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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz
Schmidt Number: S-2441
On-line since: 1st July, 2004
THE CHRIST IMPULSE IN HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
Locarno, 19th September 1911
I am very happy to be speaking to you today among these
peaceful mountains and within view of the wonderful lake about matters
appealing to our deepest interests, that is, revelations, realities of
the life of the spirit. And the most obvious fact that strikes those
of us who have gathered here today to visit our Alpine friends, is
this: that a number of our friends have withdrawn up here, not
necessarily for the sake of solitude, but at least for the peace and
charm of the mountains. And if we then ask ourselves what our hearts
are looking for, we might find that it is something very similar to
man's present-day longing for the spirit. And perhaps it is no
illusion to assume that in the world outside the same impulse is at
work as the one that spurred you on to come up here into the solitude
of the mountains.
Man knows, or senses dimly, that there is spirituality in all that
surrounds us in nature, in forest and crag, wind and storm; the kind
of spirituality which, according to a well-known figure in the West,
is more Consistent than man's activities, and his feeling and
thinking. We cannot help sensing that in everything that surrounds us
as forest and crag, mountain and lake, the spirit is coming to
expression. And in Spiritual Science we become more and more aware
that there is spirit in everything that expresses itself in nature
round about us and in the firm earth beneath us. Looking back into the
ancient past we can tell ourselves that we descend from a spiritual
past and are the children of ancient times. Just as we create our
works of art, exploring what we can make of the material to hand, in
just such a way did our ancestors create their implements and tools.
And the phenomena of nature are the product of the work of the ancient
gods in times long past. And if we permeate ourselves with such a
feeling, the whole of nature will gradually become for us what it has
always been for Spiritual Science. Even though it will seem a maya, it
will become the kind of maya that is beautiful and great, for the very
reason that it is the creation of the divine-spiritual. So when we go
out into nature we are among memorials reminding us of the spiritual
activity that took place in ancient pre-earthly times. Then we are
filled with that tremendous enthusiasm that deepens our feeling for
nature and can fill us with warmth.
When we can enhance our feeling for nature through Spiritual Science
we should also feel that it is in a certain respect a privilege to
have the good fortune to be within the spirit of nature. And it is
a privilege. For we can and ought to bear in mind how many people
there are who are unable to get close to the creations of nature in
their present incarnation. How many people there are today, especially
in cities, who no longer have the chance of feeling the uplifting
quality of the divine in nature! And when we look at nature with a
power of observation that has been enhanced by spiritual science, then
we know the intimate connection that exists between what we feel for
nature and what we call morality moral life being the highest
thing we can strive for in this life.
It is a paradox perhaps, but it is true to say that those people who
live in towns and have to forget what oats, wheat and barley look
like, unfortunately get separated in their hearts, too, from the
deepest moral sources of their existence.
If we bear this in mind, then we will certainly regard it as a
privilege to be able to be close to the sources of nature's spirit,
for a feeling like this of itself leads to another which, supported by
Spiritual Science, must become known in the world: that is, the truth
of reincarnation. To begin with we take it on trust, this truth
concerning man's repeated earth lives. But how can a soul stand firm
at the present time, when it sees what very different paths of life
people tread, and experiences all the glaring but inevitable
inequalities in the world. Then the human being who is privileged to
be near the well-springs of nature, not only feels that he has every
reason to be happy in knowing the truths of Spiritual Science, but he
also feels a great responsibility, a great obligation towards this
knowledge of the spiritual life. For what is the greatest thing that
these souls will be able to bring to the gate of death, these souls
who today have the privilege of enjoying peace and health in nature?
What will be their finest contribution?
If we look for a moment at what is taught us by the spiritual powers
that are closer to us now than they were in the nineteenth century,
what can we learn? We can learn, without any doubt, that we can take
something different with us into our following incarnations, in our
deepest soul, in our deepest feeling, if we imbue ourselves with
Spiritual Science, than we could if we kept aloof from it. Nowadays we
are certainly not expected to take in as an abstract theory what
Spiritual Science can give us. What your souls receive, what enters
into you like a theory, is there so that it can come alive in you.
