The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Fate of Self-Consciousness in Relation to the Christ Problem

[ 1 ] Ordinary earthly soul life unfolds in the innerly experienced phenomena of thinking, feeling, and willing. In reality, underlying all of this is the fact that, as we have seen in the preceding considerations, the human physical organism contains—upon waking—an etheric organism, an astral organism, and an “I”-entity. With their astral organism and their I-being, human beings are, in a certain sense, outside their physical organism during sleep—to put it plainly, actually only outside the head region of the physical organism. But when human beings are in their waking state during earthly existence, the etheric organism, the astral organism, and the I-being are completely within the physical organism and connected to it. They are active within the physical organism. During sleep, the soul is not strong enough within its own system of forces to bring before consciousness what it experiences internally in the astral and ego organisms. In the waking state, however, only that which is reflected from the physical organism as thoughts arising from the activity of the etheric and astral organisms and the I-being enters clearly into ordinary consciousness.

[ 2 ] If a person, while awake, were fully capable of experiencing the activities of their entire soul being, they would experience what is, first and foremost, their own life course—that is, what underlies their memories as the reality of that life course. But they would also experience everything we have come to know as cosmic worlds during sleep, where the corresponding cosmic experience remains unnoticed and unconscious. If a person had the full ability to use their astral body, what they experience at night as a reflection of the planetary movements would enter their waking consciousness. They would feel replicas of the planetary movements flowing through their respiratory and circulatory systems. As paradoxical as this may sound at first to ordinary consciousness, they would be able to say: “The power of the Sun flows through my veins, reinforced by the power of Mars, intermingling with the substantial power of Jupiter, and so on.” — A person would be able to express this in such a way that they would feel the planetary forces flowing through their own being. And if a person were to experience their full “I”-being within themselves during waking consciousness, they would also feel the fixed-star sky asserting itself within their spiritual being.

[ 3 ] All of this is absent during ordinary waking consciousness. It is not the activity of the etheric body that is experienced in waking consciousness—which constitutes the real events underlying one’s own life course—nor the impulses of planetary movements that live as stimuli in our respiratory flows and pulsate in our blood circulation; it is not this entire activity of the astral organism that is experienced in ordinary waking consciousness, nor is what is expressed in the constellations of the fixed stars and is reflected in the eternal core of the human being—in his I-essence—experienced; this is what, if a person were to experience it, would lead him to say: “I am permeated by God.” — Nor is this experienced in ordinary consciousness, for the activity of the etheric organism, the activity of the astral organism, and the activity of the I-essence—which take place in the ordinary waking state—relate to the physical organism in the same way that a person clothes themselves anew in it each morning upon waking. However, with the forces that a person has accumulated during sleep from the starry worlds—forces that have arisen from the movements of the planets—he actively permeates his physical organism. And precisely because a person actively permeates their physical organism—because the activity of their three soul components—the etheric organism, the astral organism, and the I-being—acts upon the physical organism from the moment of waking until falling asleep— the physical organism is thus shaped in such a way that what then arises within it as pure activity provides the impetus for the entire soul life to unfold in the images and thoughts that are reflex images cast back from the physical body into the soul. Human beings have no awareness of their own active life course, of the movements of the planets, or of the world of fixed stars, because during waking life all inner activity is reflected onto the physical body. This physical body carries the effects of the external world into its physical interior through its senses: the phenomena of light stream in through the eye, the phenomena of the world of sound through the ear, the realities of warmth and cold through the sense of temperature, and so on. All of this is reflected in the physical organism as thoughts through the activity exerted by the soul, and the soul experiences this world of reflected thoughts in its clear, ordinary consciousness.

[ 4 ] Such is the reality of psychological experience in ordinary wakefulness. This ordinary waking life poses the question to us: What, exactly, does the soul do to the physical organism so that thoughts appear as reflexes? — But let us first note this: The physical organism actually prevents the soul from becoming aware of the cosmic realities that could otherwise resonate and continue to exert their influence within it. We will examine the specific nature of this waking consciousness shortly.

