LECTURE 3
Vienna, 11th April, 1914.
In this lecture we shall have to
draw attention to several positive results of occult investigation
which will enable us to penetrate into the nature of man and will
also show us what a complicated being man really is as he exists in
the world. Can we think otherwise than that this human being must be
a very complicated being, when we reflect how the true ideal of man,
that which it is possible for man to become if he really develops all
the possibilities contained within him, is fundamentally the content
of the religion of the Gods and that all the Spiritual Beings
belonging to the various hierarchies whom we know to be connected
with human nature really work together with one object, that of
building up man out of the whole cosmos, as the purport of that
cosmos.
The first thing we remark is that
when a human being receives impressions of the outer world, he
actually receives into his consciousness only a small portion of what
really surges in upon him. When in the physical world, he opens his
sense organs and the intellect connected with his brain and nervous
system, when he considers the world and tries to explain what comes
to him in this way, only a small portion of what surges in upon him,
really attains the form of ideas, only a tiny portion really enters
the consciousness of man. Light and colour contain much more than
what enters man's consciousness. In sound there is much more
than what comes into the consciousness of man. External materialistic
physics in its childish idea of the world says that behind colour,
behind light, etc., there are material processes, vibrations of atoms
and so on. This is indeed but a childish conception of the world, for
in reality the following comes to light: —
We must investigate human
perception with clairvoyant vision, for only by observing the actual
process of perception can we understand man's relation to the
surrounding world, even though we consider only the physical world.
Something quite unique appears when we observe the process of
perception clairvoyantly. Let us suppose some object affects our
eyes, we perceive light or colour, and thus we have in our
consciousness the sensation of light or colour. The remarkable fact
one discovers through spiritual investigation is that in the human
being there appears not only this light and this colour, but, in
consequence of light and colour, there appears what we might call a
sort of light-corpse or colour-corpse. Our eyes cause us to have the
sensation of light and colour. Thus we might say: The light streams
towards us and brings about in us the sensation of light; but looking
deeper into our being we discover that while we are conscious of
light, our human nature is permeated by something that has to die in
us in order that we may have the sensation of light. We can have no
perception, no sensation from outside without a sort of corpse being
formed as the result of this sensation.
The spiritual investigator has to
say: ‘Here I see a human being; I know that he has the
sensation of red. But I see that this red which is in his
consciousness pours forth something, pervades his whole being with
something which in so far as it has entered within his skin and the
limits of his etheric body — kills something in him which
becomes like the corpse of the colour. Imagine that whenever we
confront the physical world and have our sense-organs open, we always
receive into us the corpses of all our sensations, as phantoms —
but active phantoms. Whenever we perceive the outer world, something
dies in us. This is a most remarkable phenomenon. And the spiritual
investigator has to ask: What happens here? What is the cause of this
very remarkable phenomenon?
One has to consider what it
really is that comes to us as light. This light has a great deal
behind it. What manifests as light is only the forerunner, as it
were, of that which surges in upon us: at any rate there is not
behind the light that undulating motion which external physics
fancies, but behind the light, behind all sensations, behind all
impressions, there is that which we only comprehend when we view the
world occultly through Imaginations, through creative images. The
moment we perceive all that lives in light, in sound or in warmth, we
perceive, behind what reaches our consciousness, creative
Imagination, and within this again is revealed Inspiration, and
within that, Intuition. That which comes into our consciousness as
the sensation of light or sound is but the outermost layer, only the
froth, as it were, of what comes to us; but within it there is that
which, if it were to enter our consciousness, could become in us
Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition.
In what we perceive, we really
only receive one-fourth of that which assails us; the other
three-fourths penetrate into us without our being aware of them. When
we perceive colour, there presses into us, as it were, below the
surface of the sensation of colour, — creative Imagination,
Inspiration and Intuition; these sink into us. When we investigate
more closely into that which thus enters into us, we find that if
Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition were really to enter our
organism as they wish to do through sense perception, the result
would be, that even during the period of our physical earthly
existence between birth and death, they would bring about the same
spiritual effect as I mentioned yesterday as a possible result of the
temptation of Lucifer. This Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition
would so act upon us that we should have the impulse to cast behind
us every possibility that exists for our becoming the Ideal Man in
the far-distant future, and we should want to spiritualise ourselves
as we are now; we should want to become spiritual beings at the stage
of perfection we have now reached through our previous life. In a
certain sense we should say to ourselves: ‘It will be too great
an effort for us to become man, for to reach this goal we should have
to tread a difficult path in the future. We shall forego the
possibilities yet lying in man, we prefer to become angels with all
our imperfections, for then we can rise at once into the spiritual
world, we can then spiritualise our being; we shall however, be less
perfect than we might be in the cosmos, in view of our possibilities,
but still we shall be spiritual, angelic beings.’