And this happens with some people in this incarnation and with others
in the next. It will become real, immediate life, the life we cannot
conceive of unless we devote ourselves to that prophetic vision which
prompts us to ask: where does this development lead? With all its
fruits it leads straight into outer life. And what we can only express
in the form of words today, will become vision, vision in the young,
vision in the old, vision that brings blessing.
All those people who have not yet been able to approach the warmth and
light of Spiritual Science and to acquire the fruits of Spiritual
Science for themselves, will feel the blessing of such vision!
Everything that can exist in the way of outer personality will in the
future have that fire in it for which our present-day theories are the
fuel. It is just a handful of people who have the will to be the real
bearers of what, in the future, will have to reach all those who are
in need of it, that is the real, genuine fruits of human love and
human compassion. We do not study Spiritual Science for the sake of
our own satisfaction but so that we can acquire gentle hands that have
the power to bless, and gentle eyes from which power can shine forth,
so that we can give out all that springs forth from the eyes, all that
we call spiritual vision. Those people in particular who have this
attitude, and who have the good fortune to live so close to nature
should pay heed right now to the way everything is changing at the
present time! It is changing, in fact it is changing throughout
the cosmos.
It is wrong to say nature makes no leaps. Nature is perpetually making
leaps, from leaf to blossom, from blossom to fruit. When the chick
develops out of the egg, that is a leap. To say that nature makes no
leaps could not be further from the truth. There are leaps everywhere,
sudden transitions. And we are living in such a time of transition.
During our lifetime there has been a year of great importance:
( 11 )
the year 1899. The turn of the twentieth century is significant for
the whole of cultural development because it is the time when the
stream that came from the East and mingled with Western culture ceased
in order to make way for what can be drawn from the life of nature to
enliven the deepest levels of our life of soul.
Those men whose spirit is awakened will be able to see beings of a new
order in the processes of nature. Whilst the human being who has not
yet become clairvoyant will increasingly be able to experience that
despite all his melancholy feelings concerning the continual death
process, there is something of a rejuvenating quality in nature, the
human being whose clairvoyant faculties have awakened will see new
elemental beings issuing out of dying nature. Whilst in outer physical
nature relatively little will be seen of the great change at the turn
of the twentieth century, the spiritually awakened soul will feel:
times are changing, and we human beings have the task of preparing
spirit knowledge. It will become more and more important to observe
such things and carry them in our consciousness. For men are free
either to take up such things for the salvation of humanity or to let
them pass them by, which will lead to disaster.
That is to say, at the turn of the century a relatively new kingdom of
nature-beings will come into being, arising from nature like a
spiritual spring, and human beings will be able to see and experience
this. And further: though it would show great apathy of soul if a
person were unable to perceive the sprouting forth of springtime,
there is more to come. Those people who will grow able to experience
as a fact of nature what has just been described, will preserve these
impressions in quite a different way than through ordinary memory.
They will carry beyond the threshold the new elemental spirits that
stream towards them, as the seeds carry their life through the winter
into spring. What was experienced in spring and what was experienced
in autumn, this bursting forth of nature in the spring and this
melancholy in autumn, had no connection one with the other in the
past. What the cosmos gives out from its memory enables us to carry
over something of what we have experienced in the autumn into the
spring. If we let the elemental forces of autumn work in us, then we
can feel in a new way what will be given us in the future. Everything
will acquire something new in the future, and it is our duty to
prepare ourselves through our knowledge of the spiritual to understand
it. For Spiritual Science has not come into the world through the
personal whims of men, but because new things are happening in the
heavens, that can only be perceived when men take up the results of
spiritual research. This is why the theosophical movement has come
into being.
