II
The
Second Coming of Christ
in the Etheric World
IN
the process of human evolution a certain definite
connection exists between the past and the future. Study of this
connection sheds a great deal of light upon questions such as: What
devolves upon us as men belonging to a particular epoch?
When we were
together here some little time ago, many things were said about the past
evolution of humanity, and to-day I will add something
about the connection between the past and the immediate future. At
the end of the lecture yesterday attention was called to a
significant sign, telling us as it were from the heavens that
humanity needs a spiritual impetus, something like a new impulse for
the age.
[Mysteries of Cosmic Existence. Comets and the Moon,
Stuttgart, 5th March, 1910. See also footnote near end of present lecture,
p. 79.]
Understanding of how this impulse must work is possible only when we
study the last millennia prior to the founding of Christianity in a
certain connection with the millennia after it, with the millennia,
that is to say, in which we ourselves are living.
There is
a law in accordance with which certain happenings are repeated in the
process of man's evolution, and we spoke of them in the last
lecture-course given here in Stuttgart.
[Universe, Earth and Man.
Eleven lectures, 4th–16th August, 1908.]
Today I want only to
emphasise that when reference is made in Spiritual Science to
these systematic repetitions in the course of human evolution it must
not he imagined that they can be worked up by the intellect; they
must be investigated in detail and confirmed by spiritual research.
Attempts to construct new repetitions according to the pattern of
others can lead one very far astray. There is, however, one
repetition which does, in fact, resemble another, the form it takes
being that happenings of crucial importance before the
founding of Christianity come to pass again afterwards in a certain
way.
The last three
millennia prior to the founding of Christianity belong to an epoch in
the history of human evolution called the Dark Age, the lesser Dark
Age — Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga began in the year 3101
B.C.
With it is connected everything we recognise nowadays
as the great achievements of humanity, as the fundamental
characteristics of present-day culture. Before this Dark Age, before
Kali Yuga, all human thinking, all the powers of the human soul, were
in a certain respect differently organised. The year 3101
B.C.
is an approximate date, for in the process of
development qualities of one kind passed over gradually into others;
but before that time the last vestiges of ancient clairvoyance
were still present. In the course of evolution the sequence of
the ages is: Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga, Kali Yuga. It is
the last that is of particular interest to us to-day. The earlier
ages take us back to old Atlantis. In very ancient times, vestiges of
the ancient clairvoyance still survived and prior to the Dark
Age man was directly conscious of the presence of a spiritual world
because he was able to gaze into it. But this consciousness of the
spiritual world withdrew more and more from man's vision and speaking
generally we can say that the development then begins of those
faculties of soul which on the one hand confine his power of judgment
to the sense-perceptible world, while, on the other, they promote his
self-consciousness; all these powers begin to operate in
Kali Yuga. And whereas during this age man was not in a position to
look into the spiritual worlds, the firm centre we call the
knowledge of self-consciousness developed all the more
strongly within him. But do not imagine that even now this knowledge
of self-consciousness is already highly developed; it has yet to
reach many further stages. But it could never have been experienced
by man if there had not been this “Dark Age”.
Thus during
the three millennia prior to the founding of Christianity man was losing
his connection with the spiritual world to an increasing extent and
indeed had no direct perception of that connection.
On the occasion
of my last visit here we heard how, at the conclusion of the first
millennium of Kali Yuga, a kind of substitute was given for
vision of the spiritual worlds. This substitute was made possible
through the fact that a particular individual — Abraham —
was chosen out because the special organisation of his physical brain
enabled him to have consciousness of the spiritual world
without the old faculties. That is why in Spiritual Science we
call the first millennium of Kali Yuga the Abraham-epoch; it was the
epoch when man did, it is true, lose the direct vision of the
spiritual worlds, but when there unfolded in him something like a
consciousness of the Divine which gradually made its way more and
more deeply into his ego, with the result that he came to conceive of
the Deity as related to human ego-consciousness. In the first
millennium of Kali Yuga — which at its conclusion we can call
the Abraham-epoch — the Deity is revealed as the
World-Ego.
