HUMAN FREEDOM AND
ITS CONNECTION WITH THE MYSTERY OF GOLGOTHA
Lecture by Dr. Rudolf Steiner
Given at Dornach,
October 16, 1921
(From stenographic
notes not revised by the lecturer.)
Published in the
“Anthroposophic News Sheet,” Dornach, Switzerland
Volume 15, No.
43/44, November 9, 1947
Our last lectures
showed the fundamental difference between man's whole conception
here, from birth to death, and in the spiritual world, from death
to a new birth. We have already explained that in the present
epoch; i.e., ever since the middle of the Fifteenth Century, man
may gain freedom during his existence between birth and death;
everything on earth which he fulfils out of the impulse of
freedom, gives his being, as it were, weight, reality and life.
When we emancipate ourselves from the necessities of earthly
existence, when we rise up to free motives guiding our will; that
is to say, if we do not take anything out of earthly life for our
will, then we create the possibility of independence also between
death and a new birth. But in the present epoch this capacity of
preserving our own independent existence after death calls for
something which we may designate as the connection with the
Mystery of Golgotha, for the Mystery of Golgotha may be viewed
from many different aspects. In the course of the past years, we
have already studied quite a number of these aspects; today we
shall view the Mystery of Golgotha from a standpoint arising from
the study of freedom and its significance for the human
being.
Here on earth,
between birth and death, the human being really does not have in
his ordinary consciousness any conception of his own self. He
cannot look into his own self. It is, of course, an illusion to
believe, as external science does, that it is possible to obtain
a knowledge of the inner constitution of the human organism by
observing man's lifeless parts, indeed sometimes by studying only
the corpse. This is an illusion, a deception. Here, between birth
and death, man only has a conception of the external world. But
of what kind is this conception? It is one which we have
frequently characterized as the conception of illusion (Schein),
of semblance, and I have again emphasized this yesterday.
When our senses
are turned to the things which surround us in the world in which
we live from birth to death, then the world appears to us as a
semblance, as an illusion. This semblance may be taken into our
Ego being. We may, for example, preserve it in our memory, and in
a certain sense make it our own. But insofar as it stands before
us when looking out into the world, it is an illusion which
manifests itself particularly — as I have already explained
to you yesterday — by disappearing with death and by
re-appearing in another form; that is to say, we then no longer
experience it within us, but before or around us.
If, however, in
the present epoch we were not able to experience the world as an
illusion during our existence from birth to death, if we were
unable to experience this illusion, we could not be free. The
development of freedom is only possible in the world of illusion.
I have mentioned this in my book,
“The Riddle of Man,”
and have pointed out that in
reality the world which we experience may be compared with the
images that look out at us from a mirror. These pictures cannot
force us, for they are only pictures, only a semblance. Similarly
the world which we experience may be compared with the images
that look out at us from a mirror. These pictures cannot force
us, for they are only pictures, only a semblance. Similarly the
world which we perceive is a semblance, an illusion. But the
human being is not completely woven into this illusion of the
world. He is woven into it only in regard to his perception,
which fills his waking consciousness. But when he considers his
impulses, instincts, passions and temperament, and everything
that surges up from the human depths without his being able to
grasp it in the form of clear concepts, at least in the form of
waking concepts, then all this is not only a semblance or
illusion; it is a reality, but one which does not rise up in
man's present consciousness.
From birth to
death, man lives in a real world unknown to him, one which cannot
ever give him freedom. It may implant in him instincts which
deprive him of freedom; it may call forth inner necessities, but
never can it enable him to experience freedom. Freedom can only
be experienced within a world of pictures, of semblance. When we
wake up in the morning, we must enter a perceptive life of
semblance, so that freedom may unfold. But this life of
semblance, which constitutes our waking perceptive life, did not
always exist in this form in mankind's historical evolution.
If we go back into
ancient times, which have so often been envisaged in our
lectures, to times when people still had a certain instinctive
clairvoyance, or remnants of this clairvoyance (which lasted
until the middle of the Fifteenth Century), we cannot in the same
way say that man was surrounded only by a world of semblance. Of
course, everything which man saw in his own way as the world's
spiritual background, spoke through this semblance. He perceived
the illusion, but differently; to him it was an expression, a
manifestation of a spiritual world. This spiritual world then
vanished behind the semblance, and only the semblance remained.
The essential thing in the development of mankind is that in
older times the semblance was viewed as the manifestation of a
divine spiritual world, but the divine spiritual vanished from
the semblance, so that man was confronted only by illusion, in
order that he might discover freedom in this world of semblance.