In the life of morality it is the same as it is in nature: the life of
the soul will experience a transformation. Certain things will happen
of which men have as yet no idea. I would just like to mention one
example. There will be more and more people, especially children, who
will have the experience that when they intend doing something or
other in the future, a voice will speak in their souls urging them to
refrain from action and listen to what is to be told them from the
spiritual world. Something will come to meet them, appearing before
their eyes like a vision. First of all they will be strangely touched
by these visions. When they have made a greater contact with Spiritual
Science they will then realise that they are seeing the karmic
counterpart of the deeds they have just done. The soul is being shown:
you must strive to take yourself in hand so that you can take part in
the evolution of the future. And it is also being shown that there is
no such thing as a deed without an after-effect. And this will be a
driving force bringing order into our moral life. Moral impulses will
be put into our souls like a karma, in the course of time, if we
prepare ourselves to open our spiritual eyes and our spiritual ears to
what can speak to us from the spiritual world.
We know that it will take a long time before men learn to see in the
spirit. But it will begin in the twentieth century, and a greater and
greater number of people will acquire this capacity in the course of
three thousand years. Humanity will devote itself to such things
during the next three millennia. In order that these things can
happen, however, the main streams of development again under
the direction of the spiritual guidance of humanity will take
their course in such a way that human beings will be able to come to
an understanding of occult life as I have described it today.
There are two main streams. The first is known through the fact that
there is a so-called Western philosophy, and that the most elementary
concepts of the spiritual world arise out of the purest depths of
philosophy. And it is remarkable what we see when we make a survey of
what has gradually taken place within the science of Western culture.
We see how some people become purely intellectual, whilst others are
rooted in the religious life, yet at the same time are filled with
what can only be given by the vision of the spiritual world that is
behind all existence. On all sides we see spiritual life flowing out
of Western philosophy. I will only mention Vladimir Soloviev,
( 12 )
the Russian philosopher and thinker, a real clairvoyant, though
he only saw into the spiritual world three times in his life: once
when he was a boy of nine, the second time in the British Museum, and
the third time in the Egyptian desert under the starry heavens of
Egypt. On these occasions there was revealed to him what can only be
seen by clairvoyant vision. He had a prevision of the evolution of
humanity. there welled up in him what Schelling
( 13 )
and Hegel
( 14 )
also achieved through sheer spiritual effort. As
they stood alone on the heights of thinking, we may now place them on
the summit which all educated people will eventually reach. All this
was said in the course of previous centuries, particularly the last
four centuries. When we survey this and work on it with the methods of
practical occultism, as has been done recently, in order to make a
special investigation into what the purely intellectual thinkers from
Hegel to Haeckel
( 15 )
have worked out, we can see occult
forces at work here too. And a very remarkable thing comes to light:
we can speak of pure inspiration in the case of just those people who
appear to have least of it. Who inspired all the thinkers who are
rooted in pure intellectualism? Who gave the stimulus for this life of
thought that speaks out of every book to be found even in the lowliest
cottage? Where does all this abstract thought life in Europe come
from, that has had such a curious outcome?
We all know, of course, how the great event took place. It happened
that an important individuality in the evolution of mankind, one of
the individualities that we call a Bodhisattva, incarnated in the
royal house of Suddhodana. We all know that this individuality was
destined to ascend to the next rank that follows after that of
Bodhisattva. Each human being who progresses and reaches the rank of
Bodhisattva must become a Buddha in his final incarnation. What does
this rank of Buddha signify? What does it signify in the case of the
particular Bodhisattva who attained the rank of Buddha as Gautama
Buddha? It signifies that Buddha as with every other Buddha
does not need to incarnate on earth any more in a body of
flesh. And therefore Gautama Buddha was destined, like every Buddha,
to work henceforth from the spiritual world. He must not appear again
on the earth in physical form, but his achievements in the course of
incarnations enabled him henceforth to send his influence into our
civilisation.
The first great deed that the Buddha had to accomplish as a purely
spiritual being was, as I indicated in Basle,
( 16 )
to send his forces
down into the astral body of the Jesus boy described in the Luke
Gospel, which came to significant expression in the Christmas message:
Divine beings are revealing themselves in the heights, and peace shall
come to men on earth who have goodwill.
