THE
COMING EXPERIENCE OF CHRIST
Rudolf Steiner
A Lecture
given at Dornach on October 31st, 1920
From a shorthand report,
unrevised by the lecturer. Published by kind permission of the Rudolf
Steiner-Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland, and in agreement
with the Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company.
ESTERDAY
I tried to describe to you something of how European
conditions are bound to develop in the near future, and we saw that
the general course of modern civilisation will inevitably involve the
disappearance of much that is still greatly to men's taste and
considered by them to be of value. From the way in which I had
to speak yesterday it will be clear to you that a very disagreeable
awakening is in store for many who would have preferred to sleep
comfortably through the coming times. I do not say that the
prophecies of those who see the writing on the wall only in such
external things as the differences between Japan and America must be
fulfilled to the letter. But what must be regarded as imminent is a
great spiritual battle between East and West, in which the true
culture of Middle Europe, as we have come to know it in recent weeks,
will be crushed.
Strange
as this may sound, it is the modern world-conception, based on
natural science, that will arouse the deepest need for what I have
called the Christ-Experience yet to come. We learnt yesterday
how little experience of the Christ there really is at the present
time. The course of human evolution has brought it about that ever
since the Mystery of Golgotha, and particularly in recent centuries,
all that can properly be called experience of the Christ has fallen
into complete decadence. We saw, too, that the impossibility of
withstanding men's demand for the Gospels, their desire to be
able to read the Gospels — although the ancient veto is still
maintained in theory by the Catholic Church — has been a
hindrance to the development of a Christ-Experience. And we have
already pointed out how the peculiar frame of mind which is becoming
prevalent in modern civilisation will again lead to experience of the
Christ, just as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha remnants of
the old instinctive clairvoyance could lead to it. But one has to be
clear that just as other incisive events in human evolution come
about otherwise than is expected among the philistines, so the
Christ-Experience of the first half of the twentieth century will
come in an unexpected way. And it will have a clearly definable
connection with the modern outlook on life, based on natural science.
Since
the middle of the fifteenth century, the disposition of men's
souls has become quite different from what it was before that time.
History does not take this into account, because external history
always keeps to the surface of things. But, especially during the
period between the middle of the nineteenth century and our own day,
mankind in general has undergone a fundamental change in its frame of
mind. That also has been too little noticed, because people usually
stick to the ideas that have once been instilled into them. But there
has been a marked departure from this clinging by force of habit to
what has been inculcated, and this comes out very clearly if one
observes closely the outlook on life of the younger generation and
compares it with the outlook which their elders had in their own
youth. The poets, especially, furnish us with repeated illustrations
of this difference. And if men did not box themselves up within their
habitual ideas, so that nothing is able to penetrate their minds
which conflicts with their habitual thinking, they would soon see
what an immense gulf really exists between those who are old today
and those who are young.
On
the other hand there is today a terrible reactionary, conservative
element in human evolution. It is the belief in the authority of
popular science. And this comes about because popular science has
invaded the general consciousness with giant strides. Just think how
rapidly, especially in the last decades, ideas which have become
familiar through nineteenth-century scientific development have taken
universal hold, right down to the least educated classes. It is true
that there are many who still cling to a certain piety, a piety which
prefers to remain in ignorance of what is penetrating mankind through
modern scientific thought. But for the most part a terrible
dishonesty lurks in this piety, a reluctance to face what it is that
is spreading, a reluctance to acknowledge the materialism of the
modern man evoked by natural science.
The
spread of this materialism will not be checked in the near future, as
some misguided scientists seem to think. On the contrary, it will
increase with furious speed, and in the chaos of modern civilisation
we shall see this materialistic mood becoming stronger and stronger.
And if sufficient preparation has been made, if the aims of spiritual
science are fulfilled — so that children are given a stimulus
for the right kind of development — then out of this mood, out
of this chaos, individual souls will emerge who will have a very
strong sense of something which I should now like to describe.
When
someone acquainted with the modern scientific outlook on the world
pursues it with an open mind, he cannot fail to realise that one of
its distinguishing features is that it is not in a position to
understand man. Actually man, as such, is entirely excluded from the
conception of the world based on modern natural science. We had
occasion here recently to consider the scope of the various branches
of scientific learning when we held our course for scientists, and we
saw that none of these has anything to say about the real nature of
man.
We
need only give one characteristic example take the usual theory of
evolution expounded under the influence of Darwin or Weismann or
others. It demonstrates the evolution of the living creature from the
simplest to the most perfect, and lays down the view that man also
derives his origin from this line of evolution. But actually it takes
into consideration only so much of man as is animal. It considers man
only so far as to be able to say that any organ, any structure in
man, derives from the corresponding organ or structure in the animal
line. Science ignores how far the form in which the animal appears in
man is modified; the extent to which the animal nature of man differs
from that of the animal world. The ability to keep man himself in
view has been completely lost by science; man is left out.
