LECTURE FOUR
DORNACH, JULY 30, 1922
ONCE AGAIN WE want to look
back at those principles of initiation described in yesterday's
lecture as having been paralyzed by the advancing intellectualization
of culture. Looking back we shall see how those people, in whom these
older, atavistic principles of initiation were still alive,
confronted Christianity. Out of their perceptions they formulated
what subsequently became the contents of dogma and, as such, could no
longer be understood after about the eighth or ninth century.
We need only to remember that before the
mystery of Golgotha the impulse of the true principle of the human
self, the I, was essentially missing in human civilization. The human
being was, of course, always organized in such a way as to have the I
principle within him; furthermore, he or she was created to shape
outer and inner being out of the I principle. But only slowly and by
degrees did people come to feel and be conscious of the essence and
power of the I. Thus we can say that although the human being, even
in the times preceding the mystery of Golgotha, consisted of physical
body, etheric body, astral body, and the I, human consciousness did
not include within it this I being. The I was more or less
unconscious. In those olden times people walked on the earth who
basically did not live with full consciousness of the I. But it is
actually only possible for the I to be active in the human being when
the physical body is no longer developing in its full, original
freshness. Those human beings who were still unconscious of their I
developed their physical bodies in greater freshness than those who
had entered into a full consciousness of the I. This arrival of the
full consciousness of the I did not occur suddenly; it was taking
place both before and after the mystery of Golgotha, but it is
clearly perceptible to a spiritual-scientific observation of
history.
That which can be maintained in its full
freshness in the human physical, etheric, and astral bodies —
that can only be maintained as long as something from the divine,
spiritual nature is flowing into the human being out of the cosmos.
But we could never have become free beings if the I had not appeared
on the scene, if the divine-spiritual had not ceased to flow into us
in the old sense. Human beings only became free through at the same
time achieving mastery of the I within their consciousness. But that
was only possible when humanity became involved in the sphere of
abstract thoughts. Abstract thoughts are, however, actually the
corpses of the spiritual world. I have already pointed this out in
these lectures. Just as a corpse is left over from our physical
nature when we die on the earth, so too, there remains a corpse left
over from the being of soul and spirit that we were in the spiritual
world before coming down into the physical world. However, this has
only been the case since the human being has been equipped with
consciousness of his I. And thoughts, abstract thoughts, represent
this corpse. When we become able to take hold of abstract thoughts,
we take hold of the corpse of our spiritual and soul being as
it was before our descent into the earthly world. But a precondition
for our taking hold of the corpse of our spiritual and soul being is
that something of the dying and paralyzing principle of death
must enter our physical body.
Indeed, the evolution of the human being is
such that his nature has changed in the course of his development on
earth. The bodies of human beings in olden times were different from
those of the newer bodies. The bodies of old were such that within
them the human being was unfree, but as he moved about, all the
freshness of primal being was manifested in his physical, etheric,
and astral activity. Thus one can say that in the civilized world we
already live in a period of the evolution of humanity when the body
is beginning inwardly to decay. And we attain our freedom precisely
through this decaying body, which is the base for our intellectual,
abstract thoughts. Through this decaying body the human being has
attained all that which a person, as an intellectually imbued
scientist, is so proud of today.
Considering this, we must say that before
the mystery of Golgotha full consciousness of the self as an I was
not yet present in human beings on the earth. Nevertheless, in those
times there were a few people who had already developed this full I
consciousness, who had developed it through the mystery cults.
These people were called initiates. We have already said much
concerning what happened to those who underwent initiation in the
places of the ancient mysteries, how they ascended to the experience
of the fully conscious I at a time when it was the general
condition of humankind not yet to have a fully conscious I. But the
initiate of old could ascend to this fully conscious I because
something entered into him through the sacred enactments in the
mysteries, something which had been felt and experienced in all
ancient civilizations as the eternal Father in the cosmos. And when
the initiate, the mystic, had reached a certain point of his
initiation in the ancient mysteries he had an experience that
allowed him to say to himself (if we were to imagine such an initiate
within the ancient Hebrew civilization): The Father lives in
me.