If our souls are stirred by this message that angel beings hovered in
the aureole above the angelic child, we should know that in this aura
around Jesus the forces of the Nirmanakaya
( 17 )
of the Buddha were
active. Since then, the spiritual forces of the Buddha have been
incorporated in the events connected with the highest individualities
concerned with the Mystery of Golgotha. His forces work also in the
world conception stream of the philosophers of the West. He himself is
the driving force working out of the spiritual world into that life
that has penetrated as far as intelligence and has then gone astray.
If we read Leibniz,
( 18 )
Schelling and Soloviev today,
and ask ourselves how they have been inspired, we find that it was by
the individuality who was born in the place of Suddhodana, ascended
from Bodhisattva to Buddha and then continued to work selflessly. In
fact he continued to work in such a selfless way that we can go back
in time today to a point when not even the name of Buddha was
mentioned in the West. You do not find the name of the Bodhisattva who
became Buddha, not even in Goethe! You know, though,
that he lives in everything. He has met with so much understanding
that he works on unnamed in Western literature. The Middle Ages knew
about this, too, but they did not speak about it in this way then.
They tell us something different.
In the eighth century there lived a man called John of Damascus
( 19 )
who wrote a book in the form of a narrative. What was it about?
He relates that there once lived a great teacher who became the
teacher of Josaphat, instructing Josaphat in the secret doctrine and
the great Christian truths. And if you investigate all this you find
truths concerning those things. You also find narratives from Buddhist
literature. When we follow up our theme we come upon a legend, the one
that relates that Buddha went on living, not in an earthly human form
but in an animal form, that of a hare. And when a Brahman once
happened to find a hare which was the disguised Buddha
the Brahman complained to him about the misery of mankind outside in
the world, and Buddha made a fire and roasted himself, in order to
help mankind. The Brahman took him and transported him to the moon.
When you know that the moon is the symbol of the wisdom that lasts
forever, which lives in the human breast, then you see there is a
consciousness of Buddha's sacrifice, which has been developed and
presented in these old legends.
What is Buddha's task out there in the spiritual world? It is his task
now and for ever-more to kindle those forces in our hearts that can
give birth to great wisdom. This is how we must understand one force
streaming through our world; it is the Buddha force. It is also
represented in the form it has taken in our century, even though here
it has been reduced to abstraction. We have to try however, to
understand the occult significance of every spiritual form. To this
force is added the other one whose source was the Mystery of Golgotha,
and which combined with the Buddha force to make a necessary whole, in
which we must also now partake in earthly life. This force, emanating
from Golgotha, with which all men have to connect themselves, not only
affects man's inner life but involves our whole earthly existence.
Whilst the Buddha stream, like any other stream, concerns all of us as
human beings, in the case of the Christ Being we have a cosmic
intervention. All Bodhisattvas are individualities who go through life
here on earth, who belong to the earth. The Christ Individuality comes
from the sun, and walked the earth for the first time at the baptism
in the Jordan, dwelling in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth for
only three years. The uniqueness of the Christ Individuality was that
it was destined to work for only three years in the earthly world. He
is the same Being to Whom Zarathustra referred when he called Him
Ahura Mazdao, He Who is behind the visible sun, the same Whom the Holy
Rishis announced, and Whom the Greeks spoke of as the Being behind the
pleroma. It is the Being Who has gradually become the spirit of our
earth, the aura of our earth, since His blood flowed on Golgotha. The
first person permitted to see Him without witnessing the physical
event, was Paul.
Thus through the Mystery of Golgotha something took place that has
brought a completely new course of events into our earthly evolution.