Science
has developed certain methods. It has established a certain
discipline, a discipline which is necessary if one is to enter into
discussions of world-conceptions. But this science has not been able
to raise man's power of understanding to the point where man
himself becomes comprehensible. There is no place for man in the
scientific thought of today, so that he presents an ever greater
riddle to himself. Only a very few people are aware of this, and
these few are probably clear about it theoretically, but as yet there
is no general feeling for it. Properly conducted elementary
education will bring such a feeling to life. If education up to
the age of fourteen is what it should be, children on leaving school
will already have the feeling: “We have a science which is born
out of modern intellectuality, but the further we enter into this
science, the more we learn of nature, the less we understand of
ourselves, the less we understand of man.”
This
intellect, the development of which has been and still is of course
the dominant impulse of recent centuries, completely hollows man out,
so to speak, as regards his perception of self. And yet we hear the
demand that man should take his place in the world solely on the
basis of what he is in himself. This stands out clearly as a
fundamental social demand. Side by side with the impotence of science
to account for the human being, we have claims of all kinds coming
not from any scientific impulse but from the depths of human instinct
— demands that man should be able to raise himself to an
existence worthy of a human being, that he should be able to feel
what his real nature is. While on the one hand we have more and more
claims of a practical kind, on the other we have the increasing
inability of science to give man any light upon his own nature.
Such a lack of harmony in human experience would have been quite
impossible in earlier times.
If
we turn once more to the old oriental outlook, we find that man knew
then that he descended from spiritual heights, that before he entered
into physical existence through conception and birth he lived in a
spiritual world; he knew that he brought with him from the spiritual
world something that came out in childhood as disposition, as
aspiration, and remained with him throughout his life on earth. To be
aware theoretically that one has passed through such a spiritual life
before one's life on earth has no very great value, but a
lively feeling for it is worth a great deal; it is something
of the greatest value to feel that what is in one as an adult has
been developing in one's soul since childhood, and comes
from the spiritual world.
To-day,
both in the individual and more especially in social life, this
feeling has actually given way to another. More and more man is
weighed down, half unconsciously, by the feeling of his inherited
characteristics. To a dispassionate view this is quite clear; men
feel that they are what they are through their parents, their
grandparents and so on. Unlike men of old, they no longer feel that
the spark which kindles in them from childhood onwards comes from
those depths in which are anchored spiritual experiences brought from
their life before birth, On the contrary, they feel in themselves
characteristics inherited from parents and grandparents. The first
thing anyone asks about a child to-day is from whom he has got this
or that characteristic. And the reply seldom is that the child
has it as a result of experiences in the spiritual world; inquiries
are conducted as to whether it comes from the grandmother or
grandfather, and so on.
The
more this emerges, not merely as a theory but as a feeling, a feeling
of dependence on purely earthly inherited characteristics, the more
oppressive and dreadful will it gradually become. And the strength of
this feeling will increase very fast. In the decades ahead, it will
become unbearable, for it is associated with another feeling, a
certain feeling of the worthlessness of human existence. We shall see
more and more that if man is unable to feel his existence as anything
beyond the comprehensive expression of what has been implanted in his
blood and in his other organs by his physically inherited
characteristics, he will feel his existence to be worthless. To-day
that is to a certain extent mere theory, although there are poets
already who have expressed it as experience. But it will emerge as
something directly felt, and then it will become an oppressive
quality in the life of civilised humanity. This experiencing of
oneself in the purely inherited characteristics will lie like a
weight on the soul. It is here that the inability of natural science
to give man an understanding of himself shows itself in all its
poverty man no longer feels himself to be a child of the spiritual
world, but merely a child of characteristics inherited in the course
of earthly physical existence.
All
this is very forcibly manifest in social life. You have only to think
of the claims that have arisen as the outcome of a gigantic piece of
political stupidity which has spread through the world in recent
years! This folly has been slowly gathering strength during recent
centuries; it has come to a climax in our own day. Those who are
supposed to lead the several nations, those who at any rate hold
positions which imply leadership, and yet understand nothing of the
situation mankind is in, have brought about the great crisis of the
second decade of the twentieth century by talking about the
membering of mankind according to the will of its individual
nations. National chauvinism in its worst sense has been
aroused. And to-day national chauvinism rings through the whole
civilised world.
