Where bliss reigns, fear must vanish

 

Thank you, Carol Grayson!

What the world needs now is Anthroposophy! The New Spirituality, lecture 6 of 7

  

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

October 30, 1920

If an understanding for what one can call the reappearance of Christ is to find its place in the soul in the right way it is necessary to create a preparatory understanding for the course that the Christ-idea, the image people have had of the Christ, has taken in the course of human development. We remember that human development has proceeded from a constitution of soul which we have often called a kind of instinctive perception; a clairvoyance which was dim and dreamlike. And we have, on repeated occasions, characterized the different epochs of human development in such a way that we have placed the corresponding form of this constitution of soul into different times.

Today we will remind ourselves that there were still strong remnants of this old clairvoyant condition of humanity existing at the time of the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be understood in the first place as a fact, but as a fact which, in its inner essence, can never be grasped by the intellect which since the middle of the fifteenth century has constituted the soul-life of modern civilization but which was already prepared for in Greek and Roman times. Thus one can say: During the course of Greek and Roman history, when the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on the earth, there were still strong remnants of the ancient clairvoyance existing in many people. Other people had already lost this clairvoyance—were already definitely in the beginnings of an intellectual development. This was particularly so in the Romans. And one can therefore say that, in its reality, in its essence, the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped at first only by those who still had a remnant of the old clairvoyance. It could be described—the symbolism too could be indicated—by those who had these remnants. This instinctive clairvoyance was a particular characteristic of the ancient oriental peoples and existed essentially in its last remnants above all in these peoples. And Christ Jesus, too, did, after all, walk on the earth among oriental people. Thus the Mystery of Golgotha was understood first of all through the remnants of ancient oriental wisdom. And when this Mystery of Golgotha moved towards the West—to the Greeks and the Romans—one could receive what was related by those people who, out of the remains of the old clairvoyance, had understood what had really come to pass on the earth. And in order that there could be a perception through an 'eyewitness' of the soul there arose in St Paul, through a particular enlightenment which came to him at a late period of his life, a clairvoyant state through which he could convince himself of the truth, of the genuine nature, of the Mystery of Golgotha. What St Paul was able to relate out of his conviction—what those who had preserved the remains of an old clairvoyance could bring forward concerning the Mystery of Golgotha out of an ancient oriental wisdom, could be received by people as news—could be clothed in the form of the germinating intellect. Intellect itself, however, was not able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha. The way in which those who still had remains of the old clairvoyance spoke about the Mystery of Golgotha is called Gnosis. And, if I can put it so, the form of speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha in the way that was possible with these remnants of old clairvoyance—this was Christian Gnosis. And the presentation of the Mystery of Golgotha then reached posterity in the way I have described in my book Christianity as mystical Fact. Thus the first understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was attained through these remains of the old clairvoyance; through the ancient, instinctive oriental perception. One could say that this ancient oriental perception was preserved up to the Mystery of Golgotha to such a degree that a truly human grasp of this Mystery could find a place before the intellect broke in and understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer be found. Had the Mystery of Golgotha come during the full flowering of the intellect it would, of course, have made no impression on humanity at all.

Thus the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha lived in the accounts of the old clairvoyants and, basically, as you know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Gospels are nothing other than accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha gained through clairvoyance. But then there spread out over humanity's development the wave which had already taken root in Greece, as I have described to you, which had its source particularly in Rome and which can be seen as the wave that prepared the later intellectuality but in which this intellectuality already lived. Dialectical-legal thinking spread out and, in turn, led to civic-political thinking. This spread from the South into those northern regions where, as I related yesterday, there was still a nature-based economy. Central European civilization, nourished at first by Rome, took shape primarily in the sign of the intellectual, the dialectical-legal, development of the human soul. In the midst of everything that occurred here people could no longer themselves behold the Mystery in the sense of the old spirituality, but received the accounts, the traditions, and clothed these in the forms of their own soul-constitution. People clothed it more and more in dialectics. Through Rome the Mystery of Golgotha became clothed in dialectics. Out of what was Christian Gnosis, which still relied on vision, there took shape the pure dialectical theology which went hand in hand with the establishing of the European Empire that later became [nation] States. But the first great Empire was actually the secularized ecclesiastical 'Empire of the Church', permeated by Roman judicial forms. Many external facts show how this dialectical-legal, political thinking, in which the old oriental direct perception clothed itself, spread out over Europe.

Charlemagne, for example, was a vassal of the Pope who had bestowed on him his title of Emperor. And when one studies the whole extent of the rulership of Charlemagne, one finds among the forces through which his rulership spread an ecclesiastical-theological influence. It was a kind of theocratic empire that spread there but it was everywhere permeated by dialectical-legal forms. The clergy were the bureaucracy. They held the offices of the State and united in their person the political and ecclesiastical elements. The old spiritual life based on spiritual vision—which, as you know, had abolished the spirit in 869—this old spiritual life moves over entirely into a political Church-Empire which extends over the greater part of Europe.

You know from history and from what I have related here from the spiritual-scientific point of view how this continuous cross-flow of the Roman ecclesiastical element, and that which tried more or less to free itself from it, produced conflicts, and how these conflicts really form a great part of medieval history. But one must look at the immense difference that exists between the whole social structure of the Middle Ages, which then dissolved into the modern states, and the social structure of the ancient Orient which was entirely permeated by the spirit, by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and all that this brought with it.

From what source did this ancient oriental vision receive its content? It was—one cannot put it differently—'inborn' (Angeborensein); for the sages of the Mysteries sought as their pupils those who had inborn faculties of such a nature that they were able to come to this instinctive perception. Out of the great mass of people those were chosen in whose blood it lay to have such vision. Thus one simply knew that in the human beings that were sent as children from the spiritual worlds into this physical world came remnants of the experiences in those spiritual worlds. (I am still speaking of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha approached or was already accomplished.) In one individual these came less; in another, more. With the blood, so to say, echoes from the experiences in the spiritual worlds came in. Those who had the largest number of instinctive memories of experiences before birth or conception were the suitable pupils for the Mysteries. They were able to comprehend and see, or, rather, were able through comprehending vision to recognize the intentions of the gods regarding human beings, for they had experienced this before birth and had an instinctive memory of it in this life on earth. And they were sought out by the wise men of the Mysteries, by the priests, to be placed before humanity as individuals who could bear witness to the will of the spiritual world with regard to the physical world. It was human beings such as these who were the first ones able to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha. One can certainly say that this was a very different way of placing a human being in the social order. He was placed in this social order by the gods themselves through the recognizing of this fact by the Mysteries.

