The Easter Festival
Berlin, 12th April 1906
Goethe expressed a certain feeling, which he often had, in the
most different way. He said, if I look at the inconsistency of
the human passions, sensations, and actions, I feel attracted
to the all-powerful nature and I want to draw myself up at her
consequence and logic. — What humanity expressed in the
festivals since the oldest times is based on the aspiration to
look up from the chaotic life of the human passions, desires,
and actions at the big consistently uniform facts of the big
nature. It complies with these big facts of the big nature that
great festivals are connected with characteristic phenomena in
nature. Such a festival that is connected with a phenomenon in
nature is the Easter festival, which is for the Christian of
today the celebration of his Saviour, which was committed from
time immemorial as the awakening of something particular for
the human being. We look at the ancient Egypt with her cult of
Osiris, Isis, Horus, which expresses the continual rejuvenation
of the immortal nature. If we look at Greece, we find a
festival to honour Dionysus, a spring festival that is brought
together with the awaking nature in spring in any way.
In
India, there is a spring festival of Vishnu. Brahmanism divides
the divine in three aspects, in Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva. One
rightly calls Brahman the great master builder of the world,
who causes the order and harmony in the world. One calls Vishnu
a kind of saviour, liberator, awakener of the slumbering life,
and Shiva is that who blesses the slumbering life woken by
Vishnu and raises it to the heights to which one can absolutely
raise it. Something like a festival was consecrated to Vishnu.
One said, he falls asleep at the time of the year when we
celebrate Christmas and awakes at the moment of the Easter
festival. Who call themselves his servants celebrate this whole
time in a significant way: they abstain from certain dishes,
beverages, and meat. Thus, they prepare themselves to get an
understanding of that which takes place when at the Vishnu
festival the resurrection is celebrated, the arousal of the
whole nature. Also Christmas builds in a significant way on big
physical facts, on the fact that the strength of the sun
becomes weaker and weaker, that the days become shorter and
shorter and that from Christmas on the sun emits bigger heat
again, so that Christmas is a festival of the reborn sun. The
Christians felt it as something like that, this festival of the
winter sun.
When in the sixth and seventh centuries Christianity wanted to
go back to old, holy events, the birth of Christ Jesus was
rescheduled to the day when the sun ascends again. The
spiritual significance of the world Saviour was associated with
the physical sun and the awaking and resurrecting life.
In
spring, one also builds on a certain sun event with the Easter
festival, like with all similar festivals, which is also
expressed in external customs. In the first century of
Christianity, the symbol of Christianity was shown in the cross
at whose foot lies a lamb. Lamb and Aries signify the same. In
the spring, the sun appears in that time in which Christianity
prepared in the sign of the Aries or lamb. The sun goes through
the signs of the zodiac; every year it moves forward a little
distance. About from 600 to 700 BC, the sun moved forward to
this sign of the zodiac. For 2 500 years the sun moves on in
this sign; it was in the sign of the bull before. At that time,
the peoples celebrated that which seemed to them as important
in connection with the human development, by the bull because
at that time the sun stood in the sign of the bull.
When the sun entered the sign of Aries or Lamb, there the ram
appeared also in the legends and myths of the peoples as
something significant. Jason gets the fur of the ram from
Colchis. Christ Jesus calls himself God's lamb, and he is shown
in the first time of Christianity symbolically as the lamb at
the foot of the cross. Thus, one can connect the Easter
festival with the sign of the Aries or Lamb, and considers this
festival, therefore, as the resurrection festival of the
saviour because the saviour causes everything to a new life,
after it has died in the winter months.
With it, Christmas and Easter do not separate so distinctly,
because the sun gains strength again since the own resurrection
festival, Christmas. Something different must be expressed in
the Easter festival. The Easter festival is felt in its deepest
meaning always as the festival of the biggest human mystery,
not only as a kind of festival of nature that goes back to the
sun, but it is substantially still more: it is suggested in the
Christian meaning of the resurrection after death. The
awakening of Vishnu points still more to the awakening after
death. The awakening of Vishnu takes place in the time when the
sun begins its rise in winter again, and the Easter festival is
a continuation of the increasing strength of the sun, which
increases already since Christmas. We have to look deeply into
the secrets of human nature if we want to understand which
sensations the initiates had if they wanted to express that in
the Easter festival.
The
human being appears to us as a double being, connecting a
mental-spiritual being with a physical being. The physical
being is a confluence of all remaining natural phenomena that
are in the surroundings of the human being: they all appear as
a fine essence in the human nature in which they have flowed
together. Paracelsus shows the human being significantly as a
confluence of that which is spread out outdoors in the world:
Nature appears to us like letters, and the human being forms
the word that is composed of these letters. — The biggest
wisdom is contained in his construction; he is physically a
temple of the soul. All principles that we can observe in the
dead stone, in the living plant, in the animal filled with joy
and sorrow are joined in the human being; they have coalesced
to a unity filled with wisdom.
