The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Anthroposophy: The Path to a Deeper Understanding of the Mystery of Easter

[ 1 ] As human beings, we tend to view the state of the soul—the entire life of the human soul—too narrowly, limited to the way we experience it as people of the present, of the 19th and 20th centuries. And what we know from history consists largely of external events, rather than the history of the human soul itself. The changes taking place in the inner life of humanity are given little consideration. Now, it must be said that earlier times did not have the same impetus to engage with this history of the human soul as the present age does. For the present age—which, if we view it as a major historical epoch, begins as early as the middle, or indeed the first third, of the fifteenth century—this present age presents humanity with very special tasks that can be solved only through conscious effort, whereas earlier tasks could be solved out of a certain instinct, albeit one shaped by human experience. You have heard on various occasions—and perhaps read in the lecture cycles—how in ancient times a kind of instinctive clairvoyance was inherent in humanity, how the development of humanity consists in the loss of this instinctive clairvoyance, and how the soul constitution of today—which is an intellectual one, one that primarily develops the human intellect—has taken the place of that instinctive clairvoyance. I do not mean to say that the powers of feeling and will are therefore inactive in humanity today. But what constitutes the greatness of our present civilization—what we experience above all in the present age—appeals to the intellect, to the powers of conceptual thought. Yet modern humanity has every reason to reflect on the question: What significance does a civilization of the intellect hold for the human soul? — This question can only be answered exhaustively if one takes into account, to some extent, the reference to pre-earthly human existence, which was mentioned yesterday in a different context.

[ 2 ] As people of the present day, we perceive these ideas as something very abstract, as something we do not experience inwardly to the same degree as the ideas that were alive within human beings during the time of ancient, instinctive clairvoyance. And when we look at pre-earthly human existence from the perspective of these abstract, intellectual concepts, we find that what are today abstract thoughts were something entirely different back then. When we were still in pre-earthly existence and had no physical body, when we were still soul-spiritual beings, thoughts were something entirely different. Back then, thoughts still had a soul life; we experienced a thought in such a way that we knew: These thoughts are spread throughout the entire world, and we draw them from the world into our own soul life.

[ 3 ] Today, people believe that thoughts are something they produce with their brains. That is about as sensible as if a person drinking a glass of water were to believe that the water comes out of their tongue, rather than being taken in from the outside. In truth, thoughts are something active and alive—the active forces in the entire world—and we merely draw them from the world. Our physical system is merely the vessel into which we draw thoughts with our “I.” But the misconception that we ourselves produce thoughts—that we do not draw them from the world—is one to which one can only succumb during earthly life, between birth and death. As long as one is in pre-earthly existence, one knows that the world of thoughts permeates everything in one’s surroundings, just as the air does in existence between birth and death. We know that we, so to speak, inhale and exhale the forces of thought, that they are something active and effective.

[ 4 ] It is of extraordinary importance that we realize how the powers of thought in pre-earthly life are something entirely different from those in earthly existence. When we encounter a corpse in the world, we do not tell ourselves that this corpse could have been shaped into the form it has as a corpse by any forces we call natural forces. We know that it is the remnant of a living human being. The living human being must necessarily have existed; a natural force can never give a corpse the form it has. The corpse can only be the remnant of a living human being. What we can observe about the human life of thought, as we experience it in earthly existence, likewise provides us with clues to recognize that the powers of thought we develop during earthly existence cannot arise on their own within our physical organism, but rather that they are the remnants of living forces we possessed in our pre-earthly existence. With the same certainty with which one says that the corpse is the dead remnant of a living human being, one can also say: The abstract thinking we have today is the dead remnant of what we had in our pre-earthly existence in the form of living thinking. Living thought dies when we are born or conceived, and what manifests itself within us as thinking powers is the corpse of that living thought we possessed in our pre-earthly existence. We can only truly understand earthly thought if we regard it as a remnant of pre-earthly thought, just as we regard the corpse as a remnant of the living human being.