Man must therefore find freedom in a world of illusion; he does
not find it in the world of reality which completely withdrew to
the darkened experiences of his inner being; there, he can only
find necessity. We may therefore say that the world which man
perceives from birth to death — but everything I say
applies to our age — is a world of semblance, of illusion.
Man perceives the world, but in the form of semblance.
How do matters
stand in regard to the life between death and a new birth? In our
last lectures we explained that after death the human being does
not perceive the external world which he sees here, between birth
and death, but between death and a new birth he essentially
perceives the human being himself, man's inner being. Man's world
is then the human being. What is concealed here on earth, becomes
manifest in the spiritual world. Between death and a new birth,
man obtains insight into the whole connection between man's soul
life and his organic life, or the activity of the single organs;
in short, into everything which, symbolically speaking, lies
enclosed within the human skin.
But we find that
in the present age man cannot live in a world of illusion after
death. He can only live in a world of illusion from birth to
death. But between death and a new birth he cannot live in an
illusion. When he passes through death, necessity imprisons him,
as it were. Here on earth, he feels that he is free in regard to
his perceptions, for he may turn his eyes to the things he wants
to see; he may collect his perceptions in the form of thoughts,
so as to feel the freedom of action in the sphere of thought; but
between death and a new birth he feels a complete lack of freedom
in regard to the world of his perceptions. This world takes hold
of him violently, as it were. It is just as if he perceived as he
would perceive here on earth if every sense perception were to
hypnotize him, as if every sense perception were to take hold of
him so as to render him unable to free himself from them of his
own accord.
This is the course
of man's development since the middle of the Fifteenth Century.
The divine spiritual worlds vanished from the semblance which
confronted him, but between death and a new birth, the divine
spiritual worlds imprison him so that he cannot maintain his
independence. I said that if we really develop freedom on earth;
i.e., if we submit completely to the semblance in life, we may
carry our own being through the portal of death. By envisaging
still another difference between the present time and older human
conceptions, we shall realize, however, what is needed in
addition to this.
Whether we
consider mankind in general, or the initiates and the Mysteries
of ancient times, we find that the whole conception of the world
had another direction from that of today. If we remain standing
by what the human being has acquired ever since the middle of the
Fifteenth Century, through the form of knowledge which has arisen
since that time, we come across certain definite ideas on the
development of the earth and of the human race. But man lost
track of the conceptions which might have given him satisfactory
indications about the beginning and end of the earth. We might
say that he was able to survey a certain line of development; he
looked back into history; he looked back into the geological
development of the earth. But when he went back still further, he
began to construct hypotheses. He imagined that the beginning of
the world was a nebula, a kind of physical structure. Out of it
developed; i.e., not really, but people imagined that this was so
— the higher beings of the kingdoms of Nature: plants,
animals, etc. Again, in accordance with conceptions of physics,
people thought that life on earth and the earth itself would end
by heat — again, a hypothesis. A fragment was thus
surveyed, which lies between the beginning and end of the earth.
Beginning and end became a hazy, unsatisfactory picture.
But this was
different in a more remote past. In past times people had very
clear notions of the beginning and end of the world, because they
still saw the divine spiritual in the semblance. Bear in mind,
for example, the Old Testament, or other religious teachings of
the past. In the Old Testament we find ideas which are above all
connected with the beginning of the world, and they are described
in a form accessible to man, which enabled him to grasp his own
existence upon the earth. The Kant-Laplace nebula instead, does
not enable him to understand human life on earth. If you take the
wonderful cosmogonies of the various pagan nations, you will
again find that they enabled man to grasp his earthly existence.
The human being thus directed his gaze towards the beginning of
the earth and obtained thoughts which encompassed man.
Conceptions of the end of the earth remained for a longer time in
human consciousness. In Michelangelo's “Last
Judgment,” for example, we come across ideas connected with
the end of the world, which were handed down as far as our own
epoch and which encompass man; for although the conceptions of
sin and atonement are difficult, they do not do away with
man.
But take the
modern hypothetical conception of the end of the world: viz. that
everything will end in uniform heat. Man's whole being dissolves,
there is no room for him in the world. In addition to the
disappearance of divine spiritual life from the illusion of
perception, man therefore lost, in the course of time, his
conceptions of the world's beginning and end. Within these ideas
he could still assert himself and view himself within the cosmos
as a being connected with the beginning and end of the earth.