This initiate would characterize what had
happened within him through his initiation in the following way: The
nature of human beings in general is such that the Father indeed
sustains and bears them, but the Father does not enter their
consciousness and does not kindle their consciousness to an
experience of the I. To ordinary human beings the Father gives only
the spirit of breath; he breathes in the human being the breath which
is the living soul. But the initiate felt that the living soul
that had been breathed into a person was a special spiritual reality,
the living Father principle of the cosmos which also entered into the
human being. And then when this divine Father principle had entered
into such an initiate of the ancient Hebrew world and he had become
conscious of it, then he could say, with full justification, what the
I meant to him: “I am the I am.” Such a person who went
about among ancient peoples and, through the divine Father
principle dwelling in him, was qualified to speak the I —
which in the entire ancient world was the unutterable name of the
Godhead, of the Father God — such a person was seen as the
representative of the Father on the Earth. These initiates were
called the Fathers who walked among the peoples. They were called
Fathers because they represented the divine principle of the Father
to other human beings. It was said of them that the divine Father had
entered into them in the mysteries. Thus the mysteries were seen as
the places within the earthly world where the principle could develop
that otherwise only weaves and surges externally through the entire
cosmos. Within the mystery centers and through the mystery centers, a
tabernacle was built in the human being for the divine Father
principle. The human being himself became a tabernacle for the
divine Father principle.
Through the mysteries human beings felt the
surge of God the Father through the earthly world; and looking out
into the cosmos, into the great world beyond, they called it
the macrocosm, the great world, inasmuch as they thought of it as
permeated by and woven through and through by the divine Father
principle. They looked then to the mystery centers, within which a
tabernacle had been built for this Father God, within which
human beings had themselves become tabernacles of the Father God
through initiation; and they called the mysteries, and what a human
being had become through the mysteries, the little world, the
microcosm. This distinction persisted even into the days of Goethe,
for when Goethe became a member of certain lodges he picked up the
phrase, “The great world and the little world.” By
“great world” he understood the macrocosm and by
“little world,” the lodge that was, for him, an image of
the “great world.”
[Note 1]
All of this entered into another phase when
the mystery of Golgotha was drawing near in the evolution of
humanity. Hence, something essentially different had to be
considered. During the mystery of Golgotha there were human beings
walking on the earth who experienced within themselves something of
the independent I. The consciousness of the I had begun to
enter into human beings. But at the same time something else began to
appear: The human physical body began to be inwardly brittle, to
decay. And so at this time, in the middle of earth evolution, human
evolution faced a great danger. There was the danger of more and more
losing connection with the spiritual world and now there was the
danger that the physical body could increasingly decay and fall
apart.
To help with this danger the being we know
as the Christ resolved to pour himself into Jesus of Nazareth just as
the divine Father principle had poured into the initiates in earlier
times. This divine Father principle had poured into the initiates. In
this way the I was enkindled in, and added to, the physical body,
etheric body, and astral body. As I have already said, only those
into whom the divine Father had entered were allowed to speak the I,
which was itself the unutterable name of God.
But now, in the middle of earth evolution
there lived human beings who were beginning to say I of themselves,
human beings who had raised the I into consciousness. The Son
principle, the Christ principle, now entered into just such a human
being, into Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ principle now entered into
the I. Whereas in earlier times the Father principle had entered into
physical body, etheric body, and astral body, now the Christ
principle entered into the human being who had developed
himself to that stage further in evolution.
Now remember how I described the human being
in the second lecture. I said to you that the plant nullifies
within itself physical nature. One might also say that the
plant corrupts physical nature. The animal then corrupts the physical
and the etheric. And the human being corrupts the physical, the
etheric, and the astral. The human being did not corrupt them
completely in the period of human development before Golgotha. But
thereafter he corrupted them completely as the I really entered
fully into our being. Of course, the initiate of the ancient
mysteries freed himself entirely from physical body, etheric
body, and astral body when he let the divine Father principle flow
into him and, already in those days, became an I.
In
entering into Jesus of Nazareth, Christ nullified, through his entrance,
not only the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, but
also the I, to the extent that it was developed in Jesus of Nazareth at
that time. So that in Jesus Christ there dwelt the higher Christ
principle, which is related to the I in the same way the I of the human
being is related to the astral body.
The
Christ event was something that the old
initiates, in whom higher faculties of vision had developed, were
still just able to perceive. When these ancient initiates observed
the human being as he was in their time they found him uniting within
himself all the forces of the other beings of nature and, as it were,
standing above them uniting them all. They saw how one can find in
the human physical body the mineral kingdom, in the human etheric
body the plant kingdom, in the human astral body the animal kingdom,
and then they saw what is actually human. When tidings of this
Christ event, of the approaching event of Golgotha, came to the
initiates who had achieved clairvoyant seeing in ancient times, to
these Fathers of the peoples, at least to those few who were
still present — when these tidings came, these initiates could
see a being in Christ in whom still more was contained, in whom not
merely had earthly being been elevated to the human level but in whom
humanity itself had been elevated to the level of being that is
spiritual and divine.
If we bear in mind how there is present in
the human being something that lives in the external physical body as
an expression of essential humanity then we can understand how
these initiates saw more in Christ Jesus than a mere man, how
they saw walking around on the earth something that went beyond the
human, beyond humanity. These initiates saw Christ Jesus in a special
radiance. They saw him covered not only with the color of human flesh
but with a special shimmering radiance.
Initiates in ancient times could, of course,
see this special shining radiance in their fellow initiates. It
was the power of the Father principle that dwelled within them. But
now they perceived not only that which lived in the old initiates as
the divine Father principle; now they perceived something that
radiated forth from Christ Jesus in a special way, because not only
had physical body, etheric body, and astral body been nullified in
him, but also the I — to the extent that the I could be present
in a human being at that time.
For this reason not only initiates but also
other specially gifted people were able to see Christ Jesus as an
especially radiant being. And this was the radically new reality at
the time of the mystery of Golgotha — new even to the
initiates: that other human beings, though perhaps few in number, who
were only endowed with natural powers, not with powers otherwise
acquired only in the mysteries, could recognize in Christ Jesus this
higher nature.
From this fact came the realization that
now, with the mystery of Golgotha, something was supposed to happen
that, in earlier times, had taken place only within the mysteries
themselves. Something that had formerly taken place only within the
mysteries — within the microcosm, the “little
world” — had been carried out into the macrocosm, the
“great world.” And it is actually the case that, to begin
with, the Christ mystery was proclaimed in its clearest and most pure
form in the last remaining mystery centers of antiquity. And
precisely this proclamation of the mystery of Christ was lost to
later civilization in the course of the first four centuries of
European evolution. Because in Christ Jesus there lived, not the
Father principle alone, but also the Son principle, the old initiates
knew that he represented something absolutely unique in earthly
development. It was unique in this respect: In the further advance of
the earth never again could another mystery of Golgotha appear,
never again could such an indwelling of the Son principle in a human
being take place, an indwelling such as had occurred in Jesus of
Nazareth.
And these initiates knew that Christ had
entered into humanity as the healer, as the great healer, as the
being who prevents the human body from suffering damage caused by the
brittleness which was brought about through the entrance of the I.
For what would have happened if Christ had not appeared as the
healer? If Christ had not appeared as the healer, then when human
beings die, when they lay aside the decaying body, the products of
this decay would radiate back into the soul being that the human
being unfolds after death. The dead would have been disturbed,
tortured, by what the decaying physical body represented in earth
existence. These souls who had passed through death would have been
forced to see how the earth itself suffers injury when it has to take
in a decaying body. And the old initiates knew how those who called
themselves Christians in the true sense of the word, who had filled
themselves inwardly with the Christ principle, how such men could now
look down upon the body taken from them by death, and say: Because we
received Christ into ourselves while we were children of the
earth we have healed the physical body to the extent that it can be
placed into the earth without becoming a principle of decay for the
earth itself. What the human being needed in order to become an I had
to be healed for the sake of the earth. For in order to become an I
he had to have a decaying body; but if this decaying body had
persisted the earth would have been harmed. And after death the
souls, looking down upon the physical bodies now received by the
earth, would have been tormented because they could feel the harm
being inflicted upon the earth itself by their decaying physical
bodies.
What entered through the mystery of Golgotha
was this, that the souls of human beings could say to themselves
after they had passed through the gate of death: Yes, we carried this
fallen physical body on the earth and we can thank it for the
possibility of developing a freer I in our human being. But Christ
through his dwelling in Jesus of Nazareth, has healed this physical
body so that it is no longer harmful to the earth's existence; and we
can calmly look down into earthly existence knowing that after the
mystery of Golgotha bad seed is not falling into the earth with the
physical body that the human being otherwise needs for the
development of the I. And so Christ passed through the mystery of
Golgotha in order to heal and sanctify the human physical body for
the earth.