The inborn faculties based on the action of the blood then gave way to the medieval wave. Human beings then had nothing, or they had less and less, of what is brought into the physical world at birth from the spiritual worlds. Certainly the people who counted had nothing of this. Nothing but an instinctive memory remained. So upon what basis could a social structure be founded? What could this be founded on in the dialectical-legal age? It could only be founded on authority—the authority claimed above all by the Popes of Rome. It was this authority that took the place of that which the priests of the ancient Mysteries had beheld and recognized as being sent from the spiritual worlds. In ancient times decisions were made as to what should happen in the social life according to what was brought from the spiritual worlds. This could now only be decided in that certain people—that is the Roman Popes and, by extension, the individual vassal princes of the Popes, the kings and other princes—were ascribed with a certain authority on earth, and ascribed through legal justification, by formal, legal right. Men must now command, since the gods no longer commanded. And who was to command had now to be established through external law.

Thus arose the medieval principle of authority and one can say that into this principle was also incorporated the whole perception of the Mystery of Golgotha which one only received as an account. At most one could clothe it in symbols, in which, however, one only had images. A symbol of this kind is the mass with the sacred Last Supper and all that the Christian could experience in the Church. In the Last Supper he had directly present, according to his comprehension, the entry of the Christ-force into the world. The fact that this Christ-force was able to stream into the physical world for the believers was subject to the authority which in turn proceeded from the ordinations of the Roman Church.

But what was developing here as the dialectical-legal Roman element also bore in its bosom, as it were, its other side. It bore the continuous protest against authority. For when everything is based on authority, as was the case in the Middle Ages, then there also already comes to expression in the human being that which is to come in the future: inner protest against authority. This inner protest against authority came to light through the most diverse historical phenomena, through such people as Wyclif,¹ Hus² and so on, who set themselves against the bare principle of authority, who wished to comprehend Christ out of their inner being—for which, however, the time had not yet come. In fact, one could only give onself up to the illusion that one grasped Christ out of one's own inner being.

Those men who still made their appearance as mystics in the Middle Ages also spoke of the Christ, but they did not yet have the Christ-experience. But they did have the old accounts concerning the Christ. And this rebellion against authority became stronger and stronger and because of this the urge to fortify this authority also naturally became stronger and stronger. And the strongest exercise of power to fortify this authority—to put, in a sense, everything that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha only on a basis of authority and permanently so—came from Jesuitism. Jesuitism has nothing more of the Christ. Jesuitism already contains in itself a complete rebellion against the original understanding of Christ. The first understanding occurred in Gnosis with the remains of the oriental clairvoyance. Jesuitism took up only the intellectual-dialectic element and rejected the Christ-principle. It did not develop a Christology but a fighting doctrine for Jesus: a Jesuology. Even though Jesus was seen as one reaching beyond all human beings, that which led to the Mystery of Golgotha through Jesuitism was nevertheless to be something founded purely on authority.

Thus was prepared the situation which then came about, with its culmination in the nineteenth century, in which the Christ-impulse as something spiritual was completely lost—in which theology, in wishing to be a modern theology, wanted to speak only of the man Jesus. But as this whole development took its course it gave rise to many difficult conditions. Take the fact that the existing accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha were taken up by the Roman principle into a purely juristic dialectics; that they were taken up through external symbolism which could be explained. It was then impossible to let these accounts, as they existed, come into the hands of the faithful. Thus the strict forbiddance for those of the Roman faith to read the Bible. This was the most important fact right into the later Middle Ages; that the faithful were forbidden to read the Bible. It was considered by the priesthood and the leading Catholic circles that it would be the most frightful thing if the Gospels were to become known among the broad mass of the faithful. For the Gospels originate out of a completely different constitution of soul. The Gospels can only be understood through a spiritual constitution of soul. A dialectical soul-constitution can make nothing of them. It was therefore impossible for those times, in which the intellect and dialectics were prepared, to allow the masses access to the Gospels. The Church fought furiously against the Gospels becoming known and regarded those who went against the prohibition of reading them as the most flagrant heretics; like, for example, the Waldenses and Albigenses. These claimed the right to teach themselves about the Mystery of Golgotha through the Gospels. The Church opposed this because it knew full well that the way the Church itself presented the Mystery of Golgotha was irreconcilable with a common knowledge of the Gospels. For the Gospel in its true form actually consists of four Gospels which contradict one another. They knew that if they gave out the Gospels to the great mass of the faithful, the faithful would straightaway be confronted with contradictory accounts which, with the dawning intellectuality, they could only grasp as something to be understood as one understands things of the physical plane. After all, with an event on the physical plane one cannot understand why it ought to be described in four different ways. For an event that has to be understood by higher forces one is concerned with how it looks from this or that view, since it must always be seen from different sides. I have often said that this holds true even for dreams. People can dream the same thing; that is to say the same thing can take place within them but the pictures that are formed can differ in the most manifold ways. Thus for someone who stands in a spiritual relation to the Mystery of Golgotha the contradictions are of no significance. But the people at the dawn of the Middle Ages did not stand in a spiritual relation; they stood in the sign of dialectics right into the lowest classes of the people. And for dialectics one could not simply give out a fourfold mutually contradictory account of the Mystery of Golgotha. And when Protestantism emerged and the Church could no longer maintain the prohibition of the Bible, there arose that discrepancy in European life which then led to the modern theology of the nineteenth century which finally erased from the Gospels everything that was contradictory. And what the Gospels have now become is, in the end, really just a well-picked carcass. The most meagre that has appeared, the most plucked, are the things which the famous Schmiedel has discovered. He considers the only genuine places in the Gospels are those where someone is not praised, where something disapproving is said, and dismisses everything else. And thus there arose the descriptions of Jesus of the theologians of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, who only wanted to describe Jesus the man and believed that with that they could still remain within Christianity. An intellectual-dialectical age could only remain within Christianity by prohibiting the Gospels. With the Gospels a dialectical-legal age could only have the effect of gradually eliminating the figure of Christ completely.

