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• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 10: Composition of the Gospels
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  • You have to have the boldest of modern intellectualist minds towards experiences, well founded in present knowledge and not only in an outer content of old wisdom, but in the soul constitution of the old wise ones, if you want to behave like modern science behaves towards these things. Just as deeply as the cosmic reading resides within the starry worlds, so deeply are the simple-minded shepherds in the fields certain of the strong validity of the announcement. Today, mankind no longer knows how the soul constitution has changed in the course of time, humanity doesn’t know how, what can be read in the outer knowledge of the stars, can be experienced inwardly in the human soul as it was experienced in olden times, how astral truths were heart-felt experiences, and how we as human beings, in order to gain our freedom, were led out of these stages of consciousness, and after gaining our conscious freedom, we can again return to this earlier stage. My dear friends, we must be able to acquire this selfish feeling. To achieve our freedom, we must go back so far, let’s say from 20 December to 6th or 7th January just as abstractly as people with our souls, as we do, for example, when we (abstractly) experience Easter time. Let me express this particularly clearly — as I’ve said, these things even take root in life’s experiences — I once attended a small gathering where the discussion was about a reformed calendar, a reformed calendar to be developed from modern needs. A modern astronomer who was highly regarded in the astronomic scholarly community, was also present. He obviously was an expert witness and pleaded for the uniformity in the Easter festival being determined as always being on the first Sunday of April, that it would be at least purely outwardly, abstractly, fixed. He had no understanding at all that mankind had to look at the alternating relationship between the sun and moon in order to determine the Easter festival. To speak like this in such a
  • You need to understand such things thoroughly, as expressions of the spirit of the time. If you don’t grasp the spirit of the time even into the details, how will you then sense the actual impulse for religious renewal? You have to be able to say to yourself with certain seriousness that this “with God” should prove true on the pages of the General Ledger and Cash Book or Journal. Just imagine what power is needed to encounter the forces active in today’s social life, to really bring religion into life. This has to be sensed constantly in the background, or otherwise the drive to religious renewal is not serious enough, as it should be today. So, a feeling must develop for change in the soul constitution. You must understand that in olden times the soul constitution was such that when the earth was frozen and the stars appeared in its extraordinary aura in the second half of December, inner mankind was so contracted that they came to visions which allowed them to inwardly experience what in reality was outwardly read in the stars by the exploring astrologers.
  • Without it being explicit knowledge in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, it would have been simply correctly spoken and understood out of the inner soul constitution of the people. I’m not saying something like the Christ having learnt Anthroposophy — that sounds very amusing — or to those he had spoken, had learnt about Anthroposophy. He spoke in such a way because he was aware how the other, by listening, would have understood. Yet also there he had to speak in such a way, as one spoke at that time, regarding seeing, and regarding hearing, from out of the most inner soul constitution. Because of me you use the expression “out of the subconscious” which is a term often misused today in an inconvenient way for these things. In order to have this understood in the right way, you can also understand the third which is also contained in the Matthew Gospel: to understand it with a person’s whole being; his concentration, understanding through the heart. Understanding with your whole being is quite a different kind of understanding; one must speak to the heart of the person if you want to explain the parables. You can’t speak in a different way to the heart if it is not functioning in such a way that the eyes are made to see in the right way, the ears to hear in a right way. This is how you have to distinguish: you must awaken the ability to see and make the ears hear in the right way. The ears don’t need to be awakened, they only need to hear correctly.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 11: Insights into the Mystery of Golgotha, Priest Ordination.
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  • Rudolf Steiner: Yes, my dear friends, if I want to continue exploring which what we started, in various directions, it is important that I firstly touch on what existed in ancient Christianity, and then what unfolded out of the various forces working from ancient Christianity leading to the rise of the Evangelical-Protestant experience. We must be quite clear that during the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, those people who would at least have a tendency to accept Christianity, were still of a totally different soul constitution, than what was later the case. The Mystery of Golgotha took place in the human evolution during a time in which it had basically nothing at all to do with, I could call it, pursuing the objective course of the world in a spiritual-scientific way. This is quite extraordinary. When you try to deepen yourself particularly into the objective course of the world, as it is presented in its totality, incorporating the physical, soul and spiritual, you have a strong impression regarding the development in the 8th century before Christ. Once again, you will get this strong impact — this can already be noticed in outer knowledge — regarding the time which I’ve often spoken about, in the 15th century.