This
Abraham-epoch was followed by the Moses-epoch, when the God Jahve,
the World-Ego, was no longer revealed in the form of a mysterious
guidance of human destinies, as a God of a single people; in the Moses-epoch
this Deity was revealed, as we know, in the burning bush, as the God of the
Elements. And it was a great advance when, through the teachings of
Moses, the World-Ego as the Deity was experienced in such a way that
men realised: the Elements of manifested existence, all that is seen
with physical eyes — lightning, thunder, and so on — are
emanations, deeds of the World-Ego, ultimately of the one World-Ego.
We must, however, clearly understand in what way this denoted an
advance.
Before the
Abraham-epoch and before Kali Yuga, we find that through the direct
vision of the spiritual worlds made possible by the remains of the
old clairvoyance, men beheld the spiritual, as indeed was the
case in all these ancient times. We should have to go infinitely far
back to find anything else. Men actually beheld the spiritual during
Dvapara Yuga, Treta Yuga, Krita Yuga, beheld it as a multiplicity
of Beings. You know that when we rise into the spiritual worlds
we find there the Hierarchies of spiritual Beings. They, naturally,
are under a unified guidance, but this was beyond the grasp of
consciousness in those ancient times. Men beheld the individual
members of the Hierarchies, a multiplicity of Divine Beings. To grasp
them as a unity was possible only for the Initiates. But now the
World-Ego, grasped for the first time by man himself with the
physical instrument of the brain — a faculty that had developed
in a specially marked way in Abraham — confronted him, and he
conceived the World-Ego as manifesting in the different kingdoms of
Nature, in the Elements.
A further
advance was made in the last millennium before the founding of Christianity,
in the Solomon-epoch. Thus the three millennia before the founding of
Christianity can be distinguished by calling the first millennium by
the name of the individuality who appears and then works on into the
second: the Abraham-epoch. From the beginning of Kali Yuga until
Abraham men are being prepared to recognise the One God behind the
manifestations of Nature. This possibility begins with Abraham. In
the Moses-epoch the One God becomes the ruler of the manifestations
of Nature and is sought for behind them. All this is then intensified
in the Solomon-epoch, and we are led through this last epoch to that
point in evolution where the same Divine Being whom the Abraham-epoch
and the Moses-epoch, too, beheld in Jahve, where the same Divine
Being takes on human form.
In contemplating
this subject from the spiritual-scientific point of view it must be firmly
realised that in this respect the Gospels are right: Christ may not
be distinguished from Jahve otherwise than that the light of the sun
reflected by the moon is to be distinguished from the direct light of
the sun. Where is the light that floods a bright moonlit night? It is
actual sunlight, only it is reflected back to us from the moon.
So we can have this sunlight directly by day or rayed back by the
moon on bright moonlit nights. What manifests thus in space also
manifests in the following way: what was finally to appear in
Christ as a Spirit-Sun was revealed beforehand in reflection. Jahve
is the reflection which precedes Christ in time. Just as the
moonlight reflects the sunlight, so was the Christ Being
reflected for Abraham, Moses, Solomon. It was always the same Being.
Then He Himself appeared as the Christ-Sun at the time of the
founding of Christianity. The preparation for this great event was
made in the Abraham-epoch, in the Moses-epoch, in the
Solomon-epoch.
A repetition
of these three pre-Christian ages takes place in the Christian era, but
now in reverse order. The essential and fundamental trend of the
Solomon-epoch is repeated in the first thousand years after Christ,
in that the spirit of Solomon lives and is active as an impulse in
the most outstanding minds of the first Christian millennium. And
fundamentally speaking it was the wisdom of Solomon through which men
endeavoured to grasp the nature and essence of the Christ Event.
Then, following the Solomon-epoch, came the era that can be called
the revival of the Moses-epoch ... and in the second millennium
after Christ the best minds of this era are permeated by the spirit
of Moses. The spirit of Moses does indeed come to life again in a new
form. In the pre-Christian age the spirit of Moses had been directed
towards the outer world of physical Nature in order to find the
Divine World-Ego as Jahve, the World-Ego manifesting in lightning and
thunder, in the great revelation from the Elements of laws for men.
