The Star of Humanity. What the world needs now is anthroposophy

 

Rudolf Steiner:

We do not have heavenly wisdom. We do not study copper by looking at Venus or lead by looking at Saturn. We also do not study primeval human beings by looking at the sign of Aquarius, and we do not understand what moves from the animal nature of the lion to certain inner impulses of human nature by studying the sign of Leo. We no longer draw anything down from the heavens to help us explain earthly things; instead, we turn our gaze solely on the vast number of details all over the Earth.

Clearly, then, we need something that brings meaning into the separate details and helps us to see once again what people used to see when they beheld earthly objects illumined by the heavens. We know many things, but we need a comprehensive knowledge that can radiate into all the separate fields of knowledge and give them meaning. That is what anthroposophy wants to be.

Just as astrology looked into the heavens to explain the Earth, so anthroposophy wants to look within human beings to see what they have to say out of themselves. From there it wants to illuminate everything we know about minerals, plants, animals, human beings, and everything else we usually know only in separate details. Just as people looked to the heavens to understand earthly life, so we with our intellect and our newly acquired freedom must now come to understand ourselves. Only then will we be able to look again at the moment of death when we enter a spiritual world where gods will gaze down upon what we will bring with us and what will radiate from us. For we are to become fully human already on Earth, whereas in ancient times this did not happen until after death. How far we have been successful in becoming truly human will be evident from the strength we gain from the pure awareness of our humanity. We receive this pure consciousness of our hamanity through what radiates from anthroposophy into everything we can know and accomplish on Earth.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." [John 1:1] That is to say, in the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The Logos was brought down from the revelation of the gods in the heavens. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." [John 1:14] And, indeed, it continues to live among us. The Logos has become flesh. What could once be found only in the heavens must now be sought in the human realm. In ancient times, people were right in seeing the Logos with God the Father, but in our time it has to be sought in the realm of God the Son.

We find God the Son in his basic significance when we understand St. Paul's words "I am crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" [Galatians 2:20] — that is, when we come to know ourselves. All of anthroposophy aims at penetrating into our very depths. What did people in ancient times find when they looked into their depths? They found luciferic forces at the heart of human nature. When modern people penetrate deeply enough into their own being, they find Christ. That is the other side of the change from ancient to modern times. Since intellectualism and the consciousness  of freedom came down from the heavens to the Earth and since Christ united himself with humanity on Earth, human beings can find Christ in their own being if they penetrate deeply enough. In contrast, when people in ancient times penetrated deeply into themselves, they found luciferic spirits.

That is what the candidates of the ancient Mysteries were supposed to learn. They had to realize that when they penetrated deep down into human nature, they would ultimately find at the heart of their own soul something that would make them recoil in horror, namely, the luciferic forces. Therefore they had to learn to look up to the moment of death, for they would become truly human only after passing through the portal of death. Then they would be rescued from the lucerific forces they found here on Earth in the depths of their soul. That is what the death experience in the ancient Mysteries was about. That is why the Mystery pupils in ancient times had to concentrate on learning about and picturing the moment of death.

In our times, we have to take hold of what has been given to us: intellectualism and consciousness of freedom. If we take hold of them in the right way, by permeating all our earthly knowledge and our actions with what pours forth out of a pure consciousness of humanity such as anthroposophy strives for, then we find the Christ forces in the depths of our soul. We will then realize that while people looked to the constellations of the stars in ancient times to understand human destiny on Earth, we must now look to the human being. In  this way we learn how the human being, permeated by the Christ substance here on Earth while possessing full humanness, then lights up for the universe. The human being lights up as the star of humanity after having gone through the portal of death.

This is the spiritual humanism that can take the place of ancient astrology. It can teach us to consider what is revealed in us as Sophia, namely anthroposophia, as people did the revelation of the stars as the Logos in ancient times. That is the awareness with which we must permeate ourselves. That is how we can come to know the cosmic significance of the human being.

Source: February 10, 1923. Earthly Knowledge and Heavenly Wisdom, pp. 65-68