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[ 5 ] Let us first examine what this triad of the etheric organism, the astral organism, and the I-being actually brings about through their interaction within the human physical body. It turns out, in fact, that the activity exerted by this triad on the human physical head organism is a destructive one. If the human etheric organism alone were to permeate the physical organism, then there would also be a continuous, constructive life activity within the physical head organism; the activity of the head would, so to speak, be completely filled with life. But in that case, no physical consciousness would arise. Physical consciousness arises only through the astral organism’s intervention in the head’s organization. And this astral organism is attuned to and organized for what we have already come to know: it is organized for the human being’s pre-earthly existence. If I may put it this way, the astral organism must, so to speak, regard it as its task not to work upon this material-filled physical organism, but to fill this physical organism with its activity in its cosmic spiritual form, just as it did in human pre-earthly existence. This astral organism of the human being is, after all, an echo of what the soul did—drawing from the mysteries of planetary movements and the mysteries of the fixed-star constellations—to shape what I have referred to in the preceding reflections as the cosmic germ of the physical organism. Thus, the activity of the astral organism is oriented not toward the earthly metamorphosis of the physical organism, but toward the cosmic one—toward the spiritual metamorphosis of the physical organism. Therefore, by acting within the physical organism, the astral organism seeks to continually spiritualize this physical organism, insofar as it constitutes the brain or head organization. Indeed, our astral organism is constantly at work within our head organization to transform this head organization into the spiritual. There is no actual, outwardly visible transformation; rather, there is an striving toward transformation.

[ 6 ] This striving, however, is constantly present. Through the head organization of the astral organism, forces are constantly flowing into the constructive forces of the human head organization—forces that would bring fresh, bubbling life, but unconscious life—there are constantly added destructive forces that seek to break down and destroy the physical organism—insofar as it is a head organization—so that a spiritual organism might shine forth from it, for the astral body has been accustomed to this since pre-earthly existence. But the physical organism offers resistance. It does not allow itself to be broken down, and it carries out this resistance in such a way that every time the moment is brought about when this physical organism of the head, through the activity of the astral organism, would disintegrate into the inorganic, would pass into the lifeless—at that very moment, sleep must set in, and then, and only then, must the forces of the etheric body be active again in the head organism.

[ 7 ] Thus, the alternation between waking and sleeping can also be characterized by saying: During waking, the astral forces continually subject the human head organization to a process of decay. At the moment when—if one may put it that way—this activity of the destructive astral forces were to pass from a latent state into a real state, at that very moment sleep sets in. The imaginative consciousness of modern initiatory knowledge can perceive this fact in the appearance of the human etheric organism during wakefulness and during sleep.

[ 8 ] While awake, the etheric body—which, as a spiritual process, permeates the human physical body—becomes increasingly undifferentiated in relation to the head’s organization. Thus, in the waking human being, we have before us an etheric organism that is highly internally differentiated and endowed with complex structures in those parts of the physical organism where the lungs, the liver, and the stomach are located, and where the limbs are situated. There, the etheric organism is highly articulated within waking life. In the head, on the other hand, the longer waking life continues, the more undifferentiated the etheric body becomes. Ultimately, it becomes simply like a uniform cloud in the head, because the constructive forces that are otherwise present in this etheric organism lose their significance, and the destructive forces of the astral organism, which are waning in the waking state, act upon the head organization.

[ 9 ] In the state of sleep, it is quite different. There, through imaginative consciousness, one sees how this differentiation—the manifold articulation of the etheric organism—penetrates into the etheric organization of the head. There, the etheric organism of the head becomes just as structured as the rest of the etheric organism is during the waking state. For during sleep, the life forces, the formative forces, and the creative forces of the etheric organism for the head awaken, and the head becomes an unconscious but very lively organization.