Here again, you see from this
example the great importance of what is called the threshold of the
spiritual world, and how important the Being is, who is called the
Guardian of the Threshold. For there he stands, at the point of which
I have just spoken. It is he who only allows sensation to enter our
consciousness, and does not allow Imagination, Inspiration and
Intuition to enter; for if these were to enter they would rouse
within us a direct impulse to spiritualise ourselves just as we are,
foregoing all the subsequent life of humanity. This has to be veiled
from us; the door of our consciousness is closed against this impulse
which penetrates our being. And in so far as it penetrates our being
without our being able to illuminate it with the light of
consciousness, as we are obliged to let it descend into the dark
depths of our subconsciousness, there come towards it those Spiritual
Beings to whom Lucifer is opposed. These come into our being from the
other side and now arises within us the war between Lucifer, who
sends in his Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, and the
Spiritual Beings to whom Lucifer is opposed. With every sensation,
with every perception we should behold this battle, if the threshold
of the spiritual world were not closed to our outward perception. But
to clairvoyant vision it is not closed.
From this you may see what a
great deal really takes place in the inner part of human nature, and
the result in us of the battle which takes place there is what I have
described as a sort of corpse, a partial corpse. This corpse is the
expression of that which has to become entirely material in us, it is
like a mineral deposit, which we are unable to spiritualise. If this
corpse were not formed through the war between Lucifer and his
opponents we should have, instead of this corpse, the result of
Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition within us and we should rise
at once into the spiritual world. The corpse forms the dead weight by
which the good Spiritual Beings — the opponents of Lucifer —
detain us at first in the physical world, detain us in it so that
because of this veiling we should strive towards the true ideal of
human nature and the fulfilment of all the possibilities that may be
ours. Through this content, this corpse-phantom being formed in us,
through our receiving into ourselves, every time we perceive,
something which is at the same time a corpse, we kill in us during
the act of perception this ever-springing impulse towards
spiritualisation. It is while this deposit is forming that what I
have often mentioned occurs, and of which it is so important we
should recognise the full significance. Just consider! When you look
into a mirror you have a sheet of glass before you; this you would
see through, if it were not for the mirroring substance spread on it.
Through the mirroring substance being upon the sheet of glass
everything that is in front of the mirror is rejected. If you were
really to stand before your physical body in such a way that you
experienced the perceptions which pass into it from Imaginations,
Inspirations and Intuitions, you would then see through the physical
body, and your feeling would be such that you would say: ‘I
will have nothing to do with this physical body; I will take no
notice of it, but I will rise just as I am into the spiritual world.’
The physical body would really
stand before you like a pane of glass without any mirroring substance
behind it. But the physical body is now permeated with the corpse
which resembles the mirroring substance of the mirror and it reflects
everything that falls upon it, exactly as in the case of sense
perception. It is in this way sense that perceptions originate. The
permanent corpse we bear within us is the reflecting substance of our
whole body and we thereby see ourselves in the physical world. It is
because of this that we are individual physical beings in the
physical world. How complicated does the human being now appear to
us!
Let us take the other case, in
which we not merely perceive, but we think. When we think, it is not
a sense perception. Sense perceptions may give rise to thought, but
true thought does not consist of sense perceptions, it is a more
interior process. When we think, we make no impression in our
physical body with the actual thought, but we do upon our etheric
body. When we think, all that is in the thought does not enter into
us. Were all that is contained in thought to enter into us, we should
feel, every time we think, nothing but living, elemental beings
pulsing in us; we should feel inwardly alive. I mentioned once at
Munich that if a person were to experience thoughts just as they are,
he would feel somewhat as if he were in an ant heap. Thoughts would
live in him, everything would be alive. We do not perceive this life
in our human thought, because again, only what is like the froth of
it enters our consciousness and forms those shadow-pictures of
thought which appear in us as our thinking. On the other hand, that
which permeates thought as living force, sinks into our etheric body.
