The yoga of anthroposophy: "Not I, but Christ in me"

  

Rudolf Steiner:

People in the future will seldom have those mystical inclinations that are still experienced by some individuals today, to commune with themselves in order to find their true ego — which they even call the Divine Ego. They will have to accustom themselves to seeing their ego only in the outer world. The strange situation will come about that every person we meet who has some connection with us will have more to do with our ego than anything enclosed in our own skin will have to do with it. We are heading toward a future age in which a person will say to himself: My self is out there in all those whom I meet; it is least of all within me. While I live as a physical human being between birth and death, I receive my self from all sorts of things, but not from what is enclosed in my skin. This seeming paradox is already being indirectly prepared by the fact that people begin to feel how little they themselves really are in the reflection which they call their ego. I remarked recently that anyone can discover the truth about himself by reviewing his own biography — factually — and asking himself what he owes since birth to this person or that. In this way he will gradually resolve himself into influences coming from others; and he will find extraordinarily little in what he usually considers his real ego (but which is really only its reflection, as has been said). Speaking somewhat grotesquely, we may say: At the time that the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the human being was hollowed out; he became hollow. And it is important that we learn to recognize the Mystery of Golgotha as an Impulse that has a reciprocal relation to this hollowed-out condition of man. If we speak truly, we must make it clear that the hollow space in man, which indeed could be found still earlier — let us say, in the Egypto-Chaldean royal Mysteries — had to be filled up in some way. In that ancient time it had been partly filled by the real ego; but this now comes to a stop at birth — or at latest, in early childhood; there is some evidence of its presence in the first years of childhood. This hollow space has been filled by the Christ Impulse. There you have the true process.

Let us say, here on the left are human beings before the Mystery of Golgotha; in the middle, the Mystery of Golgotha; on the right, human beings after that Event.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha a human being had something in him that was found through initiation, as has been said, (red) Since that time it is no longer there; he is hollowed out, as it were, (blue) The Christ Impulse descends (lilac) and fills the empty space. The Christ Impulse is not to be conceived of, therefore, as a mere doctrine, a theory, but must be comprehended in accordance with facts. Only one who really understands the possibility of this descent in the sense of ancient Mystery initiation, will grasp the inner significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. A man cannot today become a Christ-bearer forthwith, as he could in the ancient Egyptian royal initiation; but in any event he becomes a Christ-bearer in that the Christ descends into the hollow space within him.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive December 27, 1918