[ 10 ] Thus you can see that human beings—in their earthly existence, from a state of waking consciousness—constantly carry within their mental organization the latent presence of death. The tendency toward death is constantly present in the head organization. The astral organism constantly seeks to transform the head organization into the spiritual realm. It seeks to make it a planetary organ of movement, to make it a reflection of the constellations; it is a constant destroyer of the physical head organization.

[ 11 ] If modern science were aware of this fact, it would find it completely impossible to fall into materialism. For what do those people have to say who wish to interpret the entire human organism in materialistic terms? They say: Organic processes also take place in the head; they unfold there as organic life processes, just as life processes unfold in the liver or the stomach, so too in the brain, and this unfolding of life processes in the brain manifests itself as thought, as mental activity. — But this is, in light of the facts, utter nonsense. For we do not think—and we do not experience the soul in ordinary consciousness—through the occurrence of constructive life processes, but rather through the fact that our nervous system is constantly in a state of being broken down, that death is constantly present within us. To have an active soul life in ordinary consciousness means not developing organic processes, but killing them off. The organic processes must first die within themselves; they must make way for the soul if it is to unfold in ordinary consciousness. If one were to understand this correctly, one would have to say: The life of the soul certainly cannot emerge from the organic processes, because these organic processes must first enter a state of dying out. They must first withdraw from the organization of the head if the soul is to be active within it.

[ 12 ] This is precisely the true reality regarding the interplay between the human soul organization and the human physical organization. But this true reality also shows how, from the moment of birth, human beings immediately carry within their head organization the predisposition toward death, toward dying. Through supersensible knowledge, we come to understand that dying is constantly striving to occur within us and is only continually overcome by sleep. The single act of dying—dying in the physical sense—is, after all, merely a summation, a more intense process compared to the continuous, if I may say so, atomistically small processes of dying that take place constantly in waking consciousness. As long as we have the physical organism, it resists its own destruction, which is brought about by the astral organism. This is the case with the head organization.

[ 13 ] But the human astral organization does not have only this effect in waking life. Only a part of it has this effect. Another part manifests itself in earthly life in much the same way as it is active in pre-earthly existence. This part of the human astral organism is not active in the head organization, but rather in everything that constitutes the rhythmic organization of the human being—that is, in those organs of the physical body in which respiration, blood circulation, and the other rhythmic processes take place. This part of the astral body of which I am now speaking does indeed live within the human rhythmic organism, but it does not connect with this physical rhythmic organism in the same way as the other part, which is active in the head organization. This other part, which is active in the head organization, takes such a strong hold of this head organization that it constantly inclines it toward dying, toward death, because it fractures it. That part of the astral body, on the other hand, which blends with the rhythmic organism in the human being, permeates this rhythmic organism; it lives in the breathing, lives in the blood circulation, but because it does not take hold of the organism in such an intense way, it also leaves it undisturbed in a certain sense. It does not take hold of it in such a way as to seek to destroy it. Consequently, however, no life of thought arises through this connection between the human astral organism and the rhythmic organism. Whatever plays out as a soul activity is reflected in the physical head organism, which is constantly tending toward death. This is the effect of fully conscious thinking. But whatever takes place in the intermingled flow of the astral and the rhythmic organization is not reflected in the same way, so as to give rise to a clear consciousness like that of the life of thought; rather, it unfolds in the more indeterminate form of soul life as the human emotional life. This is feeling. It arises, then, from the fact that the astral organism pulses through the breathing and blood circulation in waking life, yet does not fragment them or immerse itself so deeply within them; rather, through its interaction with the rhythmic organization, it kindles what constitutes the human emotional life.

