CHAPTER VI
E have spoken of two spiritual streams, flowing through different peoples,
and passing from old Atlantis towards the East. We saw the difference in
their development and how they were enabled to prepare future events; and
we observed how the southern stream more particularly tended to
deepen the power of penetration to the spiritual world which lies
behind the soul world of man, while the other more northerly
spiritual stream directed man's attention to his earthly environment
in order to make him aware of the spiritual world behind the world of
the senses. Mention has been made of the development in the southern
stream of qualities which led to spiritual beings connected with the
Luciferic principle, and of the gradual approach to earth, on the
other side, of the kingly spiritual being behind the sun in order
finally to incarnate in a physical body, which, through many
incarnations of a certain individuality, had been so purified that
the Godhead found in it not merely an image of itself, but was able
actually to incarnate within it. The incarnation of the Christ, the
sun spirit, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was the great event
which took place in the northern stream of peoples. Now these two
streams of peoples may, be said to have moved towards each other in
order to be mutually enriched, and during their progress there arose,
in the first epoch after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the ancient
Indian race in the south of Asia, a race in which the human soul was
in a certain sense able to look out towards the external world of the
senses as well as into itself to find the spirit, because it
instinctively recognised the unity between the spirit in the external
world and the spirit within man. Let us picture to ourselves the
feelings of the ancient Indian when he looked out at the sense world,
at the earth with its mountains and forests, its tapestry of plant
life, its animal and human kingdoms.
Possessed
in high degree of spiritual sight, this ancient Indian soul
perceived, underlying everything, a spiritual world consisting of
beings of etheric substance, who did not descend to the density of a
physical body. In the mountains, trees and stars the soul of the
ancient Indian saw not only the dense elements but also the finer,
etheric nature, in the shape of the external world of the gods. It
should not of course be imagined that these spirits were composed
merely of ether but just as the etheric, the astral and the ‘I’
principles are within the physical body of a man, so these spirits
had an etheric body for their lowest principle and their other,
higher principles in higher worlds. The Indian, looking into this
world, felt that he stood upon the Earth; that as man he had through
long periods of time developed from the first germ of human existence
on ancient Saturn down to the Earth evolution; that it was necessary
for him to descend to dense physical matter in order to acquire
self-consciousness within it. He said: ‘I, speaking to myself,
am an Ego being; formerly I was a companion of all those spiritual
beings visible around me to spiritual sight from the etheric world
upwards. I have descended from these worlds to denser matter, yet in
them all human perfection's are to be found, not only those now
possessed by man, but those which he will have to attain through his
own efforts. But there is one thing which no being who does not
descend to the physical plane can attain. There are in the universe
other lofty perfections as well as the recollection peculiar to human
consciousness. There are other kinds of consciousness, but in order
to develop that of a man on earth, it is necessary for a being to
descend to this earth and for a number of incarnations to be embodied
in dense matter.’ The soul of the ancient Indian further
realised that whatever infinitely higher perfections than man on the
Earth these spiritual beings possessed, there was one thing they had
not in their world, namely, the human ego consciousness that to say
‘I’ as a man does, was not natural in those higher
worlds. The Indian felt himself to originate from these realms and
everything existing in the spiritual worlds to be summed up for him
in his human ‘I’ consciousness. He knew that to speak of
a human ego consciousness in the spiritual world had neither meaning
nor content. Hence only a word which excludes this ‘I’
can be applied to everything that in a spiritual sense is spread out
in the surrounding world, a word which is not in contact with the ‘I’
... And the Indian consciousness named that which spread itself out
externally, the ‘Tat,’ the ‘That’ in
contradistinction to the ‘I.’ In order to express the
fact that man is of the same nature and essence as the ‘That,’
the ‘Tat,’ or the ‘It’ — that the ‘I’
or ego had only developed because of the descent to the Earth —
the Indian said: ‘I am Tat, Thou art That.’ Thus man's
relationship to the surrounding spiritual world (to this clairvoyant
penetration of the ultimate nature of our world) was combined in the
words: ‘It exists; but thou thyself art that.’
