Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus : Overcoming Death

    

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

July 10, 1921

Yesterday, in closing, I called attention to the fact that, since that time, according to the spiritual-scientific point of view, we have to reckon the evolution of mankind on earth as having made a circuit from Pisces to Pisces. When I have spoken in this connection of the evolution of mankind on earth, it must naturally be correctly understood. We speak of the overall evolution of mankind in such a way that we let it begin in the old Saturn time, and therefore it can naturally only be a partial evolution of mankind when we speak here of the evolution of mankind on earth. But one can imagine it this way: During the time of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon, man quite naturally took on a very different form, one that cannot be compared to the present form of man. And when we speak here of the formation of humanity on earth, it means that the preparations for this physical human formation began at the end of the Lemurian age, that it developed in the way I have described in my writings, in the Atlantean time, thus precisely in the time that represents such a full cycle of the spring equinox of the sun.

Now let us discuss the conditions to which man was subject during this time, when he had, so to speak, returned to his starting point. I would like to present something schematically so that you have the complete picture of what I actually mean with these explanations. We cannot say that human evolution has taken place in such a way since the last Lemurian period, when the spring point of the sun was also in Pisces, that we can depict this evolution as a cycle that simply returns to itself. That would be wrong. We have to think of this cycle, because of course I am only giving a picture of the development, we have to think of it as a spiral. We must therefore imagine that, if the starting point of evolution lies in the ancient Lemurian period here, this evolution returns in such a way that man has naturally risen to a higher level of his being, but at this higher level, in relation to his relationship to the cosmos, has in a sense returned to his starting point in the present age. And how he had to live in these circumstances, let us bring that to mind today.

Blackboard Drawing I

Some time ago, I gave a lecture to a small group in Stuttgart about a possible astronomical world view. I pointed out how, for a long time, the so-called Ptolemaic world view was regarded as correct by mankind. This Ptolemaic conception of the world is thoroughly ingenious, it is so, I might say, in certain line forms geometrically summarizes that which must be summarized if we want to express the view we have of the stars, their positions and their orbits, by pictorial representations. Then, for certain reasons, which I have often described, this Ptolemaic system was replaced by the Copernican system, which, with some important modifications, is still regarded today as essentially correct. In Stuttgart, I showed that this Copernican system is nothing more than a linear representation of what we see when we look into the cosmos with our eyes, telescopes or other instruments. I also showed that it cannot be said that this Copernican system is any more correct than the Ptolemaic system; it is only a different way of summarizing the phenomena. And I have then tried to summarize these phenomena myself, linking them to what man – who, after all, if, for example, the earth has a movement, must go along with this movement – can experience within himself. Today I want to present only the result to you; the other is not important for us today.

If we begin to summarize these phenomena not in a one-sided way, as is the case with both the Ptolemaic and Copernican world systems, but if we take into account everything that is available to us, then we come to the conclusion that this summary will ultimately become so complicated that we can no longer get by with a simple world system, which we can represent with a pencil or a planiglobe. It is not at all possible, basically, to summarize things in as simple a way as one would usually like to summarize them. And one can indeed arrive at something very strange in this way, which I would like to present to you quite simply, because, however paradoxical they may appear to people of the present day, these things must be discussed.

People believe that the science of the present is the most intelligent thing that has ever existed, and that basically nothing more intelligent could possibly be invented. And because of this belief, humanity is indeed heading for a terrible cultural fate. But the right thing must also be presented in a certain way. If you take into account more and more circumstances, you will end up in such a state of mind regarding the complexity of the world system that this state of mind is very similar to the one you have when you have just woken up and experience the chaotic images of the soul, which I said yesterday and the day before yesterday sit in us as an undercurrent. I have schematically drawn the human organism for you according to etheric body and physical body and said: These chaotic images emerge from it, which are actually always there even during the day. They can be found very effectively in dreamy natures, but everyone notices them at the bottom of their soul. And they can be particularly strongly noticed when a person submerges with his ego and astral body into his physical and etheric bodies in the morning. Now I do not mean these images themselves – these images are, of course, very poetic and imaginative for the people concerned, depending on their level of perfection or imperfection, or they are very chaotic, the latter being the more common case. But I am talking about the state of mind that a reasonably logical person experiences when they are accustomed to thinking logically and then find themselves immersed in this world of images. What is meant is the state of mind that comes to those who do not approach it with all the prejudices and simplifications that prevail when constructing world systems, but who approach it without prejudice. Then, in relation to what one ultimately achieves, in relation to the complexity, in relation to the interweaving, one enters into a similar state of mind.