[ 14 ] Thus, in the rhythmic-organic system, something of what the human being experienced cosmically in pre-earthly existence does indeed live on, but it does not give rise to any clear consciousness. This, however, has a very specific consequence. Namely, in the unconscious depths, through this interaction—which I have described—between the astral organization and the physical-rhythmic organization, something is constantly taking place that enters full, ordinary daytime consciousness only as a faint reflection. Let us study this in detail! Let us say that a person carries out their activities, their actions, in physical existence. These actions he performs do not simply play themselves out within him as mere natural phenomena; rather, he is compelled, by a certain impulse rising up from the subconscious, to judge these activities as moral or immoral, as valuable or worthless, as wise or unwise. This moral evaluation, this moral judgment, intermingles with the otherwise amoral—not antimoral—life of thought.

[ 15 ] What is it that now shines up indistinctly from the depths of our inner experience and tells us: this activity is good, that activity is evil, this action is wise, that is foolish? — It is a psychological activity that has remained as it was in pre-earthly existence, one that permeates the rhythms of the human being— breathing, and blood circulation, but which cannot fully flow up into the life of thought; rather, it merely colors it, so that in our life of thought we also have reflections of this inner experience that are valuable for the actions we carry out in the physical world. We do not carry within us only what we carry out as conscious, rational judgment in our activities. No, within the human rhythmic system lives and pulses an astral-spiritual force that, in a form similar to how it already existed in pre-earthly existence—clear to itself but only indistinct to ordinary consciousness—says “yes” or “no” to our human activities. Within us there is a judge of the worth of our soul, and this judge lives as truly as our soul lives as a thinking soul within our head organization.

[ 16 ] In the earlier stages of human development, therefore, those who wished to attain higher knowledge through the old methods sought to bring the rhythmic system—the respiratory system, but also the circulatory system—into their consciousness. Consider what emerged for such people from an older method—one that can no longer be practiced today—of attuning themselves to the spiritual world. What emerged was that these people viewed their own human worth—based on what the cosmos inscribed in their respiratory life—as good or evil, as wise or foolish. For the ancient Indian yogi, the judgment regarding a morally-natural human being and a naturally-moral human being rose from the rhythmic system of breathing up into the brain. For a time, during his yogic insight, he transformed his brain into a respiratory organ and experienced firsthand what the cosmos had to say about his actions.

[ 17 ] This judgment of the cosmos regarding our actions is very real within the astral organization of humanity. And when the physical human body is cast off at death, then that obstacle is removed which prevents the human being from being conscious of what is alive in his breathing and blood circulation. The physical organism acts like a veil, obscuring what takes place in the astral organism in the manner I have just described. Therefore, what lives on as astral experiences in the breathing and blood circulation from birth to death continues to live on beyond death within the human being. We will see how this is the case when, immediately after translating this section, I describe what the human soul goes through when it truly passes through the gate of death.

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[ 18 ] When the human physical organism disintegrates at death and separates from the human being, this human being initially remains in the etheric organism, the astral organism, and in its “I”-essence. Since the physical organism no longer presents an obstacle to the human soul’s unfolding into the cosmic realm—insofar as it no longer draws the human soul back into its own sphere—the possibility of cosmic consciousness immediately arises for the human soul. This human soul now possesses the etheric organism without having this etheric organism bound to a physical organism. But this etheric organism, insofar as it represents the human life course on the one hand, is at the same time the continuous interplay of cosmic forces—the forces of cosmic life. As the human soul gradually lives through the etheric body in the process of death, it experiences the cosmic world-ether within the etheric body. What takes place in the cosmic world-ether now flows into the etheric organism, for until now this inflow had been held back solely by the physical organism. This barrier is now gone. The etheric organism is not as separated in its activity from external cosmic events and realities as the physical organism is. What takes place out there in the cosmic world ether flows in and exerts its influence upon the human etheric organism, and what takes place within the human etheric organism pulses out into the world through the etheric organization. After death, the human being immediately immerses himself not only in his etheric organism but—having freed his etheric organism from the physical organization—he immerses himself in that which is constantly flowing in and out; he immerses himself in the cosmic-etheric.