But
the ancient Indian realised at the same time that the reality without
designated as ‘Tat’ is also to be found by a man looking
into his own inner being, that this reality manifests at one time
from without, at another time from within. Therefore men of those
ancient times knew that by sinking down into the soul they came to
the same primordial spiritual reality as the external ‘Tat,’
but that the right relationship between them and what was living
within them as their original ‘cause,’ so to speak,
veiled by the life of the soul, was expressed by saying instead of
‘Thou art That,’ ‘I am Brahman,’ and ‘I
am the All.’ And they took the two together to mean the
following: ‘When I look out into the world of “Tat”
I find a spiritual world, and if I dip down into my own soul life I
find a spiritual world, and the two are one.’
As
we have seen, in ancient India, a perception of the unity of the
outer and of the inner was the typical outlook of the soul; and it is
to be expected that the other extreme will consist in turning the
gaze outwards, and in penetrating through the tapestry of the sense
world to the spiritual world lying hidden behind it. And this is what
actually happened to a different people. They saw the outer spiritual
world, but could not realise immediately that it was the same as the
inner spiritual world. Hence it is not surprising that religious
conceptions and philosophical thoughts spring up, all fervently
directed to the gods and spirits behind the sense world; that
mythical and other descriptions for these divine spiritual beings
behind the tapestry of the sense world were given to the people; and
that in the mysteries of that age men were led into the spiritual
world which is behind the sense world. Nor will it be a matter for
wonder that side by side with such mysteries and such racial gods
something else is to be found; that at the same time there were
mysteries leading man along the path through the inner soul life to
its deepest foundations. And in very fact we find a region of post
Atlantean civilisation where those two kinds of mysteries existed
contemporaneously — a region where on the one side the
so-called Apollonian culture and mysteries were developed, and on the
other the culture and mysteries of Dionysos. Such a division is to be
found in ancient Greece. There we have on the one hand the path which
was shown to the people as well as to the Initiates, the path leading
out into the spiritual world, to what is behind the senses, to the
spiritual world behind the sun. So far as the Greek knew this world,
he gave it the name of the realm of the Apollonian beings. Apollo,
the Sun god, was the representative of the divine spiritual beings
which exist behind the tapestry of the sense world. But there was
also a class of mysteries pointing the way through the soul life into
its spiritual foundations, mysteries concerning which we already know
that man may enter them only, after careful preparation, and after
having attained a certain degree of maturity. For this reason the
second kind of mysteries was more carefully guarded against
immaturity than were the Apollonian. The Apollonian gods were
indicated to the masses of the people, whereas the spiritual beings
to be found along the path through the inner nature were reserved for
those who, through spiritual, intellectual and moral training of
their inner life had reached a certain state of maturity. This second
kind of mystery cult was known as the Dionysian mystery and its
central spiritual being was Dionysos. So it is natural that in
Dionysos, this central figure of the inner circle of gods, men
perceived a being standing in near and intimate relationship to the
human soul; a being not unlike man, but one who did not descend so
far as the physical plane; a being to be found by sinking from the
physical plane into the depths of the soul life. Here we have in
point of fact the deeper causes of the Apollonian and the Dionysian
division in the spiritual culture of the Greeks. In more modern times
a dim consciousness that something of the kind had existed in Greece
made its appearance in several places. The group gathering round
Richard Wagner realised the existence of something of the kind
although without definite knowledge of its spiritual foundations. And
Friedrich Nietzsche, a member of this group, founded his first
remarkable and inspired work: ‘The Birth of Tragedy out of the
Spirit of Music’ on this very division of Greek spiritual life
into the Apollonian and Dionysian mystery cults. These occurrences
were a dim realisation of what may be known to an ever-increasing
degree through spiritual meditation. In the minds of many men today
there is a kind of yearning for such a deepening of the spiritual
life. There is a widespread feeling that this deepening alone can
give an answer to man's yearning. Thus in ancient Greece these
two divine spiritual worlds are side by side. In ancient India they
appeared as a unity, in a state of reciprocal permeation.
Now
let us turn again to evolution. We have already seen that only the
most advanced group of the northern stream of nations, namely the
ancient Persian civilisation of Zoroaster, could originate the ideal
of creating a body in which the spiritual being approaching humanity
and the earth from outside could incarnate. And Zarathustra took upon
himself the task of passing through his incarnations in such a way as
to take later re-birth in a body spiritualised to such a degree that
it was able to receive into itself the sublime sun-spirit in its most
perfect form, in its Christ form. Zarathustra was reborn as Jesus,
having made himself ripe through his various incarnations to be the
vehicle of the Sun spirit for the space of three years. [Dr.