But now think what would have happened in
the course of earth evolution if things had remained as they were
after the Christ event. If things had remained that way then the
following could have been said: In ancient times the Father God
entered into human beings so they, as souls, could rise up to the I
and as initiates could proclaim to others the actual essence of the
human being, the being of the I. Then the Son, the Christ, entered
into the being of humanity. Those who raise themselves so that Christ
can dwell in them rescue their bodies for the earth. Just as through
the Father principle, and the indwelling of the Father principle made
possible by the mysteries, the human soul nature was rescued —
so now the bodily nature of the human being has been saved through
the healer, the savior-redeemer, through Christ who went through the
mystery of Golgotha.
If this had remained the situation, then
those who knew of the redemption of their bodies would have had to
bear Christ as the being who is actively working within them, as the
being who is even actively working on their bodily nature. And then
again human beings could not have become free beings. When inner
freedom would have arrived in the fourteenth century A.D., human
beings would have evolved so that they could receive the Christ into
themselves for the peace of their souls after death, so that their
souls would be able to look down upon the earth as I have just
described. But they could not have become free. If they had wanted to
become good then they would simply have had to let Christ work within
them in the same way that the Father worked in ancient times in human
beings who were not initiates. In those times human beings became
free when the I was developed within them. The initiates became free
human beings in ancient times whereas others were unfree, because the
Father lived in them beneath their consciousness. If Christians had
been beings who were merely conscious of the Christ within them, then
whenever they wanted to be good they would have had to
extinguish their own I consciousness in order to let Christ awaken
within them through the extinguishing of their own I-consciousness.
They themselves actually would not have been able to be good; it
would only have been Christ in them who was good. Human beings would
have had to walk about upon the earth with the Christ dwelling within
them, and inasmuch as Christ would have availed himself of the bodies
of human beings, the healing of these bodies would have occurred. But
the good deeds accomplished by human beings would have been the
deeds of Christ, not the deeds of human beings.
That was not the task, the mission, of the
divine Son, who had united himself with the evolution of the earth
through the mystery of Golgotha. He wanted to live within humanity
without clouding the dawning I consciousness of human beings. He did
this once — in Jesus, in whom, from the baptism onward, the
consciousness of the Son God lived in place of the I consciousness of
Jesus. But this was not to happen in the human beings of the times to
come. In the people of future times the I was to be able to raise
itself to full, clear consciousness, while Christ nevertheless
continued to dwell within them.
For this to happen it was necessary for
Christ, as such, to disappear from the immediate sight of human
beings. Although he remained united with earthly existence, he
disappeared from the direct view of human beings. A saying common in
the ancient mystery centers became also applicable to him. In the
mysteries it was said that when a physically visible being, a being
whose existence can be followed by human beings with their perception
in the physical world, ceases to be visible — it was said that
such a being had “ascended to the heavens,” and passed
into those regions where physical visibility no longer exists. And so
Christ ascended to heaven and became invisible. In a certain sense he
would have retained his visibility if he had dwelled in human beings
and eliminated the I, so that they could have become good only
because, in reality, the Christ was acting in them.
The kind of vision that enabled the
apostles, the disciples, to behold Christ even after his resurrection
— that kind of vision disappeared. Christ had ascended to
the heavens. But he sent to human beings that divine being who does
not extinguish I consciousness. This is the being to whom the
human being raises himself, not with earthly perception, but with
imperceptible spirit. Christ sent humanity the Holy
Spirit.
So actually it is the Holy Spirit who is
sent by Christ in order that man might retain his consciousness of
self, of his I, while Christ himself lives in the unconsciousness of
human beings. Thus, if he realizes in the full sense of the word what
his being really is, the human being will say: When I look back to
what the ancient initiates knew, then I see that in me lives the
Father principle which fills the cosmos and which arose in these
initiates and developed the I in them. That is the principle that
lives within us before we come down into the physical world. Through
the Father principle dwelling in them, the ancient initiates
remembered, with complete clarity, the way they had lived before they
descended into the physical world. They sought the divine in
the realm of being that precedes birth, in the realm of
preexistence: Ex deo nascimur.