We do not perceive the living beings, the living elemental beings
swarming through us, but only an extract, something like a shadow of
them; but the other part, the life, does enter into us and as it
enters into us pervades us in such a manner that again a battle takes
place, this time in our etheric body, between the progressing spirits
and Ahriman, the Ahrimanic beings. And what is the outcome of this
battle? It is that thoughts do not appear in us as they would do if
they were alive. Were they to appear as they actually are, we should
feel ourselves within the life of the thought-beings moving hither
and thither; but we do not perceive this, and our etheric body, which
otherwise would be transparent, is rendered opaque. I might say that
it becomes somewhat like a smoke-topaz, which has darker layers in
it, while quartz is quite transparent and pure. In the same way our
etheric body is filled with a spiritual obscurity and that which thus
fills our etheric body is the treasure of our thought.
This treasure of thought arises
through thoughts being reflected, as it were, in our etheric body in
the way described, but in this case, in ‘time’, they are
reflected back as far as to the point of time to which our memory
extends in physical life. Memory is rejected thoughts, thoughts
reflected in time. But deep down in our etheric body, behind memory,
work the good divine Spiritual Beings to whom Ahriman is opposed and
there they create, they construct the forces which are able to
reanimate what has died in the physical body as the result of the
above-described process. Thus whereas in our physical body a corpse
is produced (a corpse which has to be produced, because otherwise we
should have the impulse to spiritualise ourselves with all the
imperfections we possess), something like an invigorating vital force
proceeds from the etheric body, so that in the future that which has
been killed can once more be regenerated.
We now see for the first time the
significance of ‘before’ and ‘afterwards’. If
in the immediate present we were fully to experience the Intuitions,
Inspirations, etc., which enter into us, we should spiritualise
ourselves, but through their being thrown into the future by Ahriman,
through their not being used now, but being preserved as germs for
the future, they attain at last to their true nature. That which we
should misuse at the present time we shall employ in the future, when
we have passed the portal of death, to shape a new life for ourselves
from out the spiritual world. That which — if we were to use it
in the physical world — would lead us to spiritualise ourselves
with all our imperfections is the force that leads us after death to
apply ourselves again to physical earthly life. In such opposite
directions do things work in different worlds!
Such is the case with respect to
our thought. And now let us consider feeling, that which we have
within us as inner feeling. That which we perceive as inner feeling
is, once more, not really what it could be according to its whole
inner nature. What we have within us as feeling, what enters our
consciousness as feeling, is only the shadow of what really lives
within us; for here again, in our feeling Spiritual Beings live.
Remembering what I said in the first lecture, you will perceive that
in feeling live the Spiritual Beings who are really at the back of
the whole of our planetary system, only they do not enter our
consciousness. Feeling, as we know it, enters our consciousness; the
rest remains outside our consciousness. What does it really mean when
we say that the rest remains outside our consciousness? It is really
very difficult to find words in ordinary language which exactly
describe these things. Just as we must say perception and thought
produce within us something that is really like a ‘killing’
— but in the case of thought, through counteraction, there is
at the same time a sort of impulse towards a future ‘making
alive’ — so also we have to say that every feeling we
have is not really born in us, it does not come fully into existence.
If everything that is in us when we feel were to emerge, what is
contained in the feeling would lay hold of and give force to that
which is behind the feeling in quite a different manner. That which
really makes feeling into a living being, into a living being whose
life is nourished by the entire planetary system, does not appear
directly. Feeling does arise in us but as a shadow of what it really
is. The result is that however profoundly a person may enter into his
world of feeling, however deep his feeling for humanity, he is really
aware of something unsatisfactory in respect of every feeling. He
perceives that each feeling might be enhanced, it might come forth
with more power. Especially as regards feeling we have something like
a secret consciousness that it could reveal to us much more than it
does; it hides something that lives in our inner being, something
that is in the depths of our soul and that is only half born.
When we pass on to our will, to
all that as wish and will can arise within us, the case is the same
as with feeling, but to a higher degree; for behind the will is to be
found the Spiritual Being, the Causal Being, who really lives in the
sun. In the will there lives not merely that which lives in the
planets, but that which lives in the sun itself — but hidden.
The will is still less entirely born than is feeling. The will would
permeate us very, very differently, if all that is contained in it
were really to manifest itself in our consciousness. Only the
outermost surface of the will, only it's most superficial part
is really expressed. The other remains hidden from us. Why does a
whole world remain hidden from us in feeling and in will? It is
because if that which remains hidden from us were to be seen from the
physical plane, we could not bear it. Seen from the physical plane it
would have such an appearance that we should want to ward it off, we
should want to turn away from it.
