What the world needs now is anthroposophy!

  

The conclusion of the lecture

"The Concealed Aspects of Human Existence and the Christ Impulse"

Rudolf Steiner, The Hague, November 5, 1922

We shall simply have to learn to think of the human being not only in relation to what he begins to eat and drink in the earthly existence, but we shall have to consider him in relation to what he becomes because of his having passed through the cosmic worlds between death and a new birth.

When the human being is close to his earthly course of life, then he experiences a sort of loss of his being. You know from my description that he was connected with what he has woven as the spirit-germ of his physical body. Into this spirit-germ he has woven, besides, the experiences during the descent through fixed stars and planets. At a definite stage, actually quite close to conception and birth, this spirit-germ is no longer there. It has, in the meanwhile, descended with its forces as a system of forces to the Earth. It has fallen from the human being. It has united itself on the Earth independently with the physical substance of heredity which the ancestors, father and mother, afford. What is being woven there in the organism descends to the Earth sooner than the human being himself as a spirit-soul being. And then, when the human being realizes that he has actually surrendered to the parents that which he himself had woven in the cosmos, he is able, in the last stage prior to his earthly existence, to take to himself from the etheric world what is essential for his own etheric organism — since there is no longer a necessity to do any more weaving on his physical body, which is essentially complete and has been surrendered to and been made a part of the flow of heredity. Now he draws together his etheric organism; and, together with this latter, he unites with that which he himself has prepared through his parents. He takes possession of his physical body, in which all this cosmic fabric of the spirit-germ is drawn together, and which is interwoven with what the human being himself united with it as he descended through this or that stellar region. It is, indeed, not arbitrarily that he passes through new moon or full moon and causes himself to become man or woman, or to have black or blond hair or blue or brown eyes, but all this is intimately connected with the results of his preceding karma.

This shows you that, whereas the human being in the sleep state experiences as his inner nature merely facsimiles of the planetary world, the world of the fixed stars, he now passes through these worlds in their reality between death and a new birth. He passes through these worlds; they become his inner nature. And it is always the lunar forces which bring us back to the Earth. They differ essentially from all other stellar forces in this respect, in that they bring us back to the Earth. In the sleep state they bring us back to the Earth; they bring us back also after we have experienced all that I have briefly described, in order to enter once more a life course on the Earth.

But let us consider once again that which is there outside of the physical body, in the form of astral body and ego organization, between falling asleep and awakening. It is not fabricated from physical bones and physical blood; it is a spirit-soul entity. But our whole moral intrinsic quality is woven into it. Just as we consist, when awake, of bones, blood, and nerves, so does that which leaves us during sleep and returns on awakening consist of the actualized judgments of our moral deeds. If I have accomplished a good deed during the day, its effect is reflected in my sleep body within the spirit-soul substance that leaves me during sleep. My moral quality lives within this. And, when the human being passes through the portal of death, he takes with him his whole actualized moral evaluation. It is a fact that, between birth and death in the earthly life, the human being creates within himself a second being. This second human being, who leaves the body every night, is the result of our moral or immoral life, and we take it with us through the portal of death. This result, which is merged with our eternal essential being, is not the only element we possess within the spirit-soul substance which passes out of us during the night. Just after death, however, when we are first in the ether body and then in the astral body, we hardly see anything in ourselves but this moral entity of our being. Whether we were good or bad, this is what we behold; we are this. Just as here on Earth we are a human being in whom the skin forces, or the nerve forces, or the blood forces, or the bone forces predominate, so, after death, we are, to our own perception, what we were morally or immorally.

And now after death we proceed on our way, first through the sphere of the Moon, then through the sphere of the fixed stars... until the time arrives when we can begin to work with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the spirit-germ of our future physical body. But, if we were to take this moral element up into the highest worlds, where we are to weave our future physical organism in its spirit-germ, this physical organism would turn out to be a monstrosity. For a certain length of time between death and a new birth, the human being must be separated from what constitutes his moral quality. Indeed, he leaves his moral quality behind in the Moon sphere.

It is an actual fact that, when leaving the Moon sphere, we leave our moral and immoral human being in the Moon sphere and enter into the pure sphere of the gods, where we can weave our physical body.

I must now revert again to the difference between the times prior to the Mystery of Golgotha and those following it, including the present. The older initiates made very clear to their pupils — and through them to all mankind of the civilization of that time — that, in order to be able to find the transition from the world which I called in my book Theosophy the soul-world, and which we really experience in its entirety while still in the Moon sphere, into the world which I called the spirit-land, the human being must develop on Earth the feelings that enable him to be led upward by the spiritual Sun Being, after having left behind the whole bundle of his moral after-effects in the Moon sphere.

All that history relates to us in regard to the first three Christian centuries, and even the fourth century, is fundamentally a falsification; for in those centuries Christianity was quite different from the thing described. It was something quite different for the reason that within it there held sway the conception which came from understanding the ancient science of initiation. From this wisdom of initiation it was known that, in the life after death, the sublime Sun Being led the human being out of the Moon sphere, after he had left behind his moral bundle, and, on his return, led him back again into the Moon sphere. This gave the human being the strength — which he could not have had through himself — to make this moral being a part of himself, at a certain time before his birth, in order to fulfill his destiny on Earth within his soul, and to prevent it from entering his body. For otherwise, the human being would be born a monstrosity and be utterly diseased in his body. This moral bundle had to be taken over again in the Moon sphere, during the descent, in order that it should not enter into the body.