[ 5 ] This awareness—that human thought is the remnant of a living form of thought—must gradually take hold of humanity more and more. Only then will we view ourselves correctly as human beings; only then will we look back correctly on our pre-earthly existence—just as we look back from the corpse, in which only the forces of nature still live, to the living human being, in whom higher forces live. But one can only view this entire fact in the right light when one realizes: This form of thinking, which tends toward abstraction, as we know it today, is something we have only developed since the 15th century. Of course, it developed in different ways among individual races and tribes, but on average, civilized humanity evolved toward this dead thinking in the first third of the 15th century; this thinking became increasingly dead and then reached a certain culmination point of this deadness precisely in the last third of the 19th century.

[ 6 ] Yes, if we look further back in the course of evolution, we find that in ancient times, human souls—having passed through conception and birth—still carried over something from their pre-earthly existence into their earthly existence. The vitality of the ancient myths, the ancient folk legends, and the ancient creative powers of the soul—which are not the same as our present-day imaginative activity—could not have developed if something had not shone in from that living pre-earthly thinking, if earthly thinking had already become entirely abstract. In a certain sense, one can say that even today, in childhood, a final remnant of pre-earthly thinking still exists, though it is lost in the course of life. But those people of an earlier time were also, in their entire soul life, quite different from people today. Just imagine for a moment that you were still living within this living thinking today; that you could experience the kind of clairvoyance that the human soul possessed in earlier times; that you could experience imaginations—but these imaginations would have such a powerful effect on you that you would feel merely as a vessel for divine-spiritual forces: you would never attain a sense of freedom. The true sense of freedom has only developed in civilized humanity. Human beings owe their ability to become free to the fact that living thought, at least in its awakened state, no longer exerts its influence, but rather a dead form of thought into which they can pour whatever they themselves wish to pour from their free will. It is no longer spirits who think within the human being, as in the past; the human being begins to think for themselves. But to begin thinking for oneself means to send the human will into thought, and when one finds dead thought, one can pour one’s free will into it. Thus, human beings had to advance toward dead thought in order to become free beings in the course of Earth’s evolution. You see, when we consider the development of human soul life in this way, it becomes clear to us that the entire course of human development on Earth is meaningfully structured.

[ 7 ] But let us now go back to somewhat earlier times. What took place—the suppression, the abstraction, the intellectualization of thought—in the first third of the 15th century was a process that developed slowly and gradually. Such things do not happen all at once; they build up, gathering momentum, before reaching a climax. It is now clearly evident that the first stirrings of this abstract thinking occurred in the 4th century A.D. I mean, in the 4th century A.D., the first trace began to assert itself in human consciousness: the belief that human beings produce their own thoughts. A Greek would not have believed that, in reality. The Greek was still very much aware of a certain vitality in thought and was aware that thoughts are present everywhere in things, that he himself merely draws them from those things. The belief that human beings generate thoughts arose because thoughts became more and more lifeless. And these lifeless thoughts—with which one can, so to speak, do whatever one wants—did not emerge until the 4th century A.D. This process continued gradually until, in the 15th century, the consciousness we still have today was clearly established.

[ 8 ] But what does this imply for the development of humanity? In the 4th century A.D., the first steps toward intellectual, abstract thinking began to emerge. But this means nothing other than that the Mystery of Golgotha—the appearance of the Christ on Earth—occurred at a time when the human soul was still filled with living thoughts. In this regard, humanity has indeed lost much in terms of its consciousness. Although humanity has thereby gained freedom, it has nevertheless lost much. When Christ appeared on Earth, He was still received by a certain number of people who still possessed an inner, living, and active thinking—people who still retained remnants of their pre-earthly existence within their thinking. And these people approached the Mystery of Golgotha in a completely different way than people of later times. Just consider this carefully: Up until that time, people told themselves—they did not express it explicitly; everything was more shrouded in imagery back then, but an awareness of it existed—‘I am now on Earth; as an earthly human being, I have my thinking here, but this thinking traces me back, through birth and conception, to a pre-earthly existence, to another world from which I have descended.’ —People here saw themselves as a continuation of what they had been in their pre-earthly existence. The people of that time were clear that, through their earthly existence, they were continuing a previous, pre-earthly existence, even though in those days people looked into the world of pre-earthly existence as if through a dim glass. This awareness—that human beings are beings who have descended from the heavens to Earth—was essentially lost in the 4th century A.D.

