V
We CANNOT fully estimate
the nature of man's being, as it appears at present, without
fixing our eyes on extended periods through which he has
passed in the course of his evolution. This will become
evident when considering the facts described by me during
recent days. Our souls undergo repeated earth-lives that are
always separated from one another by the life between death and
a new birth. In this manner our souls have passed through the
most manifold periods of human evolution. By reflecting
on these things, we shall clearly recognize that the nature of
the human being can be comprehended only when we consider
extended periods during which our souls have repeatedly lived
on earth.
These matters have been discussed by me in previous Kristiania
(Oslo) lectures, dealing with the sequence of
evolutionary epochs, such as those that preceded and
those that followed the Mystery of Golgotha. Today I wish to
discuss this subject from a particular standpoint.
Mankind has undergone great changes in the course of its
evolution. This fact is not sufficiently appreciated. People
know that a Greek period existed, an Egyptian period, and other
earlier periods. But, although they are aware of evolving
culture-impulses, they believe that human beings in
regard to their soul-life were just the same (at least, in
historic ages) as they are today. This is not true. At a
certain stage we come to a stop in this historic retrospect. We
come to a long pause leading to a period which present-day
scientists are very fond of describing as that of man's
supposedly ape-like ancestors.
Mankind's evolution, however, was not in the least as people
now imagine it. In order to understand the changes it has
undergone, let us envisage the relatively great
dependency, existing in the present age during the human
being's first years of life, of the spirit and soul organism on
the physical-bodily one.
You
need only to consider the stage of early childhood until the
change of teeth, and the extensive transformation
accompanying the change of teeth which must strike every
unprejudiced observer. The child's entire
soul-constitution becomes different. We then find another life
period lasting until puberty. We all know that at this age the
development of spirit and soul is dependent on the development
of the body. And, if we observe these things without prejudice,
we notice the same dependence of spirit and soul on the
body also at a later age lasting until the twenties, although
today, in the time of youth movements (this is not said
in a critical sense) it is just the young people who do not
like to emphasize this dependence. Naturally, they consider
themselves, at sixteen or seventeen, fully developed young
women and young men; and those vaunting unusual mental
faculties write newspaper articles at twenty-one. These young
people would thus like to hush up the fact that their spirit
and soul is greatly dependent on their bodily organism.
At any rate, the present-day human being becomes more or
less independent of the body once he has reached a certain age.
A man in his twenties is an adult who does not feel himself as
dependent upon his body as would a child were it to pass in
full consciousness through the stages between change of teeth
and puberty.
There was still a feeling in comparatively recent ages that the
human being matured gradually. It was then clearly
realized that the so-called apprentice had to be treated
differently from the journey-man; and a master's rank could not
be attained until relatively late in life.
As
regards present-day man, however, it can be asserted that after
a certain age, his spirit and soul are no longer greatly
dependent on his body. Of course, on reaching a venerable
age, we notice a renewed dependence on our physical organism.
When the legs become shaky, when the face becomes
wrinkled, when the hair becomes grey, we cannot then deny
the influence of the body. This, however, is not ascribed to a
genuine parallelism of body and soul. People of today feel
that, even though the bodily forces decline, soul and spirit
remain, and must remain, more or less independent of the
bodily-physical. Yet this was not always the case. If we go
back to earlier epochs of mankind's evolution, we find the
human being even in his old age remaining as intensely
dependent on his body as does a child's soul today remain
dependent on its body between the change of teeth and puberty.
And if we are enabled — not by external history, but by
spiritual science — to go back to the first period of
evolution after the great Atlantean catastrophe which caused a
new configuration of the earth's continents, we come to what I
called in my Occult Science the primeval Indian epoch.