How did the people
of past epochs view history? No matter in what form they saw it,
history was something which moved from the beginning to the end
of the earth, and it obtained its meaning through the conceptions
of the beginning and end of the earth. Take any of the pagan
cosmologies: they will enable you to picture mankind's historical
development. They reach back to ages when earthly life was still
united with a divine spiritual weaving. History has a meaning. If
we turn to the beginning and also to the end of the earth,
history acquires a meaning. Whereas the conception of the end of
the earth, as an imaginative conception contained in religious
feeling, continued to exist even in more recent epochs; the
conception of the end of the earth lived on in historical ideas,
as a kind of straggler, even in more recent times. In historical
works, such as Rotteck's “World History,” you may
still find the influence of this idea of the world's beginning,
which gives a meaning to history. The significant, peculiar fact
is that at the same time in which man entered the stage of
perceiving the world as an illusion, so that he perceived
external Nature as an illusion, history began to lose its meaning
and became inaccessible to man's direct knowledge, because he no
longer had any notion of the earth's beginning and end.
Consider this fact
quite seriously. Take the nebula at the beginning of the earth's
development, from which undefined forms first condensed
themselves, and then all the beings, rising as far as man. And
consider the death by heat at the end of the earth's development,
in which everything will perish. In between lies what we know,
for example, concerning Moses, the great men of ancient China,
the great men of ancient India, Persia, Egypt — and further
on, of Greece and Rome, as far as our present time. In thought we
may add all that has still to come. But all this takes place on
earth like an episode, with no beginning and end. History thus
appears to have no meaning. Let us realize this.
Nature may be
surveyed, even if we cannot survey its inner essence. It rises up
before us as a semblance together with the experience of our own
self, between birth and death. Modern people simply lack the
courage to admit that history has no meaning; it is meaningless,
because man has lost track of the beginning and end of the world.
He should really feel that mankind's historical development is
the greatest of riddles. He should say to himself that the
historical course of development has no sense.
Some people had an
idea of this truth. Read what Schopenhauer wrote on the absence
of meaning in history, when one sets out from occidental beliefs.
This will show you that Schopenhauer really felt this absence of
meaning in history. We should be filled with the longing to
rediscover the meaning of history in some other way. The world of
semblance enables us to develop a satisfactory knowledge of
Nature, particularly in Goethe's meaning, if we give up
hypotheses and remain by the phenomena; i.e., by the truths based
on semblance, on illusion. Natural science may satisfy us, if we
eliminate all the disturbing hypotheses connected with the
beginning and end of the world. But we are then imprisoned, as it
were, in our earthly cave and we do not look out of it. The
Kant-Laplace theory and the end of the world by heat block our
outlook into Time's cosmic distances.
This is after all
the situation of present-day mankind from the standpoint of
ordinary consciousness: consequently mankind is threatened by a
certain danger. It cannot quite penetrate into the mere world of
phenomena; above all it is unable to penetrate into this world of
semblance with the forces of inner life. Man would like to submit
to the inner necessity, to his instincts, impulses, and passions.
Today we do not see much of all that may be realized on the basis
of free impulses born out of pure thinking. But in the same
degree in which man lacks freedom during his life from birth to
death, he is overcome by lack of freedom, by the necessity of
perception arising out of the hypnotizing coercion which exists
between death and a new birth. Man is therefore threatened by the
danger of passing through the portal of death without taking with
him his own being and without penetrating into a free realm in
regard to his perceptive world, but into something which
submerges him into a state of coercion, which makes him, as it
were, grow rigid in the external world.
The impulse which
must in future enter the life of mankind is that the divine
spiritual should appear to man in a new way, not in the same way
in which it appeared in ancient times. In past epochs man could
imagine a spiritual essence in the physical at the beginning and
end of the earth, to which he was united and which did not
exclude him. But this must take place in an ever-growing measure
from the centre, instead of from the beginning and end. Even as
in the Old Testament the beginning of the world was looked upon
as a genesis of the human being, in which his existence was
ensured, even as the pagan cosmogonies spoke of mankind's
development out of a divine-spiritual existence, even as the
contemplation of the end of the earth, which — as stated
— was still contained in the conceptions of the end of the
world and the final judgment, which do not deprive man of his own
self, so modern times must find in a right conception of the
Mystery of Golgotha, at the centre of the earth's development,
that which again enables man to see divine life united with
earthly life.
We should grasp in
the right way that God passed through Man in the Mystery of
Golgotha. This will replace what we lost in regard to the
beginning and end of the earth. But there is an essential
difference between the way in which we should now look upon the
Mystery of Golgotha and the old way of looking at the beginning
and end of the earth.