After the mystery of Golgotha human beings
could no longer say, “I behold the Christ.” Otherwise
they could not have become good through themselves, only Christ
within could have done the good. And the truth could only have
been In Christo morimur. The human being could die in Christ,
through the principle of death within him he could unite with Christ.
But the human being's new consciousness could be awakened through the
Holy Spirit, the being sent to him by Christ: Per spiritum sanctum
reviviscimus.
There you have the inner connection of the
Trinity. This shows you, too, something else that is definitely a
part of Christianity. Even without perception of Christ within, a
human being can achieve the awakening of the spirit. By sending the
Holy Spirit Christ gave humanity the ability to raise itself to an
understanding of the spiritual out of the life of intellect itself.
Hence it should not be said that the human being cannot grasp the
spiritual, the super-sensible, through his own spirit. A man could
only justify his inability to understand the spirit if he ignored the
Holy Spirit, if he spoke only of the Father God and the Christ God.
For those willing to see and read it is also clearly indicated
— for it is a revelation in and of itself — that
the human being can understand the super-sensible through the spirit
dwelling within him, if he only inclines himself to Christ. It is for
this reason that we are told that the Holy Spirit appeared at the
baptism of Christ. And with the appearance of the Holy Spirit these
words resound through the cosmos: “This is my beloved Son; this
day I have begotten him.”
The Father is the unbegotten begetter who
places the Son into the physical world. But at the same time the
Father uses the Holy Spirit in order to tell humanity that in the
spirit, the super-sensible is comprehensible, even if this spirit is
itself not perceptible but only works inwardly to elevate the merely
abstract intellect to the realm of the living. In the spirit the
super-sensible can be understood when the corpse of thoughts
that we have from our pre-birth existence is raised to life through
the Christ dwelling within us. And when Christ sent the Holy Spirit
to his disciples — this imparting occurred through the Christ,
through the Son. For this reason it was an ancient dogma that the
Father is the unbegotten begetter, that the Son is the one begotten
by the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is the one imparted to
humanity by the Father and the Son. This is not some kind of
arbitrarily asserted dogma but rather the wisdom of initiation living
in the earliest Christian centuries; only later was it covered
over and buried along with the teachings concerning the Trichotomy
and the Trinity.
The divine principle working as Christianity
within evolving humanity cannot be understood without the Trinity.
If, in the place of the Trinity, some other teaching concerning God
were to enter, then basically speaking it would not be a fully
Christian teaching. One must understand the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit if one would understand the teaching concerning God
concretely and in a genuine way.
The Gospel itself was no longer understood
when Scholasticism decreed that the human being has revelation
only in faith, that he cannot reach the super-sensible through his own
human knowledge. This decree concerning human knowledge, which was
separated off from faith, was itself a sin against Christianity: it
was a sin against the proclamation of the Holy Spirit through the
Father at the baptism of Jesus and through Jesus himself when he sent
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Thus within the development of European
civilization many sins were committed in what continued to call
itself Christianity, many sins were committed against the original
impulses of Christianity. Today it is really necessary for
humanity to turn back to these original impulses of Christianity. In
many ways these original Christian impulses have hardened into
dogmas. But if one penetrates into the living spirit then what is
essentially true in these dogmas can catch fire. Then they will cease
to be dogmas. What is false in the Church is not that it has
propagated the dogmas but that it has frozen and crystallized
them, has taken them away from the realm of human knowledge. Because
human knowledge was limited to only what is in the world of the
senses the dogmas had to be crystallized, had to become no longer
understandable. For it is an impossibility that faith alone could
ever really bring understanding. What must be rescued within humanity
is knowledge itself; knowledge must be led back to the
super-sensible.
Fundamentally speaking, this challenge
reaches to us from Golgotha when we rightly understand it, when we
know how, after going through the mystery of Golgotha, Christ sent
into humanity, in addition to this divine Father principle, the Holy
Spirit. Whoever beholds the cross on Golgotha must at the same time
behold the Trinity, for in reality Christ shows and makes manifest
the Trinity in all the ways he is interwoven with the earthly
evolution of humanity.
This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to
bring to you today, which will provide us with the basis for further
studies in the future.
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