Modern humanity has actually developed under this untruth. This humanity has absolutely no inkling that, fundamentally, it lives under the principle of authority but continually denies that this is so. There is hardly a stronger stamp of the belief in authority than exists among those who accept modern official science as the standard for the world. Just look how easily people are satisfied when they are told somewhere that something has been 'scientifically proven'. They know nothing more about this proof than that it has been stated by someone who has been to grammar school and university, has become a lecturer or professor and has therefore been appointed again by authority. This is how this is promulgated. And then what gets out among people in this way is supposed to be true science. Just try sometime to hold in mind for yourself everything that people accept nowadays as being true, proven science. In the last analysis it rests upon nothing other than a pure principle of authority, on absolute faith in authority—it is only that people delude themselves about this. This is the belief in authority that has replaced the other way of ordering the social structure which was derived from the Orient.

And one must grasp what hatred developed within those circles who had no understanding at all for the Mystery of Golgotha, who had only tradition continued through authority, and were terrified of the Gospels becoming generally known among the masses. One must grasp the hatred that became ever stronger and stronger and especially in Jesuitism was developed into a complete system—a hatred for Gnosis. And even today we still see how theologians get hot under the collar whenever there is any talk of Gnosis! We have to understand this on the basis of the development of European humanity. One must, for example, understand the development of the universities. How have the universities developed? One should look at history from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. They developed out of the Church. The monastery schools have become universities. Everything that was taught had to have the stamp of approval from Rome and only what had received this stamp was to be believed. The thought that it had to be approved by Rome was gradually lost but the thought that it had to be approved by something remained. And thus there remained the principle of authority even in those who no longer believed in Roman authority. And this continuation of the Roman authority-principle, but without a belief in Rome itself, is the mentality of our universities today. It is also the mentality in Protestant countries. The Catholic Church only fights on for its authority, with the exclusion of everything spiritual; it calumniates everything that goes beyond its dialectical-legal mode of thinking, calumniates everything which resists being fitted into the social authority principle. One must only understand how deeply this has penetrated into the soul-constitution of those human beings living at the dawn of our modern civilization. In this way the majority lost the power to face the truth for themselves and in the last resort this has produced the great confusion; the frightful chaos in which we are now living.

But at the same time we are now living,in an age in which a faculty of vision, of supersensible perception, is again being prepared. It is the wish of spiritual science to prepare for this faculty which humanity must take hold of again. Not the old instinctive vision, but a supersensible perception founded on full consciousness. Theology professors and others fight against this perception; they confuse it with the old Gnostic visionary gift and say all sorts of things they do not understand themselves against this modern faculty. But this new vision is rising up as a necessity which must take hold of humanity. And it is into this faculty of vision that a true comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha can shine again.

Thus, the course of man's image of Christ is as follows. The Mystery of Golgotha takes place at a time in which remnants of the old clairvoyance still exist. Human beings can still just about understand it. They set down this understanding in the Gospels. Christianity moves westwards and it taken up by Rome in the dialectical spirit. It is understood less and less. People talk in words about the Mystery of Golgotha; in words that are merely words so that the faithful are also quite content when they are in church and the priest speaks words in a language they do not understand. For it is not a matter for them of understanding but a matter, at most, of living in the general atmosphere which is directed to the Mystery of Golgotha. And the real connection of human beings with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost. It is lost more and more. At a certain point in the Middle Ages people begin to debate the significance of the symbol in which the continuous communication of the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself. People begin to debate, for example, the significance of the Last Supper. But as soon as people begin to debate something it means they no longer understand it. What lives in the evolution of humanity lives as experience; as long as people have the experience they do not dispute it. When the conflict over the nature of the Last Supper arose in the Middle Ages the very last traces of understanding for the Last Supper were gone—the play of dialectics had already taken possession of it. And so the modern life of humanity unfolded until the prohibition of the Bible could no longer hold. In theory, all Catholics are still forbidden to read it. Theoretically they are allowed to read only that extract that is prepared as if the Gospels were a unity. Even today it is strictly forbidden for Catholics to occupy themselves with the four Gospels because, of course, the moment one goes into the four gospels with the modern spirit, where they are read in the same way one reads an account of the physical plane, they fragment into shreds. It is irresponsible when people who are fully aware of this and who have also experienced how in the course of the nineteenth century, under the philologizing of theology, the Gospels have been destroyed—when these people have the cheek, it cannot be called anything else, to say that Anthroposophy explains the Gospels in an arbitrary way, that it reads all sorts of things into them. These people know that the connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost if the Gospels are not understood in a spiritual sense. One experiences people getting up onto the platform and again and again gabbling from a Catholic or Protestant point of view about how Anthroposophy puts things into the Gospels although they know perfectly well that if no spiritual comprehension is given to the Gospels they must radically destroy the Christian constitution of soul. If people would only pay more attention to how the majority of those who utter such nonsense about Anthroposophy are really only concerned with keeping their office in the most comfortable way, in the way they learnt in their youth—if people knew that in these theologians there is living not the slightest feeling for truth but only fear of losing their comfortable way of comprehending things—then we would get much further in rejecting the sort of Frolinmeyers and similar people who no longer possess the slightest spark of any sense of truth.

What is to be saved today is the Mystery of Golgotha itself. And preparation must be made so that this Mystery of Golgotha may shine forth again to human imagination. For it cannot shine forth to the intellect. The intellect can only dissolve it. The intellect can either only wipe it from the world with its art of philology or preserve it by a tyrannical authority in the Jesuitical sense which does not strive for truth but only for a comfortable life. For those, however, who strive for truth the path today leads towards Imagination; that is to conscious perception of the spiritual world. And the important thing is that, from the vantage point of this conscious perception of the spiritual world, One should be in the position to comprehend once again the whole being of humanity. Above all, it is essential that all human education and instruction be given from this point of view.