Steiner has in many lectures gone more fully into the difference
between the Jesus of Bethlehem and the Jesus of Nazareth, and
explained to some extent the deep mystery here referred to. The
translation of a small work by Dr. Arenson on this subject, and
called the “History of the Child-hood of Jesus,” is
strongly recommended to those interested. It is published
simultaneously with this volume by the Anthroposophical Publishing
Company, price 2p.]
We
may now ask: What is the relation of Apollo to the Christ? When a
Greek uttered the name of Apollo, he referred to the spiritual realm
behind the sun. But men's conception of a being or of a fact differs
according to their capacities. The man who has cultivated a rich
inner life within his soul is capable of seeing in a truer form
things which a less developed person also sees, so when the Greek
uttered the name of Apollo he was indeed referring to the being which
later was revealed as the Christ, but he could only conceive of it in
a kind of veiled form, as Apollo. Apollo is in a certain sense a
garment of the Christ, resembling in its form the being within it.
Veil after veil had to fall from that figure conceived of by the soul
as Apollo before the Christ could become visible and intelligible to
the intuition of men. Apollo is an intimation of the Christ, but not
the Christ Himself.
Now
what is the most essentially characteristic quality of the Christ so
far as our cycle of evolution is concerned? To consider all those
divine spiritual beings to which men of ancient times looked up to as
the upper gods behind the tapestry of the sense world, as the rulers
and lords of the spheres and functions of the universe, is to realise
that their characteristic quality is that they do not descend so far
as the physical plane; they only become visible to the consciousness
of the seer, which transcends the physical plane and is able to see
on the etheric plane. There Zeus, Apollo, Mars, Wotan, Odin, Thor,
who are all real beings, became visible. It was characteristic of
these spiritual beings not to descend so far as the physical plane,
but at the most to manifest temporarily in some kind of physical
embodiment, a fact which is cleverly indicated in the myths when
mention is made of momentary appearances of Zeus or other gods in
human or some other form, when they descended to the world of men in
order to carry out some purpose. It is not permissible to speak of a
permanent physical incarnation of these spiritual beings behind the
sense world. We may say that Apollo is a figure incapable of
descending into physical incarnation. For this descent requires a
higher power than Apollo possessed, namely, the Christ power. And in
the Christ all the qualities of the other beings out in the universe
were united, all the qualities which are revealed to the
consciousness of the seer; but above and beyond all these He
possessed the ability to break through the barrier separating the
world of the gods from the world of man, and was able to descend into
a physical body and become man in a human physical body that had been
prepared for Him upon the earth. In the divine spiritual world this
ability was possessed by the Christ alone. Thus one being, and one
being only of the divine spiritual world descended so far as the
stage of taking up its abode in a human body in the sense world, and
living as man among other men. This is the great and mighty Christ
event, and this is how we have to conceive it. Whereas therefore all
gods and spirits can be found only by the consciousness of the seer
and beyond the physical world, the Christ is to be found within the
physical world, although He is a being of the same nature and essence
as the other divine spiritual beings. The other gods can only be
found in the external universe: the Christ is He who was born within
the human soul, Who, as it were, leaves the outer world of the gods
and enters into the inner nature of man. This has been an event of
great significance in the evolution of the world and humanity. Before
the Christ event it — had been necessary to descend to the
sub-terrestrial gods hidden behind the veil of soul experiences if an
inner god was sought; the Christ is a God Who may be found without as
well as within. This is the essence of what happened in the fourth
post-Atlantean epoch, after the Indian, the Persian and the Egyptian
periods. The contemplative vision and abstract perception in ancient
India of the fact that the divine spiritual world was a unity, and
that Tat and Brahman, streaming to the soul from two sides, were an
unity, became a living life through the Christ event. Formerly men
could say that the divinity to be found on the outward path and the
divinity to be found on the inward path were one. After the Christ
event it was possible to say that if the soul participates in the
Christ, a descent to the inner life will reveal a being which is
Apollo and Dionysos united in one.