Of course, our time has brought it about – and that is even a great boon compared to the mental disposition of most people – that every schoolboy knows exactly: at the focus of an ellipse is the sun, the planets revolve around it, the fixed stars stand still, and so on. – Every schoolboy knows this, and it is tremendously simple. But if you approach these things without prejudice and without theoretical fuss, you do not find this simplicity. Instead, things become enormously complicated, and in the end you arrive at the kind of frame of mind I have described, in which you say to yourself: you have to move into something that transitions from the definite to the indefinite, from the definitely drawn lines into problematically drawn lines. You enter into a frame of mind that tells you: What you are taking into your head is basically an image, an image that is woven and that you can simplify, as when you, say, make a diagram of Raphael's Madonna. But just as you would not have the whole of Raphael's Madonna from that, you have just as little in the Copernican system what is actually in front of us in space in the form of an image that includes an infinity of details and particulars. Just when you are considering such a consideration, you will understand: If we have to say something like that to ourselves when we contemplate the phenomena of the universe, then we cannot actually stand face to face with reality as such; for we stand before what presents itself to us in a state of soul like the world of images that we encounter when we enter our body from the cosmos in the morning. So there can be no question of standing face to face with reality.

These are the kinds of considerations that must be made if one wants to have an understanding in the full sense of the word of what it actually means: we live with our consciousness in the world of illusion, of maya. We also live in Maya with regard to the image we have of the universe and its phenomena. And finally, we can also observe the phenomena that the sensory world weaves around us, and we come to something similar. We do not, however, come to what a, I would say, clumsy theory of knowledge has come to at the end of the 18th and in the course of the 19th century, which always repeats: Yes, out there the phenomena are, for example, through mechanical and dynamic laws, or as one says recently, electrons, and they exert an impression on our senses, and that which is then perceived by us, that is only an effect of that which is out there; but that is just only the appearance for us. To speak of appearances to us in this sense is, after all, a clumsy theory of knowledge. With such a view, one can indeed have some strange experiences.

One need only turn against this theory of knowledge with a few lines here or there today, and someone will come along and say, “But Kant said...” People have become so wrapped up in Kantianism that they consider it a kind of Bible; at least many do. They change this or that, but on the whole they consider it a kind of Bible. One can have the strangest experiences there. I once held courses on such questions in Berlin, it was in the winter of 1900 to 1901, the same winter about which Herr von Gleich has proclaimed that a certain Winter taught me about Theosophy – he has confused the winter of 1900 to 1901 with a Mr. Winter who is supposed to have taught me about Theosophy! I don't know whether he read it or was told that I once gave these lectures in winter, which were then printed, they were given in Berlin in the winter of 1900 to 1901, and so the word “winter” was taken for the name of Mr. Winter. Yes, this argument is no more intelligent than the other stupid and dishonest arguments of General von Gleich. But you see, at these lectures in Berlin there was also a dyed-in-the-wool Kantian. I can't say he was listening, because he was usually asleep, and I don't know how many people can listen while sleeping, but I could tell at the time that he only woke up when he could somehow apply Kant. And once it happened that I repeated an argument – it wasn't even mine – in which it was said: If one really speaks of the thing in itself as being completely unknown, as Kant did, then it could consist of pins, so that behind the sensory phenomena there could only be pins. But when I said this, the person in question jumped up as if stung by an adder and said: Behind the phenomena is not space and time. There are pins in space, so the thing in itself cannot consist of pins! — It is just one of the examples that one so often encounters when people believe that their Bible, their Kantian Bible, is somehow being touched.

Now, it is not the case that any “things in themselves” throw effects into us, so to speak, which then merely trigger sensory qualities, so that we are actually only wrapped up in our sensory qualities; it is not like that. But something else is true. Please just take the following: Stand outside at, say, 11 o'clock in the morning and look at the surrounding area, but look at it carefully, not as some people draw it, because what they draw is nonsense, of course it doesn't reflect the appearance of the senses. Instead, look at it at 11 o'clock, at 12 o'clock with all its lighting effects. The whole sensory tapestry has changed completely by noon, by five o'clock, by eight o'clock. The picture around you is constantly changing. You are never dealing with anything but interwoven effects and impressions. A tree – what do you see of the tree? You see the reflected light, you may see the leaves moving in the wind, and so on. In short, you never see anything permanent. You simply see an objective appearance. While the clumsy theory of knowledge speaks of a subjective appearance, you see an objective appearance, and this objective appearance naturally also communicates itself to the eye. Just as the tree intercepts the light rays in a certain way, reflects them and so on, so the eye also has a certain relationship to the light rays, and we can say: the phenomenal, the apparent, the illusory , the Maja nature, which is spread out in the sense world around us, is of course also present in our subjective picture; but because it is objectively changeable, it is also changeable in the subjective picture.