[ 9 ] From this perspective, however, people also viewed the events at Golgotha. When the initiates who still existed at that time—who were not as wise as the initiates of the ancient mysteries, but who nevertheless still possessed remnants of the ancient mystery wisdom—spoke to these people about the Christ, the question for them was this: Jesus Christ had previously been at home in the same world in which we, too, had been before we descended to Earth. That was his world; only, he had never left that world before. It is, after all, a distinctive feature of earthly human beings that they have had to descend since very ancient times. Thus they departed from the Christ in order to descend to Earth. Whenever the Christ was spoken of in the ancient mysteries—and it was always this Christ who was spoken of in the ancient mysteries, even if he was not called by the name “Christ”—thoughts had to be directed upward toward pre-earthly existence, and people had to be told: “If you wish to know anything about the Christ, you must not cling to your earthly consciousness, but must look upward toward pre-earthly existence.”

[ 10 ] We need to mention quite a few things about this pre-earthly existence in order to understand what I would like to explain today. We stand here on Earth as earthly human beings; we look up at the sun; we form ideas about this sun; we even develop hypotheses about it, such as that the sun is a ball of gas or something similar. From an earthly perspective, it is only natural to form such ideas, but people believe this to be the case from every perspective. Before we descended to Earth, we also saw the sun, but from the vastness of the cosmos—from the “other side,” so to speak. There it was not a physical entity, but the embodiment of spiritual beings, and the most significant of these beings for humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha was the Christ. So that one can also say the following: When, in pre-Christian times, the initiates were initiated into that which later became the Mystery of Golgotha, it became clear to them: In their pre-earthly existence, human beings saw the sun and perceived the Christ, and when they descended to Earth, they saw the sun from the other side, but the Christ was hidden from them; they could only be guided upward to the Christ through mystery knowledge. - In the early days of Christian development, this was perceived as the essence of Christianity: that the great Sun Spirit had not remained a Sun Spirit, but through the Mystery of Golgotha had left those regions that human beings pass through only outside the physical body, and had entered earthly existence; that he was the only one of the divine-spiritual beings who had actually entered earthly existence himself. And we encounter—albeit through the means of spiritual research—people even in the early days of Christian development who felt deep within their hearts: Christ descended from the sphere of spirits who need not pass through birth and death—for whom birth and death are merely a transformation—and passed through birth and death.

[ 11 ] This descent of Christ to Earth was the very essence of the feeling people had in the early days of Christian development. For the people of that time, this descent was far more important than what followed it. The fact that Christ wanted to enter into communion with human beings, that he wanted to share in the two most significant experiences—birth and death—was perceived in initiatory circles as the true religious impulse. This was possible only because human beings still possessed something of an inner, living thought life; because, up until the 4th century A.D., thinking had not yet become completely dulled or entirely abstract; and because it still filled people as fully as breath does today in a physical sense. That is why it was felt that he had also fulfilled the human destiny of descent—something the other divine-spiritual beings had not accomplished, because being born and dying are not inherent to the gods, but only to human beings. This is what is so magnificent about the initiatory faith of the early Christian centuries: the realization that Christ truly became human—that is, he truly took upon himself the human fate; he is the only one among the divine-spiritual beings who has shared this fate with humanity.

