The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Know Thyself. Experiencing Christ in Humanity as Light, Life, and Love

[ 1 ] When we observe an animal throughout its life—say, over the course of a year—we find that the animal experiences the changing seasons in a certain way. Consider, for example, an insect that pupates in accordance with the season, emerges as a butterfly at another time, lays its eggs during yet another season, and so on. We can observe the external course of nature, then follow the life cycle of such an insect, and we will find a certain connection—something, so to speak, that allows us to say the animal adapts its own life to its natural environment. If we consider human beings—whether as part of a particular group or a larger human community—during earlier periods of Earth’s development, we find that they, too, more or less instinctively experienced the external natural world. However, as human development has progressed, those instincts that led human beings to experience their immediate natural external environment have more or less ceased. Consequently, among members of more advanced humanity, we no longer find such an external harmony between the immediate natural environment and what occurs within the human being. This is connected to the fact that human beings are subject to a process of development that constitutes the history of humanity and forms a whole within the long epoch of the Earth’s planetary evolution.

[ 2 ] If we take a lower animal—an insect, for example—because that is where these relationships are most clearly evident, we find that such an animal experiences a relatively short period of time, roughly one annual cycle. Then, what takes place over the course of a single annual cycle is repeated in the life of the animal.

[ 3 ] In our historical reflections on humanity, we have often found a certain pattern that runs through long periods of Earth’s history, through long eras of our planet. For example, we have found—as is well known to us—that in earlier times, people possessed a kind of instinctive clairvoyance, a visual consciousness, which then faded during a middle phase of human development, when there was a transition from the old visual consciousness to the modern, intellectualistic conceptual consciousness. And we have often cited our historical present—since the first third of the 15th century—as the period of the actual development of the soul of consciousness, when human beings enter into intellectual thinking in the narrower sense, which then fully leads them to free self-consciousness.

[ 4 ] If we therefore consider a long period of time from this perspective, only then do we find a certain manageable regularity in the development of all humanity—a regularity that, for this long period, we must already compare to the regularity observed over a relatively short period, say, in the life of an insect that experiences the cycle of the year.

[ 5 ] Well, in earlier times there was still a certain sense of being in tune with—an instinctive sense of being in tune with—the natural order and the natural environment. But those instincts have been more or less dulled, and today we live in an age in which conscious inner life must take the place of the old instinctive life.

[ 6 ] If a person were to live in such a way that—I might say—he surrenders himself to chance, that he does not adopt inner guiding principles and laws, and does not say to himself at a certain point in time: ‘This is how you must orient your entire being’—if human beings did not arrive at such an inner orientation but instead left themselves to chance as they lived out their lives from birth to death here on Earth, they would, despite rising above the animal realm through their more highly developed soul life, sink below the animal realm through this way of handling their soul life.

[ 7 ] Then we would have to say: The insect follows a certain course of life through spring, summer, fall, and winter. It does not leave itself to the whims of chance; rather, it enters the world with a certain regularity in the sequence of its life stages.

[ 8 ] But when we consider how human beings have moved away from their earlier, instinctive communion with nature—which, though more spiritual than that of animals, was nonetheless instinctive—and have adopted a newer, more conscious form, we do indeed find that human beings, despite his higher spiritual and intellectual life, has, with the atrophy of his instincts, plunged more deeply into a chaotic existence and thereby, in a certain sense, sunk below the animal realm.

[ 9 ] No matter how much one may emphasize what humans initially possess that sets them apart from the animal realm—or, on the other hand, what they have developed as their more recent progress—we must nevertheless conclude, precisely from the perspectives outlined here, that humans have in fact lost that inner guiding force of their lives. For humans would have to see this guiding force in their lives in the fact that, as a member of humanity, they are conscious of: “You are a human being of this or that century.” But this or that century occupies a specific position in the overall development of your planet, just as the month of September occupies a specific position in the course of the year for a lower living being. You must become aware of how your soul life must position itself within a specific historical epoch.

