The Path through the Gospels and The Path of Inner Experience
I thank you from my heart for the kind words of the General Secretary
of the Swedish section, Colonel Kinell, and in reply I wish to say
that it is deeply satisfying, on my journey from Helsingfors, to be
able for a few days to discuss again with you in Stockholm those
things and truths which touch us all so closely. I offer you a hearty
greeting, as warmly felt as the kind words of the General Secretary.
On these two more intimate evenings we shall have to speak of a
question, an affair of mankind, which in a double connection
penetrates extraordinarily deeply into our souls. First, because the
Christ question is such that, for two thousand years now, not only has
it occupied countless souls on earth, but from it have flowed for
countless earth-souls spiritual life-blood, strength of soul,
consolation and hope in suffering, strength and sureness in action.
And not only that, but when we consider all that surrounds us as
external exoteric culture, created through many centuries, then
through deeper knowledge we see that all this would have been
impossible had not the Christ impulse taken hold of a large part of
humanity. This is one consideration which shows us what strong
interest the Christ question must offer if we approach it with
anthroposophical knowledge. This is only one side of the interest
which we bring to this problem; the other side of our interest comes
out of the particular soul and spiritual conditions of our present
time, our epoch. We need only look about us in the world and try to
understand the yearnings, the seeking of the human soul, and we shall
be able to say to ourselves: Ever more do human souls seek after
something which, through the centuries, has been connected in men's
souls with the name of Christ, and ever more do they come to the
conviction that a renewing of the ways, a renewing of interest, a
deepening of knowledge, is necessary if the needs of human souls
(which will steadily increase with regard to Christ) are to be
satisfied. If we find on the one side a thirsting for
enlightenment about Christ, we find on the other side, among numerous
souls of the present day, doubt and insecurity as to the means used up
to this time. And therefore, because of the yearning for an answer and
because of the doubt that the truth can be learned, this is one of the
most burning questions of the present time.
It is thus obvious that a spiritual movement which penetrates more
deeply into spiritual foundations has the task of throwing light on
this question. Things are like this today, my dear friends, but in a
relatively short time, truly in a very short time, they will be
entirely different. If we somewhat unegotistically examine what, in
relation to Christ, will be needed by those men who follow after our
time, then we must say to ourselves that, although many men of the
present can satisfy themselves with what there is, souls will feel
themselves increasingly unsure and will thirst increasingly for
enlightenment. Thus in speaking of Christ today we speak of something
which we foresee as necessary for the human beings of a very
near future. Anthroposophy would not fulfil its task if it did not put
itself in a position to create clarity on these points by means of its
knowledge, as far as this is possible today.
As my point of departure I shall indicate the three paths along which
the soul, in accordance with human evolution, can attain to Christ. If
we mention three paths we must briefly describe the first path, which
today is no longer a path, though it once was; which today need not be
an esoteric path, as just in our time the anthroposophic path is, but
which was a path for millions of souls through the centuries. This is
the path through the so-called Christian documents, through the
Gospels. For millions and millions of people this path was, and
for many it still is, the only possible one. The second path along
which the human soul may seek the Christ is that which can be called
the path through inner experience, which especially in the
present and in the near future numerous souls, out of their particular
constitution and qualities, must pursue. The third path is that which,
through the anthroposophical movement, one can at least begin to
understand in our time, the path through initiation. Thus there
are three paths to Christ: First, the path through the Gospels;
second, the path through inner experience; and third, the path through
initiation.
The first path, the path through the Gospels, need be only briefly
characterized here. We all know that, in the course of the centuries,
the Gospels became nourishment for the hearts and souls of innumerable
people. We know also that the most enlightened, the most critical
natures (and these are not the irreligious), begin to have no further
relation to this Christ, because it is maintained today that external
knowledge cannot know what historical facts really stand behind that
which the Gospels relate. Had the Gospels been read by men of past
centuries as today they are read by a scholar, by a man who has gone
through the current scientific education, they would never have been
able to exercise the powerful influence, the life-influence, which has
flowed out of them. Now, if the Gospels were not read in past
centuries as the educated man of today reads them, how were they read?