This is what I wanted to substantiate, for example, in the first section of my “Philosophy of Freedom” or in my booklet “Truth and Science” and so on. So even when we face the world, we are not dealing with a lasting, permanent reality; we are dealing with something that, one might say, is coming and going in the moment. We are dealing with appearances. And if we wanted to construct this image theoretically, we would come up with nothing more than the few lines in the Sistine Madonna. And so it is in everything we are immersed in. We are immersed in the world of phenomena, of Maja, but even though we are immersed in this world of Maja with all our perception, we are not dependent on this world. For it is quite clear to us when we emerge from the cosmos with our I and our astral body in the morning and submerge into our etheric body and our physical body, that what we are submerging into contains an objective, a truth. Certainly, what swirls towards us as chaotic images is only an appearance; but what we submerge ourselves in contains a truth. And in the moment when we submerge ourselves, whether we do so through: I want to move my limbs, or through: I want to bring my ideas into fantasy forms, or let's say through: I want to bring my ideas into logical thought connections – in what becomes us when we immerse ourselves in our body, in that, we know, we have something that does not depend on us, that we receive, that receives us. And the moment we wake up is the one that communicates our sense of being to us.

This sense of being is, in a sense, something that permeates and runs through our entire thinking. But our thinking itself moves more in the world of phenomena, of appearance, of maya. And let us expand what I am presenting from ordinary experiences to include the whole person.

Those who, with the help of such insights, as can be gained on the basis of my descriptions in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, can look at the whole person, will soon know how the human being, as a soul-spiritual being, goes through the state between death and a new birth, how it penetrates into the physical world, becomes embodied, in order to go through the state between birth and death, and then again a state between death and a new birth. I have developed some important details about these processes in the last lectures here. When the moment comes when one can look back into the world that lies before birth or before conception, one realizes that we have gone through the world that actually makes up our sense of being, the world from which our sense of being comes, between death and a new birth. One only acquires the right feeling for being, the feeling for being that is not subject to doubting or skepticism, when one looks back into this world of existence that lies before conception.

But now something significant appears, as you can already gather from my Viennese lectures from the spring of 1914. I will now present it to the soul in a different form, namely, something appears that confronts us before the human being descends from the state between death and a new birth to his physical embodiment. During this time, the desire to be, the desire to exist, fades more and more from the human being. As he develops between death and a new birth, I would say that the human being passes through an absolute satiation with the feeling of being. That is one of the achievements that man acquires between death and a new birth, that after going through the first stages after death, he comes more and more, through the relationship to the world into which he then enters, to a strongly penetrating feeling of being, to a — if I may use the expression — being anchored in the being of the world. And this becomes stronger and stronger until a kind of supersaturation with the feeling of being occurs, and then, towards the end of the time between death and a new birth, I would say that a true supersaturation with the feeling of being occurs. I could also call it something else. I could say that a true hunger for non-being occurs in the human being. Those spiritual-soul entities that come down to earth as human beings actually show, before they come down to earth, a strong hunger for non-being. And from this state of mind or spirit, we could say: Because man hungers for non-being, he plunges into Maja in this state, into the world that we have before us both in relation to the world of stars and in relation to the earthly phenomenal world. There is a longing for this non-existent world, for this world, which one is in soul moods towards, as one is towards the chaotic images when one goes to their bottom, this world, which actually presents us with a different aspect in every moment. We are, after all, completely immersed in an illusory world, in a Maya world, as we immerse ourselves in this world. The soul and spirit want to submerge themselves in this Maya world, and that is what we are actually dealing with. The others are more or less side effects. This is the strongest impulse that lives in the spiritual-soul human being when he approaches earthly existence: this longing for Maya, this longing to live in the soft, permeable phenomenon, not in the saturated, intense being. And what then envelops the human being as an etheric body and as a physical body has been born out of the cosmos and is used to clothe the human being. In the last few days, I have described how the embryo in the mother's body is formed out of the cosmos.