[ 10 ] This, however, must become something that a person acquires by delving ever deeper into the development of the soul of consciousness. A person must be able to say to themselves consciously: I live in this or that epoch, and I am not a human being in the full sense of the word if I leave myself to chance—the chance that brought me into earthly existence through birth—that is, if I leave my consciousness to chance; otherwise, I am at the mercy of karma. I am a human being in the full sense of the word only when I take stock of what the historical development of humanity demands of my soul life by virtue of my belonging to a certain epoch. The animal lives according to the cycle of the year. Human beings must learn to live within the history of the Earth.

[ 11 ] We have, of course, identified the Mystery of Golgotha as the most important event in the history of the Earth. And we have often considered what it means for a human being to have lived before the Mystery of Golgotha, or to have lived at a certain point in time after the Mystery of Golgotha. In a sense, we have a point of reference in historical development by counting backward and forward from this greatest historical event on Earth. But we can only do full justice to such a reckoning with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha when we can also consider, for each individual epoch of historical life, what the task of the human soul is in that particular epoch.

[ 12 ] The historical account, as it is commonly presented today, is not sufficient to gain such an awareness of a particular era. For the mere narration of how Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman life, and so on, developed does not provide people with insight into a regular way of placing themselves within the entire historical evolution of their planet, just as animals regularly place themselves within the cycle of the year.

[ 13 ] We have, of course, already studied the various epochs of history in many different ways in order to gain an understanding of what we need to bring to life, especially in our own time, within our inner lives. But life is rich and multifaceted, and if one wishes to arrive at the true reality of earthly life—of human life in general—then life must be viewed again and again from the most diverse perspectives. And so today I would like to present to you yet another perspective on human life that is suited to pointing out the particular character of human soul life in our time.

[ 14 ] When we look back to the very early stages of human development, we find scattered throughout the various spheres of life on Earth what we have come to know as the Mysteries. We find that the various groups of people living across the Earth develop—externally, to be sure, but especially spiritually and culturally—under the influence of these mysteries. We find that individual human beings, depending on their degree of maturity, are admitted into the Mysteries, that they undergo a process of development there which brings them to a certain level of cognition, feeling, and will, and that they then, as such cognizers, those with a higher sense of feeling, and those with a higher will, step out among their fellow human beings and provide them with guiding principles for the various aspects of life, for the inner strength and fortification of the soul, and for outward will and action. One can therefore best study what such guiding principles were for earlier epochs of humanity by examining how those to be initiated into the Mysteries were led to such guiding principles.

[ 15 ] Much like today—though not, as we have often heard, in the abstract, intellectualistic way that is common today—the students of the Mysteries were led to become acquainted with their environment; to put it simply, to focus on the most essential aspects and to come to know what lives in the so-called three kingdoms of nature. Even today, starting in the earliest grades, we learn through all kinds of concepts and ideas to immerse ourselves in the three kingdoms of nature. Through concepts and ideas, we come to know the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and, building on that foundation, we also seek to gain insights into human life and the human being itself.

[ 16 ] Such concepts, such intellectualistic content of the soul as is communicated to people today, did not, however, exist in those earlier times among those to be initiated into the Mysteries. Concepts did exist then as well, but they were not acquired in the same way—developed in the inner life of the soul through logic, observation, and so on, as they are today—but were brought to people through the process of undergoing an inner development of the soul, which led them to form images of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. They did not absorb the abstract concepts that they absorb today, but rather images—images that today’s intellectualistic person might find fanciful—yet it was precisely these images that people absorbed. But through direct experience of these images, they knew that what they experienced in the images—what they lived through in the images—gave them a sense of what was within the things themselves—within the minerals, plants, and animals—what grew within them, what took shape within them, what unfolded within them. He knew this. He knew it precisely from the images that seem to modern people like fantastical myths and the like.