[ 12 ] Now, however, it is necessary for it to become evident to the human soul that, insofar as this human soul belongs to the world of pre-earthly existence, it cannot actually die. Hence, what we associate with the Resurrection of Christ has also come to pass: Christ’s victory over death, serving as a model for the victory of every human soul over death. And as—I might say—the old idea of non-birth merged with the new idea of resurrection—which had indeed existed but not with the same intensity—when the event at Golgotha took place, it was, in a sense, the expression of something of the utmost importance in human development on Earth.

[ 13 ] When thinking was still alive, human beings did not fear death in the slightest. After all, death was not an extraordinary event for them. This is an extraordinarily important point in the history of human development: that people viewed death quite differently—as something entirely natural—whereas, as people increasingly lost their awareness of pre-earthly existence, abstract thinking—which uses the physical body as a tool—brought with it an ever-growing fear of death and the belief that death is a final end. Ancient humanity had little need for the idea of resurrection, but rather for that of descending together with Christ. But as people advanced further and further into abstract thinking, they increasingly needed a perspective beyond earthly existence—a perspective toward immortality. And this perspective is revealed to humanity through a correct contemplation of the fact of Christ’s resurrection. I have expounded on this fact in various ways in books, lectures, and lecture cycles. Both facts—Christ’s descent into birth and death, and the fact of the Resurrection, which is the victory over death—could be intuitively clear to humanity well into the 4th century A.D., because living thinking was still present. From the 4th century A.D. onward, as abstract thinking increasingly came to the fore, humanity became increasingly unable to connect thoughts with the content of the Mystery of Golgotha. And it is indeed the fate of human development that, in the age in which humanity won its freedom through abstract thinking—a form of thinking that is dead in relation to the spiritual world—the understanding of Christ Jesus, which had indeed existed in the first centuries A.D., was bound to be lost. It has been lost, namely because those writings—which are designated by the term “Gnostic writings,” a term that has today almost become a term of abuse—have been eradicated root and branch, save for a few remnants from which, however, little of literary value can be derived. What was thought in the first centuries by those who still knew something of living thought was destroyed; we know of it only from the writings of their opponents. Imagine what it would be like if, by some chance, all anthroposophical books and writings were to disappear, and what anthroposophy is were to be judged solely on the basis of the writings of its opponents! That is all that people who rely solely on external documents know about Gnosticism today. That truly immense Gnostic understanding of Christ, which they held within themselves, was completely lost to humanity. Above all, the awareness that Christ had something to do with the sun—and that Christ descended and shared a common destiny with humanity on Golgotha—was entirely lost. All these connections—especially the feelings associated with these things—were lost to humanity. Abstract interpretations and abstract thoughts increasingly took precedence.

[ 14 ] We see in Augustine one of those who, shaped by the spirit of the age, struggled to understand Christianity. In Augustine, we see a mind that could no longer comprehend the old way of viewing nature. As you know, it is said that Augustine was a Manichaean. Augustine himself recounts this. But what lies behind all these things can no longer be properly grasped today through external knowledge. What Augustine calls Manichaeism—what we today call the Manichaean doctrine—is, after all, merely the degenerate product of an ancient teaching that conceived of the spirit solely as creative and recognized no opposition between matter and spirit. There was no spirit that did not create, and what it created was perceived as matter. Nor did those ancient times have a concept of mere matter; rather, spirit was present in everything. This was something Augustine could not understand, something Gnosticism understood, something that was later lost, and something that even our present age no longer understands. The fact is, there is no such thing as matter in and of itself. The Gnostics knew this and viewed the entire descent of Christ in the light of this perspective. Augustine could do nothing with it. That era was over; the possibility of doing anything with it no longer existed, because the documents had been destroyed, and the ancient clairvoyance had also faded away. Thus, after a long, almost superhuman struggle, Augustine came to tell himself that he could not arrive at the truth on his own, but must submit to what the Catholic Church prescribes as truth: to bow to the authority of the Catholic Church. And this mood—take it for now as a mood—persisted and thrived precisely because thought became increasingly abstract. It was only very slowly and gradually that thought itself became paralysed.