We must therefore imagine that the human being basically comes from a completely different world. There he acquires this hunger for existence, for life in the Maja, by approaching the physical earthly existence, and he is received by plunging into the Maja with his I and with his astral (see drawing, red, blue), of which the etheric body and the physical body (yellow, red) are formed in the maternal body through fertilization as its covering from the cosmos. The human being comes from a world that is not spatial-temporal, that cannot be found in space, but he is clothed in space with what is formed in the mother's body. He then emerges into this every time he wakes up. When falling asleep, he emerges from it. A rhythm of submerging into the physicality and of being drawn out of it is formed.

Blackboard Drawing II

Today's ideas are actually such that one has great difficulty in dealing with them in relation to reality. This convergence, for example, of a completely different current that a person goes through before he comes to his embodiment, and the external that then envelops him, which of course has nothing essential to do with him before - as it really becomes, I have described on other occasions - this interaction, that can hardly be described by today's science in an appropriate way because it lacks the concepts for it.

The same thing can be seen in another area. When a physiologist talks about light or color today, his main concern is to describe something that the eye does, to find out what it is. But in reality it is actually just as if someone wanted to describe any of the personalities sitting here and, above all, describe this carpentry workshop here because you walked in here. Basically, the light that enters the eye and takes effect in the eye has no more to do with the eye than you have with the carpentry workshop when you walked in and the carpentry workshop now also envelops you. If someone describes the carpentry workshop and you, they naturally describe it as a whole. But that is not the case. It is difficult to find the truth in the face of today's complicated ideas.

And so we can say: that which is spiritual and soul in man comes into this world of the earthly primarily out of an urge for non-being. And every waking state, that is, every state that is experienced from waking up to falling asleep, is a new education for being, a re-impregnation of consciousness with being.

The human being is in the state in which he is last between death and a new birth, I would like to say, so glad when he can arrive at his physical embodiment, he is so glad. I have often described to you how the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. If the whole weight, one thousand three hundred and fifty grams or something like that, were to press on the veins under the brain, the veins would be crushed, they could not exist; but the brain only presses with about twenty grams. Why? Because the brain floats in the cerebral fluid. And you know Archimedes' principle. Right, it was Archimedes who found it. He was once in a tub bathing and felt how he was getting lighter and lighter in the bath, and he was so pleased about this discovery that he immediately ran naked through the streets shouting: I've got it, I've got it!” — namely, that every body in a liquid loses as much of its weight as the weight of the water body that it displaces. So if you have a container of water and you put a solid object in it, it becomes lighter than it actually is outside the water, and it becomes lighter by the amount that the displaced water weighs, that is, by its own weight, if you think of it as being made out of water. So if, for example, there were a cube here and you thought of it as a water cube and weighed it, the actual cube would become lighter by the weight of the water cube. And so the brain becomes lighter, except for twenty grams, weighs only twenty grams because it floats in brain water. So the brain does not follow its full gravity. It is pushed upwards. This force that pushes upwards is also called buoyancy. Man looks forward to this, to coming into something that actually pulls him upwards, that really pulls him upwards. And he learns to be heavy again at twenty grams, and through heaviness we learn the feeling of being. Man is again imbued with the feeling of being between birth and death. And this is then developed and increased in the evolution after death.

This is what, I would say, has so disappeared from the consciousness of modern humanity that the greatest philosopher at the beginning of this newer time, Cartesius or Descartes, coined the formula: Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am. - It is the most nonsensical formula one can think of, because precisely by thinking, one is not. One is precisely outside of being. Cogito ergo non sum – is the real truth. Today we are so far removed from the real truth that the greatest modern philosopher has put the opposite in the place of truth. We acquire the feeling of being precisely when thinking feels itself in the organism, when thinking feels itself embedded in what is heavy. This is not just a popular image, it is reality in the face of appearances.

But this can teach us how the human being, as he initially knows himself, goes down to earth in knowledge, actually submerges himself in the Maja and, within the Maja, learns what he needs again after death: the feeling of being.