Those initiates who were living at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and even in the three or four centuries following thereafter, said to their pupils: Previously the sublime Sun Being was only above in the spiritual worlds. But, as mankind progressed, the ego-consciousness has become so bright upon the Earth that it becomes all the more obscured in the spiritual world. In other words, the brighter our ego-consciousness is by means of the physical body only, here below on the Earth, the darker is it above. The human being would no longer come into contact with the Sun Being, he would not find through his own power the transition after death from the Moon sphere to the higher spheres, had the Christ not descended and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. The being whom the human being met formerly after death only in the spiritual world has now descended; He has lived here upon Earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha; and now the human being can establish a relation to Him according to the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but the Christ in me.” In this way the human being takes strength from the Earth with him, strength given to him by the Christ here on this Earth, which enables him to leave behind in the Moon sphere his moral being which he creates within himself and to proceed to higher spheres, there to work on the spirit-germ of his physical body. It also gives him the strength on his descent through the Moon sphere to take up his karma again of his own free will, take up the after-effects of his good and evil deeds. In the course of historical evolution, we have become free human beings. But the reason we have become such is that the Christ force we have acquired has enabled us through free inner strength to take over our karma on our descent through the Moon sphere. No matter whether we like this or do not like it here on Earth, we do this at the stage I have described, if we have become true Christians on Earth.

I have been endeavoring, my dear friends, to show you a little of the way in which the modern science of initiation can see into worlds which we might call the concealed aspects of human existence, to show you how really everything pertaining to the human being can be elucidated only as we are able to see into these concealed aspects. And at the same time I tried to show you in connection therewith what the Christ Impulse means to mankind of the present time; for we will have constantly to revert to it. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, we cannot be a whole human being unless we find the way to this Christ Impulse. Therefore it is necessary that anthroposophical spiritual science shed light more and more upon the Christ Impulse in the right way. For the manner in which light was shed on the Christ Impulse in the past, when man's consciousness was obscured, would, if continued, deprive a large part of mankind — just think of the Orientals, think of the inhabitants of other continents — of the possibility of embracing Christianity. But that Christianity which is rooted deeply in anthroposophical spiritual science will actually — if once the essence of spiritual science, as it is here intended, is understood thoroughly — be eagerly grasped particularly by the Orientals, who are endowed with an ancient spirituality, even though it is in decadence.

In this way only can that peace prevail on Earth which must proceed from the soul and spirit of men, and which is so indispensable to the Earth, as every impartial person feels today. We shall have to be much more convinced of the fact that all present-day thinking concerning outer institutions is really worthless, and that it is very necessary, on the other hand, to appeal directly to human souls. But we can appeal to the souls only if we are able to say something to them about the true home of the soul, about the experiences of the human being that lie beyond his physical existence, in those states of consciousness I have been describing to you today. Even if those states of consciousness do not exist during the Earth life, their effects do exist. Oh, my dear friends, the one who has insight into life sees in the countenance of every human being a reflection of cosmic destinies which the individual has experienced between death and a new birth!

I have described to you today how destiny — whether one has become a man or a woman — can be understood by means of the cosmos, even how the color of the eyes and hair can be understood only when we can look into cosmic existence. Nothing in this world is comprehensible unless it can be understood by means of the cosmos. The human being will feel himself to be truly a human being only when we can inform him through true spiritual knowledge of his relation with that which is back of the sensuous-physical existence. Even though the human beings on Earth are not yet aware of it, mankind unconsciously thirsts for such a knowledge. What is developing convulsively today in all domains, be it the domain of the spiritual, the externally juridical, or the economic life, all is ultimately a result of the spiritual. Only as the human being learns again to know of his relation with extra-physical existence can all this be transformed from forces of decadence into upward-moving forces. For physical existence is meaningless unless seen in connection with super-physical existence. The physical human body becomes significant only then when we can see it, so to speak, as the confluence of all those sovereign forces that are woven between death and a new birth. This is the tragic character of materialistic knowledge of the world: that, in the final analysis, it does not know matter itself. We lay the human body upon the dissecting table; we examine it most carefully as to its tissues and its individual physical component parts. This is done in order to acquire a knowledge of matter. But we do not learn to know it in this way, for it is the product of spirit, and only as we are able to trace it back to those stages where it is woven out of spirit do we know it. Human beings will comprehend precisely this physical-material existence only when their souls are led cosmically into the realm of soul and spirit.

If we permeate ourselves with the consciousness that we should comprehend more and more our connection with the spirit-soul realm of the cosmos, we then become true Anthroposophists. And you, my dear friends, will surely not ridicule me when I say that the world is in need today of true Anthroposophists who will bring about an ascent for humanity through that consciousness which results from experiencing the spiritual, even though at first we should only grasp it as a reflection and not ourselves have attained to clairvoyant knowledge. We need not be clairvoyant in order to work beneficently after we possess spiritual knowledge. Just as little as a person needs to know what constitutes meat when he is eating it and it nourishes him, just as little does a person need to be clairvoyant in order to be efficacious through his work and through his whole association with the life of the higher worlds. If we accept spiritual science before we are clairvoyant, it is as though we were consuming it. Fundamentally, clairvoyance adds nothing to what we can become for the world through spiritual knowledge. It satisfies merely our knowledge. This knowledge must, indeed, exist. Of course, there have to be people who examine the composition of meat, but this knowledge is not required in order to eat. Likewise there must be clairvoyant persons today who can investigate the nature of man's connection with the spiritual world; but, in order to bring about that which is essential to mankind, it is necessary that we be healthy human souls. If they are informed of the science of the spirit, they will sense the digestive power of the soul nature; they will appropriate this spiritual science, digest it, and assimilate it into their work. And this is what we need today throughout the civilized world: external human work which is spiritualized through and through in the right and true sense.

Source: November 5, 1922