To ponder a priori on what may have taken place in Palestine at
the beginning of our era, this would never have occurred to the
Gospel-readers of earlier centuries, and still does not occur to many
Gospel-readers of today. Those who begin to test, in the Gospels, what
may have taken place before the eyes of the inhabitants of Palestine
at the beginning of our era lose confidence in the historical
character of the events of Palestine. The men of earlier times did not
read in this way. They read in such a way that they allowed a picture
to work on their souls; for instance, the picture of the Samaritan
woman at the well, or of Christ imparting the Sermon on the Mount to
his disciples. The question of external physical reality never
occurred to them. How their hearts warmed, how their feelings swelled
in the presence of these great and powerful pictures this was
to them the main thing. What formed itself in their hearts, what
force, what life-meaning they gained through these pictures
this was the main thing. They felt that spiritual lifeblood and
strength flowed to them from these pictures. When they let these
pictures work on their souls, they felt strong; they felt that,
without these pictures, they would be weak. And then they felt living,
personal connections with what is recounted in the Gospels, and the
question of historical reality occurred to them no further. The
Gospels were themselves reality, they were present as force,
and one did not need to ask whence they came; one knew that men had
written them not with earthly means, but with impulses from the
spiritual worlds. I do not assert that one must feel in this way today
(what one must do depends on the development of mankind), but I assert
that men felt in this way through centuries.
How could it be so? On this point spiritual science is now first able
to instruct us. When we begin to understand the Gospels in the light
of spiritual science, and try to penetrate into what flows down from
spiritual worlds and is contained in the Gospels, then we stand before
the Gospels in such a way that we say: We know from spiritual
science, quite apart from the Gospels, all that has taken place in
human evolution in connection with the Christ-impulse, and then we
find what is contained in the Gospels, quite independently of
them.
How, then, do we conceive the Gospels from the spiritual-scientific
point of view? If I may use a simple comparison, let us assume that a
man has attained enlightenment on some subject. With this
enlightenment, he meets a second man and begins to talk with him. At
first he will not suppose that the other knows anything of the subject
which is so clear to him, but from the conversation he perceives that
the other knows it quite as well as he. What must reasonably be
assumed? The reasonable thing to assume is that the other has
enlightened himself through the same or similar sources. So is it also
with the Gospels. We can do this, no matter from what standpoint we
approach the Gospels. A society could be formed of people who read the
Gospels in the above described way; then there could also be people in
this society who were determined opponents of the Gospels, and who
would say that, when the Gospels were tested by the methods of
science, it would be found that they were written much later than the
events in Palestine could have occurred, and that their accounts
contradict each other in short, that these Gospels cannot be
regarded as historical documents. Such people might be in such a
society, and one could say: Well, let us at first leave the
Gospels in peace, but let us do some research in the spiritual
worlds.
Then, if we did some genuine spiritual research, if we gained genuine
super-sensible knowledge, we would find that in the course of human
evolution there had once entered a strong impulse, which broke into
human evolution as an impulse from the spiritual worlds, from which
mighty things have proceeded for humanity; and we would see that at
the beginning of our era, this impulse had taken hold of a man who was
especially suited thereto. All this, and many other facts which fit
into this knowledge and which can be won only through super-sensible
research, all this we would have; and those who wished to know nothing
of the Gospels would have this as well as others. Then one could
approach the Gospels and say: Well now, at first we did not
trouble ourselves at all about these Gospels; yet it is remarkable
that, when we read them carefully, we see that they contain what we
found in spiritual fields independently of them. Now we recognize
their value from an entirely different side.
Then we are clear that it could not be otherwise, that those who wrote
the Gospels must have received their knowledge from the same source
which is now opening itself to humanity through the spiritual
movement. This is just what now confronts us, what will come more and
more, what will make a valid basis for the valuation of the Gospel
documents. If this is so, we must say that men will be able to find
along other ways what can be known through these documents. And so
this knowledge begins to be more and more sacred to us through the
spiritual cognition of the present day. It already worked through the
force of the Gospels. Because the Gospels are suffused with the
holiest knowledge, with the spiritual impulses of humanity, they had
an influence even where they were taken in naively. Spiritual
knowledge works not only abstractly, not only in theory, but works as
a life-force, as life-blood of the soul. And ever more and more will
men recognize how consolation and strength flow from this knowledge.
But when we speak of the inner way to Christ, we encounter more and
more things which can be understood and felt at the present time only
when approached with the right spiritual-scientific understanding. We
shall try to speak of the inner Christ-experience in such a way
that it may be seen how, independently of all tradition, this may
appear in every man. To this end we must, of course, regard the human
being with the knowledge which we have found through spiritual
science. If we steep ourselves in spiritual science, then we find even
the most elementary knowledge becoming fruitful when we apply it to
life. We find that we get away from the abstract charts of the seven
members of man when we contemplate the growing and becoming of man.