The human being then felt himself, even after having reached
his fifties, to be just as dependent on the physical as the
child's soul is dependent on the change of teeth, and the
youthful person's soul on puberty. This means: Just as we
experience today during childhood the ascending line of growth,
so ancient man experienced, in his fifties, the descending line
within spirit and soul. Then things happened in such a way that
a man, on reaching his fifties, matured inwardly just by
becoming older, in a similar manner as modern man matures on
attaining puberty. And at that time, seven or eight thousand
years before the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings eagerly
looked forward, during their whole life, to this stage of
existence. For everyone could say to himself: Something
will be revealed to me out of my bodily constitution that I
could not experience in younger years, before I became
forty-nine or fifty. Naturally, such an idea is bound to shock
modern men most profoundly. You only need to think of a
present-day man who is absolutely sure of being a finished
product after reaching the twenties. What could be said if he
had to wait until the age of maturity revealed something to him
which he could not know before, which he could not feel, and
experience before!
In
ancient India, however, man's bodily constitution enabled him
to feel, already in his fifties, something like a gradual
separation of the physical body from spirit and soul. He felt
more and more how the physical approximated, as it were, the
corpse-like. And he felt in this estrangement of the physical
body, in this approach of the physical body to the
earth-elements, a liberation of spirit and soul. By
considering the body merely as a garment, he felt its
relationship to the earth, to all that would belong to earth
after death. It was less amazing to ancient than to modern men
that the body had to be discarded, delivered to the
earth-forces. For ancient man passed slowly and gradually
through this process of discarding the body.
This sounds paradoxical, because it implies the terrifying
conception of having a physical body that is slowly becoming a
corpse. Ancient man, however, did not think of his body as a
burdensome object passing, as it were, into a kind of
putrefaction. Instead, he thought of it as an independent
sheath or shell which, even though becoming earth-like, was yet
full of life. Yet the physical body, at the age of fifty,
assumed a sheath-like, shell-like character.
This gradual becoming similar to the earth taught ancient man
something that can be known today only through abstract
science. The inner nature of metals, for instance, became known
to him. At the age of fifty, he was instinctively able to
differentiate between copper, silver, and gold. He felt the
resemblance of these metals to his own organism gradually
turning to earth. A rock-crystal called forth in him other
feelings than furrowed soil. By aging, man gained wisdom
concerning terrestrial matters.
This fact influenced primeval civilization. The young,
looking up to the old, said to themselves: These ancients
are wise. Once I have become as old as they are, I shall also
be wise. Such an attitude caused a profound veneration and a
tremendous respect for old age.
In
those ancient days of mankind's evolution (the epoch of
primeval India), a lofty civilization, connected with a
wondrous veneration, a wondrous respect for old age,
existed in a certain part of the world (not in that part,
however, inhabited by men with receding foreheads, such as are
excavated today by anthropologists). And we must ask ourselves:
How did it actually happen that men passed through these
experiences?
It
did happen, because primeval man lived less intensively in his
physical body than we do. Today man crawls into the very core
of his physical body, the experiences of which he shares. Thus
he feels himself to be identical, at one with his physical
body. And we must undergo a common destiny with whatever is
felt to be at one with us. Because, in those ancient times, men
felt themselves more self-dependent within the physical body;
because their thinking was more imaginative; because their
feeling was like an inward weaving and living in the world of
reality — for all these reasons their physical body from
the beginning seemed to them like a sheath in which they were
encased. This sheath began to harden as life drew near its end.
A man in his fifties could feel how the body developed
increasingly in accord with the outer world, thus becoming a
mediator that could instill in him wisdom concerning the outer
world.
The
situation changed when civilized mankind of those days passed
into the next age, called by me in my Occult Science the
primeval Persian. Then a man in his fifties could no longer
experience this dependence of his physical body upon the
earthly. Instead, the aging physical body exerted a different
influence on those still in their forties, from the
forty-second or forty-third year to the forty-ninth or
fiftieth. During these years, they participated intensively in
the change of seasons. They experienced spring, summer, autumn,
winter within their body. As it were, their body began to bud
and blossom during spring and summer, and went into decline
during autumn and winter. Human life took part in the seasons,
the changing air-currents ...