We know that until the age of seven, until the change of teeth, the child lives in imitation. Imitation is, in fact, nothing less than a continuation of what, in a completely different form, was present in the spirit world before birth or conception. There, in the spiritual world, one being merges into another and this is then expressed in the child's imitation of the people around it, as an echo of its spiritual experiences. Then, from the seventh Year, from the change of teeth up to puberty, comes the child's need for authority. What still lives in childish imitation lived in a certain way in the whole human nature during the ancient oriental culture. Those who worked out of the Mysteries worked with such a powerful force that other human beings followed them, as the child follows the grown-ups in its environment. Then came the principle of authority. And now the human being is growing out of this principle and is growing into that principle which begins to show itself after puberty—although of course in a personal, individual way, different from the way it is in the development of humanity as a whole. Today the human being is approaching the time when it will be necessary to develop in himself something which cannot be developed of itself. The child comes into the world as an imitator. In the ancient oriental social life it also came into the world as an imitator. But what lived in the child as the principle of imitation remained active even into the time of authority: the time of discerning judgements, remained active with regard to social affairs and everything that was encompassed as the religious life. The authority-principle in the ancient Orient applied only to the immediate environment. The greater affairs of life remained in the form of child-like experience.

These larger affairs of life then came into the times of the Middle Ages. The authority-principle prevailed and now, for the first time, a withdrawl from the authority-principle asserted itself—the principle of individual judgement arose. All that was developed for the affairs of the religious life, the artistic life -for human life in general that goes over and beyond the immediate elementary affairs of nature—could be found in the child, who brought it with him into the physical world from the spiritual worlds through the blood. When the authority principle still held sway, one only needed to build upon something which, with a certain necessity, developed out of the still quite unconscious etheric body. Today, when the principle of independent judgment is appearing, there arises an enormous new responsibility for pedagogy and didactics. There arises the fact that one must look in the growing child towards what will emerge. When a child reaches the age of fifteen the astral body is born in him. There is born in him that which carries into the world—now not unconsciously but in a more and more conscious way- the experiences of the spiritual world.

The time is approaching when in all our education and training we must look to what emerges from the child when he is in the fourteenth, fifteenth years of life. This was not of such great importance in all earlier times for it is connected with what lives independently in the human being which he does not bring with him through birth and which he cannot receive through authority but must really draw out of himself. And in order that he may draw it out of himself rightly we must take care that the child has the right upbringing and education up to the fourteenth, fifteenth years so that in those years he can then develop the astral body in the right way. Education and training take on a completely new significance in our modern time and, in fact, there should be no more teaching without insight into the relation of the human being to the spiritual world. That is the battle that is arising.

The sense of 'I' which pressed to the surface of human consciousness in the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe asserted itself, as it were, out of still instinctive depths. In Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, however, this sense of 'I' dealt only with what man experiences between birth and death and had nothing to do with what is the super-physical human being. I said yesterday that the Mid-European was cut off by Turkey and by the influence of Peter the Great from anything oriental. But what continued to hover before the Mid-European as a revelation still lived on as an inheritance. This was really only understood out of the clairvoyance of the ancient Orient but still had its echoes in Asiatic Russia, the Russia not yet Europeanized. Revelation is still alive today in Asia although in a completely decadent form. A sense for revelation is there still. The intellectual, the purely dialectical element, belongs to the West and is only developed today for the economic life. The Mid-European element was always hemmed in between these two—the Western intellectualism, still entirely restricted to the earthly economic, human reason that wishes to occupy itself only with external experience, and the oriental revelation. And the clouds gathered ever more threateningly since only a kind of rhythmic balance existed between revelation and reason. What the great Scholastics of the Middle Ages had sought to hold apart—a rational grasp of the outer sense-world and supersensible revelation—collided increasingly into one another as the modern age arose. And we see this mutual interlocking particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century when the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe was born. We see then how the Western element expands in the second half of the nineteenth century; how, to a certain degree, the whole of Europe, even up to Russia, is Anglicized, and how the crushed condition, the devastated state, of Central Europe is an external sign of a deep inner process which humanity today is unwilling to grasp. Everything that is hemmed in between West and East is razed to the ground, is dashed to pieces, and does not know what to do. It lives in upheavals; talks of all sorts of things by which, somehow or other, progress can be made—but talks, however, nothing but nullities. This is expressed right into small details. There is an utter inability to cope with economics under the old conditions. What do people do? They either squeeze out of the old what is still left by a dreadful tightening of taxation or they fill what is lacking by printing worthless notes; millions of bank-notes a week. And though it is perhaps only a symbol, there nevertheless stands before the soul of individual people the following: a decadent clinging to revelation in the East, the nullity of the Centre and the rationality of the West, still bogged down in economics. And yet they talk as if of a future perspective—as though the Centre were simply not there—of the great conflict that lies ahead between Japan and America. People, of course, picture this purely physically. This also signifies something of immense profundity. And when the decadent element existing in the East and that which is as yet unborn in the West clash together through ignoring the Centre—then the sense of 'I' which came to expression in the Centre is submerged in that chaos that arises through the crushing from East to West. Contemplation of the 'I' vanished with the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe. It has ceased to exist since the middle of the nineteenth century. And what people tried to create as political structure out of the upheavals—that, too, lies on the ground today. Impossible political structures spring up like that of Czechoslovakia which, quite certainly, in the long run cannot live and cannot die. These impossible structures can only spring up through the fact that peace is made by the people of the West who have no idea what the conditions for life are in the Centre. In Zurich people listen to someone or other who comes from Paris and holds forth to them brilliantly, as one says, on the unity of the Slovak and the Czech elements. The listeners are astounded at what such a professor makes known about the predestination of Czechoslovakia, because they have no idea of the conditions for life in the East and because they do not know that what is brought into being there is only the squeezing element, the crushing together of East and West. People still cover their eyes so as not to see what the external symptoms are saying. You won't believe how, even here in Central Europe, scenes take place—though at the present time still very much towards the East—where remnants of the troops who carried the war on their shoulders appear here and there. They are now officers although there is no justification for this under present conditions. They make innocent women dance naked before them and then thrust bayonets into their bellies. Such scenes actually take place at the command of people who, incidentally, fought bravely in the war.