The physical body has its especial development in the first seven
years of life. We perceive further that in the second seven years of
life, from the change of teeth until sexual maturity, the forces of
the etheric body play in man. Then the forces of the astral body begin
to play, and only later, about the 20th or 21st year, (depending on
his whole organization and on the nature of the forces in him) begins
what appears in man as the Ego, as the bearer of the Ego, with that
force which it really has because of its organization for the whole
life of man as the bearer of the Ego.
That the bearer of the Ego first becomes really capable of living in
the 20th or 21st year is not often observed in our present time,
because we are not yet inclined to pay attention to these things. What
does it mean that the bearer of the Ego first becomes really active in
the 20th or 21st year of life? Here we must observe, by occult means,
the growing man and view the deeper forces of his organization. These
forces continually change: from birth until the seventh year, from the
seventh year until sexual maturity, from sexual maturity until the
unfolding of the Ego. But they change in such a way that they cannot
be tested by the methods of ordinary anatomy or physiology. By occult
means, one can say that only around the 20th year does man develop his
forces in such a way that a self-sufficing Ego-bearer now exists.
Earlier this Ego-bearer is not yet formed; earlier the human
corporeality, even the super-sensible, is not yet a proper Ego-bearer.
So if we consider the members of man in the light of the great
world-principle, we must say that, through the peculiarities of his
organization, man is really ripe to develop an Ego out of himself only
in his 20th or 21st year, not earlier.
With this fact another may be contrasted, namely that in the first
years of life, in normal consciousness, we really dream ourselves,
sleep ourselves into life, and that only after a certain point of time
does life take such a course that our own memory begins. Of what
happened before this time we may be told by our parents or elder
brothers; after this point the man says I am who I am.
From the time when he says I have done this; I
have thought that, the man dates his own Ego; what came before
that loses itself in the twilight of the soul. Our memory reaches only
to the point of time so described.
What do we have when we put these two facts together; that the real
bearer of the human Ego is born in the 20th or 21st year, and that in
our souls we describe ourselves as an Ego from the third or fourth
year on? This means that in the present cycle of man's development he
has an opinion, a feeling, about himself which does not correspond to
his inner organization, as this has developed; for the
consciousness of the Ego appears in the third or fourth year,
but the organization for the Ego first appears in the 20th or
21st year. This fact is of fundamental importance for the
understanding of man. When this fact is stated abstractly as an item
of spiritual-scientific knowledge, no one gets particularly excited
about it; but, because this fact is true, there are numerous
experiences available which we all know well, but which we do not
observe in the light of this fact. All that man can experience of
cleavage between external organization and inner experience, of sorrow
and pain in life because (by reason of his organization) certain
things are impossible for him, of disharmony between what he wishes
and what he can perform; the fact that he may have ideals which lead
far beyond his organization: all this leads back to the fact that the
consciousness of our Ego goes an entirely different way from
that followed by the bearer of our Ego. In this respect we are two
men; An external man who is organized to develop his egohood in the
20th or 21st year, and an inner soul-man who already in his fourth or
fifth year, as to his soul-life, emancipates himself from his outer
organization. Emancipation of the Ego-consciousness from the outer
organization takes place in childhood. We go through something in our
soul which proceeds independently of our outer organization and which
can even come into sharp contradiction with our outer organization. We
are inclined, in regard to the inner consciousness of the Ego, to pay
no attention to our organization, to what is below in our bodies. In
our souls we develop in an entirely different way from that in which
our bodies develop.
Thus the course of inner development of mankind is twofold. The
development of our organization goes from the first to the seventh
year, then from the seventh to the fourteenth, from the fourteenth to
the twenty-first, in the above described way; but our inner
development is such that we are entirely independent of the above,
such that the consciousness of our Ego emancipates itself in tenderest
childhood and makes its own way through life. But what is the
consequence of this curious fact of human development? Only the
occultist can tell us this.
If we survey all that the occultist can teach, we come to a curious
fact. We come to see that sickness, frailty of the human organization,
all that makes possible illness, age, and death, comes from our being
really a duality. We die because we are organized in a certain way and
in our organization pay no attention to our Ego-development. That with
our Ego we go an independent path, not troubling ourselves about our
organization, this is brought home to us when this organization, in
sickness and death, places a hindrance before our Ego-development; we
are reminded that our Ego-development proceeds quite separately from
our organization. Whence comes really this curious fact of duality in
human nature?