Try to penetrate
into the way in which the pagan cosmogonies arose. In the present
time we often come across conceptions stating that these pagan
cosmogonies were thought out in the same way in which modern men
freely join thought to thought and disconnect them again. But
this is an erroneous University conception which has no
reasonable foundation. We find instead that in the past, man gave
himself up entirely to the contemplation of the world; he could
see the beginning of the world only in the way in which it
appeared to him in the cosmogony and in the myths. There was no
freedom in this; it was altogether the result of necessity. Man
had to envisage the beginning of the earth, he could not refrain
from doing so. In the present time, we no longer conceive in the
right way how in the past man's soul confronted the beginning of
the world and, in a certain respect, also the end of the world
with the aid of an instinctive knowledge. Today it is impossible
for the human soul to envisage the Mystery of Golgotha in this
way. This constitutes the great difference between Christianity
and the ancient teachings of the Gods. If we wish to find Christ,
we must find him in freedom and turn to the Mystery of Golgotha
freely. But the content of the ancient cosmogonies was forced
upon man, whereas the Mystery of Golgotha does not force itself
upon him. He must approach the Mystery of Golgotha in freedom and
his being must pass through a kind of resurrection.
Man is led to such
freedom by an activity which I have recently designated in
anthroposophical spiritual science as the cognitive activity. A
clergyman who believes that he may gain knowledge of the
“Akasha Chronicle” through an “illustrated
luxury edition”, that is to say without any inner activity
on his part, for the grasping of truths which should appear
before his soul in the form of concepts and become images —
such a clergyman would simply show that he is predisposed to
grasp the world only in a pagan way, not in a Christian way; for
Christ must be reached in inner freedom. Particularly the way in
which the Mystery of Golgotha should be faced, constitutes the
most intimate means of an education towards freedom.
If the Mystery of
Golgotha is experienced rightly, it already tears us away from
the world. What arises in that case? In the first place, we live
in a world of apparent perception and in it surges up something
which leads us to a spiritual life guaranteed by the Mystery of
Golgotha. This is one thing. But the other thing is that history
ceased to have a meaning, because beginning and end were lost; it
obtains a new meaning when it receives it anew from the centre.
We learn to recognize that everything before the Mystery of
Golgotha tends towards the Mystery of Golgotha as its goal, and
everything after the Mystery of Golgotha sets out from it.
History thus once
more acquires a meaning, whereas otherwise it is an illusory
episode without beginning and end; the world which we perceive
outside faces us as an illusion for the sake of our own freedom
and also changes history into something which it should not be
— an illusory episode without any centre of gravity. It
dissolves into fog and mist and theoretically we already find
this in Schopenhauer's writings.
By tending towards
the Mystery of Golgotha, all that was once mere illusion in
history obtains inner life, an historical soul, connected with
everything which modern man requires through the fact that he
must develop freedom in life. He will then pass through the
portal of death with the great teaching of freedom. Avowal of the
Mystery of Golgotha throws into life a light which must fall on
everything in man that is capable of freedom. And having the
disposition to freedom in the illusory aspect of the world which
is given to him, he has the possibility to escape the danger of
failing to develop freedom, because after death he submits to
instincts and passions, thus falling a prey to necessity. By
accepting a religious faith which is quite different from those
of the past, by allowing his whole soul to be filled by a
religious faith which only lives in freedom, he becomes able to
experience freedom.
In the present
civilization, only a small number of people have really grasped
that only a knowledge gained in freedom, a knowledge gained by
inner activity, is able to lead us to Christ, to the Mystery of
Golgotha. The Bible gave man the historical record so that he
might have a message of the Mystery of Golgotha for the time when
he could not yet take in spiritual science.
To be sure, the
Gospel will never lose its value. It will have an every greater
value, but the Gospel must be added to the direct knowledge of
the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ should be felt and
recognized also with the aid of human forces, not only with the
aid of the forces working through the Gospel. This is what
spiritual science strives for in regard to Christianity.
Spiritual science seeks to explain the Gospels, but it is not
based upon the Gospels. It is able to appreciate the Gospels so
fully, just because it discovered, as it were, subsequently, all
that lies concealed in them, all that has already been lost in
the course of mankind's outer development.
You see, the whole
modern development of mankind is thus connected on the one hand
with freedom and the illusion of perception, and on the other,
with the Mystery of Golgotha and the meaning of the historical
development. The sequence of many episodes which constitutes
history as it is generally described and accepted today, obtains
its true weight if the Mystery of Golgotha can be set into the
historical course of development.