Before all these things the deluded men of the West, who conclude a peace of which they understand nothing, cover up their eyes. They do not see how, in what is actually going on, significant things proclaim themselves. And, for the most part, people go on with life as though nothing were happening in the world at all. And thus, one could say, things are driven into the very narrowest corner of the consciousness. That which once brought forth such idealistic heights—such ideas as one finds in Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—in reality no longer exists in public life. And when it tries to assert itself, as here in the Goetheanum, it is slandered. Trumped-up slanderous stuff crops up everywhere; people cite it as something which they pretend to understand and must pass judgment on. Something is developing into nullity which a century ago was still radiant spirit-life. And above this the clouds are rolling together from the East and the West.

And what is the meaning of this that must come to expression In the most frightful way in coming decades? What is its Meaning? On the one hand it is the challenge to stand firm on the ground that would give birth to the new life of the spirit. On the other hand it is the sign in the heavens of that which has been spoken about among us for some time: the approach of the Christ in the form in which He must be seen from the twentieth century onwards. For, before the middle of this century has passed, the Christ must be seen. But before that, all that remains of the old must be driven into nullity, the clouds must gather. The human being must find his full freedom out of nullity and the new perception must be born out of this nullity. The human being must find his whole strength out of the nothingness. It is but the desire of spiritual science to prepare him for it. This is something of which one may not say that it desires to, but that it must desire to!

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Revelation of John: September 30, A.D. 395

      

From the notes of a listener to an Esoteric Lesson given by Rudolf Steiner on March 5, 1911:

Two sayings are given to pupils in Rosicrucian schools to support them in their meditations: Beware of drowning in your esoteric striving. Beware of burning in the fire of your own ego.

There's an outer and an inner way to strive towards the spiritual.

Everything around us is like a veil, like a cover before the spiritual that we must punch through to get to the spiritual behind it. But in which direction? This cover surrounds us on all sides: above, below, front, back, right, and left. And inwardly, everything that we experience as joy, pain, etc., is like a veil, like fog that conceals the spiritual in us, and this spiritual is the same one that we find when we break through the outer cover.

So that mankind can evolve further and get into the spiritual there are always men from time to time who are more advanced than is permitted by the momentary stage of human development, and who have things to tell us about states of human evolution that reach far into the future. Such advanced beings must exist to lead men further. John, the writer of the Apocalypse, was such a man. When he wanted to write a revelation of the future, he told himself: If I write this book out of the whole surroundings in which I'm living here and now, it'll be influenced by the self that's in my body, since I'm connected with everything around and in me. I must free myself from all of this. He had to place himself on something like a rock that served him as a firm support, on which he didn't wobble and wasn't influenced by anything that surged around and in him. And he moved himself to the evening of September 30, 395 A.D., to the island of Patmos, as the Sun had already disappeared under the horizon, though its effect could still be felt, and as the Moon and stars appeared. The Virgin constellation was there in the western sky, irradiated by the last gleam of the Sun that had set, with the Moon under it. This picture is reproduced in one of the seals — the Virgin with the radiating Sun, and the Moon under her feet. Thus, all of these seals were produced out of deep mystical connections.

John broke through the cover that surrounds us in this one direction — that of Virgo. There are 12 of these signs. Seven of them are good — the ones reproduced in the seals; the other five are more or less dangerous. Just as John chose this particular point in time and space to become completely separated from himself and all temporal things around him, so a Rosicrucian pupil must acquire a firm foundation in himself. The best way to do this is to let theosophical teachings work on us. Our astral body and thereby our etheric body become expanded by listening to theosophical ideas. This is the effect on anyone who hears anything about theosophy. But the effect on those who are inclined toward theosophy is different than on those who aren't. The former feel the etheric body's expansion and fill it up with theosophical teachings, by accepting them. The other feel an emptiness in their etheric body through its expansion because they don't accept these ideas and so don't fill the expansion. Then doubt and skepticism arise through this emptiness. Whereas with the first men, it's like a pouring of oneself into the universe, which they can't let go too far, for they'll get a feeling of hollowness, of not feeling at home in these widths of space, like a fish that's taken out of water and can't live in air, because its organs haven't adapted themselves to this changed element. When a theosophist devotes himself to the teachings and his astral body expands evermore, he loses himself in this unfamiliar element. One must avoid drowning here. And this is possible if one studies theosophy seriously, takes it in, elaborates it, and grasps it with feeling, not just with thinking and will, but permeates it completely with feeling. One can only do this with great earnestness. One must gain a firm support within oneself — like John when he wanted to write the Apocalypse and he transported himself to the island of Patmos at sundown of Sept. 30, 395.

The configuration of the Sun, Virgo, and Moon on that evening can be checked astronomically, and this was done. From this materialistic science draws the conclusion: Therefore the Apocalypse was written at that time. And then we're told that science has ascertained this. That's the way science ascertains things.

On the inner path one finds all the joys and sorrows, pains and blissfulness that live in us. But all of this is attached to our lower, perishable ego. This whole desire-world surrounds us like a fog that covers the spiritual for us. It keeps us from seeing and noticing the spiritual. We must break through it to get to the spiritual. There are forces that approach an esoteric pupil to make this fog even denser. The fog gets even denser if we don't resist it. We must burn it to avoid burning in the fire of our passions. If we don't overcome this fog, if we don't resist its becoming ever denser through Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, we're prisoners, as occultists say. There actually are men today who are born with great capacities and reach certain stages very quickly, but are then completely wrapped up in such a fog by the adversarial powers that they can't get out. One calls this occult imprisonment.