[ 17 ] People of the past knew that there was something true in what people today perceive, to a greater or lesser extent, as mythological and fantastical. Ancient people knew: When I look at an animal in the physical, sensory world, it stands before me with fixed contours. — But comprehending these fixed contours was not actually their intention. Their intention was rather to trace the life that flows everywhere, moving and fluid. According to their views, this could not be conveyed through sharply defined images or sharply defined concepts, but rather through fluid, transforming, metamorphosing images. And this is how it was conveyed to them in the Mysteries.

[ 18 ] But then, when a person, on the basis of this knowledge of the mysteries, was to rise to the point of recognizing himself, he first underwent a profound crisis in his soul. In his understanding, which was appropriate for the ancient era, he had received images of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. In a manner corresponding to his dreamlike consciousness, he was able, so to speak, to see through to the inner nature of the kingdoms of nature. From his experience of the mysteries, he had received the guiding principles for self-knowledge in a manner similar to that of later times. “Know thyself” has, after all, been an ideal throughout all periods of human cultural and civilizational development. But as this ancient human was to ascend from his form of imaginative knowledge of nature to self-knowledge, he underwent an inner crisis of the soul.

[ 19 ] If I am to describe to you what this inner crisis of the soul consisted of, I must say the following: Human beings had enriched their inner life by learning to look out upon the essence of the vast mineral realm; they carried within themselves the effects of mineral-physical processes. Furthermore, he carried within himself images of the plant life that was intricately interwoven within him. He carried images of the animal realm within himself. He was also able to bring these together into a mineral-plant-animal world. By looking back into his inner self, as it were, from this outward gaze, he possessed—in his more primitive form of memory—an inner image of the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and an inner image of their interplay.

[ 20 ] When he then set about fulfilling the demand: “Know thyself,” he suddenly had to stop in his tracks; he had to say to himself: I have a multifaceted, richly varied, colorful, even inwardly resonant—one might say, inwardly musical—world of images of that which exists outside of the human being in earthly life. But this entire world—rich in form, manifold, ever-changing, shimmering, glowing, and shining with colors everywhere, resounding with tones—it fails me when I want to fulfill the demand ‘Know thyself.’ By trying to grasp the human being itself in such a pictorial way, I cannot do so. I do indeed receive images of the human being as well, but as I experience these images, I know from the very experience of the images themselves: this is not the real human being; this is not what I feel when I experience my human dignity with feeling. That is not who I really am.

[ 21 ] And out of this crisis—which humanity was undergoing in relation to the powerlessness of self-knowledge—something else then developed for the person who had lived through this very crisis through initiation into the mysteries. From this emerged a very specific philosophy of life—one that we find at the root of all ancient civilizations.

[ 22 ] This philosophy of life held that a person who was truly enlightened in ancient civilizations would say to himself: Here on Earth, where minerals, plants, and animals find their purpose, where they are able to reveal their essence in the images I can form of them in my mind—here on this Earth, human beings do not reveal their essence.

[ 23 ] This is the conviction underlying all ancient civilizations: that human beings do not belong to the Earth in the same sense as the beings of the other kingdoms of nature; that, in a sense, the true home of their own being lies elsewhere than on Earth; that this true home of their own being is in the supersensible world. And this was not an arbitrary belief, but rather something that people had arrived at during a crisis in their spiritual life, after they had first acquired the understanding of the non-human aspects of earthly life that was appropriate to their time.

[ 24 ] And the only way to resolve this crisis was that, in those ancient times, human beings—by virtue of the abilities they still possessed at that time—could be guided toward an understanding of pre-earthly life, and from there also toward an understanding of post-earthly life, that is, life after death.

[ 25 ] In a certain sense, every instinctive human being was aware of pre-earthly life. It loomed into earthly life like a pre-earthly memory. And, as I indicated in the so-called French Course, knowledge of life after death was then acquired on the basis of pre-earthly life.