That which lives in feeling and
in will, and remains unborn, is karma in process of development,
evolving karma. Let us suppose, to choose a concrete example, that we
have a hostile feeling towards someone. That which comes into our
consciousness when we have this hostile feeling is but the ripple on
the surface; below, forces are active which extend over the whole of
our planetary system. But it is precisely that which remains hidden
that says to us: ‘Through thy hostile feeling thou art
implanting in thyself something that is imperfect,’ this thou
must make good. The moment that were to appear, which dwells below
the surface, we should see before us the ‘Imagination’ of
what karmically must balance this hostile feeling. In order to avoid
the compensation we should unite ourselves with Lucifer and Ahriman,
because we should judge what we saw from the standpoint of the
physical plane. On the physical plane this is hidden from us; the
Guardian of the Threshold hides it from us because we can only judge
the things which are unborn in our feelings and in our will when we
live in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. There we will
what otherwise we never should will; there we will that what
corresponds to a hostile feeling shall really be corrected, because
there we have a true interest in the contents of divine religion, in
the perfect ideal of humanity, which would make of us perfect human
beings. From this we know that what has come to pass through a
hostile feeling must receive its equivalent compensation. It has to
be held over till the future, only after death may that appear which
has remained unborn in our feeling and will.
Thus you see I have presented to
you four things connected with the human soul. That which remains
unborn in our feeling lives in the astral body. That which remains
unborn behind our will, lives in the ‘I’. Again, when we
receive impressions of the outer world we receive into us at the same
time something like a physical corpse, which is really the
mirroring-substance of our physical body. We also have within us a
deposit, resembling a beclouding of the etheric body. In our astral
body we have something which does not come to birth in the period
between birth and death; and in our will we also have something which
is not born during this period. This fourfold possibility which a
human being bears within him, must be aroused in the period between
death and re-birth. It lives within us as the kernel of our soul,
just as surely as the seed for the following year lives in the plant.
Thus we do not only speak of a soul-seed in a general way, but we can
even comprehend this soul-seed in its fourfold nature. When we have a
feeling which produces an inward uneasiness, when we are not in
harmony with life, it is because a certain pressure is exercised upon
the conscious part of our feelings by the unborn part of our
feelings. How can this pressure be relieved? Now this pressure is
something to which every human being is continually exposed; for what
I have just described — in so far as it relates to feeling and
will, that is, to what is really our soul-life — is that which
brings us into inner disharmony. If there were true unison between
that part of feeling and will which is born, and that which remains
below the threshold of consciousness, if the right relationship, the
right harmony existed, we should live in this sense-world as happy
and useful human beings. Here lies the real reason for all inner
dissatisfaction. If anyone is inwardly dissatisfied, it comes from
the pressure of the subconscious part of his feeling and will.
Now, to the explanation I have
given, I must add that the nature of man has changed in the course of
his evolution. What I have just described applies particularly to the
present time, but it was not always thus. In ancient periods of human
evolution, let us say in the ancient Persian, Egyptian and Indian
ages, it was different. Of course man's perceptions arose in
exactly the same manner, and Imaginations, Inspirations and
Intuitions were contained in them; but in ancient times these
Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions were not so entirely
without effect upon man as they are to-day. They did not kill so
completely the inner physical part of man. They did not make such a
dense mineral deposit. This was because, in those ancient times under
certain conditions when perceptions came from outside, something shot
up out of feeling and will to meet it. If, for example, we go back to
the Egyptian or the Babylonian civilisation and observe human beings,
then we find that they perceived quite differently. Of course they
confronted the outer sense-world just as we do, but their bodies were
so organised that the Imaginations hidden within the
sense-perceptions had not only their destructive effect, but they
entered with a certain life-giving power. Because they entered in
this living way they produced inwardly the reflection of that which
now remains entirely hidden in the Ego and astral body. The Spiritual
Beings belonging to the sun and planetary system pressed out from
within and reflected as it were that which was animated by the
Imagination; so that to the people belonging to the ancient Egyptian
and Babylonian civilisations there were certain times when, on
turning their gaze to the physical world, they did not only have
physical perceptions as we have them, but life-endowed perceptions.
The Egyptian knew that behind his
perceptions there was something which expressed itself in
Imaginations. Hence he was not so foolish as to suppose that behind
the perceptions there were vibrations of material atoms, as our
present physicists do, but he knew that there was life behind them
and from his inner being there streamed towards him pictures of the
animated starry heavens and the living sun.