When we examine man in connection with reality, we see that, if at a
certain time in the Earth evolution, namely in the Lemurian time, only
progressive forces had intervened in human development, the youthful
development of man would today proceed quite otherwise namely
so that it would keep even step with the Ego-development. At all times
the soul-development would coincide exactly with the body-development.
It would have been impossible for man to develop himself otherwise
than in the way now set up as an ideal, for example, in my pamphlet
The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.
(Anthroposophic Press, New York City) Had only
progressive forces been active at that time, the singular result would
have been that, in the first twenty years of life, man would have been
much less self-reliant than he is now. This lack of self-reliance is
not meant in a bad sense, but in such a way that each of you would
approve of it completely. For example, human nature in the first seven
years of life completely disposed to imitation. Since grown people, if
only progressive forces had been active in the Lemurian time, would do
nothing shameful, children between one and seven would be able to
imitate nothing bad. In the second seven years of life the principle
of authority would reign, whereas now it has come to be a curse of the
land, a curse of the world, that persons between seven and fourteen
want to be independent and are even educated to form independent
opinions. The grown persons would have been the natural authorities
for the children. From fourteen to twenty-one, man would have looked
much less into himself, upon his own self; he would have turned more
toward the outside. The force of ideals, the power of living himself
into his life-dreams would have become immensely significant for him.
Life-dreams would have sprung from his heart, and then full
Ego-consciousness would have appeared in his 20th and 21st years.
Thus there would be in the first seven years a period of imitation,
then in the second seven years a looking up to authority, then in the
third seven years a springing forth of ideals, which would bring man
to his full Ego-consciousness. The sum of those forces also working in
evolution which are called the Luciferic forces have brought about a
deviation from this path of development in the course of human
evolution. Since the Lemurian time they have torn the
Ego-consciousness away from the foundation of the organization. The
fact that we already have the Ego-consciousness in tenderest childhood
is to be traced to the Luciferic forces.
How did the Luciferic forces intervene? The Luciferic powers are
beings who remained behind on the Moon, and who therefore have no
understanding of the mission of the Earth, for that which should
develop for the first time on the Earth for the Ego after the 21st
year. They took man as he was on coming over from the Moon, and laid
in him the germ of self-reliant soul-development. So that in the
hastening of Ego-consciousness, in this peculiar cleavage in human
nature, lie the Luciferic forces. Knowledge of such a fact is given
for the first time by anthroposophy. It can be sensed by every man of
sound feeling, for every man can sense that there is something in him
which separates him from his full humanity. All that we call
unjustified egoism in our nature, all withdrawing from the activities
of men, all this stems from the Ego's not going along on the right
path of the organization. Thus do we see man before us, if he can
feel. If he says to himself: I could be other than I am; I have
something in me which is not in harmony with myself then
he feels the strife within him of the progressive powers with the
Luciferic powers. This fact had to occur in the course of human
evolution; it was necessary because man would never have become really
free without the Luciferic beings; he would have been always bound to
his organization. What on the one hand brings man into conflict with
his organization, gives him on the other hand the first possibility of
being free. One thing, however, remains out of this duality of the
organization for the ordinary human life; this shows itself in our
feeling that the Ego has become incapable, out of its own powers, of
transforming the organization.
When we survey the broad circumference of what has constituted and
created man, we find the two forces described above; there are the
organic forces of our human nature, which are intended to develop in
seven-year periods, and there are the Luciferic forces. If there were
nothing else in nature or in the spiritual life in the course of human
development, it would follow that man could never, through his
emancipated Ego, come into full harmony with his nature. Were there
nothing else in the field of earth-existence, man could only become
ever more estranged from his organization; his organization would
become ever more infirm, more dried up; the cleavage would necessarily
become always greater. If man only once reaches the point of intensely
feeling this as spiritual-scientific knowledge, then he comes to a
great moment in his life, when he can say: Here I stand with my
human organization which is given me by the progressive forces that
work from seven years to seven years (he need not express this in
precise words, he need only feel it dimly). But, because this
organization has an opposing force, which develops itself
independently, it becomes sick and infirm and finally dies. In
the depths of his soul man feels this. Without knowing anything of
anthroposophy, he need only have this feeling of a discrepancy between
the inner Ego and the outer organization, and, if he steeps himself in
this feeling, then he knows not whence there comes into
his soul something of which he feels: I myself, with the Ego
which I can trace back, can do nothing against my organization, for
which I am no match. But there comes something which I can take into
my Ego as force, which I can take into my consciousness as conviction;
directly from spiritual worlds comes something which does not reside
in me, but which permeates my soul. From unknown worlds something can
flow into my soul; if I take it up in my heart, if I suffuse my Ego
with it, then it helps me directly from spiritual worlds.