If
we look at the wonderful construction of the human brain with
its countless cells, which co-operate in such a way that all
this can be expressed which the thoughts, the sensations of the
human being are, what permeates his soul anyhow, we recognise
the supreme wisdom in the organisation of his physical body. In
the whole environment, if we look out we recognise crystallised
wisdom. If we penetrate all principles of the environment with
our knowledge and look then back at the human being, we see the
whole nature concentrated in him, we see him as a microcosm in
the macrocosm. In this sense, Schiller said to Goethe,
“You take together the whole nature to understand the
single; in the all-ness of her phenomena, you look for the
explanation of the individual. From the simple organisation you
go up, step by step, to more developed ones to build up,
finally, the most complex of all, and the human being,
genetically from the materials of the whole building of
nature.”
Due
to the wonderful construction of the human body, the human soul
is able to direct its look at the environment. The mental human
being looks at the world through the senses and tries to fathom
that wisdom bit by bit with which the world is built up.
If
we look at a still rather undeveloped human being from this
point of view, his body is the most reasonable which anybody is
able to invent; there the divine reason has flowed together in
this human body. However, a rather childish soul lives in it
that can hardly develop the first thoughts to understand that
mysterious force which prevails in the heart, in the brain, in
the blood. Quite slowly, the human soul develops up to
understand that gradually which has worked on the human body.
However, this bears the imprint of a long past in itself. The
human being stands there as the crown of the remaining
creation. Aeons had to precede until the universal wisdom was
summarised in this human body.
However, in the soul of the undeveloped human being the
universal wisdom starts growing. There it hardly dreams of the
great thought of the universal spirit that has built up the
human being. However, the human being understands the
mental-spiritual in future that lives still like sleeping in
himself. The universal thought has worked for countless years,
he has created in nature to form the crown of all this
creating, the human body. In this human body, the universal
wisdom now slumbers to recognise itself in the human soul, to
form an eye in the human being to grasp itself. Universal
wisdom outdoors, universal wisdom inside, creating in the
present like in the past, creating in the future, which we can
only anticipate in its sublimity. The deepest human feelings
are called if we look at the past and at the future in such a
way.
If
the soul starts understanding the miraculous that the universal
wisdom built up, if it gets the prudent clearness about that,
the enlightening heart knowledge of it, then the sun is the
most marvellous symbol, which expresses this inner awakening,
which opens the access to the outside world to the soul through
the gates of the senses. The human being receives the light
because the sun illuminates the things. What the human being
sees in the outside world is the reflected sunlight. The sun
wakes the strength in the soul to look at the outside world.
The awaking solar soul in the human being, which starts
recognising the universal thought in the seasons, sees its
liberator in the rising sun.
If
the sun again begins its rise, if the days increase again, the
soul looks at the sun and says, to you I owe the possibility to
see the universal thought spread out in my surroundings that
sleeps in me and in all the others. — Now, the human
being looks at his former existence, at that which preceded the
groping feeling of the universal thought. The human being is
much, much older than his senses. Spiritual research lets us
reach that time, in which the senses of the human being existed
only as rudiments. We come to the time when the senses were not
yet the gates through which the soul could perceive the
surroundings. Schopenhauer felt this and characterised the
turning point where the human being reaches the sensuous
perception of the world. He means this if he says, this visible
world only originated when an eye was there to see the world.
— The sun formed the eye, light formed light. Once when
such an external vision was not yet there, the human being had
an internal vision. In the primeval times of human development
an external object did not stimulate the human being to
perceive, but from the inside images rose in him: the old
vision was a vision in the astral light. At that time, the
human being had a vague, twilit clairvoyance.
In
the Germanic world of gods, the human being also saw the gods
in vague, twilit astral vision and took his images of the gods
from it. This vague clairvoyance descended into darkness and
disappeared completely bit by bit. The strong light of the
physical sun extinguished it, which appeared in the sky and
made the physical world visible to the senses. Thus, astral
vision of the human being disappeared. If he looks at the
future, then he realises that this astral vision has to return
to a higher stage: what was extinguished because of the
physical vision, so that the full awake clairvoyance of the
human being could be caused, has to revive. An even brighter,
more luminous life of the human being is added to the day
consciousness in the light of the future. To the physical
vision, the vision in the astral light is still added.
The
leaders of humanity are those spirits who were able — due
to an earthly life full of renunciation — to bring that
condition about already before death which one calls the
passage through the gate of death. He encloses those
experiences in himself that are bestowed on the whole humanity
once when it has acquired the astral vision, which makes the
mental and spiritual perceptible. The initiates always called
this making perceptible of the spiritual-mental around us the
awakening, the resurrection, the spiritual rebirth that adds
the gifts of the spiritual senses to the gifts of the physical
senses. Someone who feels the new astral vision awakening in
himself celebrates an internal Easter festival.