This was particularly strong
during the Persian culture, when, together with the outer perception,
something like the inner, spiritual force of the sun shone forth —
Ahura Mazdao! If we go back to still more ancient times we find this
interaction, this meeting of the inner and the outer expressed very
much more strongly. To-day this can no longer be the case; but there
can be a substitute, and here we reach a point where from the very
nature of the thing we can really understand the task of the
anthroposophical conception of the world. A substitute has to be
produced. We confront the outer world with our perceptions. We think
about it, a part of this outer world remains hidden from us, and this
has a deadening and darkening effect upon us, but through Spiritual
Science we can restore that which is thus darkened and deadened. It
is precisely through the restoration of what otherwise is killed and
darkened, that the science originates which portrays evolution
through the Saturn, Sun and Moon Periods, as described in my book
Occult Science.
Every human being possesses this knowledge
regarding the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, only it is in the
background of his consciousness. He would prefer not to be an earthly
man were he able to see it directly, without the necessary
preparation: he would prefer not to have any connections with the
earth, and to end with the Moon evolution. All the knowledge we are
able to acquire through Spiritual Science illuminates the hidden part
of evolution in the past. That which as Imaginations, Inspirations
and Intuitions lives outside and does not consciously enter into us,
is really what we have gone through in the past. To gain this
knowledge we must pass beyond the veil of sense-perception.
It is somewhat different
regarding what is contained in our feeling and will. A person may say
(and many have the impulse to say this at the present time): ‘Why
should I concern myself with what these odd people think out, or have
thought out, regarding a super-sensible world? I do not accept such
ideas!’ A person who says this has never formed any idea as to
why religions have come into our evolution. The one thing which all
religions have in common is that they relate to things we cannot
perceive with our senses: a person who accepts religious ideas fills
himself with something he cannot perceive with his senses. Ideas
which come from what we sensibly perceive, never give such an impulse
to our feelings and will as may have an uplifting power after death.
In order that the ‘unborn’ part of our feeling and will
may continue to be active after death — as indeed it must —
we do not use ideas gained through the perception of the senses, or
through the intellect attached to the brain. These do not help us at
all. The only ideas which give us the impulse and power which we need
after death, are the ideas which correspond to that which is not
outwardly real, the conceptions which when accepted make us pious and
by which we look up to a spiritual world. Religious conceptions are
those which cannot work in us as yet, but they become active forces
after death. When we acquire religious conceptions we are not merely
acquiring knowledge, but something that can become active after our
death. For this reason it must be that anyone who does not want to
reflect upon active forces of such a nature may laugh about them and
in his materialism may reject them, but if he does not acquire ideas
regarding what is super-sensible he will have but crippled powers
wherewith to develop that which has remained unborn in his feeling
and will.
Therefore it must frequently be
stated that light is thrown on the past by clairvoyant consciousness.
This is recognised at the present time in so far as it exists behind
the veil of the sense-world as Imagination, Inspiration and
Intuition. In former times this consciousness was given to man as a
religious belief, in order that he might not lose all uplifting power
for the period after death and that he might have something in his
soul — like a seed — that could carry on the life of the
soul even when he had laid aside the physical body. The time has now
come when mankind ought to acquire ideas about the super-sensible
worlds through the understanding of Spiritual Science. For this
reason it cannot be too often stated that the spiritual investigator
alone can investigate these matters in the super-sensible world; but
when they have been investigated and then imparted to us, there is
something in our inmost soul which is a hidden language of the soul,
which can grasp and understand the discoveries made by the spiritual
investigator. It is only when the prejudices of the mind and senses
hold sway that the super-sensible ideas furnished us by spiritual
research are looked upon as nonsense, as foolishness and fantasy —
ideas which, when accepted, endow the soul with an uplifting power
which enables it to find its way in the cosmos through all the ages
to come. It will always be the case that only those who have gone
through an esoteric development will be able to investigate the
contents of the spiritual world; but to know these contents, to work
upon them inwardly in the consciousness, to hold them as ideas and
conceptions, to possess the spiritual world as a certainty of the
soul's existence is something that humanity will have need of
more and more as its necessary spiritual food.