Before that time, the greatest variety of concepts could be
assimilated through the many different religions. What crossed over
from the Buddha religion, when the being of Buddha streamed into the
astral aura of Jesus, and what I told you concerning the soul seeing
and feeling new things in nature, means nothing short of this: that
just as the Christ Being descended through the baptism into the
physical body, dwelt within it until the Mystery of Golgotha, and was
therefore here physically on the physical plane, He will now, in the
same way, begin working in the etheric world. So we can speak of a
physical incarnation from the event of the baptism by John until
Golgotha, and now of an etheric reappearance.
The etheric Christ will be perceived through the development of the
etheric body, and also through impressions of autumn which the human
being weaves into himself. Why was Christ here in a physical body? It
was so that man could develop higher in order to acquire the capacity
to perceive the Christ more and more in the etheric.
To sum up: we began this lecture with the elemental spirits
manifesting themselves in nature. We continued with those particular
visions that impel us to pause in our actions and listen to the inner
word. And in all these occurrences grouping themselves round a central
point we see that those human beings who find the right path to the
spiritual world and this does not mean trained clairvoyants,
who have always been able to find the Christ, but human beings through
their natural development will be able to see the Christ as an
etheric vision: see Him Who will only take part in world events from
out of the etheric. We see that all these occurrences group themselves
around the future Christ event. And if we look at the whole of
spiritual development in its progressive stages, we see that the
Buddha who sacrificed himself in the fire of love is the inspirer of
our Spiritual Science.
Those people who give careful thought to the reading of, for instance,
The Soul's Probation,
( 20 )
which I was able to have performed
in Munich, and who become aware of where all the mysterious forces are
to be found that point to what is in surrounding nature, and who also
pay heed to the wisdom of the future even if the wisdom of the
future is often the folly of the present, as the wisdom of the present
is often the folly of the future these people will become aware
that there will be a kind of chemistry pervaded by the Christ Impulse,
and a kind of botany pervaded by the Christ Impulse, and so on. The
world does not consist of lifeless molecules. All that is spread out
in nature comes from the spirit. Even a flower is an etheric being,
and on the other hand the spirit has come into the earth from outside
through this flower. In all the forms that spring forth out of the
earth we can see meaning of the highest order. Then we shall not only
know by faith, but we shall understand.
This has brought us to the second stream which has to unite with the
first. The coming years will bring many surprises to the earth. In
everything that will occur in this way we shall be able to see the
Christ Principle, whilst we shall become aware of the Buddha impulse
in a more inward way. This is why unless we have an understanding of
these sublime measures taken by the spiritual guidance of the world we
shall not see clearly how to seek the Christ Impulse, nor perceive
that it is He Who, in the course of history, leads one individuality
over into the other. What is there to offer the thinking man's thirst
for knowledge in the sort of phenomenon that is to be found in the
West, where all the thinking is expressed more in the style of
let us say Galileo, to name an example or again, in the East,
where it is expressed in the manner of Vladimir Soloviev?
When we see this, we acknowledge how objectively the Christ works.
Similarly, we can see the Christ Impulse in everything that happens
outside in the world.
Great things will happen in the next epochs of culture. What only
arose as a dream
( 21 )
of the great martyr Socrates in the
fourth epoch, will become reality. What was this mighty impulse of
Socrates? He wanted it to come about that whoever experiences a
moral precept and understands it so thoroughly that it becomes one
with his feeling, should also be a moral person, carrying his morality
into his actions. Consider what a long way from this we still are,
what a lot of people can say: such and such must happen but how
few have the inner power, the moral strength to do it! Moral
principles will have to be so clearly understood and moral feelings so
positively developed that we cannot inwardly know something without
having the impulse to carry it out with enthusiasm. For this really to
mature in the human soul, so that a moral impulse does not stop at the
stage of understanding, but has inevitably to become a deed, men will
have to live their way into these two particular streams. Then, under
the influence of the two streams, human beings will develop in
increasing numbers who are capable of carrying the feeling for the
acknowledgment of morality, through into action.