Another
question arises here. We have seen that divine spiritual beings of
the external world are, for man, represented by the mightiest of
them, by the Christ, Who, as an outer being, at the same time becomes
an inner being. But what of those other beings designated in the last
lecture as ‘Luciferic?’ Knowledge gained as the result of
spiritual development teaches us that it would not be correct to say
that the beings under the leadership of Dionysos work themselves
through into the human soul life, and that, as it were from the other
side, a Dionysos — a Luciferic being — incarnated as a
man. Here we arrive at something vitally and essentially connected
with the evolution of humanity and of the universe. If we go back to
very ancient times, we find that the soul looking outwards sees the
external spiritual world, and looking inwards, sees the inner divine
spiritual world; the Apollonian world objectively, and the Dionysian
world subjectively, to use the Greek expressions. Later on in
evolution matters change somewhat. In the most ancient times, when a
vast majority of men were possessed of spiritual vision, facts were
as I have just described them. Objectively the upper gods were seen;
subjectively, the lower gods; and there were these two paths into the
spiritual world. In later times man's capacity for spiritual vision
decreased; he gradually lost his original dim clairvoyance. But let
us take a period in which a few men still possessed a natural
spiritual vision. We need not go so very far back, for in the
Egypto-Chaldean epoch such natural sight still existed. At that time
men, on penetrating through the tapestry of the sense world, saw the
upper gods, and on descending into the depths of their own souls, the
lower gods. Those who had passed through a certain degree of
initiation felt these impressions more clearly and powerfully. I
should mention of course that at all times there have existed
initiates with full knowledge of the unity of these two worlds; but
they are men who have reached the apex of humanity. Centuries
therefore before the appearance of Christ on earth, there were men
who still had the old spiritual sight, and initiates who by following
one path were able to find the upper gods, or following the other
were led to the lower gods. But there came an age where the region
which we call the world of the lower gods gradually withdrew from
human life and was difficult of attainment even for those who had
passed through the early degrees of initiation; but in this period it
was comparatively easy at an early stage of initiation to attain to
what we call the upper gods behind the outer world of the senses.
Take, for instance, an initiate of the ancient Hebrew people. Such an
initiate could, even if he had not attained a very high degree of
initiation, look into a region where Jehovah was not merely an idea,
a concept, but an etheric reality, a being which spoke to them as a
man in their spiritual consciousness.
While
therefore the existence of Jehovah was proclaimed to the people, to
the initiates he was a reality. On the other hand it had become more
difficult for an initiate of the ancient Hebraic world to find
anything by dipping down into his own soul life, and searching there
for the domain of the lower gods. In that region he would have felt
no solid ground, but everywhere would have encountered the thick
crust of his soul life through which he could not penetrate to the
lower gods. The lower gods had withdrawn into a certain unknown
obscurity. This was the time of the Christ's descent to the earth,
when the Luciferic spirits had to a certain extent withdrawn into the
darkness. And at that time men in the outer world only knew that the
mysteries existed, and that those initiated into them acquired the
faculty of penetrating through the forces of the soul life into the
Dionysian world. There was just a vague inkling of the deep secrets
which could be investigated by man in the mysteries. But the subject
was merely alluded to and very few people had a clear idea of it at
the time when the Christ was expected. Their ideas of the outer gods
were much more definite. There were many men who still had living
experience of these gods. But the evolution of humanity progresses.