We
can understand this way that the spring festival always carries
such symbols that remind of death and of resurrection. The
astral light is dead in the human being; it sleeps. However,
this light will resurrect in the human being. A festival that
points to the awakening of the astral vision in the future is
the Easter festival.
The
sleep of Vishnu begins around Christmastide when the astral
vision fell asleep and the physical light awoke. If the human
being is successful to renounce the personal, then the astral
light awakes again in him, then he can celebrate the Easter
festival, then Vishnu is allowed to awake again in his
soul.
Out
of cosmic knowledge, the Easter festival is tied not only on
the awakening sun, but on the emergence of the plant realm in
spring. As well as the sowing corn is immersed in the earth and
must rot to awake anew, the astral light must slumber in the
human body to be woken again. The symbol of the Easter festival
is the sowing corn, which sacrifices itself to let arise a new
plant. It is the sacrifice of a phase of nature to let arise a
new one. Sacrificing and coming-into-being — this is
concentrated in the Easter festival. Richard Wagner felt this
idea as something great. He was in the Villa Wesendonck at the
Zurich Lake in 1857; there he looked out at the awaking nature.
With the idea of it, he got the idea of the dead and
resurrecting World Saviour, of Christ Jesus, and the idea of
Parzival who seeks for the holiest in the soul.
All
leaders of humanity who knew how the higher spiritual life of
the human being awakes from the lower nature understood the
idea of Easter. Hence, Dante (Dante Alighieri, ~1265-1321) also
showed his awakening at Good Friday in his Divine
Comedy. Immediately at the beginning of the poem, this
becomes clear to us. In the 35th year of his life, Dante has
this big vision, which he describes. In the middle of his life,
he lets it take place. The normal human life counts seventy
years, 35 years is the middle. He reckons 35 years for the
physical experience in which the human being still takes up new
physical experiences. Then the human being is ripe that the
spiritual experience is added to the physical one. Then he is
ripe for the perception of the spiritual world. If all the
growing forces of the physical are united, the time begins when
the spiritual is woken to life. Therefore, Dante let this
vision take place at Easter.
The
original growing of the solar strength is celebrated at
Christmas. Easter is tied on the middle of the growing solar
strength. We are in the centre of spring, at the Easter point
where Dante believed to stand in the middle of human life when
he felt the spiritual life rising in him. The Easter festival
is put with reason in the middle of the rise of the sun,
according to the time when in the human being the slumbering
astral light is revived. The strength of the sun wakes up the
slumbering seed, the grain resting in the earth. The grain has
become a picture of that which takes place in the human nature,
if the astral light awakes in him. It is born inside of the
human being. The Easter festival is the festival of the
resurrection inside of the human being. The thought of the
redeeming Christ was connected with the cosmic thought.
A
kind of contrast was felt between the Christian view of the
Easter festival and the spiritual-scientific idea of karma. It
seems to be a contrast, this idea of karma and that of the
redemption by the Son of Man. People who do not understand a
lot of the basic view of the spiritual-scientific thought see
such a contradiction between the redemption by Christ Jesus and
the idea of karma. They say, the thought of the redeeming god
contradicts the self-redemption by karma. — They
understand neither the Easter thought of redemption in the
right sense, nor the thought of karmic justice. It would not be
right if anybody saw a fellow man suffering and said to him,
you yourself have caused this suffering — and, therefore,
he did not want to help him because karma should have its
effect. He misunderstands karma. On the contrary, karma says,
help that who suffers, because you are there to help. You
improve the karmic account of necessity, while you help your
fellow man. Thereby, you give him the possibility to bear his
karma. Then you appear as the saviour from suffering. —
Thus, one can also help a whole circle of persons instead of a
single one. One fits thereby into the karma of these persons,
while one helps them. If a mighty individual comes to the
assistance of the whole humanity like Christ Jesus, his
sacrificial death has an effect on the karma of the whole
humanity. He could help to bear the karma of the whole
humanity, and we may be sure that the redemption by Christ
Jesus was taken up in the karma of humanity.
Just the thought of resurrection and redemption is only
correctly understood by spiritual science. A future
Christianity combines karma and redemption. Because cause and
effect are connected in the spiritual life, this big
sacrificial action must also have its effect on the human
lives. Spiritual science also deepens this festival idea. The
knowledge of spirit deepens the idea of Easter that seems to be
written on the starry firmament, which we believe to read on
the starry firmament. Also in the future emergence of the
spirit, which will take place in the human being, we see the
depth of the Easter thought. The human being lives now in the
middle of his life in disharmonious, bewildering conditions.
Nevertheless, he also knows: as the world has arisen from the
chaos, the harmony will once arise from his chaotic inside. As
well as the regular orbits of the planets around the sun
originated, the internal saviour of the human being will arise
who will mean the uniform, the harmonious compared with all
disharmony. Everybody should be reminded by the Easter festival
of the resurrection of the spirit out of the present darkened
nature of the human being.
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