This which comes from spiritual worlds may be called whatever we like;
that is not important; only the feeling is important.
Let us assume that a man is today at odds with life and says to
himself: I must seek through the whole world to see if somewhere
a force will spring up which will give me something through which I
can come out of the conflict, something which will help me out.
In the nature of things this man could never find his way with
the means of the old religious confessions; in the ancient
ecclesiastical ideas he could never find anything which would give him
this force that he seeks. But, in order to have a concrete example,
let us assume that such a man went to one of the ancient holy
religions, that he went, for example, to Buddhism and steeped himself
in the extraordinary teachings of Buddhism. If the man felt, however,
naturally and in its full strength the cleavage described above, he
would feel I do not say this would come out of a theory, but
out of a dim feeling he would feel that in the personality, in
the individuality of Gautama Buddha, something had lived which could
appear in the world only on the basis of a long development. This
individuality went through many incarnations, achieved higher and
higher grades of evolution, and finally came so far that in the 29th
year of his life as Gautama Buddha, he was able to rise from
Bodhisatva to Buddha, was able to rise in such a way that he need
never more return to a physical body. How did that which flows out
from this individuality come into being? Every unprejudiced mind can
feel what speaks out of the Buddha, can feel all that first came about
and developed through the Bodhisatva in earth evolution after
developing through many incarnations. In the most beautiful and
comprehensive sense all this contains the forces which are found in
the periphery of the earth, in the interplay of the forces of the
organization and the Luciferic forces. Therefore, because it has gone
from incarnation to incarnation, because it stems from the same forces
from which the human forces stem, therefore that which flows from the
Bodhisatva to the Buddha has such an effect that the unprejudiced mind
does not feel anything that can call forth a full harmony between the
Ego of man and his organization. The soul feels that there must be
something which does not go from incarnation to incarnation, but which
can stream into every human soul directly from the spiritual worlds.
When the soul feels that it must have a relation to what
streams down from the heavens, then it is beginning to have an
inner experience of the Christ. Then the soul can
understand that in Christ Jesus something had to appear which was
different from everything previously existing. This is the radical,
fundamental difference, the difference in principle between the life
of the Christ and that of the Buddha.
Buddha rose from a Bodhisatva to a Buddha with the forces which cause
man to mount from incarnation to incarnation, as is the case with
other great founders of religions. Into the life of Jesus of Nazareth
something entered, something worked into the individuality of Jesus of
Nazareth, over a period of three years, which streamed down directly
out of the spiritual worlds, which had nothing to do with human
evolution, which previously was not connected with a human life. We
must keep this difference clearly in mind if we wish to understand
why, in what the fourth post-Atlantean epoch called the Christ, there
was something which was different from all other religious impulses,
and why the other religions have always pointed mankind toward this
Christ.
If we, in the post-Atlantean time, look back into the ancient sacred
Indian culture, we see the seven holy Rishis, in whose souls there
lived something of an immediate perception of the spiritual worlds.
Had one of the seven holy Rishis been asked about the fundamental mood
of his soul, he would have said: We look up to the spiritual
powers from whom all human development has proceeded. This reveals
itself to us in seven rays, but above this is something else,
something which lies above our sphere. Vishvakarman, this was
the name later given to what the seven holy Rishis thus felt. The
seven holy Rishis spoke of a power which had not developed with the
earth.
Then came the Zarathustra culture. Zarathustra spoke, when he directed
his gaze to the spirits of the sun, of something which should flow
into human evolution directly through a streaming out of the spiritual
worlds. What we can give to men, so spake Zarathustra,
is not that which will one day, from the sun-distances, stream
directly out of the spiritual worlds into mankind. What is
spiritual in the sun, this is what the later Persian culture called
Ahura-Mazdao.
In the Egyptian mysteries the Christ question was felt with a
particularly tragic force. It was felt in the deepest way, if by deep
we mean a form of human feeling in which there was an especially
strong consciousness that humanity stems from what is spiritual. The
Egyptian initiate said to himself: Wherever we turn our gaze, we
feel in what surrounds us the decline from the original spiritual.
