forces—which seek to hinder the Earth’s development—but rather they do not want to allow human beings to attain full knowledge of the earthly realm; they wish to halt its development before the Earth reaches its goal. The Ahrimanic beings wish to bring the Earth as far as serves their purposes; the other beings are intent on preventing what has been predisposed in human evolution from the very beginning from reaching full unfolding, and on holding it back at earlier stages. But then they were able to make a decision—and this is the other decision we encounter when we look up into the higher spheres—namely, an alliance between Lucifer and the elemental forces of the etheric. While Ahriman and his forces can enter the human being when a person closes themselves off from knowledge of the spiritual, Lucifer and the forces in the etheric realm can enter a person when they fail to delve deeply enough into their inner self. And so today, the hostile forces from above and below stand before humanity.

[ 17 ] And the forces that dwell in warmth, that surge with the alternation of summer and winter—these fire spirits that dwell in the surging warmth, yet also live in our blood, which pulses through us with warmth—these form the mediators between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. But just as in the outer world—not as irregularly as meteorology depicts it, but rather in the same way as our blood circulation—so does the element of warmth circulate up and down in the world, forming the mediation between Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings. And we stand within it, in the objectivity of the blood circulation, in its surging and weaving of warmth; we stand within the surging not only of these elemental spirits but of the entire elemental world. We emerge from it only when we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world with full consciousness. But we can immerse ourselves there only if we do not shy away from truly looking this spiritual world in the eye with an open mind.

[ 18 ] But this is precisely the difficulty we face at this present moment in our anthroposophical movement. We are confronted with something in this anthroposophical movement that, I would say, makes the continued existence of this movement particularly difficult. I would like to illustrate this with a concrete example; the same point could be made using any other example.

[ 19 ] Today, because of what the world demands of us—let’s say, for example, in the field of medicine—we must speak in such a way that what we say ties in with conventional medicine. We must speak of how certain diseases arise and which external, material forces of nature are involved; we must explain, for example, how rickets is connected to what approaches the human being as the air element. We must make use of what statistics tell us today from the materialistic worldview: we must count how many people live in the north and how many in the south. In doing so, we may not even realize which element we are delving into. Consider the same element in the insurance industry. We can—and must—statistically calculate the probable life expectancy of a person so that they can take out life insurance. In the outer physical reality, life insurance companies can only operate by calculating a person’s probable life expectancy. Now let’s assume this has been calculated. Will any person say: “I can only live until that point in time that has been calculated”? — No one will say that to themselves, because they are aware that there is something in reality that can make a mockery of all statistics. While recognizing this, we must nevertheless use statistics to characterize this or that, so to speak, in accordance with science on the external level. This is entirely correct, for today we must speak in a way that is consistent with science. But I have now established this: Rickets afflicts a person because they must develop the forces of the lower human being as if in a deep cellar, since the forces of light have been withdrawn from them. Yet on the other hand, we—as spiritual-soul beings—descend from a spiritual world and clothe ourselves in the physical. This “clothing” does not merely mean that we take on a body in any arbitrary way, but that we descend into the earth, into a specific people, into a specific family, because we feel a particular affinity for the individual forces that prevail in that family and in that place. Down to these very details, the soul’s affinities contain what draws it to earthly life; down to these very details, the soul contains what draws it to a life it must live as a child—perhaps in a room facing north, or in a room facing south. The soul strives to be able to unfold, even under circumstances of darkness. We must not say that we should look only at one thing—whether there is a lack of light and air—but must look at the spiritual-soul aspect that has longed to be part of this environment. Therefore, we must ask ourselves: Can we, based solely on the physical conditions revealed to us by physical knowledge, seek to heal what presents itself to us as rickets? We cannot; rather, we must tell ourselves: If we were to succeed in administering the remedy in such a way that the person simply became physically healthy, they would still have to push back into the deepest depths of their soul life that which lies in their destiny—and which is the very reason they have yearned to enter this world not filled with light. And only if we succeed in addressing what has been pushed down into the subconscious, if we enable the human being to bring to consciousness what he must do, only if we can look at the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—only then can we establish a complete science, including the medical one. You must bear in mind that we are living within this tragedy precisely at this moment in the anthroposophical movement; that, therefore, contradiction upon contradiction can be found within this anthroposophical movement; that it is all too easy to accuse one person of one thing and another of another. But precisely by viewing it in its true light, one thing and another find their balance. Therefore, those who are active within our anthroposophical movement have spiritual tasks wherever they engage with the material world. That is why those who become doctors must become different kinds of people, view the world from a different spirit, and not get into the habit—by immersing themselves in external science—of becoming more and more like it; rather, precisely when they make the necessary compromises with it, they must rise above it.