[ 26 ] But what did human beings come to know there, based on their ancient abilities? They came to know this: Only when you have passed through the gate of death will the moment have come when you will not only have the essence of non-human nature before you, but when you will see your own essence appear before your soul. For that was the distinctive feature of an earlier stage of human development: that in those days, between birth and death, human beings developed exclusively an imaginal consciousness—as I have often described—and not yet the intellectual consciousness we possess today. This intellectual consciousness that we possess today was developed by human beings in those earlier times immediately after death. And they retained it after death.

[ 27 ] What is peculiar about the progress of human development is that the intellectualistic consciousness which people of an earlier time possessed after death—just as we today describe for people the purely pictorial retrospect of the three days following death— that was the peculiarity: that people of an earlier time on Earth had a dreamlike, pictorial consciousness, just as we today already have intellectual consciousness during our earthly life, and after death they grew into the intellectual life that then, once they were freed from the body, gave them freedom. In earlier times, after death, human beings became intellectual and free beings.

[ 28 ] And as the initiate was initiated into this truth, it could be made clear to him, based on the understanding of humanity at that time: Here on this Earth, through your imagery consciousness, you can gain insight into the non-human realm. But when you look back upon yourself in accordance with the command “Know thyself,” you do not actually find yourself, with your full human dignity, in earthly life before death. You become a fully realized human being only after you have passed through the gate of death. Then you will be able to take possession of pure thinking; then, through pure thinking, you will be able to become a free being.

[ 29 ] This is what is so peculiar: this form of consciousness, which in earlier periods of human development occurred for people after death in the same way that, for us today, it is the looking back after death; it has, so to speak, flowed in from the afterlife—from the life beyond the earth—into earthly life, in a current opposed to human life. And what we, as human beings, have acquired to a marked degree since the first third of the 15th century has flowed in from the human being beyond the earth into the earthly human being. That is to say, it is the true human being—which the older students of the mysteries had come to realize can only be found in the super-earthly existence after death—that has drawn into earthly life. A truly supersensible current has flowed into earthly human life, opposing our human existence—which moves from the “before” to the “after”—by moving from the “after” to the “before.” As human beings, we have become partakers of something supraterrestrial, and in doing so we have indeed taken on the task of becoming worthy of this element drawn from the suprasensory into the sensory realm, of gaining our freedom inwardly as well, and of fully acknowledging the suprasensory in the sense of the development of the soul of consciousness.

[ 30 ] It is truly the case that, even though in earlier times the demand “Know thyself” was, so to speak, placed upon human beings, the answer given to them was: Here on earth there is no self-knowledge, for here on earth the full human being is not yet fully realized. You are not a fully human being on Earth; you will only be a fully human being once you have passed through the gate of death and entered the supersensible world.

[ 31 ] Even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and for centuries afterward, the human being as he lives on earth was therefore referred to, in the sense of the ancient wisdom of the mysteries, as the natural human being. But at the same time, it was believed that this “natural human being” is not the true human being, is not the complete human being, and does not even carry the full human essence within. And a distinction was made between this “natural human being” and the “pneumatic human being,” the spiritual human being. And it was believed that only when a human being, after shedding the physical body and passing through the gate of death, had become a pneumatic human—only then, as such a pneumatic human, could he be a complete human being. Therefore, the mystery initiations of ancient times were associated with the development of the utmost humility in the human being’s earthly consciousness. The mystery initiation could not make the earthly human being arrogant, for it did not give him the feeling: “You are already a human being in the full sense of the word on this earth,” but rather it gave him the awareness: “You are, so to speak, a candidate for humanity here on earth, and you must live your earthly life in such a way that you might become a fully human being after your death.”