This
is merely the social counterpart of the utterly reactionary outlook
on the world which would trace everything back to inherited
characteristics. When we no longer strive to fathom man's
nature as man, and to fashion the social structure in such a way that
this human nature will thrive in it, and when, instead we try to
bring it about that the social structure corresponds only with what
men are as Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Poles and
so on, then we are forgetting all spirituality, we are excluding all
spirituality. This is because we are trying to order the world
solely in accordance with characteristics inherited through the
blood; because we have got to the pitch of having no content at all
in our ideas; because this twentieth century has had to give us an
example of a man, hailed by vast numbers as a world-leader whose
utterances have absolutely no meaning — Woodrow Wilson, who
only utters phrases which have completely lost their content.
We
have had to fall back upon something entirely devoid of spirit, on
blood relationship; consequently all that has happened is the making
of peace treaties in which people who know absolutely nothing about
the conditions of life in the civilised world of to-day have taken
decisions as to the shape of the maps of the countries in that world.
Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the materialism of modern times,
its denial of everything spiritual, than the emergence of the
principle of nationalism.
I
need scarcely say that to many men to-day this truth is unacceptable.
And that is why so many lies have to find a camping-ground in the
depths of the soul. For if one does not face honestly the fact that
by establishing an order of the world based only on
blood-relationship one is denying the spirit, then one is lying. To
say in such circumstances that one is inclined towards any kind of
spiritual conception of the world is to lie.
And
now let us look at the way the evolution of the world is going
to-day. All this that wells up out of the chaotic
instincts of mankind belies the spirit utterly. ... We see on all
sides that the conception of the human being has become lost to
man. Let us now consider the spiritual-scientific counterpart of what
I have so far described simply as a feeling that is surging up.
You
know that spiritual science shows how our earth-planet, upon which
man has to experience his present destiny, is the re-embodiment of
three preceding conditions, and how we have to look forward to three
subsequent embodiments, so that our earth is in a midway state. Now
we know from the descriptions in my
“Outline of Occult Science.”
that what man has to-day as his physical body is in essentials an
inheritance from the first, second, third and fourth conditions what
he has as his ether body is a result of the second, third and fourth
conditions; what we call his astral body is the result of the third
and fourth conditions; and now in Our present earth-evolution comes
his ego. When the earth enters into its future states there will
appear spirit-self, life-spirit and the true spirit-man; today these
are indicated in man only in germ. They will have to be worked out
just as physical body, ether body and astral body have been
elaborated, and as the ego is being fashioned at the present time.
If
you reflect on it, you will know how much of this cosmic-earthly
evolution can come about in you: during earth-evolution only the
germs of spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man can unfold. We shall
have to wait for the transformation of the earth into its three
following conditions for them to appear fully. And from the
descriptions I gave in the
“Outline of Occult Science.”
you will see that spirit-self is the transmutation of the astral body
to a higher stage, that life-spirit is the transmutation of the ether
body to a higher stage, and spirit-man the transmutation of the
physical body to a higher stage. But this transmutation of the
physical body will not take place until the seventh condition, and
correspondingly in the case of the other members.
Today,
however, man can already understand that this has to happen; he can
embrace the thought that it will happen. Indeed, he can grasp still
more, if without prejudice he gets beyond the limitations of
natural science and directs his soul's gaze upon his own
nature. He will have to say to himself: “It is true that I
cannot during earth-existence attain spirit-self in my astral body,
nor can I attain life-spirit in my ether body or spirit-man in my
physical body, but what I have to do is to prefigure them in my soul.
And by developing the consciousness-soul now, I am preparing myself
to take spirit-self into it in the next, the sixth, culture-epoch. I
know that I cannot yet bring spirit-self into my entire astral body,
but I have to bring it into my consciousness-soul. As man, I must
learn so to live inwardly as I shall one day live actually, when the
earth has passed over, through a certain cosmic development, into its
next condition. I must prepare myself in germ inwardly, so that in
the future I shall be able to shape my outer form in the way which it
is my task, even now, to understand.”
Now
I want you to be quite clear as to what is involved. Man is already
growing into spirit-self, as I have often explained he is growing
into states of consciousness which are really of such a nature that
during the period of earth-existence they cannot fully emerge. These
states of consciousness tend to transform him even as regards his
external sheaths, his astral body, ether body and physical body; but,
as earthly man, he cannot achieve this. He has to say to himself that
he must pass through the rest of earth evolution in such a way as
always to be aware that he is preparing himself inwardly for
conditions of being that he cannot yet develop. In future it will
have to be the normal thing for a man to say: “I see the human
being growing in his inner nature beyond what he can be as earthly
man. As earthly man I cannot but feel myself a dwarf, compared with
what man really is.” And this feeling will be the
outcome of the sense of dissatisfaction that properly educated
children will now very soon have. The children will feel that no
amount of intellectual culture enables them to solve the riddle of
man. Man is missing from what can be acquired intellectually; man is
missing from the social structure.