How does it come about that these two streams unite in humanity so
that the Christ can be taken up from within through the Buddha? It is
because the position of Bodhisattva has never been unfilled. As soon
as the Bodhisattva became Buddha, another attained to the rank of
Bodhisattva. And it was attained by the particular individuality who
is known to have lived as an Essene about a hundred years before Jesus
of Nazareth. This personality has been sadly slandered and
misunderstood, by the writer Celsus,
( 22 )
for example,
and particularly by Haeckel in his Riddles of the World.
He was the personality who carried out his task a full hundred
years before the Mystery of Golgotha, and he is known as Jeshu ben
Pandira, one of the incarnations of the Bodhisattva who succeeded
Gautama, the Bodhisattva who became Buddha. He will continue to work
as a Bodhisattva until three thousand years have gone by, and then,
when about five thousand years will have taken their course after the
Buddha became enlightened under the bodhi tree, he will become a
Buddha also. Every serious occultist knows that five thousand years
after the enlightenment of Gautama Buddha under the bodhi tree that
individuality who lives on as Bodhisattva will have become Maitreya
Buddha. He will have incarnated frequently before that time comes. And
then, when the five thousand years are over, a teaching will arise
that will be the teaching of Maitreya Buddha, Buddha of the Good,
where the spoken word works at the same time morally. Words are not
powerful enough at the present time to describe the reality of this.
It can only be perceived in the spiritual world, and human beings will
first of all have to be mature enough to receive it. What will be
special about the Maitreya Buddha is that he will have to repeat in a
certain way what took place at the event of Golgotha.
We know that the Buddha individuality entered into Jesus of Nazareth
and now only works into earth evolution from outside. All those
individuals who live as Bodhisattvas and will later on become Buddhas
have the particular destiny on earth, as every serious occultist can
see, of being in a certain respect unknown in their youth. Those who
do know something of them may see them as gifted people, but do not
see that the being of the Bodhisattva is working in them. It has
always been like this, and it will be like this in the twentieth
century, too. It will only become recognisable during the time that
lies between the thirtieth and the thirty-third year the same
span of time as there was between the baptism in Jordan and Golgotha.
Then a change takes place in the human being, and to a certain degree
he sacrifices his individuality and becomes the vehicle for another,
as the Jesus individuality made way for the Christ.
The Bodhisattva incarnations, which are those of the future Maitreya
Buddha, occur in unknown people. They work as individuals relying on
their own inner strength. The Maitreya Buddha will also work out of
his own inner strength, and against the stream of general opinion. He
will remain unknown in his youth. And when in his thirtieth year he
has sacrificed his individuality, he will appear in such a way that
morality will work through his words. Five thousand years after the
Buddha was enlightened beneath the bodhi tree his successor will
ascend to the rank of Buddha, and will be the bringer of the word that
works morally. We now say: In the beginning was the Word. We shall
then be able to say: In the Maitreya Buddha the greatest teacher has
been given us, and he has appeared in order to make apparent to men
the full extent of the Christ Event. His unique quality will be that
he, the greatest of teachers, will be the bringer of the most exalted
Word.
As it happens so often that great things that should be brought into
the world in the right way are so badly misunderstood, we must try to
prepare ourselves for what should come. And if we want to approach the
spirit at the point where the spirit of nature also speaks to us
morally, then we may say to ourselves: all Spiritual Science is in a
certain respect a preparation to help us understand what has been said
about past events when we discussed the changes that take place in the
course of time.
New times were dawning when John proclaimed the Christ. In a certain
sense we can also speak today of new times, in preparation for which
it is necessary for our hearts to change. Despite all the machinery of
civilisation that will appear in the outside world, men's hearts must
change in such a way that souls care about the spiritual world that
will make itself known in a new way, just at this time in which we
live. Whether a glimpse of it will become visible here in this life,
or at the gate of death, or at a new birth we shall not only
see this new world but work from out of this new world. And the best
that is often in us will come to realisation because, from beyond the
gates of death, beings send these forces into us from the other world.
And we shall also be able to send these forces, if we go through the
gate of death having acquired what we recognise to be the necessary
change for our time, about which I have permitted myself to speak to
you today.
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