Whereas the World-Ego streams into Moses from outside, is revealed
from outside, in the second millennium after Christ the same Divine
Being announces Himself within the soul. The experience which
came to Moses as an outer happening when he withdrew from his people
in order to receive the Decalogue this significant happening is
repeated in the second Christian millennium in the form of a mighty
revelation from within man.
Repetitions
do not take the same form but what comes later manifests as a kind of
polarity. It was from the Elements, from outer Nature, that the God
revealed Himself to Moses; in the second millennium after Christ He
reveals Himself from the deepest foundations of the human soul. And
how could this be presented to us more impressively than in the story
of a great, supremely gifted man of whose preaching it was said that
he proclaimed mighty truths from the very depths of his soul! It can
be taken for granted that this man was steeped through and through in
what can be called Christian mysticism. Then, to the place where he
is preaching comes a seemingly unimportant layman who at first
listens to the sermons but then turns out to be one who need not be
considered a layman but can become the instructor of the preacher
— Tauler — and induces him, despite his renown, to
suspend his sermons for a time because he does not feel inwardly
imbued with what is living in the layman. And when Tauler, after
having received the inspiration, ascends the pulpit again, the
overwhelmingly powerful impression made by his sermon is
described symbolically by saying that many of his listeners
fell down as if dead — meaning that everything of a lower
nature in them was killed.
This was
a revelation of the World-Ego from within — working from within
with a power as great as that of the revelation from the Elements to Moses
in the second millennium before Christ. Thus we see a revival of the
Moses-epoch inasmuch as the spirit of Moses illumined and
imbued with life the whole of Christian mysticism, from Meister
Eckhart down to the later Christian mystics. Verily the spirit of
Moses was alive in the souls of the Christian mystics! This was in
the second millennium after Christ when there was a revival of the
whole character of the Moses-epoch. Just as in the first
millennium of the Christian era the repetition of the
Solomon-epoch was responsible for bringing to expression the inner
content of the Christian mysteries — for example, the Christian
teaching concerning the Hierarchies, the detailed wisdom concerning
the higher worlds — so was the second Moses-epoch particularly
responsible for the essential character of German mysticism: a deep,
mystical consciousness of the One God who can be awakened and
resurrected within the human soul. And the influence of this
Moses-epoch has persisted in all the endeavours made since that time
to fathom the nature of the World-Ego, the Undivided Godhead.
But the
course of the evolution of humanity is such that from our time onwards
a renaissance of the Abraham-epoch will take place as we pass slowly
into the third millennium. In pre-Christian times the sequence is:
Abraham-epoch, Moses-epoch, Solomon-epoch; in the Christian era the
order is reversed: Solomon-epoch, Moses-epoch, Abraham-epoch. We are
moving towards the Abraham-epoch, and this will inevitably bring
momentous consequences in its train.
Let us recall
what was of essential significance in the pre-Christian Abraham-epoch. It
was the fact that the old clairvoyance had disappeared, that there had
been bestowed upon man a consciousness of the Divine closely
bound up with human faculties. Everything that humanity could acquire
from this brain-bound consciousness of the Divine had by now been
gradually exhausted and there is very little left to be gained
through these faculties. But on the other hand, in the new
Abraham-epoch exactly the opposite path is taken — the path
Which leads humanity away from vision confined to the physical and
material, away from intellectual inferences based upon material data.
We are moving along the path leading into the regions where men once
dwelt in times before the Abraham-epoch. It is the path that will
make states of natural clairvoyance possible for man, states in
which natural clairvoyant forces will be in active
operation.
During Kali
Yuga itself, Initiation alone could lead into the spiritual worlds in
the right way. Initiation does, of course, lead to higher stages that
will be accessible to men only in the very far distant future; but
the first signs of a natural faculty of clairvoyance will become
evident fairly soon, as the renewal of the Abraham-epoch
approaches.
Thus, after
men have acquired ego-consciousness, after they have come to know the ego
as a firm inner centre, they are led out of themselves again in order to
be able to look with an even deeper vision into the spiritual worlds.