And
this perception of the changing air-currents, the
changing seasons, was connected with another thing. Man
felt that his speech was being transformed into something no
longer belonging essentially to him. Just as the primeval
Indian felt that, once he had attained the fifties, his whole
physical body did not really belong to him, but more or less to
the earth, so the primeval Persian felt that the body, by
producing speech, belonged to the people around him. At fifty,
a member of primeval Indian culture no longer said: I am
walking. If expressing his own feelings, he would say: My
body is walking. He did not say: I enter through the door; but
instead: My body carries me through the door. For he
experienced his body as something related to the outer world,
to the earth. And, five or six millennia before the Mystery of
Golgotha, a member of the Persian civilization felt that speech
came forth by itself, that he had it in common with his whole
surroundings. At that time, people all over the world did not
live in such an international way as today, but as
members of definite folk communities. They felt how
speech became alienated from them; how, if expressing their
real feelings, they could say: “It is speaking within
me.”
It
was really the case that people after attaining the forties
expressed the following in a certain, very respectful sense:
Divine-spiritual forces are speaking through me. And the
human being also felt as if his breath did not belong to
him any longer, but was dedicated to the surrounding world.
On
reaching his late thirties, a member of the Egypto-Chaldaean
culture — which lasted from the third or fourth
millennium until the eighth or ninth pre-Christian
century — had a similar feeling with regard to his
thoughts, his mental images. The Egyptian or Chaldaean felt in
his thirty-fifth year as if his mental images were connected
with heavenly forces, the course of the stars.
As
the primeval Indian, at the end of his life, felt the
connection of his body with the earth, as the primeval
Persian felt the connection of his speech, his breath, with the
seasons and the surrounding world, so a member of ancient
Egyptian, of ancient Chaldaean culture felt that his thoughts
were directed by the course of the stars. And he felt how
divine star-powers were interwoven with his thoughts.
In
Egypto-Chaldaean culture, the human being felt this dependence
of his thoughts upon heavenly powers until his forty-second or
forty-third year. Subsequently no new element entered into
human development. The primeval Persian, too, felt as if his
thoughts had been given to him by the stars; but he attained,
moreover, in his forties the relationship to speech that I have
described. Likewise, the primeval Indian, from his thirty-fifth
year, possessed this relationship to the star-powers. Therefore
he considered astrology as something self-evident. In his
forties, he also attained the dependence of speech upon his
surroundings. In his fifties, moreover, he experienced how his
physical body became objective, became shadow-like. He
accustomed himself, as it were, to the dying, because dying had
approached him already in his fifties. The soul was less firmly
joined to the body. Hence outer conditions could bring forth
these bodily changes. This fact was perceived by the soul,
experienced by the soul. And thereby man, as he grew older,
merged himself more and more with the world.
Then came the Graeco-Latin era, which lasted from the eighth
pre-Christian century until the fifteenth post-Christian
century, for until then, the echo of Graeco-Latin culture still
resounded in all civilized countries. This marked the age when
man felt himself until his thirties still dependent upon his
physical body, but no longer dependent on the stars, the
seasons, the earth. He felt himself firmly entrenched
within his physical body. The Greek felt a concord, a harmony
between the soul and spirit element and the bodily-physical.
Only this bodily-physical element no longer separated itself
from him. This is all very difficult to express, for we are
prevented, by the customary and totally inadequate historical
teaching given to us in school, from forming a conception of
these changes in mankind's evolution.
There then came the time when the human being became connected
with his physical body in such a way that his physical
body was committed no longer to participate in the course of
the universe directed by spiritual laws. Now man was
completely bound to his physical body. Mankind did not
reach this stage until the eighth pre-Christian century.
Thus a great transformation of mankind's whole evolution
occurred in as far as it concerned civilized mankind. Although
the human being on reaching the thirties felt himself still at
one with his physical body, he no longer was separated from it.
He felt himself united with his physical body. It could no
longer unveil to him the world's mysteries. During this period,
therefore, mankind attained an entirely new relation to death.