Our desire-world consists entirely of egoism. And we can only overcome this egoism in deep humility. Which thought can lead us to an overcoming of egoism? The thought that we already spoke about yesterday in the exoteric lecture, the thought that we killed Christ. We're murderers, yes, that's what we are. We can transform this fact, but only if we let Paul's words live and become truth in us, “Not I, but Christ in me.” We shouldn't kill the divine in us through egoism, through our life of desires, etc., we should let Christ live in us. We should begin to carry out this easy and yet so difficult thing in us with shivering earnestness.

We arose from the divine: Ex Deo nascimur. We should take all suffering upon us willingly and patiently with the thought that we killed Christ; we should devote ourselves to him completely and die in him: In Christo morimur. Then we'll be reborn, reawakened through the Holy Spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. This verse sounds different exoterically than esoterically, but the difference is in only one word that's left out in the esoteric version. As we leave this word out and don't speak this word in shy reverence for what this word expresses, our feeling goes out to what is left unspoken in shy reverence.

Ex Deo nascimur

In … morimur

Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

This tells us that man arose from the spiritual; that he was originally contained in the spirit:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.

And the spirit has imprinted in my body

The eyes of sense,

That through them I may see

The lights of bodies.

And the spirit has imprinted in my body

Reason and sensation

And feeling and will,

That through them I may perceive bodies

And act upon them.

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.

In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

And I will incorporate into my spirit

The supersensible eyes

That through them I may behold the light of spirits.

And I will imprint in my spirit

Wisdom and power and love,

So that through me the spirits may act

And I become a self-conscious organ

Of their deeds.

In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

March 5, 1911. GA 266

Yoga : At-one-ment

  

"You and I are two persons and yet you and I are one — and the gap between the two of us, this also is myself."  — Sri Anandamayi Ma

For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.  — Ephesians 2:14

The quintessential Maha-Vakya: "ES IST ICH"

Rudolf Steiner:  "In older languages the self was not specifically designated, for it was contained within the verb. The 'I' was not directly mentioned. The verb was used to show what one was doing, and this was what indicated that one was speaking about oneself. There was no name for the self. It only came about in later times that the human being gave his self a name, and in our German language that name [ich] contains the initials of Jesus Christ, which is an important symbolic fact." [Iesus CHristus: ICH]

 

At-one-ment

Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We

Awash in a Sonburst Sea

You—Love—and I—Love—and Love Divine:

We are the Trinity

You—Love—and I—We are One-Two-Three

Twining Eternally

Two—Yes—and One—Yes—and also Three:

One Dual Trinity

Radiant Calvary

Ultimate Mystery

Thank you, Carol Grayson!

Related post: Yoga : Nonduality

Christian Yoga : Transubstantiation : Atman becomes Brahman

      

The Book of Revelation and the Work of the Priest
Lecture 18 of 18

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland, September 22, 1924

We have looked at the Apocalypse with respect to its inner spirit and we have looked at it in connection with your work as priests. One could of course say a great deal more in connection with the Apocalypse; for instance, one could unroll the whole composition of the Apocalypse, but it seems to me that this conference in Dornach will get its best content if what was said in connection with the Apocalypse will show up in priestly activity in a really practical way.

We'll only have to add one more thing today. We should consider that we're living in the consciousness soul age or at that stage of man's overall evolution where he has to gain control over his intellectuality, as it were, so that it's integrated into his individuality. Of course to begin with this age is still restricted to man's spirit or intellect, as it were, where the things which are connected with the acquisition of intellectuality occur within human thinking and reflection, although a time will come when the deeper forces of the human soul will also be taken hold of by that which now occurs more within thinking, wishing and reflecting.

At present man can only form ideas about how he should use the intellectuality that is breaking into his individuality. However, before this age of consciousness soul development is over souls will be taken hold of by intellectuality right down into their deepest emotions, feelings and passions. And then what was still sought in the stars during the Middle Ages, when one spoke of angelic intelligences in the stars and planets will live even more deeply and pervasively in men.

All of this will be deposited in men, and later on when the Jupiter period comes even man's corporeality will be taken hold of by intellectuality. However, at present, where the soul has still not been taken hold of by intellectuality in its innermost structure and men can grasp the important things in their thoughts and words, it is possible to orient priestly activities in such a way that the world goals can really be attained.

So you see things are like this; when men grab intellectuality from the cosmos — and after all, it is a wise arrangement of the world powers that he is taking possession of it — there are always unguarded moments when it becomes possible for the Ahrimanic power who is called Satan in Christian tradition to take hold of this intellectuality that men have. Satan must not be confused with the ordinary devil, who is a lower power with different characteristics. Satan has the rank of a Principality (Archai), and he took hold of this intellectuality in the course of world evolution long before it approached men in the described manner, and one could say that he possesses more intellectuality than any other being. He is trying to bind human intellectuality to his own to such an extent that men can fall out of their evolution in this way. In other words, this Ahrimanic power is trying to nullify the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ's activity.

Now this Ahrimanic power who is called Satan in Christian tradition lacks the strength to work up further than the human level of cosmic beings. So one shouldn't think that the intelligence of an angel, for instance, could be taken hold of directly by this Satanic power; this can only happen in certain exceptional cases. These exceptional cases that could occur in the future, where it might not only be possible for the Satanic power to chain men to himself through their intellects, but also to bind beings from the spheres of the angels and namely of the archangels to himself — these things still belong to the higher secrets of occultism that cannot be spoken about at present, and that can only be disclosed under certain conditions. So we can only indicate that a temptation and a seduction of beings in the hierarchy of angels and namely of archangels might be possible in the future, but we must reckon with the fact that the power who is called Satan in Christian tradition has the ability to cling to something in man's inner life that is as independent as his intellectuality. And then when the intellectuality which men contain is taken hold of by the Ahrimanic power, a man can be torn out of evolution and can be put on an entirely different course, simply because his being is pulled along with the intelligence with which Satan is able to connect himself.