[ 19 ] But since the human soul is a unity, the human astral body and the “I”-essence are drawn along into the cosmic-etheric realm. More and more, the cosmic-etheric consciousness shines forth within the human soul as its innermost essence. But compared to this mighty, vast cosmic consciousness, the human being’s own etheric body is only a very small part, and within this very small etheric realm, the world ether actually dwells. This is why the human being’s own etheric experiences—which were held together time and again by the physical organization—now have no significance whatsoever in the vast ocean of the etheric realm alongside cosmic consciousness. This means nothing other than that this human etheric organism dissolves very soon after death. The human being now retains his astral organization and his “I”-essence along with the cosmic consciousness he has attained.

[ 20 ] But within this astral organization lies the aftereffect of what this astral organization experienced within the physical body during its physical existence on Earth. I have already pointed out how a part of the astral organization, so to speak, retains its cosmic character by being only loosely connected to the rhythms of respiration and circulation. Now, however, after the physical organs of respiration and circulation have been shed, that which developed during physical life on Earth—in conjunction with the physical processes of respiration and circulation—as the human inner being with moral qualities continues to live on. This, permeated by cosmic consciousness, continues to unfold after death. That which found its reflection during earthly life in physical respiration and physical blood circulation continues to unfold in a cosmic rhythm after death. A rhythm is present once again, but it is a rhythm through which the human being feels the influence of what they have brought with them from their earthly existence in terms of moral evaluation. They perceive their astral content as moral qualities—as they became good or evil, wise or foolish during their physical life on Earth. This is, in a sense, an inner pulse.

[ 21 ] Into this inner pulse, the cosmic process—which has not yet been permeated by morality—continually flows in from the outside; this process represents something purely cosmic, in which we are still dealing with amoral—not antimoral—events, as reflected here on Earth in natural phenomena. Here we do not distinguish between good and evil; everything proceeds according to neutral natural processes. All that takes place in this way is a reflection of a cosmic process, and this cosmic process rhythmically resonates within the aftereffects of rhythmic-moral evaluation. Thus, after death, the human being feels immersed in a cosmic rhythm, as it were, inhaling the cosmos in its moral innocence and exhaling into the cosmos what he has accumulated within himself in terms of moral evaluations. A cosmic rhythm has taken the place of the physical rhythm, and within this cosmic rhythm the human soul experiences—just as in the cosmos, which is amoral in its structure with regard to external nature—the emergence of a moral element that is carried out through human experiences and through the gate of death of the individual human being into the cosmos.

[ 22 ] Whatever the human soul carries out into the cosmos through the gate of death in the form of a moral assessment of its deeds becomes integrated into the amoral realm of the cosmos. What now descends into the bosom of the cosmos are the moral consequences of human life, carried there by death, and through his consciousness—unhindered by anything—the human being becomes a witness to how, within the bosom of the amoral cosmos, a moral element takes shape for a future world. Our world is morally neutral in its natural reflection. From our world will arise a future world that, in its natural reflection, will not be morally neutral, but where everything moral will be natural and everything natural will be moral. Human beings carry the seed of this into the cosmos through their moral deeds. And during this experience, the great question stands consciously before the human soul: Am I, through the qualities I have acquired morally, also worthy to participate in the afterlife in that future cosmos, which will no longer have a merely natural image, but will have a moral-natural image?

[ 23 ] Whatever sensations and feelings—we can use these terms, even though they do not strictly represent supersensory experience—are experienced by the human soul after death within the described rhythm of the worlds, this is the realization of the moral imprint in the physical world. For a time after death, this gives the human soul’s experiences their own distinctive character. I have described these experiences—which I am now describing from a different perspective—in my book Theosophy, where I referred to them as the “world of the soul.”