And with what result? There is a history of outer humanity, and in
the future there will also be a history of the mysteries. Outer
humanity will transform its spiritual culture and the Christ will
enter into it more and more. In the mysteries, too, the nature of the
Christ being, which today is hardly appreciated at all, will come to
be understood. The god who could be perceived at the time of
Zarathustra when spiritual sight was directed to the sun, and who
descended to the earth, will be understood with ever growing intimacy
by the human soul. The god who was the ruler of the outer world will
become more and more an inner god. The Christ traverses the world in
such a way that from a cosmic god who descended upon earth, He
becomes an inner mystical god, Whom man will gradually be able to
experience in the depths of his soul life. Therefore it was, that at
the time of the descent of the Christ there could be accomplished
what His disciples, the Apostles, described in the words: ‘We
have laid our hands in His wounds, and have heard His words on the
mountain.’ The essential point is that the Christ was on earth
in a physical body. At that time He could not have been experienced
physically within, or understood in His Dionysian nature; He had
first to be experienced as the outer, historical Christ. But the
progress of man's consciousness of the Christ consists in His ever
deeper descent into the soul, and it will become possible for man to
live through his own soul experiences subjectively, finding the
mystical Christ within his own soul, in addition to the knowledge he
has of the outer Christ. It will be observed how in the so-called
mysticism which arose in the early days of Christianity, through
Dionysius the Areopagite, a friend and pupil of St. Paul, the Christ
is first understood by external occult faculties. And all the
descriptions of this first occult Christian school are of a kind that
depict the Christ essentially as having those qualities which he
unfolds in the external worlds, and which may be experienced by
instinctive spiritual sight when it is turned outwards. Then let us
proceed a few centuries further in human evolution and see what has
come about; let us enquire into mediaeval mystical development, into
the deep inner experiences of Meister Eckhart, of Johannes Tauler,
etc., and to our more modern mystics. Here are men who look down into
their own souls. Just as in ancient times men looked within
themselves in order to penetrate through this inner life to Dionysos,
so the more modern mystics, piercing inwards, could say like Meister
Eckhart: ‘The historical Christ is in very truth a fact; His
development takes place in outer history but there is a possibility
of descending into one's own inward life, and of there finding the
inner mystical Christ.’ Thus the human soul developed the
capacity of finding the Christ not only in the outer world, but also
within, of finding the mystical Christ in His Dionysian nature. First
the historical Christ came into being, and then through the work of
the historical Christ, influences were brought to bear on the human
soul of such a nature that a mystical Christ within human evolution
has become possible. Therefore we may, with regard to modern times,
speak of an inner mystical experience of the Christ; but we must also
understand that the Christ was a cosmic god before His descent upon
earth. If, in those former times, man plunged into his inner soul
life, he found not Christ, but Dionysos. Today if development has
come about in the right way, we find an inner Christ Being there. The
Christ, at first a divinity external to the soul, has become a
divinity within the soul, who will take fuller possession of it, the
more the soul experiences draw near to the Christ. Here we have an
example of a transformation of principles during the development of
the world. When modern men speak of the mystical Christ within the
soul, they should not forget that everything in the world has
developed, and that mystical consciousness has not been the same
through all time, but has also evolved to its present state. When the
holy Rishis of antiquity looked up into the spiritual worlds they
spoke of Vishvakarman, who was the same cosmic being to whom
Zoroaster referred when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao. It was the Christ
Being. Today this being may also be found in the inner life as the
mystical Christ. This is the result of the Christ's own deed on the
earth. This is the true relation of the cosmic, astronomical Christ
to the mystical Christ. The outer god has gradually become an inner
god.
But since every event
in the external physical world is an effect of a spiritual
occurrence, this penetration of the soul by the Christ has also its
effect upon the other life. This effect will manifest first of all in
the mysteries, and has already partly done so since the foundation of
the Western mystery schools of the Rosicrucians. When by means of the
discipline of the old mystery schools a man had sunk more deeply into
his soul and descended to the lower gods, he found Dionysos, which is
only another name for the world of the Luciferic gods. But at the
time when the Christ in His glory was approaching the earth, the
Luciferic reality sank into darkness even for spiritual
consciousness, if the latter had not attained the very highest
stages. Only the highest initiates were still able to descend to the
Luciferic gods. Other men had to be told that if they descended while
yet unpurified and immature, these Luciferic beings would only appear
in distorted images, as wild demons who would tempt them to all sorts
of evil. This is the original of all the terrible descriptions of
this subterranean realm, and of the fear of the mere name of Lucifer
at a certain time. And as everything is transmitted hereditarily to
men who do not progress with evolution, there are still some who have
inherited the fear of the name of Lucifer. But for spiritual
consciousness the Luciferic world emerges again after the Christ
principle has for some time been working in the soul. As soon as the
Christ has worked in the soul for a while, the soul, permeated by the
Christ substance, becomes mature enough to penetrate again into the
realm of the Luciferic beings. The Rosicrucian initiates were the
first to be able to do this. They strove to understand and see the
Christ in such a form that as the mystical Christ He permeated their
souls, and lived within them, and that this Christ substance in their
inner being became a bulwark of strength against all attacks. It
became a new light within them, an inner, astral light. Historical
experience of the Christ in His true being illuminates the soul to
such an extent that men again become able to penetrate into the realm
of Lucifer at first only the Rosicrucian initiates were capable of
this, and they will gradually carry out into the world what they have
been able to experience with regard to the Luciferic principle, and
will pour out over the world that mighty spiritual union which
consists in the fact that the Christ, Who has poured Himself as
Substance into the human soul is understood henceforth by means of
the spiritual faculties that mature in the spirit of individual men
through a new influx of the Luciferic principle. Let us consider an
initiate of the Rose Cross. He first prepares Himself by the
continual direction of the feeling, conceptions and thoughts within
his soul to the great central figure of the Christ, by allowing the
mighty figure of the Christ, as depicted by the Gospel of St. John,
to work upon him, and in this way he purifies and ennobles himself.