This is only possible with man's intellectuality, and not with any other psychical, spiritual or bodily force in him. For a man's intelligence sits in him in such a way that it is the most independent thing in him. Everything else is connected with certain divine powers, and so if Satan were to do anything with men's feelings, sensations, desires and wishes he would still have to deal with the superhuman forces that are in these soul-capacities. Intellectuality is the first thing through which each human being can separate himself entirely from the beings who bring about his personal evolution, and it is the first thing in which he must freely connect himself through his own efforts with those powers who have accompanied his evolution right from the beginning. So that he has to identify himself freely with the last goals of the Apocalypse, where the Apocalypticer clearly indicates that the power who is the Alpha and Omega of the creator beings who go through evolution will appear, and each human being has to decide for himself to attach himself to the being who led him during the time when he was becoming cosmically mature.

To be sure, Satan can use this great moment in the evolution of humanity and he can pull men's intelligences and the men with it into his own realm. We can already see how the Satanic power is trying to bring men into its evolution in this way. The way to do this is to bring people together in the kind of associations that we see arising everywhere in a germinal form today, where the old group souls end and a new group-soulness can begin.

That is why what is occurring in eastern Europe today, for instance, is so terribly Satanic because it all tends very forcibly in the direction of putting people together in such a way that group souls become necessary. If the most intelligent people are then taken over into the lower Ahrimanic regions in this way, the groups that are formed here can only be assigned to Ahrimanic powers as groups. That would be a way for the Satanic powers to tear mankind out of earth evolution and to bring it into another planetary evolution. That kind of activity with a group soul character can only succeed if the intellectual element becomes completely emancipated in a certain way.

Very clever beginnings in this direction are being made in the east today, and priests should understand these beginnings for their work, because they are becoming manifest in a very forcible way in the east, but they're also present in central and western Europe.

For example, something that seems to be more or less harmless in exoteric life but which must be discussed very seriously is the way that psychology is being allowed to pass over into an experimental observation of human souls. This is one of the methods that will eventually prevent the soul elements from working from man to man in the way that the old divine powers intended, and psychical things will be determined in a numerical way or some other way instead by the emancipated intellectuality.

These things in central Europe and in the West are still relatively harmless. However just consider, for example, that a statistical, intellectualistic way of looking at things that is emancipated from men's soul life has arisen in the west through William James and others. They apply statistical methods to the inner conversion of human beings or to what one could call a finding of one's inner religious bearings— which occurs in many people just before they're 20 years old. Many people also experience an inner transformation after they're 20, which is like a whirling up of the Godhead out of their own soul.

In the U.S. they determine the percentage of the population that undergoes such inner conversions, and they treat things in a statistical manner. The Satanic thing about this is the statistical treatment, the compilation of data, the emancipated intellect. All these conversions are really the results of karma, but then one has to look at each particular case. You will find that statistical methods are praised to the skies in all scientific fields today, if you follow such things at all. People can't penetrate inner things anymore, and they try to arrive at laws through statistics everywhere.

This is the hardest to combat in the medical field, where it has caught on in the most terrible way, and where all clinical methods tend in this direction. One simply records whether medicaments have a positive or negative effect, etc., in a statistical manner. This statistical element is becoming established, but it is completely worthless in this field. For it really tells one nothing to know how many cases went one way and how many went the other way. The important thing is to have a really thorough understanding of the individual case, no matter how it turns out. Only when all the cognitional methods have been pressed into the service of a study of the individual cases and their individual forms, — only after one has everything else through individual observations can one use statistics at the end and say that the thing was favorable in so and so many cases and unfavorable in the rest. As you know, statistics are very popular in social studies and social democracy.

The statistical approach has also produced some very nonsensical things in connection with suicides and crazy people. One determines what percent of the people in particular professions committed suicide or went crazy. But it has no real value to know this. Because the important thing is to know why this individual committed suicide and why that individual became insane. And so with regard to this statistical approach which scientists think is so important today when they write about theories of knowledge, — it's really as if Satan were loose: it's really quite terrible.

This approach has been successful for the Satanic power in central Europe and in the east. It became a philosophy in Avenarius and Mach, who were studied by leading Bolshevik philosophers, who then brought the thing to Russia and made it practical. Even good natured people who want evolution to proceed in an orderly way don't pay much attention to the fact that the seeds for Bolshevism were laid in central Europe decades ago and were carried over to Russia; it's as if one takes a seedling and transports it to another place where it is supposed to grow up.

Thus this Satanic power is working hard today and he turns to people everywhere and appeals to their emancipated intellect that is disconnected with things in some way. This applies to the soul, to the spirit, to inner conversions, etc. If Satan were to succeed in bringing about what he wants to do within a certain time, what has to approach then would occur in a harmful way for the evolution of humanity.

For the events of which the Apocalypticer speaks will come. It's just a question of how they will occur. There's only two possibilities: either human evolution will proceed in accordance with the intentions of the gods, or it will not. Intellectuality is breaking in now and men are becoming more and more intelligent through their own efforts, and not through inspiration. That is breaking in. But on the other hand mankind has been kept weak by influences that come from the Luciferic side. Even though the individual element is the only salutary thing for mankind in this age of the individuality, which is really a Christian age, groups will form, but these group formations must be taken away from the danger that they're in.

Through the efforts that the Satanic power is making to acquire the intellectual forces of humanity, a time will come when this Satanic power will be so strong that it will approach all groups that will have formed. So that it will really come about that Satan's power will work towards the four corners of the world, and these smaller and larger groups — Gog and Magog — will be exposed to the temptation and the seduction of the Satanic power. What will be decided then is whether or not those who have begun to work with spirituality have developed such an intensity that human intellectuality can be led to where it belongs with the aid of the Michael power, namely, to the starting powers who were connected with the origins of human evolution, and who want to lead what men have become further, although men are left free. A great deal will depend upon whether men will get to the point where they will fully understand real spirituality that has an inner order. In priestly work one must already look at these affairs of humanity now, for only if one succeeds in directing everything into channels that run along these lines will the great seduction scene that Satan intends with Gog and Magog turn out in a way that is beneficial for human evolution.