[ 32 ] Thus, in the sense of this mystery wisdom, human beings walking the earth were not perceived as a true revelation of the fullness of humanity. It was not until the Greek era and the period that followed under the influence of Greek culture that people perceived—I would say—through intellectuality and freedom, the inflow of the true, post-earthly human being into the earthly human being. And in the spirit of Greek civilization, one viewed the earthly human being in such a way that, although the whole human being was not fully realized even in the individual earthly human being walking the earth, one saw, as it were, the supernatural working its way from the super-earthly into the earthly in what the earthly human being was. In the way a person’s physiognomy, manner of activity, and form manifested themselves—in all of this—one reverently perceived the inflow of the supraterrestrial into the terrestrial.

[ 33 ] All of this has changed with the newer phase of human development. In this newer phase of human development, each person must tell themselves: I have the great task of becoming conscious of my own humanity. My task on this Earth is to fully embody, at least to a certain degree, the essence of the human being. The demand “Know thyself” also arises within me. But because I have acquired an intellectual consciousness, I am able to grasp the inner power of pure thought and the inner state of the soul that is freedom through self-knowledge. I can bring the human being before the eye of my soul. Human beings must not become arrogant, even through this demand—“Know thyself”—which is fulfilled to a certain degree. For at every moment they must become aware of how they must attain that which is their true freedom, how they are dependent, in their passions, emotions, feelings, and sensations, on what is subhuman, and what an ancient humanity, through its pictorial consciousness, beheld so vividly in the extra-human—and thus was also able to perceive in the human, that is, in the subhuman. And the recognition of this subhuman realm as that which could be perceived was widespread in those ancient times. For people told themselves: The true human being does not live on earth at all—for the true human being would have had to be grasped as an intellectualistic being through intellectualistic cognition. Through non-intellectualistic pictorial cognition, one can initially grasp only the subhuman realm. Only then, when the intellectual aspect—which lives in a free inner state of the soul, as I have described it in my *Philosophy of Freedom*—only when this is further developed into conscious, precise clairvoyance, can a human being also come to know themselves in relation to the other aspects of their being, apart from pure intellectual thinking and the free impulse of the will.

[ 34 ] Through such a higher consciousness—the imaginative, inspired, intuitive consciousness—he is able to recognize himself, even in his non-intellectual nature, as a member of the supersensible world. And then it becomes clear to him: You are indeed a complete human being—this is revealed to your self-knowledge—but complete humanity demands of you that you become ever more perfect.

[ 35 ] And so modern man cannot develop the kind of humility that he had to develop in earlier eras of civilization, and which came to him because he had to tell himself: “Since you live in a physical body, you are not yet a fully realized human being; you do not yet fulfill your full human dignity and worth, but are merely a candidate for humanity. You can only prepare yourself for the consciousness and freedom that will arise within you immediately after death.”

[ 36 ] But modern man, having passed through the intermediate stage of Greek existence in other earthly lives, must tell himself: You must be careful not to fail to become a truly complete human being in your physical body between birth and death, for it is your destiny as a modern human to work through inwardly that which has entered earthly life from pre-earthly existence. You can become a human being on Earth. You must therefore take upon yourself the challenge of becoming a human being on Earth.

[ 37 ] This is also reflected in the development of human religious consciousness. As we heard here last time, in earlier times people looked primarily to the Father God and saw Christ as the Son of God. But the Father God was seen in the substantial, creative, and guiding aspects of the supersensible realm, of which the sensory-earthly realm is merely a reflection. People looked up to the cosmic from the earth. And in religious consciousness, they looked up to the Father God in this sense.

[ 38 ] The mystery students were always aware that the highest thing they could learn about human beings was a preparation for life after death. Now, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Son of God has been united with earthly life, and human beings can develop the awareness expressed in Paul’s words: “Not I, but Christ in me.” But by allowing the Christ impulse to come alive within themselves, by orienting their inner activity so that the meaning and life of the Christ impulse flows through and surges within them—in this way, human beings can sense precisely that current which has come to us from pre-earthly life and take it into themselves during their earthly lives. And the first, primitive absorption of this stream into earthly life consists precisely in a person saying to themselves: At a certain point in my life, I come to feel something sprouting and coming to life within me—something that until now had lain beneath the threshold of my consciousness, and which I now realize is there. Now it is rising up! It fills me with inner light—and thus with inner warmth. Through this, I now know that this inner life, this inner warmth, this inner light has only risen within me in the course of my earthly life after birth; I now know more about earthly life than I was born with. In my earthly life, I am coming to know something that rises up within my humanity.