The ending of Kali Yuga has to do with this also. Having lasted for
five thousand years, Kali Yuga ended in
A.D.
1899. This was a year of crucial importance for the evolution of
humanity. Naturally, it is again an approximate date, for things
happen gradually. But just as the year 3101
B.C.
can be indicated as a point of time when humanity was
led down from the stage of the old clairvoyance to physical vision
and intellectuality, so the year 1899 is the time when humanity
received an impetus towards the first beginnings of a future
clairvoyance. And it is the lot of mankind, already in this twentieth
century before the next millennium — indeed for a few
individuals in the first half of this century — to develop the
first rudiments of a new faculty of clairvoyance that quite certainly
will appear if men prove capable of understanding it. It must,
however, be realised that there are two possibilities. It
belongs to the very essence of the human soul that natural
faculties of clairvoyance will arise in the future in a few people
during the first half of the twentieth century and in more and more
human beings during the next two thousand five hundred years,
until finally there will be a sufficient number who, if they so
desire, will have the new, natural clairvoyance. A distinction must,
of course, be made between cultivated and natural
clairvoyance.
But there are
two possibilities. The one is that although men have indeed the aptitude
for this clairvoyance, materialism may triumph in the next decades
and humanity sink in its morass. True, even then there will be
individuals here and there who assert that they see in the physical
man something like a second man; but if materialistic
consciousness gets to the point of declaring Spiritual Science to be
sheer craziness and stamping out all consciousness of the spiritual
world, then these incipient faculties will not be understood. It will
depend upon humanity itself whether what will then take place turns
out to be for the good or ill, because what ought to come about might
pass unnoticed.
Or the other
situation is possible, where Spiritual Science is not trampled underfoot.
Then men will understand how to cultivate such faculties not only in the
secret schools of Initiation but also to foster them when, towards
the middle of this century, they appear like delicate buds of the
life of soul in individuals here and there. They will say, as if from
a power that has awakened within them: I see as a reality something
that is described in Anthroposophy as the second man within the
physical man. But still other faculties will appear — for
example, a faculty that a man will notice in himself. After he has
performed some deed, there will appear before his soul a kind of
dream-picture which he will know to be connected in some way with
what he has done. And from Spiritual Science he will realise: When an
after-image of my deed appears in this way, although it is
essentially different from the deed itself, it reveals to me what the
karmic effect of my deed will be in the future.
This
understanding of karma will develop in certain individuals during the
middle of our century. The explanation is that Kali Yuga has run its course
and that from epoch to epoch new faculties appear in men. But if no
understanding is developed, if this particular faculty is stamped
out, if those who speak about faculties of this kind are put away as
if they were insane, disaster is inevitable and humanity will sink in
the morass of materialism. Everything will depend upon whether
understanding is awakened for Spiritual Science, or whether Ahriman
will succeed in suppressing its intentions. Then, of course, those
who are choking in materialism may say scornfully: They were fine
prophets who stated that a second man will be seen beside the
physical man! Nothing will be apparent if the faculties for seeing it
are crushed out. But even if these faculties do not become evident in
the middle of the twentieth century, this will be no proof that the
rudiments of them are not within man, but only that the seed of the
young buds has been crushed. The faculties that have been described
to-day exist and can be developed, provided only that mankind is
willing.
This stage
of evolution therefore lies immediately ahead of us. We are, as it
were, retracing the path of development. In Abraham, consciousness of
the Divine was brought down into the brain; in passing into a new
Abraham-epoch, consciousness of the Divine will in turn be brought
out of the brain, and during the next two thousand five hundred years
we shall find more and more human beings who possess knowledge of the
great spiritual teachings of the cosmic secrets yielded by the
mysteries of Initiation. Just as the spirit of Moses prevailed in the
epoch that is now over, so in our time the spirit of Abraham begins
to prevail, in order that after men have been led to consciousness of
the Divine in the material world, they may now be led out of and
beyond it. For it is an eternal cosmic law that each individuality
has to perform a particular deed more than once, periodically
— twice at all events, the one as the antithesis of the other.
What Abraham brought down for men into the physical consciousness he
will bear upwards again for them into the spiritual
world.
Thus it is
obvious that we are living at a vitally important time and that to
disseminate Spiritual Science to-day is not a matter of preference
but something that is demanded by our age. To prepare mankind for
great moments in the process of evolution is among the tasks of
spiritual investigation. Spiritual Science exists in order that
men may know what it is they are seeing. Anyone who is true to his
age cannot but be mindful of the fact that spirit-knowledge
must be brought into the world to prevent what is coming from
passing by humanity unnoticed.
These things
are connected with others. In certain other respects everything is
renewed in similar repetitions. A time is approaching when more and
more of what existed in pre-Christian centuries will be renewed for
humanity, but everything will now be steeped in what men have been
able to acquire through the mighty Christ Event. We have heard that
the great impulse experienced by Moses through the vision of the
burning thorn bush and lightning on Sinai was experienced again
inwardly, in its Christianised form. For men such as Tauler
and Eckhart knew with all certainty that when there dawned within
them the power known to Moses as Jahve, that power was the Christ, no
longer the reflected Christ but the Christ Himself, arising from the
depth of the heart. What had been experienced by Moses was
experienced by the Christian mystics in a Christianised form,
in a form changed through the Christ Impulse. And what was
experienced in the pre-Christian age of Abraham — that, too,
will be experienced in a new and different form. And what will this
be? All things, all events that come about normally in the evolution
of humanity cast their lights in advance (instead of the trivial
saying, “cast their shadows”, I prefer to say,
“cast their lights”). Thus in certain respects a light
indicative of future happenings was cast in advance by the event of
Damascus, the conversion of Saul into Paul.
Let us be
clear what this signified for Paul. Up to then he had acquired a thorough
knowledge of the Hebraic secret doctrines. From these teachings
he knew that some day an Individuality would descend to the earth,
representing to humanity the One who conquers death. He knew: an
Individuality will appear in the flesh, showing through his life that
the spirit triumphs over death so completely that for this
Individuality in his earthly incarnation death has no more
significance than any other physical happening. Paul knew this.
And he knew something else as well from the ancient Hebraic
teachings, namely that when the Christ, the Messiah who was to come,
had lived in the flesh, when He had resurrected and had won the
victory over death, the spiritual sphere of the earth would be
transformed and clairvoyance would undergo a change. Whereas
before then a clairvoyant would not have seen the Christ Being in the
spiritual atmosphere of the earth, but only when he looked upwards to
the Sun Spirit, Paul knew that through the Christ Impulse there would
take place in earth-existence a change signifying that, having gained
the victory over death the Christ would be found by clairvoyant
vision in the sphere of the earth. When, therefore, a man was
clairvoyant, he would behold the Christ in the earth-sphere as the
living spirit of the earth. But that of which Paul, while he was
still Saul, could not be convinced was that the One who had lived in
Palestine, had died on the Cross and was said by his disciples to
have been resurrected, was indeed the One to whom the ancient Hebraic
doctrines referred.
The salient
point is that Paul had not been convinced by what he had seen physically
of the things narrated in the Gospels. Conviction that the Christ was
the predicted Messiah first came to him when the light cast in
advance revealed itself to him, when as though by Grace from above he
became clairvoyant and, finding Christ in the sphere of the earth,
was compelled to say to himself: He has been here in very truth and
has risen! It was because Paul himself had beheld Christ in the
spiritual sphere of the earth that he knew: Now He is here! And from
that moment he was convinced regarding Christ Jesus.
The essence
of what happened at Damascus, therefore, was that Paul had discovered
Christ Jesus clairvoyantly in the sphere of the earth. Thus, if he had
not, for example, heard tell of the deeds of Christ in Palestine, if he
had not himself actually heard the stories told in the Gospels but
had lived somewhat later, he might have experienced the Christ Event
of Damascus only later: but even so he would have arrived at the same
conviction. For this event revealed to him the reality of Christ's
presence! He knew: He who is now revealed in the sphere of the earth
is the One of whom the ancient Hebraic secret doctrine
tells.
The Christ
Event is not confined to one point of time only. In the case of Paul it
came very early, in order that through him Christianity might pursue its
course.
Now, as long
as Kali Yuga lasted — this was until the year 1899 — the
evolution of humanity had not reached the stage at which Paul's
experience could be repeated without more ado; human faculties were
not mature enough for that. Hence there was one who experienced it
through Grace; and others, too, experienced similar events through
Grace. But we are living now in the age when there is to be a
revolutionary change: the first rudiments of natural
clairvoyance are developing. We are passing into the Abraham-epoch
and are being led out into the spiritual world. This means that it
will be possible for a certain number of human beings, and more
and more in the next two thousand five hundred years, to experience a
repetition of the event of Damascus. The great and momentous feature
of the coming era will be that many human beings will experience this
event. The Christ, now to be found in the spiritual sphere of the
earth, will be perceptible to those faculties which, as we have said,
will make their appearance. When men become able to see the etheric
body, they will learn to see the etheric body of Christ Jesus, as did
Paul. This is what is beginning as the characteristic trait of
a new age, and between the years 1930-40-45 it will already become
evident in the first forerunners of human beings possessed of these
faculties. If men are alert they will experience this event of
Damascus through direct spiritual vision and therewith clarity and
truth concerning the Christ Event. A remarkable parallelism of
happenings will come about.
During the
next two decades men will be more and more inclined to abandon the texts
of the Gospels because they will no longer understand them. Superficial
scholars are everywhere at pains to “prove” that the
Gospels are not historical records, that there can be no
question of any historical Christ. The historical documents will lose
their value and the number of people who deny Christ Jesus will
steadily increase. Men who may still believe that these events can be
substantiated by history are short-sighted. Those who mean well by
Christianity will not reject understanding of the spiritual
proof of the existence of Christ Jesus, for this spiritual
proof will be provided through the cultivation of the faculties
which enable men to behold the Christ as a real Presence in His
etheric body. Those who place reliance only on documents may call
themselves good Christians, but in point of fact they are
destroying Christianity; however vociferously they proclaim the
knowledge they have gleaned about Christianity from documentary
records, they are destroying it because they are rejecting a
spiritual teaching through which, in actual vision, the Christ will
become a reality for men in our century.
When the
Christian era began, men had been descending into the Dark Age for more
than three thousand years, had been thrown back upon the faculties of their
outer senses. At that time Christ could not have revealed Himself to
the faculties necessary for the evolution of humanity in any other
way than through physical incarnation. Because man's physical
faculties had then reached the peak of their development, Christ was
obliged to appear in a physical body. But no progress at all would be
possible unless with higher faculties men were able to discover
Christ as a reality in the higher worlds. Just as Christ had once to
be discovered with purely physical faculties, men will find him with
the newly developed faculties in that world where etheric bodies
alone are to be seen. There can be no second physical incarnation
of Christ. He came once in a physical body of flesh because it
was at one period only that human faculties were dependent upon His
presence in such a body. But now, with the higher faculties, men will
be able to perceive the etheric body of Christ as an even greater
reality.
The momentous
event in store for us can be called: the Reappearance of Christ Jesus
... a gradual reappearance, to begin with for a few and then for more
and more human beings. It is an event that has significance not only
for those who will then still be incarnated in bodies of flesh. A
number of human beings living to-day will still be in incarnation at
the time of the Christ Event ... they will experience it in the way
that has been described. Others will have passed through the gate of
death. As we once heard in a lecture here,
[This reference is to a lecture given 14th November, 1909:
The Tasks and Aims of Spiritual Science.]
the Event of Golgotha was
an event that affected not only the physical world; its influences
reached into all the spiritual worlds. Christ's descent into
the underworld was an actual fact and the effects of the Christ
Event that is to take place in our century will also work —
though not in the same form as on earth — into the world in
which man lives between death and rebirth.
But there is
one essential. The faculties by means of which men will be able, between
death and rebirth, to behold the Christ Event, cannot be acquired in
that world; they must be acquired on the physical plane and carried
from there into the life between death and a new birth. There are
faculties which must be acquired on the earth, for we have not
been placed on the physical earth for nothing. It is an error to
believe that there is no purpose in living on the earth.
Faculties have to be acquired there that can be acquired in no other
world — they are the faculties for understanding the Christ
Event and the events that will follow it. Those human beings who now
develop these faculties on the earth through the teachings of
Spiritual Science will carry them through the gate of death. It is
not through Initiation only, but through a clear-minded acceptance of
spiritual-scientific knowledge, that the faculties are acquired which
make it possible also to be aware of the Christ Event in the
spiritual world between death and a new birth. But those who turn
deaf ears to this knowledge must wait until a later incarnation to
acquire the faculties that must be acquired here on earth in order
that the Christ Event may be experienced in yonder world. Therefore
let nobody imagine that the announcement of the Christ Event —
an event which the teachings of Spiritual Science alone can make
intelligible — will bear no fruit for him if he has already
passed through the gate of death. It will indeed bear
fruit.
Obviously,
therefore, spiritual research prepares the way for a new Christ Event.
But those who receive into themselves the essence of the teaching of the
spirit as part of their whole life of soul, as a quickening, vital force,
must then grow on to a spiritual understanding of these things,
realising that through Spiritual Science they must learn to
understand our newly dawning age thoroughly and fundamentally.
We must come to realise that in the future the most important events
must be sought, not on the physical plane but outside and beyond it,
just as Christ must be sought in the spiritual world when He appears
in His etheric form.
What has here
been said will be repeated again and again in the coming decades. But
there will be people who misunderstand it and who will say: So Christ
is to come again! Because this view will be tinged with the belief
that this is a physical return, such people will support all
the false Messiahs who will appear. And in the middle of the
twentieth century there will be plenty of them, making use of the
materialistic beliefs, the materialistic thinking and feeling of men
in order to proclaim themselves as Christ. There have always been
false Messiahs. For example, in the South of France, before the
Crusades, there appeared a false Messiah whom his followers regarded
as a kind of Christ incarnate in a physical body. Before then a false
Messiah had appeared in Spain, attracting a large number of
followers. In North Africa, a man who announced himself as the Christ
created a great sensation. In the seventeenth century a man who
appeared in Smyrna, alleging himself to be the Christ, drew a vast
crowd of followers; his name was Shabbathai Zewi. Pilgrims journeyed
to him from Poland, Austria, Spain, Germany, France, from all over
Europe and from wide provinces of Africa and Asia.
In past
centuries this kind of happening was not so deplorable, for the demand
to distinguish the true from the false had not yet been made of
humanity. Only now are we living in the age when disaster might
befall if men were not equal to the spiritual test. Those will be
equal to it who know that human faculties develop to higher stages,
that the faculties on account of which it was necessary for Christ to
be seen physically were dependent upon a physical manifestation at
the time of the founding of Christianity but that no progress would
be made if in this present century men were not to find Him
again in a higher form. Those who are striving in the sense of
Spiritual Science will have to prove that they are the ones able to
distinguish the false Messiahs from the One Messiah who does not
appear in the flesh, but appears as a spiritual Being to the
newly awakened faculties of men.
The time will
come when men will again see into the spiritual world and there behold the
land whence flow the streams of true spiritual nourishment for
everything that happens in the physical world. Again and again we
have heard that it was once possible for men to look with clairvoyant
vision into the spiritual world. Oriental writings also contain the
tradition of an ancient spiritual land
[See note 1 at end of lecture.]
into which men were once able to gaze and
whence they could draw the super-sensible influences that were
available for the physical world. Many descriptions of this land,
that was once within reach of men's vision but has withdrawn, are
full of sadness. This land was indeed once accessible to men and will
be so again now that Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, is over. Initiation has
always led thither, and it was always possible for those who had
achieved Initiation to guide their steps into that mysterious
land which is said to have disappeared from the sphere of human
experience. Deeply moving are the writings which tell of this ancient
land, whither the Initiates repair ever and again in order to bring
from there the new streams and impulses for everything that is to be
imparted to mankind from century to century. Those who are connected
with the spiritual world in this way resort again and again to
Shamballa — the name of this mysterious land. It is the
deep fount into which clairvoyant vision once reached; it withdrew
during Kali Yuga and is spoken of as an ancient fairyland that will
come again into the realm of man. Shamballa will be there again when
Kali Yuga has run its course. Mankind will rise through normal human
faculties into the land of Shamballa, the land whence the
Initiates draw strength and wisdom for the missions they are to
fulfil. Shamballa is a reality, was a reality, will be a reality
again for humanity. And when Shamballa reveals itself again,
one of the first visions to come to men will be that of Christ in His
etheric form. Into the land declared by Oriental writings to have
vanished there is no Leader other than Christ. It is Christ who will
lead men to Shamballa.
We must
inscribe into our souls what can come to pass for humanity if the omen
[See note 2 at the end of this lecture.]
referred to in the
lecture yesterday is rightly understood. If men realise that they
dare not allow themselves to sink more deeply into matter, that
their path must be reversed, that a spiritual life must begin, then,
at first for a few and in the course of two thousand five hundred
years for a greater and greater number of human beings, there will
arise the experience of the land of Shamballa — woven of light,
shone through with light, teeming with wisdom. Such is the event
which for those who have the will to understand, for those who
have ears to hear and eyes to see, must be described as denoting the
most momentous turning-point in the evolution of humanity at the dawn
of the Abraham-epoch in the Christian era. It is the event through
which men's understanding of the Christ Impulse will be enhanced and
intensified.
Strange as it
may seem, wisdom will thereby lose nothing of its value. The more insight
men achieve, the greater and mightier will Christ appear to them to
be! When once their gaze can penetrate into Shamballa, they will be
able to understand much of what is indeed contained in the Gospels
but for the recognition of which they will need to experience a kind
of event of Damascus. Thus at the time when men are more sceptical of
the original records than they have ever been, the new form of belief
in Christ Jesus will arise when we grow into the realm where He will
first be encountered: the mysterious land of Shamballa.
Notes:
-
Other direct
references made by Dr. Steiner to the region of the spiritual world
named “Shamballa” in ancient Tibetan writings:
-
Lecture-Course
17.
The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness.
Lecture 5.
Given at Berlin, 9th March, 1910.
“... at one time it was possible for men to travel to
a land where the Spiritual flowed into the Physical. It is the
land from which at certain times the Initiates — and
at all times the Bodhisattvas — draw fresh forces. The
Eastern writings refer with deep sorrow to this land, asking:
Where is it? We are told the names of places, paths are named;
but the land itself is concealed, even from those most initiated
among the Lamas of Tibet. Only to the highest Initiates is it
accessible. But it is always stated that some day this land will
return to earth ...”
-
Lecture
given at Munich, 15th March, 1910.
The Sermon on the Mount. The Land of Shamballa.
See also:
H. P. Blavatsky: The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, pp. 333 and 418
(3rd and revised edition, reprinted 1905).
-
Halley's Comet.
The following passages are from the lecture to which Dr. Steiner is
referring:
Mysteries of Cosmic Existence. Comets and the Moon.
“... Halley's Comet has a quite definite task and everything
else that it brings with it is definitely related to this task.
Halley's Comet — we are speaking of its spiritual aspect
— has the task of impressing human nature as a whole in
such a way that human nature and the human being always take a
further step in respect of the development of the Ego when the Comet
comes near to the Earth. It is the step in development which leads
out the Ego to concepts connected with the physical plane. ... When
it is said that Halley's Comet may be an omen, that its influence,
working alone, might make men superficial and lead out the Ego more
and more on to the physical plane, and that precisely in our days
this must be resisted — it is not said for the purpose of
reviving an old superstition. The resistance can come about
only by a spiritual view of the world like that of Anthroposophy
taking the place of the trend of evolution brought about by Halley's
Comet ...”
See also,
Lecture-Course 17,
The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness.
Lecture 5.
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