  • The time epoch stretching from the 8th century BC to 15th AD creates roundabout an epoch in which humanity’s development, if you follow this development spiritual-scientifically, was unfolding and can be called the Mind- or Intellectual Soul; in other words, it was the epoch of the Mind- or Intellectual Soul development. In its purest form it comes out of the Greek people’s evolution. I call it Mind Soul but ask you, please, not to connect an intellectual concept to this term. Should you want to study the Mind Soul today, as it had developed out of Greekdom, then you need to study such individuals who had in a certain sense some kind of clairvoyance, not schooled clairvoyance but an atavistic one; inherited clairvoyance which can still pop up in some people at present. You can see that the content of the world appears to such people as imaginative, made up of images. If you should ask them to describe their pictorial impressions — of course only if no physical deformation disorder is involved, but when the whole thing is pure — you discover an extraordinary amount of understanding in the images thus depicted. They describe some processes in the spiritual world in pictures. They receive the images, but they get the sense of them as well. They can’t help it if they include understanding in the images they receive because they take place together. Up to the 15th Century the soul constitution of many people were still not as developed as the mind is today, but they were inspired by their minds, they could have revelations in the mind. Only after the 15th Century did intellectualism develop which means that the mind had to be actively laboured with inwardly in the soul. Logic had to be developed, it was something to be worked at; it was not, so to speak, just given to the soul. That is the essential difference in the soul constitution of more modern people in comparison with t
  • Within his soul, Augustine just couldn’t come to terms completely with how the spiritual worked into matter. Augustine for instance sought amongst the Manichaeans for a possibility of how to recognise the spiritual in the material. He didn’t manage; he actually only managed by withdrawing completely into himself, in order to depend on the self-assurance of his human I, which made him one of the precursors of the famous Descartes declaration: “Cogito, ergo sum.” (I think, therefore I am.) This principle is found with Augustine already. However, on the other hand he was confronted with a certain doubt about the teaching, and this doubt was eating him up. One can certainly understand out of the configuration of the time, why Augustine felt this way. How the old heathen point of view of the church fathers, namely Clemens von Alexandria, was still completely accepted, so that in the oldest Christian times they were totally overtaken by the pagan in Christian teaching, and this Augustine could no longer accept, because in his human soul constitution it was no longer appropriate. The teaching content was also shaped in such a way that, essentially in the time of the Council of Nicaea, it had been brought as abstract dogmas which could then be absorbed by intellectualism. So the human soul in Augustine’s time, I can mention, was already driven towards intellectualism. From then on Augustine could do nothing other than accept the dogmatic Catholic Church content, in order to find a teaching content.
  • The Catholic Church was actually on this point always consequential, also when it became a worldly establishment under Constantine, as it went over into the political field. It was, one could say, really ironclad in its consequentiality. It has maintained its ceremonies in the most conservative way and in order not to go under, suffocated its soul content with dogmatism. No wonder that the ceremonial content became more and more strange as an experience, because people had no lively relationship to it anymore, and the dogmatic content was experienced as something obsolete — while it had been lively knowledge in olden times, knowledge experienced by a different soul constitution. The dogmatic content could not hold true compared with what came out of purely worldly knowledge. However, the Catholic Church had to remain absolutely consequential, and it has remained in its conserved state right up to the present. It has remained conservative by not participating in the state of mind/soul constitution residing in the present day. It has remained so, that it demands faith in preserved dogmas, which corresponds to a knowledge of an earlier soul constitution so that what is learnt about the Catholic Christ in the Church today is completely bound up with a dogmatic content which believes it presents a level of knowledge which mankind had actually reached at the end of the 14th century AD.
  • In this depiction of our conversation I wanted to firstly stress the kind of perception of truth we lived in during the middle of the 15th Century. The Catholic clergy was not experiencing the perception of truth like modern consciousness does, but a truth-conception corresponding to an earlier time epoch. They were not aware of the view of truth that reckons with the consequences of truth for the inner life of a human being. Quite a different attitude to the truth existed, and as it had changed from olden times, was not clearly understood. We need to look back at the evolution of humanity which means that the soul constitution essentially has changed. Basically, there is no incorrect expression other than that nature had made no leaps. Nature in fact makes continuous jumps. Take for example a green foliage leaf to the coloured flower petal — that is a jump. In the same way we have leaps in the course of time, apparently quite a sharp advancement from one soul state into another. However, people don’t always grow in the same degree but allow old points of view to continue and as a result their souls atrophy, as we are able to notice if we look at the enormous leap which has come about in modern human soul constitutions and which has not been participated in by a large number of people.