It is this which shows us how,
from its very nature, the mission of our Anthroposophical Movement
can be understood. In ancient times it still was the case that
knowledge was animated from above and the capacity for receiving this
knowledge came from below. Hence the ancients still possessed a
direct consciousness of the spiritual worlds, but this consciousness
gradually became dim and dark. Had this not come to pass, man would
not have arrived at the full consciousness of the Ego, He can only
attain to full consciousness of his Ego by developing to the highest
degree in his physical body, the phantom-corpse of which I have
spoken. Our physical body, as a transparent being, must be, as it
were, entirely overlaid with ‘mirror-foil’ and only when
it is completely overlaid, are we so conscious of ourselves that we
can say: ‘I am an I’. But the complete overlaying has
only been done slowly and gradually, for it has developed in the
course of the evolution of humanity: it was completed in the age in
which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.
The application of the
‘mirror-foil’ was then completed. Before that time the
higher and the lower natures of man still met, what was below and
what was above in a human being came together. One may say that
through the covering of ‘mirror-foil’ being perfected,
the higher and the lower were completely forced apart and this only
came about when the event of Golgotha drew near.
What had then really taken place?
Let us look more closely at what had taken place. Picture to
yourselves the consciousness of these ancient people before the
Mystery of Golgotha. From outside comes the life-giving force of
Imaginations; from within arise pictures of the superhuman spiritual
world. What are these pictures which thus arise in the human being?
As we know, this was possible in ancient times, owing to the clouded
condition of human consciousness. Those who knew these things, those
who as Initiates were able to see the human soul and who saw it in
this meeting of the life-giving Imagination from without and the
vision from within, these did not say, ‘Man alone sees this’;
but these ancient Initiates — the ancient Jewish Initiates, for
example — said: ‘Jahveh or Jehovah looks upon His world
in man. God thinks in man.’ Just as at the present time, in our
cycle of evolution, when we have a thought, we may say ‘I
think’, those who knew these things in ancient times said, when
the pictures from the spirit-worlds appeared to them, ‘The Gods
are thinking in us.’ Or as they recognised the unity of
Divinity in Monotheism, they said, ‘Jehovah thinks in man; man
is the stage whereon the play of divine thoughts is carried out.’
Men felt themselves inflamed by these thoughts; therefore they said,
‘In me the Gods think.’ But the necessity arose in human
evolution that this should become more and more impossible and that
darkness should spread more and more. The possibility of seeing
visions, the thoughts of the Gods in man, ceased. The phantom-like
corpse in man became more and more pronounced. The time drew near,
when no more thoughts came forth from our human nature to meet the
Gods. The Divine Being regarding whom it was said that He thought
through man, felt His consciousness becoming dimmer and dimmer —
for His consciousness consisted in His thoughts. And the longing
arose within this Divine Being to awaken a new form of consciousness.
When men acquire a different form of consciousness, they acquire
something of the utmost importance. When the Gods create a new form
of consciousness, they create with it something essential; something
of the most profound moment occurs. The thing of profound importance
that now came into being was the Christ. Christ the child of the
Godhead, restored to man the power whereby he was conscious of God —
restored the consciousness which the previously mentioned Divine
Being had felt to be darkened. To accomplish this the Christ had to
enter into and become a part of human nature. We must become fully
aware of the fact, that in the act of perceiving the sense-world we
receive continually into ourselves the content of death; that when we
think about this world we are receiving obscuration and darkness into
ourselves; and when we feel and will, something remains unborn in us.
All these remain below in the depths of our consciousness, and with
them there enters into us the content of something dead and something
unborn which we can only first make use of after we are dead. But the
power to do this would be crippled, if we could not let it sink into
the Being whom the Godhead has brought to birth as the principle of a
new consciousness, if we could not let it flow into the Christ-Being.
When through spiritual science we really recognise the meaning of
evolution, we become conscious of the following: — We realise
that we send down into the subconscious depths of our being that
which dies in us; but the death which we send down more and more into
our own being is received by the Christ Who comes to meet us with
life-giving power. Christ gives life to that which dies in us, which
darkens in us, which remains unborn in us. We allow that to die in
us, which must die in order that we may approach the true ideal of
humanity with all the possibilities it contains; but the
death-content which streams into us we pour into the Christ-Being,
for He has pervaded human evolution since the founding of
Christianity, and we also realise that what remains unborn in us, our
feeling and will, is received by the Christ-substance into Whom it
will sink after death. For within us dwells the Christ ever since He
passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Into Christ we let sink the
death-content which is present with every perception; into Him we
allow the darkening of our power of thought to sink. Into the light,
into the spiritual sunlight of Christ we send our darkened thoughts,
and when we pass through the portal of death, our unborn feeling
sinks within the substance of Christ and so too does our unborn will.
When we understand evolution aright we say to this evolution: In
Christ we die —
IN CHRISTO
MORIMUR.
|