Nowhere in the outer world is the spiritual to be found in its
immediacy and purity. Only when man steps through the gate of death
does he descry that from which he springs. Man must first die (in
relation to inner experience, not in relation to initiation); then he
becomes united with the Osiris-principle (so did the ancient Egyptian
name the Christ principle); in life this cannot be done, that is the
discrepancy. All that is in the periphery of the earth, this does not
lead to Osiris; the soul must first have passed the portal of death to
be united with Osiris. Then, in death, the soul becomes a piece of
Osiris, it becomes itself a sort of Osiris. The world outside has
become such that it dismembers Osiris through his enemy; that is,
through all that belongs to the external world.
And the initiate of the Egyptian mysteries said: Mankind, as it
now is in our culture, is a sort of reminiscence of the old Moon-time.
As the culture of the seven holy Rishis is a sort of reminiscence of
the old Saturn-time, as the Zarathustra culture is a reminiscence of
the old Sun-time, so is the Osiris-culture a reminiscence of the old
Moon-time when the Moon and its beings first separated from the sun,
on which, however, remained the beings from whom man took his origin.
At that time there took place the separation of man from the good
forces of his organization, from the source of his life-forces. But,
through the yearning and privation for the spiritual which will
endure, the time will come for men when Osiris will descend and show
himself as something which must come as a new impetus which was not
before on earth, because already in the old Moon-time it had separated
itself from the earth.
All that to which the seven holy Rishis and Zarathustra pointed, and
of which the Egyptians said that in their time men could not attain it
during life, this was the force, the impulse, which for three years
revealed itself in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. All great religions
spoke of it; it revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all
religions pointed. Thus not only Christians have spoken of Christ, but
also the members of all ancient religions. Thus something entered into
the course of human development which man needs and which is
accessible to inner experience.
Let us assume that a man grows up on a lonely island. Those who have
charge of his education tell him nothing of that happens in the world
in regard to the name of Christ and to the Gospels; they give him only
such culture as does not make use of the Gospels or the name of
Christ, culture which may have come to birth under the influence of
Christ, but divested of the name of Christ. What would happen in this
case? In such a man the following mood would be bound to appear. He
would say to himself one day: Something lives in me which is in
accord with my universal human organization; this I cannot at once
grasp. For that in which my Ego-consciousness lives presents itself to
me in such a way that I need something which cannot come to me through
human culture, I need an impulse from the spiritual worlds, in order
to make the Ego stronger again in its organization, from which it has
emancipated itself. If such a person can only feel strongly that
man needs, then something can come over him from which he will
recognize that, directly from spiritual worlds, something must stream
out which penetrates directly into his Ego. He does not know that this
is called Christ; but he does know that in his consciousness he can
suffuse himself with it, that in his Ego he can foster this which
comes to him from the spiritual worlds. Then something will come to
him of which he may say: Granted, I can be ill, I can be weak, I
can die; but from my own Ego I can make myself stronger, I can send
into my organization something which gives me strength and force
directly out of the spiritual worlds. It is indifferent what he
calls this; if the man comes to this feeling, he is gripped by the
Christ-impulse. That man is not gripped by the Christ-impulse who says
he can have something from a teacher who has passed from incarnation
to incarnation, but he who feels that directly from the spiritual
world there can come impulses of force, of strength. Men can have this
inner experience; without it men cannot live, without it men
will not be able to live in the future. They can have this experience,
because once, for three years, there lived objectively in Jesus of
Nazareth this impulse which came directly out of the spiritual worlds.
As it is true that a man can lay a seed in the earth, and that many
other seeds can come from this one, so it is true that the
Christ-impulse was once implanted into humanity, and that since that
time there is something in humanity which was not there earlier.
This is why the Egyptian life was so tragic. Men felt that in their
lives they could not come to Osiris; that they must first pass through
the gate of death, to be united with him in inner experience. Of
initiation we have still to speak. But since the time of the Mystery
of Golgotha that is possible which earlier was not possible: that of
his own motion, out of his single incarnation, man seeks his
connection with the spiritual world. And this is because the impulse
which was given through the Mystery of Golgotha can flash up in every
soul, and can enter, since that time, into every man through inner
experience. Not the Christ Who was on earth the soul does not
trouble itself about Him but the Christ Who is attainable
through inner experience. Since the Mystery of Golgotha it is
possible, in the single incarnations, to win a connection with the
spiritual. And because this is so, there happened in the one fact of
Golgotha something which can shine out into humanity, which is not
given through the achievements of the successive incarnations.
Therefore it is impossible that Christ should show himself in a way
which is a consequence of many incarnations, as happened to Buddha
from his incarnations as Bodhisatva.
Tomorrow we shall see how the path to the Christ in human evolution
can be found for the future.
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