[ 15 ] And the Scholastics, in all their greatness—for they are great—still lived with a vestige of the knowledge that earthly thought derives from a super-earthly thought, that human beings live within a heavenly thought. But in the course of this development, the possibility of making something living out of the event at Golgotha was increasingly lost. And it is indeed true that the progressive theology of the 19th century, because it sought to become scientific in the modern sense, lost sight of Christ, and that theology was glad to have, in the end, the “simple man from Nazareth.” Christ was now merely “the highest human being on earth.” It was no longer possible to conceive of Christ dwelling within Jesus.

[ 16 ] And so, in fact, the development since the 4th century A.D. has been a loss of the connection between human beings and Christ in that living way that existed for many during the first centuries of Christianity. And so it also came to pass that, in the end, people understood the content of the Gospels less and less. To people who lived in the first centuries of Christianity, it would have seemed quite strange to speak of contradictions in the Gospels. It is as if someone knew only the front view of a person, and then someone brought him a photograph taken from the side, and he said: “That cannot be a picture of the same person.” — That is how it would have seemed to the people of the first centuries after Christ if someone had spoken to them of contradictions in the Gospels. They knew very well: The four Gospels merely present the image from four different angles. — People today would say: “These are indeed strange depictions; they differ from every angle.” — In the spiritual world, everything is simply much richer.

[ 17 ] Gradually, the time came when people no longer knew anything about the event at Golgotha in the traditional sense. Now, the event at Golgotha is one that can only be understood from a spiritual perspective. It is interesting that historians generally avoid addressing the event at Golgotha. Take, for example, the historian Ranke, who is regarded as an outstanding historian, and who declares: “One does not speak of this; it is left out.”—If one omits the very most important aspect of history, no history can emerge. Even if one has no connection to the spiritual world—and thus cannot understand the Mystery of Golgotha—one would still have to acknowledge its immense influence. Yet history is written today without recording the immense impact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The ability to look properly at the Mystery of Golgotha has been increasingly lost.

[ 18 ] But we can also look at the matter from a completely different perspective and say to ourselves: In the course of its evolution, humanity faced the necessity of having the Christ in its midst. More and more, people lost the awareness of their connection to pre-earthly existence. They no longer looked to that. In the end, people knew only that they had existed since their earthly birth. Then Christ came to them to show them, through His descent, that a pre-earthly existence exists, to give them an understanding of that which could no longer live in their own consciousness. Since human beings no longer had this connection within their own consciousness, they were to gain a new connection through their relationship to Christ, who had gone through the event of Golgotha. Christ had, so to speak, given himself to humanity at that time, just as the epoch in which humanity was to ascend to freedom was gradually drawing near. Now, as thinking became increasingly abstract, there was no longer any possibility of contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha in thought. But the content of the New Testament story was so captivating, so deeply moving to the soul, that precisely through the purely external traditions, that which could no longer be grasped by thought was able to remain for some time.