[ 39 ] When a person then perceives this light and life rising within them, and this love rising within them, as the Christ impulse weaving and living within them, they gain within themselves the strength to grasp the post-earthly as the fully human in their free inner soul life.

[ 40 ] And so the mystery of Golgotha and the Christ impulse are intimately connected with the attainment of human consciousness of freedom—that consciousness which is also capable of infusing mere thinking, which otherwise becomes dead and abstract, with inner life and inner warmth.

[ 41 ] This, however, places the experience of Christ within the human being in modern times—in all its importance and essence—alongside the demand that has been made of human beings throughout the ages and continues to be made today: “Know thyself. Nurture thyself within thyself to full humanity.”

[ 42 ] This, however, once again hints in a certain way at how different that aspect of the human being—which, in the present epoch, must live within its soul constitution—is from the soul constitution of an earlier epoch. And over a long period of time, we learn to view human beings in the same way we must view an insect, of which we must say: it senses, it perceives the summer epoch within the entire context of the world, and prepares itself to perceive, at the right time, the transition into the autumn epoch, in order to establish a different way of life in this autumn epoch than it has established in the spring and summer epochs. Just as the animal lives in the course of the year, so should human beings be able to live within the history of their Earth. He should be able to say to himself: Just as springtime is for the insect, so for me there was once the time of the old instinctive clairvoyance—with a lack of freedom, with pictorial consciousness, with the impossibility of fulfilling the demand “Know thyself,” and with the awareness that you are a fully realized human being only when you have passed through the gate of death. Then came—just as summer and fall follow for the insect—the Greek era. That marked the transition to a later epoch, in which I now live, and in which the soul’s task is this: to fulfill, in a certain sense, the “Know thyself” here on earth, and thereby, even after death, to attain higher stages of life’s unfolding than those of an earlier humanity, where a person could only become a fully realized human being after death.

[ 43 ] In those earlier times, it was humanity’s task to be a candidate for life here on Earth, thereby becoming a fully realized human being after death. In our present era, human beings have the task of attaining the ability here on Earth to be fully human, so that after death they may enter higher stages of development than the human beings of earlier times were able to. The human beings of earlier times ran the risk of failing to attain full humanity if they did not live their earthly lives correctly. Modern humanity faces something different. It faces the necessity of attaining full humanity here on Earth. And if it fails to attain it, then it denies it, and thus propels itself further down into the subhuman realm for life after death. The older human being could fail to do something; the newer human being destroys something. The older human being failed to do something if he did not become a candidate for life; the newer human being destroys something in his humanity for the sake of all humanity if he does not strive to become a fully human being on earth, for in doing so he denies humanity, whereas the older human being merely failed to attain it.

[ 44 ] This is the mindset one must adopt if, at a higher level of existence, a human being wishes to consciously engage with the world in the same way that an animal instinctively engages with its world at a lower level; otherwise, the human being surrenders to chaos, something the animal, guided by its instinct, does not do.

[ 45 ] This is something we must learn through anthroposophy: to truly be human, so that we do not experience the shame of being less in the cosmos, even though the gods have destined us for something higher, to be less in the universe than the animal, which never fails to participate in the harmony of the universe, whereas we humans, if we refuse to think as indicated by placing the right consciousness in the right times, transform the harmony of the universe into disharmony and thereby, I would say, bring cosmic shame upon ourselves.

[ 46 ] Thus, in modern times, we must learn to integrate our emotional life with our intellectual life. We must learn to recognize that it can be a disgrace not to strive for the knowledge that makes us fully human—a disgrace before the gods of the world.