At an earlier time, when the human being prepared himself for
dying, as it were, by undergoing a separation from his
physical body, this dying signified for him nothing but a
transformation in the midst of life; for, in his fifties,
he became familiar gradually with the process of dying. He
experienced dying as a process which merged him, in a
wisdom-filled and blissful way, with the universe. He
experienced death as something guiding him into a world in
which he had already lived during his earth-life. Death at that
time was something entirely different from what it became
later. It might be said: More and more the human being was
confronted by the possibility that soul and spirit might
participate in death.
Let
us compare Hellenism with the primeval Indian epoch. In
primeval India, the body gained independence. The
individual was aware of being something else besides his
body which became independent and sheath-like. He could not
have possibly conceived the thought that death might be the
end. Such a thought did not exist among human beings of the
primeval Indian period. Only by degrees, and most decisively in
the eighth pre-Christian century, did man say to himself (still
out of an unconscious feeling, because he was unable to think
about these things in a rationalistic way): My body dies; but,
with regard to soul and spirit, I am at one with my body. No
longer did he notice the difference between the bodily and the
spirit and soul element.
The
human being became dominated by a thought that terrified
him when it first arose out of dark spiritual depths in the
ninth or eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha. It was
the thought: Might not my soul pursue the same path as my body
— die, as my body dies?
This thought which in the primeval Indian epoch would have been
totally inconceivable now came more and more to the fore. Out
of this mood emerged words like those famous ones of the Greek
hero: Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the
realm of the shades.
This was the time when mankind nurtured a mood that grew in the
right way towards the Mystery of Golgotha. For, what brought
forth in ancient human beings the ability to preserve a
freshness of soul which made it impossible for them to conceive
that the soul might take the same path of death as the
body?
This freshness of soul, this independence of soul with regard
to feeling, was given to ancient man by this knowledge: I have
had a life — for he could look into this life —
which was pre-earthly; through it I passed with my soul and
spirit before I descended to the physical world. While dwelling
in this higher world, I was united with the exalted
Sun-Being.
The
ancient Mysteries had evolved a teaching which pointed out that
man, in his pre-earthly existence, was united with the spirit
of the sun, just as in earth-life his body is united with the
physical light of the sun.
The
teachers in the ancient Mysteries told the following to their
pupils who, in their turn, told it again to others (they did
not designate the exalted Sun-Being as the Christ, but He was
the Christ, and we may therefore be permitted today to use this
name): The Christ is a Being Who shall never descend to the
earth. You, however, dwelt in your pre-earthly existence,
before descending to earth, within spiritual worlds in
communion with the Christ. And the force of the Christ
has given you the faculty of making your soul independent of
the body.
This instinctive memory of a pre-earthly existence was lost
through the soul's increasing identification with its physical
body. And, in the Greek epoch, earthly man could employ his
instinctive consciousness-forces only by looking at physical
life. The Greek was able to live such a harmonious earth-life,
because his outlook into the divine worlds of the spirit
had faded away. He was so successful in subduing the
sensible-physical that the spiritual vanished more or less from
his life's horizon. No longer did civilized men have a
consciousness of the fact that before descending to earth, they
dwelt in the presence of the exalted Sun-Being Who was later
called the Christ. Now darkness encompassed those who looked at
pre-earthly, prenatal existence. And thus arose the
mystery of death.
What happened henceforth must be envisaged as something
concerning not only mankind but also the gods. The
divine-spiritual powers who sent the human being down to earth
gave him the impulses towards the development that I have just
described. Since his spirit and soul became increasingly merged
with the physical body; since, as it were, his spirit and soul
became identical with the physical, and since, therefore, the
mystery of death confronted also the spirit and soul, the
divine-spiritual powers who had sent the human being down to
earth were threatened with the danger that he might be lost to
the gods, that his soul, as well as his body, might die.
Yet
man would never have become a free, independent being, had he
not grown into his body during this epoch. Man could only
become free in evolution if his view of the pre-earthly was
dimmed. He was obliged to stand on earth — totally
forsaken, as it were — within his physical body's abode.
Thus his independent ego could radiate and gleam up.