[ 19 ] Let us look back at the early days, as Christianity was spreading. There we see how traditions existed that ultimately stemmed from the Gospels, and how the childlike mind increasingly took hold of the image of the events in Palestine. But at the same time, we see how the mystery of Golgotha is lost in the experience of knowledge. To the same extent that dead thinking emerged, the childlike memory of the Palestinian era also grew dim; people lost their connection to Christ Jesus, and they were glad if they could still maintain a connection to the man Jesus. Now we stand in the present; in fact—though people have not yet noticed it—the awareness of the connection with Christ Jesus has already been lost. Out of tradition, people cling to their creeds, yet they have no living inner connection with Christ Jesus. One need only look at how superficial the annual festivals have become! How superficial Easter has become for people today, whereas for people of earlier times, Easter was an occasion when they experienced, in the deepest recesses of their inner being, something that can be described as a remembrance of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 20 ] Christ gave Himself to humanity at a time when humanity had to develop a sense of freedom. In a certain sense, humanity has achieved this. However, it would lose its inner essence if the connection with Christ could not be rediscovered. This connection can only be found if we begin to seek spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge, as sought by anthroposophy, will once again restore the connection with Christ Jesus. This connection can only be found spiritually. What happened on Golgotha is not merely an event that intervened in the physical, earthly history of humanity, but also a spiritual event. No one can understand the event of Golgotha who does not wish to understand it in the spirit. Therefore, anthroposophical spiritual science is at the same time a preparation for a new understanding of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha. When we consider this fact in this way, we are reminded of the significant words from the Gospel: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” This saying radiates the certainty that He was not merely present when the event of Golgotha took place, but that He remains with humanity as a spiritual being, accessible in the spirit. We must therefore not regard as Christian only what shines forth from the Gospels; rather, we know that Christ is with us, and when we listen today—equipped with spiritual insight—to what the spiritual world reveals to us about him, that is a revelation of Christ. It is a revelation of Christ just as much as what we gain when we look to the Gospels.

[ 21 ] “I have much more to say to you, but you cannot bear it yet”—this is a reference to the time when Christ is to be seen anew. And now those times are drawing near; they are already here. Humanity would lose Christ if it could not regain Him in a new way through spiritual understanding. Through this, much of what was once connected to the Mystery of Golgotha—but which has been lost because the spiritual understanding of it has been lost—must once again become comprehensible to us. How people, with today’s intellectualism, struggle with the words that Christ is said to have spoken: that the Kingdom of God has come down to earth, that a whole new life is to begin. - It is so incredibly clever to say today: “But everything on earth has remained exactly as it was!” - That is, of course, clever, but one must raise the other question from the spirit of Christ’s words: Is it also in the sense of a true Christian, spiritual understanding to believe that some kind of external spiritual kingdom is to be established? - An external spiritual realm would, after all, be physical! People don’t notice this contradiction! But it is highly remarkable that, in this day and age, people have actually become quite wise, yet are unable to properly appreciate that wisdom within their own sphere.

[ 22 ] Although this may take us away from the main topic, I would like to point out something quite interesting to you. The Viennese geologist Eduard Sueß, an outstanding researcher, writes in his book *The Face of the Earth* that the face of the Earth must have been quite different, the rocks much more alive than they are today, and that we are, in fact, already walking on a dead Earth. The clods of earth upon which we walk belong to a dying world. The geologist assumes that the Earth was once more alive and has gradually transitioned into a state of death. Here, Sueß says something very similar—in a completely different context—to what Christ said about the spiritual life of the Earth. If it were only the case that the Earth would disintegrate in a distant future, when the Earth is scattered throughout the universe—if it were not the case with the Earth just as it is with human beings—the body decays into dust, but the spirit lives on—then we would all be caught up in this scattering. With this Earth, we look toward what leads upward into the existence of Jupiter. We are already beholding a new Earth there.

[ 23 ] From a physical standpoint, this view of the Earth’s decay is correct; from a spiritual-psychic standpoint, however, the situation is different. For the ancient initiates of the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, it was clear: the old civilization and the ancient mysteries have come to an end. The way the ancient people lived with their gods has come to an end. The way they lived in harmony with natural phenomena has come to an end. But the gods are sending humanity the opportunity to move toward a future with the spirit. What was drawn from the earth as knowledge in ancient times is now a thing of the past. A new era must dawn in which humanity, through its own will, must establish a kingdom where it can, through its own power, revive dead thinking. This was a prophecy at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Outwardly, this kingdom also drew near. It can only be understood and embraced by the people of the present. Now we must feel that the Kingdom of God, of which Christ speaks, must be seen by us on earth through Christ’s work on earth. This must be fulfilled on earth, and the fulfillment of this Kingdom of God must be grasped with earnestness, especially in our present time. We are experiencing it in all areas: how human beings begin to face the danger of being cut off from the spiritual worlds and from their true nature if they do not find access to the spiritual world. Human beings cannot approach the human being through natural science.