Many people felt
this in the right way and also used appropriate images for this.
They said to themselves: Once upon a time, man looked out into
the heavenly spaces; he saw the Sun, but not as we see it now.
Today there are physicists who think that out there in the
universe there swims a large sphere of gaseous matter. I have
frequently said that they would be astonished if they could build
a world airship and reach the Sun, for where they suppose the
existence of a gaseous sphere, they would find negative space,
which would transport them in a moment not only into Nothing, but
beyond Nothing, far beyond the sphere of Nothing. The cosmologies
developed today, the modern materialistic cosmologies, are pure
fantasy. In past epochs, people did not imagine the Sun as a
gaseous sphere swimming in the heavenly spaces, but they saw a
Spiritual Being in the Sun. Even today the Sun is a Spiritual
Being to those who contemplate the world in a real way; it is a
Spiritual Being manifesting itself only outwardly in the way in
which the eye is able to perceive the Sun. In Christ an older
human race felt the presence of this central Spiritual Being.
When speaking of Christ, it pointed to the Sun.
By recognizing the
Sun as a Spiritual Being, it was possible to connect a conception
worthy of man with the beginning and end of the earth. The
conception of Jesus, who was Christ's abode, renders possible a
conception worthy of man in regard to the middle of the earth's
development, and from there will ray out towards beginning and
end that which will once more make the whole cosmos appear in a
light that gives man his place in the universe. We should
therefore envisage a future in which hypotheses concerning the
world's beginning and end will not be constructed on the basis of
materialistic, natural-scientific conceptions, but in which the
point of issue will be the knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha.
This will also enable us to survey the whole cosmic development.
In ancient times, the Christ was felt to be outside in the
cosmos, where the Sun was shining. A true knowledge of the
Mystery of Golgotha enables us to see in the historical
development of the earth the Sun of the earth's development
shining through Christ. The Sun shines outside in the world and
also in history — it shines physically outside, and
spiritually in history; Sun here, and Sun there.
This indicates the
path to the Mystery of Golgotha from the aspect of freedom.
Modern mankind must find it, if it wants to come out of the
forces of descent and enter the ascending forces. This should be
realized fully and profoundly. This knowledge will not be
abstract, not merely theoretical, but one that fills the whole
human being. It will be a knowledge which must be felt and
experienced in feeling. The Christianity which Anthroposophy will
have to teach, will not only imply looking at Christ, but being
filled by Christ.
People always want
to know the difference between the teachings of the older
Theosophy and the truths that live in Anthroposophy. Is this
difference not evident? The older Theosophy warmed up the pagan
cosmology. In the theosophical literature you will discover
everywhere warmed-up pagan cosmologies, which are no longer
suited to modern men, and although Theosophy speaks of the
world's beginning and end, this no longer means what it meant in
the past. What is missing in the writings of an older Theosophy?
The centre is missing, the Mystery of Golgotha is missing
throughout. It is missing to an even greater extent than in
external natural science.
Anthroposophy has
a continued cosmology which does not blot out the Mystery of
Golgotha, but admits it, so that it is contained in it. The whole
evolution, reaching back as far as Saturn and forward as far as
Vulcan, will take its course in such a way that the light
enabling us to see it, will ray out from our knowledge of the
Mystery of Golgotha. If we but recognize this fundamental
contrast, we shall no longer have any doubt as to the difference
between the older Theosophy and Anthroposophy.
Particularly when
so-called Christian theologians again and again put together
Anthroposophy and Theosophy, this is due to the fact that they do
not really understand much about Christianity. For it is deeply
significant that Nietzsche's friend, Overbeck, the truly
conspicuous theologian of Basle, wrote a book on the Christianity
of modern theology, in which he tried to prove that modern
theology; i.e., the Christian theology, is no longer Christian.
One may therefore say: Even in regard to this point, external
science has already drawn attention to the fact that modern
Christian theology does not understand anything about
Christianity and knows nothing about it.
One should
thoroughly understand all that is unchristian. Modern theology,
in any case, is not Christian; it is unchristian through love of
ease, through indolence. Yet people prefer to ignore these
things, which should not be ignored, for to the extent in which
they are ignored, people will lose the possibility to experience
Christianity in a real way, from within. This must be
experienced, for it is the other pole of the experience of
freedom, which must appear. Freedom must be experienced, but the
experience of freedom alone would lead us into the abyss. Only
the Mystery of Golgotha can lead us across this abyss.
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