For
this shining forth of the independent ego can be best
accomplished by the human being entering completely into his
physical body. When man grows upward into the worlds of spirit
and soul, his ego retreats; he is being merged with the
objective element of spirit and soul. Man could become a free
ego-being only if given the impulse by the gods to merge
himself more and more with his physical body. He was
thus, however, confronted by the mystery of death; for
the physical body was bound to be claimed by death.
Now, if man's vision had not been awakened in another way, all
of mankind on earth would have become more and more convinced
that the soul and physical body were both dying together. And,
if nothing else had happened; if history had continued its
course in a straight line, all of us today would have come to
the common conviction that the soul as well as the body are
doomed to be laid in the grave.
At
this point, the divine-spiritual powers decided to send down on
earth the exalted Sun-Being, the Christ, in order that men, who
no longer had any knowledge of their communion with the Christ
during pre-earthly existence, could gain consciousness of
their communion with the Christ after He had descended on earth
and had shared on Golgotha and in Palestine their human
destiny in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The God descended
into the earthly world at the moment of mankind's world
historic evolution when men had lost their feeling of communion
with the Sun-Being beyond the earthly world.
Why
did the Christ come down on earth? Because human beings, having
fought their way to the attainment of complete
ego-consciousness, needed Him on earth. Men had to
experience the presence of a victor, who could die and
resurrect himself — be the vanquisher of death.
In
the course of history, this mystery had to be set before
mankind at a time when man, no longer able to look back into
pre-earthly existence, was granted a view of his communion with
the giver of man's immortality, with the Christ. It is a divine
event, and not merely for mankind, that the Christ was sent
down on earth from higher worlds. For the human race would have
fallen away from the gods, had they not sent down upon earth
the loftiest among them, in order that He undergo a human
destiny, a human existence, thus interweaving a divine
event with earthly-human events and mankind's entire world
evolution.
The
Mystery of Golgotha cannot be comprehended unless we regard it
not only as a human event, but also as a divine event. The fact
must be grasped that something which could be envisaged
previously only in the divine worlds could now be envisaged in
the earthly world.
Possibly you might raise the objection: Not all men have become
followers of the Christ; many do not believe in the Christ.
Must all these have the opinion that at death their soul would
be laid in the grave with the body?
This, however, is not the way in which the Mystery of
Golgotha may be interpreted. It is valid through all the
centuries preceding ours that the Christ, in His infinite
compassion overflowing with grace, died not only for His
immediate followers, but for all men in all ages,
everywhere on earth.
All
men on earth have been redeemed from the riddle of death by the
Christ. At first, this deed did not touch human consciousness.
It is natural, however, that some men were found who could
consciously grasp the grandeur and significance of the
Mystery of Golgotha. Yet the Christ did die and did rise as
much for the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindus as for the
Christians.
Just because since the fifteenth century human evolution must
increasingly regard intellectualism as its highest soul-force,
and just because this intellectual impulse will become more and
more powerful in the future, have we approached an epoch when
it is incumbent upon the earth's entire population to grasp,
with its ever growing consciousness, what was brought forth by
the Mystery of Golgotha.
Thus it will become necessary that the Mystery of Golgotha be
penetrated by a knowledge that can be really understood by
all men on earth.
In
preceding centuries, Christianity developed in a way that still
conformed to the peculiarities of ancient ethnic religions.
Christian development had not yet attained universality. The
Christian missionaries who went among the followers of other
religions found little or no understanding, because the Christ
was presented as a separate god who had the same qualities as
those possessed by the ancient heathen folk deities. This was
the manner in which Christianity had been disseminated. Why had
Constantine, why Chlodvig, accepted Christianity? —
Because they believed that the Christian god would be a more
powerful helper than their former gods. They exchanged, as it
were, their former gods for the Christian god. Hence the Christ
had to take on many qualities of the ancient folk deities.
These qualities have adhered to the Christ through the
centuries.