Now, when one describes what I have described to you now, then one has something that is specifically human in human development. This, I would like to say, rhythmic movement between the feeling of being and the feeling of not being can be visualized for meditation in the following way. You can say, when you live in mere thoughts: I am not. When one lives with reference to the will, which physically rests in the metabolic-limb-human being, then one says: I am. And between the two, between the metabolic-human being and the pure brain-human being, who says: I am not, when he understands himself, because that which lives in the brain are merely images; that which lies in between is the rhythmic alternation between: I am and I am not. For this, the external physical is breathing. The exhalation fulfills the breathing process with what comes from the metabolism, with carbon dioxide. I am – is exhalation. I am not – is inhalation. I am not

I am not
I am – I am not exhalation – inhalation
I am

The inhalation is related to: I am not - of thought. Inhalation happens in such a way that we take in air into our ribs, pushing the water of the arachnoid space upwards and thereby pushing the cerebral fluid upwards. We bring the vibration of the breathing process into the brain. This is the organ of thought. The inhalation process transmitted to the brain: I am not. Again, exhalation, the cerebral fluid – through the arachnoid space – presses on the diaphragm, exhalation, the air impregnated with carbon, turned into carbonic acid: I am – out of the will. Exhalation: out of the will.

All this, understood in this way, is a purely human process, because the person who wants to transfer it to the animal, because the animal also breathes, is just like a human being who takes a razor to cut his flesh because it is a knife. Of course animals also breathe, but animal breathing is something different from human breathing, just as a razor is something different from a table knife. Those who base their definitions on the outward appearance of things will never arrive at any kind of useful explanation of the world. Death is something different for humans, something different for animals, something different for plants. Anyone who starts from a definition of death will come to just as little of a useful explanation as someone who starts from the definition of a knife and says, for example, “A knife is something that is so fine on one side that it cuts through other objects.” Of course, that gives a nice general concept, but one cannot understand anything about what really is. So, these are specifically human processes that I have described to you. They are the human processes that man has gone through while the vernal point made the circuit from Pisces to Pisces. This is precisely the time in the evolution of the earth when man, in the leading parts of the nations, has gone through everything that I have described to you now, and which all tends to show how it actually happens, how man, human being, by descending into the physical world through birth, plunges into the maja, and with death is reborn out of the maja again, enriched by the feeling of being, which he needs for the further life after death. This is the most important fact: this being born through death with the feeling of being, while being born is the human being's spiritual-soul entity plunging into maya. It is precisely because we plunge into maya, that is, into a world of images, that we are free. We could never be free if we were in a world of facts with our consciousness between birth and death. We are only free because we are in a world of images. Images that are in the mirror do not determine us causally. A world of facts would determine us causally. What you bring to the image that hangs before you must come from you. The phenomena of the world do not determine us as human beings in what I called in my Philosophy of Freedom pure thinking, which does not come from the organism. What comes from the organism is, as you have seen, imbued with the sense of being, even if in the brain this sense of being is present in such a small percentage that it is about twenty to one thousand three hundred and fifty. One must look at this again and again, how man actually develops the longing for Maja by being born into earthly life, and how earthly life educates him to the feeling of being. That is what we have gone through during the time from the last Lemurian period into our period, where a sun cycle of 25,920 years, a great world cycle, has been gone through. Now, however, we are in the time in which development has returned to its starting point, but I have drawn it in such a way that I said: we have to indicate it schematically in a spiral (see drawing on page 170). The development of humanity has indeed returned to its starting point, but at a higher level. But what does this higher level mean? This higher stage means that we, as humanity, have always plunged into Maya with our birth and then, out of our physical existence, have gained the feeling of being. But the earth has also changed in the meantime; the earth today is no longer the same organism that it was in the Lemurian or Atlantean times. Today, as I have often stated, the Earth is already in a process of dissolution.

Geology also knows this. Read about it in the beautiful geological works of Eduard Sueß, 'The Face of the Earth': the Earth is in a crumbling process, the Earth is in a dissolution process. This means that we will no longer have every opportunity to acquire the feeling of being in a sufficient way. And now that a cycle has been completed, as I explained yesterday and today, humanity is facing the danger of going through deaths in which it has developed too little sense of being, simply because our earth no longer provides the necessary intensity of the feeling of being. With this new period, which I have now explained to you as a period of the whole cosmos, the prospect opens up for humanity to pass through death with a feeling of lightness that is, if I may express it so, too great. Humanity may become more and more materialistic, and the consequence of this, if it becomes more and more materialistic, will be that it carries an insufficient feeling of heaviness or being through the gate of death.