[ 24 ] But if a person were to remain in these experiences forever after death, he would not be able to properly prepare the spiritual part of his future physical organism. For this spiritual aspect of the future physical organism—which I have described in my previous explanations, and which a person must carry within themselves in a new earthly life—could not be developed in a healthy or proper way from a soul life that is tainted by the moral imperfections of the previous earthly life. Therefore, for a certain time after death, the human soul must enter a world in which it lives only within the purified cosmos, where the experiences of the rhythm I have just described are subdued; for all moral evaluations of the human soul’s actions play into this rhythm. From this, only a decadent part of the spirit could be formed for the future physical organism. A healthy physical organism can only be formed if the soul can enter a world where it is no longer affected by the aftereffects of human-soul experiences from its past earthly life, but where the extra-human spiritual impulses of the cosmos are at work, as I have just described.

[ 25 ] I have described these experiences—which must be lived through by the human soul within the purified cosmos of the spirit—in my book Theosophy from a different perspective than I do here. There I called it the “Land of Spirits.” Human beings must enter this Land of Spirits of the soul, for only then will they be able to participate in the formation of a universally comprehensive spiritual organism—one that will, however, metamorphose into the physical organism in the future. For a time, the imperfections from a previous existence must be removed from the human being; otherwise, he would have to come into being in a malformed physical organism in his next earthly life.

[ 26 ] Thus, based on an inner insight, we arrive at a description of what the human being experiences in the spiritual cosmos after death through the powers of the soul. With the astral body, the human being naturally carries into the cosmic spiritual world that which is now also present in his or her “I”-being. But this “I”-essence must still be prepared in another way. That can then be the subject of tomorrow’s lecture. Today, in a final section, I will describe how the form that the human being assumes after death relates to Christian development and to the Mystery of Golgotha.

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[ 27 ] You will see that a true cosmology can only come into being if it also incorporates what inspiration can reveal about the integration of such a moral cosmic seed as I have described. Any cosmology would remain incomplete if it did not know how the present cosmos—which has a neutral, amoral reflection in nature—will one day, through human life, become one in which the natural is at the same time moral and the moral is natural. Thus, for this reason as well, a true cosmology can arise only from the enrichment of ordinary knowledge through inspiration, just as a true philosophy can acquire living content only by incorporating the results of the imagination, as I explained yesterday. But such a cosmology also requires Christianity.

[ 28 ] In the time that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, there were initiates who worked according to methods different from those required by initiation today. These ancient initiates, who lived before the Mystery of Golgotha and who knew what takes place in the spiritual worlds that human beings enter after death, were already able to tell their followers: After death, you enter a world of souls in which you will experience the reverberations of your moral qualities and those of a similar nature. However, you cannot enter the spirit realm with the same soul forces that unfold in this soul world, for even if you were to enter, that which exists in your consciousness as the aftereffect of moral evaluation within the astral organism would dull and extinguish your “I”-consciousness—the consciousness of your Self—which you would otherwise attain in the spirit realm after death.

[ 29 ] In the physical world, as I have said, self-consciousness has developed here on the basis of the physical organism. But it was precisely for the development of that spiritual seed within the human being that self-consciousness had to be present, even in the early stages of human evolution, during the time spent in the spirit realm.

[ 30 ] A human being cannot attain this through his own efforts—so the ancient initiates told their followers who were willing to listen— a human being can attain this only if, at a certain moment after passing through the world of the soul, that high spiritual being—whose physical reflection is found in the physical sun—steps alongside the human being, leads him from the world of the soul into the realm of the spirits, and from then on serves as his guide there. Just as human beings here in the physical world experience their best physical powers under the influence of the physical sun—so said the ancient initiates—so must human beings be taken by the hand, figuratively speaking, during the transition from the world of the soul into the realm of the spirits, so that there they may draw their best powers from the impulses of that solar being, which has its physical reflection here in the physical sun. — Thus the ancient initiates depicted the spiritual solar being as the sublime companion of the human soul through the realm of spirits.