[ 20 ] This is what we can—and indeed must—tell ourselves once we have lived within the anthroposophical movement for some time. And there are many difficulties like the ones I have just described. They are not meant to be critically examined, but rather to be fully immersed in so that we may learn to understand them in such a way that complete harmony emerges in their place. And this is how we must truly work together today in all areas of life. When a Waldorf school teacher says something to a doctor at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute today, it is different from when other people outside the movement say something to one another. When such a teacher speaks, he expresses, so to speak, the “hygiene” of the soul; he speaks from the very essence of what must be done with the children in order to be a healer of children. Then something resounds that, in turn, can shed immense light into the mind and soul of those working at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute. And conversely: what is developed at this Clinical-Therapeutic Institute must influence the work of the Waldorf teachers. In this way, spiritual harmony must develop, a harmony demanded by the matter itself. When each person acts on their own, disharmony arises. If, in our field, the individual people working from this or that perspective do not come together, do not unite, then anthroposophy will not arise at all within humanity. Anthroposophy, as a matter of fact, truly requires human brotherhood down to the deepest depths of the soul. Otherwise, one might say: Brotherhood is a commandment. With anthroposophy, one must say: It grows only on the soil of brotherhood; it cannot grow in any other way than in the brotherhood that arises from the matter itself, where the individual gives to the other what he has and what he can do.

[ 21 ] But that is precisely what, from the ground up, leads us more and more to see things differently. Things have come to such a point today that we must, in essence, take seriously the words of a professor of theology at the University of Basel—a friend of Nietzsche’s—who wrote the book that made such a profound impression on Nietzsche himself: the book on the Christian character of our contemporary theology. This is not an anthroposophist speaking, nor an atheist; this is a person who was employed at the university to teach theology. And the conclusion of this book is, in essence, that Overbeck, the author, says: There may still be much that is Christian among people, and people often still behave in a Christian manner; but in any case, theology is no longer Christian. — That is to say, it has lost the true concept of Christ, especially where it seeks to be “enlightened” theology. This is the conclusion reached not by a heretical anthroposophist, but by a teaching theologian of the Christian Church.

[ 22 ] That is one thing. The other is what you already know well—not out of tradition, but out of genuine insight—namely, the anthroposophist’s stance on the Mystery of Golgotha. You can find what needs to be said about this in various places throughout the so-called cycles. But what I would like to emphasize in particular today is the following: How little, especially today, does the enlightened theologian look to the One who, as an extraterrestrial Christ-being, passed through the Mystery of Golgotha and subsequently associated with the initiates and disciples. How little does theology turn its attention to the One who, after the Resurrection, continued to live and appear visibly to his initiated disciples! But those who approach anthroposophy can gradually come to a vision—a living vision—of this Mystery of Golgotha and come to understand what Christ taught his initiated disciples after his Resurrection. And as one immerses oneself in this, the spiritual world around one also becomes more and more tangible. For understanding the Mystery of Golgotha itself requires spiritual understanding. That is why it is so difficult for people to understand the Mystery of Golgotha—because they want to approach it materialistically. Yet much of what Christ Himself imparted to His initiated disciples after His Resurrection lives on even among the early Church Fathers. And from among these many teachings, I would like to highlight just this one today.

