The Yoga of Anthroposophy

Rudolf Steiner:  "It is a question of learning to say the following: there was a time prior to the Mystery of Golgotha when the Earth had an atmosphere which contained the soul element that belongs to the soul of man. Today, the Earth has an atmosphere which is devoid of this soul element. The same soul element that was previously in the air has now entered the light which embraces us from morning to evening. This was made possible through the fact that the Christ has united Himself with the Earth. Thus, also from the soul-spiritual aspect, air and light have undergone a change in the course of Earth evolution. My dear friends, it is a childish presentation that describes air and light in the same manner, purely materially, throughout the millennia in which Earth evolution has unfolded. Air and light have changed inwardly. We live in an atmosphere and in a light sphere that are different from those in which our souls lived in previous earthly incarnations. To learn to recognize the externally-material as a soul-spirited element: this is what matters. If we describe purely material existence in the customary manner and then add, as a kind of decoration: "This material existence contains everywhere the spiritual!" — this will not produce genuine spiritual science. My dear friends, people are very strange in this respect; they are intent on withdrawing to the abstract. But what is necessary is the following: in the future we must cease to differentiate abstractly between the material and the spiritual, but we must look for the spiritual in the material itself and describe it as such; and we must recognize in the spiritual the transition into the material and its mode of action in the material. Only if we have attained this shall we be able to gain a true knowledge of man himself."

Source: November 30, 1919