Otherwise what men have experienced under the influence of their developing individualities; since the year 666 after the beginning of Christian evolution will someday have to be torn out of humanity. Darkness would be spread over all previous human incarnations and a new world evolution would replace the earthly one. We can already see the beginnings of this quite clearly, and we can also see the great danger that mankind is in today. Ahrimanic powers possess an almost unbelievably large amount of intellectuality, and they use men's vanity, untruthfulness and all of their other weaknesses in order to win them over. For instance, it is really quite terrible how the Satanic powers used the vanities of men at the beginning of the world war in order to create a tremendous turmoil in a few days — after there had been a very deep state of sleep — which put people in a great uproar, so that they're still not sure what really happened.

But it's only a phase. There are much worse phases in the purely intellectual so-called spiritual battles of the present. For where can one find truth anymore? One sees that things are being introduced everywhere in such a way that truth of action or a true way of working is becoming less and less important for men today. Just think of how they're increasingly trying to put the spiritual life under the control of the state. Just look at how much of our spiritual life is under state control.

All of these things expose humanity to a great danger, but men are not inclined to develop a real understanding along these lines. You could see this when the first attempt was made to do something with the threefolding movement so that the seduction by Gog and Magog that is to happen in the future can be brought into channels that are favorable for humanity. The threefolding idea should have led mankind over the threshold of evolution, and also would have had to lead it across, but the way it was received shows the tremendous dangers that mankind is exposed to with respect to these things, and priests should take these things very seriously.

There was an individual in the early Christian centuries who lived in the place where the actual church battle occurred which then made preparations in Europe for the Christianity that had been present in Rome throughout the centuries, who experienced the year 666 and perceived what really went on there with a certain clairvoyant power. This particular individual saw quite clearly and spiritually that the Satanic power was preparing itself for such a mission. Like many other people, this individual later confused the Satanic power that Michael knows is higher than he is, with the devil of the Middle Ages; he speaks of the devil, but in such a way that one sees that he really means the Satanic power. He reincarnated in Berlin in the first half of the 19th century; he was a high school teacher by the name of Drandorf. He spoke about the devil, that is, about Satan, and he wrote an article Is the Devil a Figment of the Imagination? You should also study his book on aesthetics some time. Drandorf remained relatively unknown; the consistorial and supreme consistorial counselors in Berlin were his enemies.

What all of this amounts to is: will you priests be able to represent the spiritual world in its full reality and not just in the sentimental way in which this has occurred everywhere in the last few centuries, so that one doesn't want to bring in the evil powers whenever one is speaking about the spirit. In other words, the main question is whether there is enough energy among you to really represent spirituality. The main thing is that such things like a knowledge of karma or an honest look at earlier earth lives presuppose the same attitude of soul as the perception of the celebration of transubstantiation during an act of consecration of man.

These ideas must become real for men again. Only if they become real will it become possible to bring everything that is connected with the perspectives for humanity which the Apocalypticer wanted so much to present, into the right channels. It should be emphasized that the things that were discussed here in connection with the Apocalypse are truths which one should not receive without uniting them with one's whole being, which one should not receive without looking upon them as a kind of communion.

So one would like to say that a church is outwardly real, and it embraces the faithful members of the congregation. And the priesthood must look upon itself as that group of people in the church through whose activity a spiritual element flows into humanity. For this they need the right understanding and a little chapel for the sacraments and the consecrated bread and wine, which contains the secret of transubstantiation.

And one would like to say: If we imagine that we have a chalice, in which transubstantiation takes place, then men look for a way to the Father through transubstantiation. They look for a way to that creative power in the primal world which is present in there in a fully real way, and which therefore cannot be found if one only goes towards the material or only towards the spiritual. It can only be found if one discovers that the spiritual and the material are a unity. An understanding of the world is only present today when a transubstantiation is carried out at an altar. A sacred search for the Father really still occurs there, and here the Son always shows men the way to the Father; the Son who now mediates the way to the spirit.

And so when a man looks at what appears everywhere in the physical things during transubstantiation he can find the completely hidden spirit and the working of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in the physical things. Their concealed activity becomes manifest as physical substances. If one wants to have the latter as something spiritual, one has to take the path to the Father. The path to the Father is indicated by the Son, and he then brings it about that the spiritual appears out of the physical.

Bread is bread, but one can look for the Father in it; this can also be shown for the wine. Christ shows the way; the transubstantiation puts an aura around the bread; man experiences the spirit in the aura. The wine reinforces what is present in the bread (drawing: sun). And so one can say that the longing for the Father is present in the sensory aspect that conceals the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. Christ leads each human being on the path, so that Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai become active before him in the way ye indicated yesterday, and he ascends into that region where he can only perceive the spirituality of the spiritual world today in angels, archangels, and archai, who however have the Holy Spirit in their midst.

To understand this and to draw the right conclusion from it today is written in the Apocalypse. What does that mean? It means that the one who understands it finds his own understanding already traced out in the Apocalypse. Hence one can say that whether or not the Apocalypse is speaking about you depends upon you and upon whether you will it.

For if you take the impulses in the Apocalypse into your work as priests in a truly spiritual way, you will be the ones who are spoken of in the Apocalypse, who will come and will ward off the power of the beast, the false prophet and Satan. And then at least in your mind you will always think that the book of the Apocalypse is placed underneath the chalice when it is standing there for the transubstantiation. And as you imagine that the chalice is standing on the apocalyptic book, you will be able to say to yourselves: My vocation is in the latter. And what we do over it is the carrying out of my vocation.

And so I didn't want to give you a theoretical exposition during this conference. After the justified wish arose in you to hear something about the Apocalypse I wanted to give you what I did and therewith I wanted to place the Apocalypse underneath the chalice for you, at least in your minds. That is the goal I had in mind for these lectures. You will definitely succeed in attaining the things that are possible if you intensify the ideals of your work as greatly as you can if you make these serious studies of the Apocalypse into the innermost impulse of your own activity. That is what I wanted to place before you at the end of these reflections. You can imagine that the most intensive thoughts about an intensive, forceful activity that is worthy of your great task will accompany everything that you will do in connection with these reflections.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive 

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0346/19240922v02.html