[ 23 ] You see, before the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity certainly lived in a kind of primordial wisdom. When we go back to the earliest stages of the Earth, we do not find that primitive human being who was more or less animal-like—he was only so in his outward appearance—but rather we find that primitive human being who received a primordial wisdom from a divine-spiritual, superhuman being. This primordial wisdom of the Earth, which is sometimes emphasized in particular, is by no means a chimera, but something that actually existed. Human beings proceeded from wisdom, not from ignorance. This primordial wisdom, which we particularly admire today when we consciously rediscover it within the realm of anthroposophy, was of a more dreamlike nature. People experienced it in images that were not connected to a strong sense of self. A kind of immensely profound primordial wisdom—which, one might say, was received from the divine-spiritual beings—was present at the dawn of Earth’s evolution among human beings who outwardly had a more animal-like appearance. People knew of this primordial wisdom only through images. However, once people look into the full fabric of nature, they will also judge the animal realm differently than they do today. Then one will look, for example, at the snake lying there as if paralyzed while digesting, and will see that within what lies there coiled lengthwise there is an inner life that experiences an immense wealth of events in images, as in a cosmic dream, so that even the snake’s digestion is provided for from the world of images, from the cosmos. Even within the Ahrimanic realm, one will yet discover the spiritual.

[ 24 ] But this primordial wisdom was, after all, a dreamlike one. This meant that people did not fully grasp something that modern humans, simply because they are organized around external perception, experience in all its intensity: namely, death. Although our ancestors from the beginning of the Earth did not have animalistic notions about their fellow human beings or themselves, they still did not possess that view of death extending into the innermost depths of the human soul that later humanity has. People lived out their lives; they ceased to live without being in any way affected by this cessation of life, for the reason that during their lives they received the radiance of the spiritual through primordial wisdom. They never felt themselves completely detached from the spiritual. Therefore, they did not experience death as a special event, but merely as a shedding, like the shedding of a snake’s skin. They did not experience death with the intensity with which we today must experience it. This means that, in order to view death as modern humanity must view it, other spiritual powers are necessary than those possessed by primeval humanity. But the mystery of death, as it stands before humanity today, came into focus more and more; yet it was not yet fully present in the ancient times before the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 25 ] Now it was drawing near. But let us imagine for a moment that it had not come, that what the Gospels proclaim to us had not happened at all—let us assume this hypothesis for a moment: then the development of humanity would have proceeded in such a way that human beings would have pushed primordial wisdom deeper and deeper into the unconscious. Humanity would have perceived only the outer appearance. The terrible death, along with everything else that the sight of death brings in its wake, would have loomed desolately before humanity. And as the millennium, the century, drew near in the course of human development on Earth—the one into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell—everything connected with the sight of death loomed ever more prominently before the human soul. And that was what the risen Christ communicated to his initiated disciples. He told them: Humanity received primordial wisdom from the divine-spiritual beings at a time when the gods themselves had not yet known death. This primordial wisdom contains no concept of death or the overcoming of death, for within the divine worlds there was only metamorphosis, not death. But I, said Christ after the Resurrection, have been sent by those who are devoted to the Father God to experience on earth what cannot be experienced in the world of the gods: I clothed myself in a physical body.” — After the Resurrection, He said this to His initiated disciples, though the message was not fully transmitted until much later—for Christianity was not fully externalized until the fourth century—: I descended to have a divine experience of death, so that the gods might know of death, so that whoever embraces Christianity in truth might also learn to comprehend the victory of all that is spiritual over all that is earthly in death.