This is something that is already quite clear to those who are familiar with the conditions in the world today: souls today are carried through the gate of death by their own sense of non-being, so that they experience the opposite of what a person who falls into water and cannot swim experiences — they sink. These souls sink when they pass through the gate of death, due to the little weight they have. How the expression 'weight' is used in the spiritual world, that occurs at an important point in my Mysteries. They rise to the top and are lost. This can only be counteracted by people rising from concepts that can be easily acquired today and that figure in our entire lives, to that which must be achieved with a certain effort of physical life: that is, such concepts that are not produced by physical life alone, that are acquired through spiritual science.

What do people who absolutely want to remain in today's thinking say about spiritual science? They say: Yes, what is described, for example, in this Steinerian “occult science”, that is fantastic, that is arbitrary, that cannot be imagined! Why do people say that? People can see chalk, they can see tables, they can see legs, and they can only imagine what has once presented itself to them in this way; they do not want to imagine anything other than what they have appropriated from the bellwether of external physical reality. They do not want to develop any inner activity in imagining. Anyone who wants to study Occult Science: An Outline must make an effort themselves. If he gapes at an ox, he has a reality, to be sure; he needs not make any effort, but only gape at it and then form a so-called concept, which is no concept at all. What it is about is that the concepts that are hinted at by spiritual science, for example by my “Occult Science” or “Theosophy” or by the other books, demand this inner activity. A large part of humanity, which is now more materialistic than ever because it wants to educate the world of ideas in a materialistic way, the spiritualists, would really rather not get involved in thinking through and working through Occult Science; they prefer to let themselves be by Schrenck-Notzing or others, where such lumps, shaped like human beings or the like, appear to them in such a way that they can remain completely passive; they do not need to make any effort at all.

But in doing so, one becomes lighter and lighter and works against one's continued existence after death. However, by working one's way into the activity needed to penetrate spiritual science, one has to make a greater physical effort, connect more strongly with the physical than is the case today under so-called normal conditions. One must use stronger concepts. But in so doing, one also takes one's sense of being with one through death and is then equal to life after death.

That is something, is it not, that today's man likes so much: to add nothing to what he encounters in life. If he is to add something, to be active, it immediately becomes uncomfortable for him. Outwardly, in our social lives, we have always striven to learn as much as possible and to learn according to the templates prescribed by the state; so that when we have happily reached the age of twenty-five or twenty-six and are ready to start our legal clerkships, we are then pushed into some scheme and entitled to a pension after so many decades; now we are safe. We are only in our twenties, but we are insured for life. We let our body retire – that is guaranteed from the outset – then comes the church, the church confession, which also demands nothing more than that we passively surrender to what is offered to us. And the church then retires our soul when we are dead; it insures us against it without our doing anything, except at most living in faith, just as our body was retired before. This is something that must be broken with if civilization is not to arrive at its decline. Inner activity, inner active participation in what man makes of himself, even what he makes of himself as an immortal being, is necessary. Man must work on his immortality. That is the one thing that most people would like to be magically removed. They believe that knowledge can only teach one something of what is so anyway, can at most teach one that man is immortal. There are those who say:

Yes, I live here, as life exists here; what will be after death, I will see then.

He will see nothing, absolutely nothing! For the argument is about as ingenious as that of the Anzengruber personality: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” — These things are of the same logic. The fact of the matter is that, with regard to the spiritual and mental, by taking it into our knowledge, we make the spirit mature so that after death it does not go through the opposite state of someone sinking in confusion, that is, of someone rising without essence. We must work on our essence so that it can pass through death in the right way. And the assimilation of spiritual knowledge is not just the assimilation of abstract knowledge, it is the penetration of the spiritual and mental life of man with the forces that conquer death.

This is, after all, the essence of the Christian teaching. Therefore, a person should not merely believe in Christ, as a modern confession would have it, but should take to heart the words of St. Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The power of Christ in me must develop and be cultivated! Faith as such cannot save the human being, but only the inner cooperation with Christ, the inner development of the power of Christ, which is always there if one wants to develop it, but which must be developed. Initiative and activity are what humanity will have to fill itself with. And it must realize that mere passive faith makes man too easy, so that in time immortality would die on earth. That is Ahriman's endeavor. And to what extent it is Ahriman's endeavor, we will then bring before our soul in a next lecture, because today we are in the midst of the battle between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic powers. And just as we have protected our unconsciousness to a certain extent, with the spring equinox marking a boundary, we will have to enter the next boundary in such a way that we place ourselves with full

1987 we place ourselves in that which interweaves the world's being: the battle of the Luciferic with the Ahrimanic spirits. Through spiritual science we are led into reality, not just into an abstract knowledge. More about this next time.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive