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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz
Schmidt Number: S-2478
On-line since: 1st July, 2004
THE CHRIST IMPULSE AS LIVING REALITY
Munich, 20th November 1911
So mighty and all-pervading was the impulse poured into the evolution
of mankind by the Christ that its waves surge onwards into future
epochs. In the fourth epoch of post-Atlantean civilisation this
impulse was manifested in the incarnation of Christ in a human,
physical body. And we are now approaching an epoch when the impulse
will manifest in such a way that human beings will behold the Christ
on the astral plane in an etheric form.
Yesterday [Public lecture, Munich 19th November 1911,
From Paracelsus to Goethe. (Not published in English.)
( 43 )]
we heard that in still later epochs men will be able to behold Him in even
higher forms in the aesthetic and moral spheres. But when we speak in this
way of the Christ Impulse we are concerned with ideas which will be
resolutely opposed above all by the churches of Christendom. Great and
incisive measures have been and are necessary in the onward progress
of human evolution in order to promote increasing understanding of the
Christ Impulse. Hitherto, indeed, such understanding has been lacking.
And anyone who considers modern theology will realise not only the
futility of the attitude maintained by the opponents of Christianity,
but also by those who claim to be its steadfast adherents. The
theosophical movement in the West should have become that stream of
spiritual life which out of true and genuine sources awakens
understanding for Christianity in the modern age, but such endeavours
met with strong opposition.
It is important to understand the real sources of Christianity, but
owing to lack of time they cannot all be mentioned today. We shall
speak only of those which have been accessible to mankind since the
thirteenth century.
Since the thirteenth century the movement connected with the name of
Christian Rosenkreutz has been an integral part of the spiritual life
of mankind. Spiritual measures of a very definite kind were necessary
in the thirteenth century to enable the influence connected with this
name to become part of the spiritual life of the modern age. At the
time when the spiritual world was entirely shut off from human vision,
a council of twelve wise men came together. All the spiritual
knowledge then existing, of the world and its secrets, was gathered
from their separate different spheres into this council. By means of
certain occult processes, the wisdom that had passed over from
Atlantis to the holy Rishis had been transmitted to seven of these
twelve men. In four others lived the wisdom of the sacred mysteries of
the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and Greco-Roman epochs respectively. And
what existed in those days of the kind of culture which was to
characterise the fifth post-Atlantean epoch constituted the wisdom of
the twelfth. The whole range of spiritual life was accessible to these
twelve.
Now it was known at that time that a certain individuality who had
been a contemporary of the Mystery of Golgotha was to be born again as
a child. Meanwhile, through a number of incarnations, this
individuality had unfolded a power of deep and fervent piety, devotion
and love. The council of the twelve wise men took this child into
their care soon after he was born; shut off from the outside, exoteric
world, he came under no influence save theirs; they cared for all his
bodily needs and were also his teachers. The manner of the child's
development was altogether unique; the profound spirituality he bore
within him as the fruit of many incarnations came to expression, too,
in his outer, bodily form. He was a weak and sickly child, but his
body became marvelously transparent. He grew up and developed in such
a way that a radiant, shining spirit indwelt a body that had become
transparent. Through the processes of a profoundly wise form of
education, all the wisdom from the ages preceding and during
post-Atlantean times which the twelve wise men were able to give
forth, rayed into his soul. By way of the deeper soul-forces, not by
way of the intellect, the treasures of all this wisdom united in the
soul of this child. He then fell into a strange condition. For a
certain period of time he ceased to take nourishment; all external
functions of life were as though paralysed, and the whole of the
wisdom received by the child rayed back to the twelve. Each of them
received back what he had originally given, but now in a different
form. And those twelve wise men felt: Now, for the first time, the
twelve great religions and world conceptions have been given to us,
united into one interconnected whole. And henceforward what we call
rosicrucian Christianity lived in the twelve men.
The child lived only a short time longer. In the external world we
give the name Christian Rosenkreutz to this individuality. But it was
not until the fourteenth century that he was known by this name. In
the fourteenth century he was born again and lived then for more than
a hundred years. Even when he was not incarnated in the flesh, he
worked through his etheric body, always with the purpose of
influencing the development of Christianity in its true form as the
synthesis of all the great religions and systems of thought in the
world. And he has worked on into our time, either as a human being or
from his ether body, inspiring all that was done in the West to
establish the synthesis of the great religions. His influence today is
increasing all the time. Many a person of whom we do not expect it, is
a pupil chosen by Christian Rosenkreutz. Already today it is possible
to speak of a sign by means of which Christian Rosenkreutz calls to
one whom he has chosen. Many people can discover this sign in their
life; it may express itself in a thousand ways, but these different
manifestations all lead back to a typical form which may be described
as follows.
The selection may, for example, happen in the following way. A man
embarks upon some undertaking; he spares no effort to make it
successful and forges straight ahead towards his goal. While he is
ruthlessly making his way in the world (he may be a thorough
materialist), suddenly he hears a voice saying: Stop what you purpose
to do! And he will be aware that this was no physical voice. But now
suppose that he abstains from his project. Then he will be able to
realise that if he had continued ruthlessly towards his goal, he would
certainly have been led to his death.
These are the two fundamentals: that he knows with certainty, firstly,
that the warning came from the spiritual world, and secondly, that
death would have come to him had he persisted in his undertaking. This
is therefore revealed to one who is to become a pupil: You have
actually been saved, moreover by a warning proceeding from a world
which, to begin with, you are not within. So far as earthly
circumstances are concerned, death has already come to you and your
further life is to be regarded as a gift. And when the person in
question realises this he will be led to the resolve to work in a
spiritual movement. If the resolve is taken, this means that the
choice has been accomplished. This is how Christian Rosenkreutz begins
to gather his pupils around him, and many human beings, if they were
sufficiently alert, would be conscious of such an event in their life.
The human beings of whom it can be said that they were, or will be,
united in this way with Christian Rosenkreutz, are those who should be
the pioneers of a deeper understanding of esoteric Christianity. This
stream of spiritual life connected with Christian Rosenkreutz provides
the highest means for enabling the Christ Impulse to be understood in
our time. The beginning was already made long, long ago a
hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, through Jeshu ben
Pandira, whose essential mission it was to make preparation for the
coming of Christ. He had a pupil, Matthew, whose name subsequently
passed over to his successor who was living at the time of Jesus of
Nazareth. The greatest deed wrought by Jeshu ben Pandira was that he
was the originator and preparer of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew. The content of this Gospel derives from a ritual of
initiation, and passages such as that concerning the temptation, and
others, too, originate from enactments in the ancient mysteries. All
these processes in the evolution of humanity were to be enacted on the
physical plane too. This was written down in outline by the pupil of
Jeshu ben Pandira.
Jeshu ben Pandira was not spared from the hard fate he himself
predicted; he was stoned, and his corpse was suspended on a cross. The
original chronicle was preserved in the hands of a few of his
adherents, in deep secrecy. We can best follow what happened to it
later on when the great Church father Jerome
( 44 )
himself says that he
had received the document of the Matthew Gospel from a Christian sect.
The original record was held at that time in the secret keeping of a
small circle and through certain circumstances came into the hands of
Jerome. He was charged by his bishop with the task of translating it.
Jerome himself narrates this; but he says at the same time that
because of the form and manner of the transcription, it should not
pass into the hands of the outside world. He wanted to translate it in
such a way that its secrets would remain secret and he says,
furthermore, that he himself does not understand it. The nature of
what came into existence in this way was such that one man could
express it in one way and another in a different way in secular
language. And this is how it has come down to posterity. In reality,
therefore, the world does not yet possess the Gospels in their true
form. There is every reason and justification then for spiritual
research today, in shedding new light upon the Gospels, to go back to
the Akashic Record, because there and there only are they to be found
in their original form.
Let there be no mistake about it. Christianity in its true form has
yet to be separated out from the trash. One sign among many others
indicates how necessary this is. For example, in the year 1873 in
France a count was taken of those who could be said to belong inwardly
and genuinely to Catholicism. They amounted to one third; the other
two thirds proved no longer to be adherents in the real sense
and these two-thirds were certainly not composed of people who never
feel the need of religion! Life is such that the religious longings of
men do incline towards the Christ, but the true sources of
Christianity must be rediscovered. And it is to this end that the
stream of spiritual life going out from Jeshu ben Pandira flows into
unity with the other stream which, at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, is connected with the name of Christian Rosenkreutz.
It is also necessary for us to know that one of the characteristics of
the incarnations of the Bodhisattva is that in his youth he cannot be
recognised as such. Between his thirtieth and thirty-third year a
great revolution takes place in the soul and the personality is
fundamentally transformed. For example a Moses or Abraham
individuality can be possessed by the personality of a Bodhisattva at
this time of his life.
About 3,000 years after our present time this Bodhisattva will become
the Maitreya Buddha. And then his influence from the spiritual world
will flow into the hearts of men as a magic, moral power. In this way
the two streams work together, the stream of the Maitreya Buddha and
the Western stream connected with Christian Rosenkreutz.
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Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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