  • As a result of this primal sin the Christ appeared on the earth — I am speaking in the consciousness of this time period — in order to gradually heal people from their dying through what Lucifer had done to them. That we outwardly know so little about the constitution of consciousness, is a result of the really innumerable things proclaimed by the Roman Catholic Church, which is based on this ancient tradition. Above all, everything Gnostic was eradicated and also later the reproduction of anything that still had an older soul constitution was made exceedingly difficult. You know the writing of Scotus Eriugena had been lost and only later rediscovered, and for centuries people knew nothing about Scotus Eriugena because all copies of his writing which one could get hold of, had been burned. It is certainly so that it deals with looking again at an event which took place in the supersensible world and into what human beings had become entangled.
  • Among the impulses of such observations, I could say something worked behind human events, active through superhuman events of other beings who actually were also involved with human evolution, in order for Augustine’s teaching regarding predestination, to develop. Augustine saw the incarnation of people on earth as something much rather, if it could be expressed it would be by saying: The human being is actually the result of the battle of superhuman beings. — This meant individuals had no intrinsic worth; that only happened in the middle of the 15th century. Augustine believed it quite possible to think of human development as beyond their will, accomplished by the destinies of superhuman beings. His teaching could only be alive in him if a part of the human being, not the sinful part, but a part, be destined for demise and another part of the human being destined for bliss, the teaching which is not usually presented in all its meaning, when it is to be experienced. Today this can’t be experienced in devotion, which was possible for Augustine. Into this soul constitution something also played that one can call original sin, which is balanced out by the Mystery of Golgotha. People in Luther’s time still expressed it in this way, but they lived in another time of a soul constitution as in the time of Augustine. It was quite impossible to find one’s way into these ideas with all of one's soul. In this way Luther experienced the illumination through his soul, as an Augustine monk.
  • Now I must speak to you about my conviction which is based — even though it is called a conviction — on knowledge. For me it certainly is knowledge. I am not in the position to speak in the same way about chance or coincidences like other people because coincidences also belong to an order of things which is usually ignored. I can’t attach it to an actual incident in Luther’s life, I can’t be indifferent to a lightning strike in a tree beside him, but I can see it, according to my knowledge, only as the effect of a truly supersensible intrusion. You can think about it in any way you like, but if I speak sincerely and honestly, I certainly regard part of Luther’s soul constitution as this pointing in, if I may call it so, of God’s finger, not out of belief but out of recognition. Luther’s state of mind or soul constitution became something quite different under the influence of such a deed; it happened so that certain inner sources were opened. These sources, or better said, the effectiveness of these sources, had already been prepared through the wrestling with misunderstood lore. It could not rise up, it was like a turning point in the soul itself, but it could not consciously show itself. Then it rose up into consciousness and became a turning point for only that which was happening. If I want to express myself roughly, the body has been softened, so to speak, and what had been prepared in Luther for a long time, permeated through a soft body.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 12: Prophecy, Dogma and Paganism
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  • The third element in the writings of the church fathers is what actually contributed a great deal to the church doctrine. Everywhere a kind of legal element developed, a warning to obey the bishops, the dogmas, to submit to the constitution in the developing church. So everywhere something was taking place which one could be referred to as this: To the believers it was said that they will fall into bad luck if they develop anything which comes from within themselves, while they are searching for a religious path. — The religious path given by the church’s constitution and the legal constitution, which ordered obedience to the church, was something that has continued particularly in Catholicism to the widest extent, which even as an experience today can still oppose one very forcefully.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 14: Gnostics and Montanists
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  • When we ask our contemporaries about the essence of the Gnosis, for example the essence of the Montanistic heresy, then with the current soul constitution you basically can’t understand anything correctly relating to it. That which would outwardly be informative in the becoming church has been carefully eradicated and the things that archaeologists, philosophers, researchers of antiquity discover from this characterised epoch, will indeed be deciphered word for word, but the decipherment does not mean reaching an understanding. All of this must actually be read differently, in order to enter the real soul content of olden times. It is for instance possible for modern humanity, to take the Deussen translation, which has exterminated all real meaning of the Orient, and, while thinking these translations are great, while mankind can’t eradicate all understanding for what Deussen translated, devote yourself to such a Deussen translation. In order to understand, you need to penetrate the meaning of the first Christian centuries, more specifically the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha happened.
• Title: Foundation Course: Lecture 15: Ordination and Transubstantiation
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  • Now we will not understand these things, my dear friends, if we don’t know that the entire constitution of people in older times was different to what it became later. Such a process, which I have sketched for you, you can observe today when waking up or going to sleep. When physical development reaches puberty, the conditions are such that you won’t be able to do these things any longer. The influence on the human being is no longer possible in this intense way; people have hardened more in themselves. Today it doesn’t happen for these fine spiritual processes which are taking place there, to be observed just like that. In this respect it will even change the human race. As a result, it has happened that what had taken place within, during earlier times, now is to be looked for outwardly. To a certain extent the opposite of the inner process is performed as a ceremony.