[ 26 ] At that time, a great call went out to humanity to understand death in such a way that, through it, the spiritual essence would free itself from the human being after having spent some time in the earthly world. But this is precisely what the gods have come to know through the Mystery of Golgotha. The exalted cross is therefore also an event within the cosmos. The cosmos has arranged matters here in such a way that something of the utmost importance has taken place on Earth. The cross was not merely raised up from the Earth; rather, it was lowered down to Earth so that the gods could place upon it something they had to settle in the divine world, for human beings to behold. In this way, human beings must also recognize the true Christ, whereas today, if you look at theology, the vision of Christ is becoming blurred. For example, in Harnack’s work, you can strike out the name “Christ” everywhere and substitute the general name “God” in its place, for there is no mention of the living, risen Christ, and thus the Mystery of Golgotha is not recognized in its transcendent significance. When a person connects with this meaning, they increasingly come to realize that while spirituality does indeed require death, humanity could not otherwise attain its full development unless it were to pass through the gate of death again and again. But now that the foundation has been laid for all future earthly development, we must go even further in understanding human death through the Mystery of Golgotha. We must grasp something else as well.

[ 27 ] All of dead nature surrounds us today. We practically congratulate ourselves when we are able to comprehend this nature. We want to understand not only the stones, but also the plants through their chemistry, and the animal kingdom as well. We want to imbue everything with the dead. And when people, based on their current understanding, establish an ideal, it is to replace life with a dead mechanism and chemistry. They would like to be able to say: There is a plant that unfolds very small, minute processes which combine in such a way that when one looks at the plant, what is experienced in the individual chemical processes appears blurred, and that is what we then call life! But that is not how it is; there is real life within it. We must be clear that death surrounds us, and that our understanding seeks to orient itself toward death. But just as Christianity has torn us away from our connection with death—just as it has taught us that whoever does not understand the Resurrection, whoever does not understand Christ as the Living One, is dead within their own soul—so too must we understand: If we connect only with the dead, then we ourselves become dead and Ahrimanic; but if we have the courage and the love for all beings around us to connect with what the beings themselves are—not with what our dead idea of them is—then we find Christ everywhere; then we find the victory of the Spirit everywhere. Then we may still have to speak—in a way that seems paradoxical to our contemporaries—of the individual beings that live in the solid, the liquid, and so on; but as long as we do not speak of this, we are speaking of a dead, unchristianized science. Only then will we cease to do so, when we resolve to speak of these things as we speak in true Christianity. Thus we must also imbue all science with the Christ; we must carry what we can cultivate through our communion with the Christ into all knowledge, all insight, and into our entire lives. Only then, however, will the Mystery of Golgotha truly bear fruit through human power, human striving, and human love among human beings themselves. And in this sense, we can say: Anthroposophy is, in every detail, a striving to Christianize the world.

[ 28 ] We look up to the sign of Christ. When we look at the external world of nature, we can only say—out of inner sickness—that there is no God in nature. But when we look at nature with a truly contemplative soul, we find God everywhere in it, and we then simply say, drawing from nature itself: Ex deo nascimur.

[ 29 ] It is a sickness if we do not say this in our innermost being. But in the course of our earthly life, we must find Christ through our own soul forces; otherwise, we cannot die properly, because only Christ mediates life in the dying of the newer humanity. And it is simply a matter of destiny in human life whether we can take Christ into ourselves, whether we find Christ, whether we learn to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, whether we learn to say in our innermost being: In Christo morimur.

[ 30 ] Just as it is a kind of human affliction to be unable to come to God the Father, so it is a miserable fate to be unable to come to God the Son. But at the same time, a weakness of the spirit arises from this: for when we imbue ourselves with the knowledge of and love for God the Father and Christ, something is awakened within us that leads us—despite all death, despite all dead nature—into living spirituality. And then, through the power of God the Father, through the power of Christ the Son, we say: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus—in the Holy Spirit we are reborn.

[ 31 ] And so, through clear understanding—not through a vague, nebulous striving—that which can be known is distilled into the word:

Ex deo nascimur — we are born of God.
In Christo morimur — we die in Christ.
Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus — through the Holy Spirit we are reborn in the Spirit.