[ 24 ] Consider the great divide that exists today between the elderly and the young. There has always been a contrast, but it has never been as pronounced as it is today. There is one thing in particular that must be understood about this. Many people say that the elderly cannot have a positive influence on the young because they have not retained their childlike qualities. That sounds wonderfully appealing, but it is not the case. Young people do not demand that we act as young as they do; otherwise, they would instinctively say: “What they can do, we can do too.” Then we wouldn’t need them at all—we could just stay among ourselves. —What we must understand is how to age properly, how to use our aging bodies with full vitality. Young people do not love those who have grown old but remain childish; rather, they love those who have truly grown old—that is who the young admire. Young people want to look up to older people precisely because they find in them something different that they themselves do not possess. But we in humanity have lost the ability to be truly spiritually alive. Once the actual fire of childhood has passed, we burn out. The body merely grows older, but we treat the old body just as we treated it when we were children. We must gain the ability—even without our body’s assistance—to spiritualize our thoughts through spiritual insight, to recreate them anew as living thoughts through our own will, and to bring about the resurrection of thoughts within us. Whatever dead thinking there is within us must thus become living thinking. Then this living thinking will be able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha, and only then will we, as if through a true sacrifice of thought and feeling, repeat vividly within ourselves: “Not I, but Christ in me.”

[ 25 ] This word also holds tremendous significance for our age. We have attained self-consciousness through lifeless thinking. With the old, living thinking, this could not have been attained. We now possess this sense of self, but it must be purified and spiritualized from within by learning to utter these words correctly: “Not I, but Christ within me.” We must be able to receive Christ into our innermost being—which we must make our own through spiritual knowledge. This is something we as human beings today can achieve only if we can imbue ourselves with the very will of the anthroposophical life. And, fundamentally speaking, anthroposophy does not seek to be a new religion. The Christian religion is, after all, already here. As a person is led to Christ, they do not found a new religion, but they need a new path to Christianity. And a new path to Christianity opens up through anthroposophy. It is anthroposophy that opens the new path—so necessary today—to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 26 ] This is what I would like to add to what has been said here. For it is indeed right that we should, from time to time, try to allow this central point of the entire development of humanity—the Mystery of Golgotha, illuminated by anthroposophy—to truly come to life in our souls. For truly, the course of human development is as follows: The Earth develops up to the Mystery of Golgotha; then a powerful fertilization of the Earth emanates from the spiritual cosmos, and the Earth continues its existence under entirely new conditions. Only by introducing this religious nuance into the anthroposophical understanding do we raise it to the level it must attain if it is to meet the deepest longings of people today.

[ 27 ] Having been able to immerse ourselves in this way in the most important matter for humanity during our gathering here, I would like to express to you my deep satisfaction at having been able to spend time among you once again. And I may also express the feeling that what we have cultivated in our physical togetherness may continue to live on even when we are physically apart. Anthroposophy would also like to be a symbol for the entire spiritual existence of the human being. Through anthroposophy, we must be able to feel that our physical togetherness must serve as the starting point for a non-physical togetherness in which all souls in the world who are receptive to anthroposophy can come together. This spiritual-soul community exists for those who seek it today. And within it, Christ will also be able to work most intensely, after having united himself with the development of the Earth in the Mystery of Golgotha and having waited for an age that can understand him not merely through tradition, but in thought, feeling, and will. It is precisely that will—which I would like to call the Christ-imbued will—that permeates all of this: “You shall not take the name of God in vain!” To act and think from this, in community with all like-minded people, in spiritual thought—this will then also be able to become a true community in outward matters.