  • Then again, the disciples of the Apostles in turn depended on the imagery which they had experienced; you can even read this in individual letters. When some or other apostolic disciple, Polycarp of Smyrna for instance, could describe what some or other person who had taught him, looked like, the description was unbelievably more important than the communication of mere words. What is most essential here, was recalling the feeling of being-together-with everything in connection with the Christ, so that one can say the Apostles sensed the succession, but they could no longer inwardly experience every transformation which had been experienced in the old initiation mysteries. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t suggest that the apostles or apostle disciples have made such deliberations, but their soul constitution was so that they could make such deliberations and it was characteristic of their soul constitution to formulate such deliberations. When they were asked to formulate their soul constitution, they would have said: Yes, we couldn’t go through with it in the same way as was still possible in the earlier Mysteries, for instance experiencing the transformation of light to darkness; we can no longer experience how one is anointed with oil and so on, and we can no longer experience the inner pain through recalling; but here a God has incarnated in the form of Jesus who was here, and with whom we have relations and when we really in our consciousness take it up, not merely with intellectual grasping but when in all concreteness we live in it, then something lifts us up into the supersensible world.
  • We will want to develop the particular format of the priest ordination, into a ritual form. I would like, still today, to point out that you could eventually find something which remains incomprehensible in the priest ordination. Now, by me saying something like this you will understand, also in connection with the regular previous lectures up to this morning, that in fact a complete break had to take place regarding the understanding of such things, when the changed consciousness appeared from the middle of the 15th century. In me expressing these things, I’m using words, which actually for the general consciousness could only have been fully understood before the middle of the 15th century. Then people actually stopped having a real sense for the meaning of these words. It is basically only through the trust you have been able to put in me, that you can hear something here in the manner and way it happened in former times when the soul constitution experienced things in quite a different way. Then came the time when less importance was attached to a concrete connection, when people who still knew how to attach importance to this concrete connection, became rare. Now, the most importance was attributed to the comprehensible content of the Gospels, to the comprehensible content of religion as such. Thus, gradually it took on particular importance to discuss the content of the Gospels, to discuss the content of the sacraments and to a certain extent particularly look into the teaching material, at the teaching content. The teaching content gradually became the most important. Not actually the concrete, but the abstract, became the most important, that is the essential thing. While for the catholic consciousness — I don’t mean merely the roman catholic, but the catholic Christian consciousness — the priest ordination placed the chosen one in a spiritual ancestry up to Christ, which actually for the modern person made everything quite comprehensible, from def
  • Somewhat in this way, I’ve tried to clarify how one must enter into the sacramental. It actually makes no sense, let’s say, in simply transforming holy water as is often done today by subordinate clerics. There is simply no point in performing the transubstantiation in this way, as is done by many subordinate clerics today, who are left in the dark in relation to the esoteric consecration of the Catholic Church. Regarding the old soul constitutions, it had made sense to be fully aware of one’s actions when a certain word was spoken over the salt substance, and that they knew the salt substance had changed as a result.
  • I think, in any case, my dear friends, that many questions could be conjured out of the soul by me speaking about these things, and I would love it if the questions, while you are all here, not in general, could also be formulated concretely so that no doubt remains. I completely understand that with earnestness your small circle has turned to me with the clear intention to really work toward a renewal of the religious life. It is not possible to do so by merely changing the teaching content; it is only possible when you enter with a changed soul constitution. We are now entering more deeply into things and, triggered through your questions we will become ever more acquainted with these things so that you’re actually going to understand what I mean to convey.
• Title: Foundation Course: Summaries of Lectures
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  • Soul constitution of people at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha (formation of mind or consciousness soul). Mystery of Golgotha as a cosmic, free divine deed; change in soul conception since Golgotha. Renewal of dying earth existence. Rise of intellectualism, working of spirit in matter ever less understood. Scotus Eriugena, Augustinus. Start of dogma and ritual in Catholic Church. Anthroposophy to help clarify present day understanding regarding Golgotha. Luther and the rise of two time streams. Luther and Faust. Christian symbolism in art. Meaning of priest ordination.
  • Development of Christian sacrament of ordination out of the old Mysteries. Initiation and state of consciousness. Initiation and transformation of material substances in humans. Regarding the ordination earlier, and today. What means dedication? The soul constitution of the Apostles and experience of apostolic succession. Apostolic succession today? Novalis’ and Shelling’s knowledge of true Christianity. Inner reasons that led to celibacy.