For our souls change fundamentally when we gaze in reverence upon the
figure depicted by the Gospel of St. John. If we receive within us
what streams forth from this figure, as described by St. John, the
mystical Christ comes to life within us. And if we further this
process by the study of other Christian documents, the soul is
gradually permeated by the spiritual substance of the Christ, is
cleansed and purified and reaches higher worlds. Feelings more
especially are purified in this way. We either, like Meister Eckhart
and Tauler, learn to conceive of the Christ in a universal sense, or
else to experience Him with the tenderness of Suso and others; we
feel united with that which streamed to the earth from the wide
expanse of the heavenly worlds through the Christ event. Thereby a
man makes himself ready to be led as a Rosicrucian initiate
consciously into those regions which in ancient times were called the
Dionysian worlds and may now be called the Luciferic worlds.
What
is the effect upon modern Rosicrucian initiates of this introduction
into the Luciferic worlds? If their feelings glow with enthusiasm for
the divine as soon as they are permeated with the Christ substance,
the other faculties through which we understand the world are
illuminated and strengthened by the Luciferic principle. In this way
the Rosicrucian initiate ascends to the Luciferic principle. His
spiritual faculties are intensified and elaborated through
initiation, so that he not merely feels the Christ mystically within
His soul, but can also describe Him, can speak of Him and picture Him
in spiritual images or thought pictures; so the Christ is not merely
dimly felt and experienced but stands before him in concrete
outlines, as a figure of the outer sense world. It is possible for
man to experience the Christ as soul substance when he directs his
gaze to that figure of the Christ which meets him in the Gospels. But
to describe and understand Him in the way that other phenomena and
events in the world are understood, and thereby to gain an insight
into His greatness, His significance and His causative connection
with world evolution, is only possible when the Christian initiate
advances to knowledge of the Luciferic realms.
Thus
in Rosicrucian science it is Lucifer who gives us the faculty for
describing and understanding the Christ. [It is easy to see how,
conformably with the use of the ordinary word ‘Lucifer,’
ill will or ignorance may throw calumny on what has been here said;
that however cannot prevent these things being stated. Anyone, who
understands by Lucifer what is here meant, must necessarily have
other conceptions.]
What
the centuries have been able to do is to propagate the Gospels; so
that the Word streaming forth from them enabled hearts and souls to
be warmed by their message, to be permeated by the fire and
enthusiasm which flow out from them. Today we stand at a stage of
human evolution when it can no longer suffice to receive the Gospels
as a tradition in the old way; today men need something else. Those
who decline to accept this new teaching will have to bear the Karma
of opposition to the introduction of the Luciferic principle into the
interpretation of the Gospels. There may be many who say: ‘We
are content to accept the Gospels as simple Christians; we feel that
they satisfy us; the Christ speaks through them, and He does so even
when we receive them as traditionally handed down for centuries in
religion.’ Although these people may imagine themselves to be
good Christians, they are in reality enemies of the Christ, who on
account of their personal egoism, and because they still feel
themselves satisfied by what is offered in the traditional
interpretation of the Gospels, would sweep away that which in future
will bring Christianity into glory. Those who today believe
themselves to be the best Christians are often the most effective
exterminators of real Christianity. Those who today understand the
development of Christianity think quite differently. They say that
they do not wish to be the egoists who think that the Gospels suffice
and assert that they will not have anything to do with abstractions.