[ 31 ] And the Initiates who lived at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and for another three to four centuries afterward said to those who wished to be their followers and to hear them: Due to the course that human physical development—the physical organism—has taken, once a person has passed through the soul world, their inner being becomes so entangled in the perception of moral reverberations that, if they were left to rely on their own powers, their consciousness would become obscured there, and they would be unable to attain the influence of that Solar Being at all. For this reason, this solar being descended to Earth, took on human form in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 32 ] And when a person on Earth adds to what he can develop through his sensory perception and through the development of ego-consciousness the perception of the Christ Being in his feelings—as he can experience it here between birth and death— when he incorporates into this feeling—which is, after all, bound to the astral organism—the perception of the Mystery of Golgotha, then this exerts upon that astral part of the human being—which continues to live on after death in the manner I have described—the very effect that is the aftereffect of the relationship between earthly events and Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha. And through this aftereffect, the consciousness of the spirit realm—which would otherwise remain clouded and dark—is strengthened during the transition from the soul world to this spirit realm after death, and is enabled to perceive in the spiritual world that which enables the human soul, between death and a new birth, to prepare the physical organism in its spiritual aspect.

[ 33 ] Thus the Initiates—whether they were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha or lived several centuries afterward—said to their followers: If human beings have evolved to the point where, upon death, they no longer possess the forces capable of guiding them from the world of the soul into the realm of the spirits, Christ nevertheless descended to Earth, accomplished the deed of Golgotha, and through the effect of this deed of Golgotha upon the human soul, the powers of that soul can be strengthened to such an extent that, after death, during the transition from the world of the soul to the spirit realm, the human being experiences the cosmic world so richly that, drawing upon its impulses, he can shape—or help shape—the physical organism of his next earthly life. Through Christ’s deed, the human soul is purified during the transition from the world of souls to the spirit realm.

[ 34 ] This is what the initiated contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha said, just as the ancient initiates had said before them: Through the guidance of the High Solar Being, the human soul is purified during its transition from the world of souls to the realm of spirits.

[ 35 ] From this you can see how what must be addressed here as the mystery of death is connected to the Christian evolution of humanity on Earth. After the 4th century, however—as I have already explained—that initiatory knowledge began to fade, knowledge which, in the manner I just described, could have spoken to the people who would come to profess it. But now the time has come again when a new initiatory science can once more reveal the connection between humanity and Christ Jesus. And this new initiatory science must once again declare: Whoever takes the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha into his emotional life during his earthly existence thereby strengthens and invigorates his inner soul being, so that upon the transition from the world of the soul to the realm of the spirits, it can become powerful enough to form a physical organism different from the one that would otherwise arise if no such impulse were to come through a renewed Christianity. For without this impulse, physical organisms that are pathological would have to arise in the future organization of the Earth. Through renewed Christianity, we immerse ourselves in that impulse through which healthy, vigorous physical organisms can arise for the remainder of earthly life.

[ 36 ] Thus, what human development entails in the face of death is deeply connected to the Christ Being, and in a true cosmology, Christ stands within it as a world force, as a cosmic force, and his power can be beheld during the human being’s transition from the world of the soul to the realm of the spirits after death.

[ 37 ] How, then, that which is now also present in the human soul—and which, for ordinary consciousness, finds its expression in the will—passes through death and, between death and a new birth, can develop into the seeds of certain forces that will only come to expression in the next earthly life; how human destiny—what was formerly called karma—unfolds from one earthly life to the next, that will be the subject of the next lecture, which will add to today’s consideration of the human world of thought and the human world of feeling a consideration of the human world of will. There, however, it will again become clear how, with regard to the aspect of will, the human being must develop his significant relationship to the Christ Being and to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the entire Christian development. And just as we have today placed Christ within the context of cosmological development—within true cosmological knowledge—so it will still be our task in tomorrow’s lecture to place Christ within the context of a renewed understanding of religion.