All
that will develop out of the foolish Wilsonian prescription, and out
of any other form of Chauvinism that spreads over the world, will be
quite unworkable. All such things bring modern civilisation up
against a dead-end. However many more national states are set up,
they will provide only so many more seeds of destruction, and it is
just out of what matures in human souls as a result of modern
civilisation that the feeling I have just described from another
point of view will proceed. Man will say to himself: “The being
of man that lights up in me inwardly is far higher than anything I
can realise externally under these conditions. I must introduce into
the social structure something quite different, something of which
the spiritual heights can take cognizance. I cannot entrust myself to
the social science derived from natural science.”
The
essential thing is for man to sense the inner discord between his
dwarf-like existence on earth and the experience of himself as a
cosmic being that can light up within him. Out of all that men
can absorb from modern culture — that culture which today is
lauded to the skies — a twofold feeling will develop. On the
one hand man will be aware of himself as belonging to the earth; on
the other he will say, “But man is more than an earthly being.”
For the earth can by no means satisfy man; it will have to be
transformed into other conditions before it can do that.
These
feelings will ripen, and when they are no longer mere theory, but are
experienced by those whose karma enables them to grow beyond the
trivial feelings of today — when humanity comes to feel disgust
at the thought of purely inherited characteristics and at the
emotions engendered by chauvinism and turns against all this —
only then will a reaction set in. Man will feel himself to be a
cosmic being. With outstretched arms he will implore the solution of
the riddle of his cosmic being. This is what will come about in the
next decades eagerly man will ask, “Who will decipher for me my
nature as a cosmic being? All that I can establish on earth, all that
the earth can give me, all that I can get from natural science,
accounts for me only as an earth-being and leaves my real being an
unsolved riddle. I know that I am a cosmic, super-earthly being. Who
will disentangle this super-earthly being for me?”
The
experiencing of this question will be the dominant note in men's
souls. In the next decades, even before we reach the middle of the
century, this question will be more important than anything else
which may happen or any other feelings men may have. And from the
expectation, the feeling that there must be some solution to this
riddle, that man is despite all a cosmic being; from this conviction
that one day the cosmos will unveil something that cannot come from
the earth, the mood will arise to which the cosmos makes reply: “Just
as the physical Christ appeared at the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha, so the spiritual Christ will appear to mankind. He alone
can give the answer, for He is not in some indefinite place; He must
be recognised as a Being from beyond the earth Who has united Himself
with earthly humanity.” People will have to understand
that the question of cosmic man can be answered only if He Who unites
Himself with the earth from out of the cosmos comes to their aid.
This will be the solution of the most significant disharmony that has
ever arisen in earth existence, the disharmony between man's
feeling as an earthly being and his knowledge that he is a
super-earthly being, a cosmic being. The fulfilment of this longing
will prepare man to recognise how the Christ-Being will reveal
Himself out of remote spiritual depths; He will speak to men
spiritually, as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha He spoke to
them in the physical body.
The
Christ will not come in the spiritual sense if men are not prepared
for Him. But a man can be prepared only in the way I have just
stated, by sensing the incongruity I have described, by feeling the
discordance weigh heavily upon him: “Of course I must regard
myself as an earth-being. It is the intellectual development of
recent centuries that has created the conditions which make me
appear an earth being. Yet I am no earth-being. I cannot but feel
myself united with a Being Who is not of this earth; a Being Who, not
untruthfully as the theologians do, but verily in truth can say: —
‘My kingdom is not of this world.’” For man will
have to say to himself: — “My Kingdom is not of this
world.” And to do it he will have to be united with a Being Who
is not of this world.
It
is directly out of the sciences which, as I have said, will take
possession of the popular consciousness with devastating speed that
something must be developed which will direct mankind towards the new
manifestation of the Christ in the first half of the twentieth
century.
Naturally
this could not happen in the state of mind in which the civilised
world was before 1914, when all talk of ideals, all talk of
spirituality, was grounded in falsehood. Men will have to be driven
by necessity to make their search for spirituality a true one. And
the Christ will appear only to those who renounce all that spreads
falsehood over earthly life. And no social question will be solved
unless it is thought out in conjunction with this
spiritual-scientific endeavour that enables man once again to appear
in truth as a super-earthly being. The solution to our social
problems will be found to the degree in which men are able to feel
the Christ-Impulse in their souls. All other solutions will lead only
to destruction, to chaos. For all other solutions are based on the
conception of man as an earthly being. But in our own day man is
outgrowing the state of mind which permits him to think of himself as
a purely earthly, physical being. The new experience of the Christ
will arise out of the harmony of men's souls, and out of their
need.
Translated by Dorothy Lenn.
|