What spiritual science has to offer is far removed from being an
abstract teaching. Real Christians today know that humanity needs
something more than the Christianity of the egoists; they realise
that the world can no longer be satisfied with the old Gospel
tradition, and that the light from Lucifer's kingdom must be thrown
upon it. They listen to the teachings proceeding from Rosicrucian
schools of initiation, wherein the spiritual faculties have been
intensified by the Luciferic principle, in order to penetrate more
and more profoundly into the Gospels, and these initiates have found
the Gospels to be of such infinite depth that it is impossible to
imagine that they can ever be exhaustively dealt with. But today the
time has already arrived when the Rosicrucians must let their
teachings flow out into the world; they are called upon to spread
abroad what they have gained from the Luciferic world in the form of
intensification of spiritual forces and faculties, and to pour this
into the Gospels. The spiritual science of the West consists in
letting the light which streams forth and may be gained from
Lucifer's kingdom be cast upon the Gospels. Spiritual science should
be an instrument for the interpretation of the Gospels. So it is part
of our work to bring to man the joyful message about the substance of
the Christ Being, which permeates the world, and to allow the light
which may be gained in Lucifer's kingdom on the path of Rosicrucian
initiation to fall upon the Gospels. Thus we see that the Christ, Who
formerly was a god living in the outer world, became the mystical
Christ, and that by His ennoblement of the human soul, He has brought
it back again to the realm called in ancient times the Dionysian
world, which for awhile had to be shut off and which will be
re-attained in the future by man. The interpretation of the Christ by
spiritual faculties illuminated by Lucifer, is the inner and
essential kernel of the spiritual stream which must flow through the
western channel. And what I have said represents the mission of
Rosicrucianism in the future.
What
is it therefore that comes to pass in human evolution? Christ and
Lucifer, the one as a cosmic god and the other as a god within the
human soul, dwelt side by side in ancient times, one to be found in
the upper regions and the other in the nether regions; then the
evolution of the world progressed and for some time it was known that
Dionysos or Lucifer, was far away from the earth; on the other hand
the cosmic Christ was felt to be penetrating the earth to a greater
and greater degree; Lucifer again became visible, and was once more
able to be known. The paths taken by these two divine spiritual
beings may be pictured more or less in the following way: they
approached the earth from two different sides; Lucifer became
invisible at the time when his path cut across that of the Christ —
his light was overpowered by the Christ light. The Christ entered the
human soul, became the planetary spirit of the earth, growing more
and more to be the mystical Christ within human souls, and can be
felt and realised through inner experiences. In this way the soul
becomes gradually more capable of again beholding the other being,
who took the reverse way, from within to without. Lucifer, from a
being within man's inner nature, a purely earthly being such as he
was when he was sought in the mysteries leading to the underworld,
becomes a cosmic god. He will appear in ever-greater radiance in the
outer world which we behold when we look through the tapestry of the
sense world. Man's vision will become reversed. In the past Lucifer
was seen behind the veil of the inner soul world, and the Christ, as
by Zarathustra, behind the veil of the sense-world, but in the future
the Christ will to an ever greater degree be realised by inner
spiritual meditation and Lucifer will be found when the gaze is
directed outwards into cosmic regions. Thus we have to record a
complete reversal of the conditions by which man can acquire
knowledge in the course of human evolution. The Christ, an erstwhile
cosmic god, has become an earthly god, who is henceforth the soul of
the earth; Lucifer, an erstwhile earthly god, has become a cosmic
god. And when in the future, man desires again to ascend to the
external spiritual world hidden behind the veil of the sense-world,
and is not willing to stop short at the external and material, he
must penetrate through the sense-world into the spiritual world and
must allow himself to be borne to the light by the ‘Light
Bringer.’ No faculties for penetration into that region can
arise in man if he does not create them out of the forces flowing to
him from Lucifer's kingdom. Men would be drowned in the sea of
materialism, would persist in the belief that there is nothing except
the outer world of matter, if they did not ascend to inspiration
through the Luciferic principle. Just as the Christ principle exists
to strengthen our inner being, so the Luciferic principle intensifies
and develops those faculties by means of which we have to penetrate
into the spiritual worlds fully and completely.
Lucifer
will intensify our understanding and comprehension of the world; the
Christ will strengthen us perpetually within.
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