In
this way, however, Christianity could not become a
universal religion. On the contrary, it had to retreat
more and more before intellectualism. And we have seen,
particularly in the nineteenth century, many a theological
development which understood nothing whatsoever of the
Christ-event in its super-sensible aspect. Here the desire was
to speak only of Jesus, the man, although conceding that as man
he towered above all other men. Yet, henceforth, the desire was
only to speak of Jesus, the man, and not of Christ, the
God.
We
must, nevertheless, be able to speak again of Christ, the God,
because this Christ, while undergoing His destiny through the
Mystery of Golgotha, manifested to men on earth what He had
formerly signified to them, before they had descended to
earth from the high heavens.
Hence, we must state that the ancient folk religions were
primarily local religions. People prayed to the god of Thebes,
to the god on Mount Olympus. They were local deities who could
be worshipped only in near-by places. Thus, from the beginning,
these ancient faiths were bound to certain territories.
Later the local gods, who had their abode in a definite spot,
were replaced by gods bound to the personalities of single men,
of the guiding folk heroes. Yet a people's god was either a
still living folk hero or his surviving soul, the ancestral
folk soul. All religious faiths had a restricted character.
With Christianity, however, there appeared a world religion
which bestowed a spiritual element upon the whole earth, just
as the sun bestows a physical element upon the whole earth. The
climate in the vicinity of Mount Olympus is different from the
climate in the vicinity of Thebes; the latter, in its turn, is
different from the climate in the vicinity of Bombay. If a
religious faith nestles close to a locality, it cannot spread
beyond this locality. The sun, however, sheds its light on all
the earth's localities, shines upon all men as the same
sun.
When, however, the human form was taken on by that God Whose
physical reflection shone forth in the sun's radiance, then the
human race received a God who could be accepted as God by all
men on earth. If the possibility is found of penetrating
the being of this Christ-Divinity, we shall be able to
represent Him as the God acceptable to all mankind. Today we
stand only at the beginning of anthroposophical teachings. As
it were, we are still stammering the language of Anthroposophy.
Yet Anthroposophy will continue to develop more and more. And a
part of this development will consist in its capability
of finding words to describe the Mystery of Golgotha —
words of a kind that spiritual science can bring to the Hindus,
the Chinese, to all men on earth; and which will elucidate the
Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that the Hindus, the
Chinese, the Japanese will be unable to reject what is
told them concerning the Mystery of Golgotha.
For
this purpose, we must attach a genuinely serious
significance to all that represents Christian tradition.
Throughout the centuries, people have subjected themselves more
or less to the words of the Gospels. They have studied these
Gospels in a way commensurate with their understanding of these
ancient books. We have certainly no intention of speaking
against the validity of the Gospels. Our cycles on each of the
Gospels attempt to penetrate, by means of special
anthroposophical interpretation, into the deeper meaning
of these Gospels. Yet one thing must be said: Why is the
passage at the end of one Gospel taken so lightly? There it is
written: 1 have still many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. And why are the words of another
Gospel not taken more seriously: And, lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the earth-cycles?
For the Christ spoke the full truth. He could have said to men
other things than those recorded in the Gospels. Only those
Christ-words are recorded in the Gospels, for the understanding
of which the men of that epoch — few in number —
were ready. But mankind must become more and more mature in the
course of earthly evolution. From the Mystery of Golgotha on,
the Christ dwelt among men as the Living Christ, and not as the
dead Christ. And He is still present among us. If we learn to
speak His language, we shall recognize His presence; we shall
recognize the truth of His words: And, lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the earth-cycles.
And the anthroposophical world view desires to speak His
language, His spiritual language. The
anthroposophical world view desires to speak in such a way of
nature, of all the beings on earth, of the starry sky and the
sun that, by means of this language, the Mystery of Golgotha
may be understood; that the Christ may be experienced as
the One Who is ever present.
And, also after the Mystery of Golgotha, we may regard
as Christ-words all that we have gained from the spiritual
world; aided by that power which, through the Mystery of
Golgotha, descended from heaven to earth. If as men we speak of
the spiritual worlds, we may make true the word of St. Paul:
Not I, but the Christ in me. For today we have entered
an age in which we cannot even emulate the Greeks who, although
feeling themselves still at one with their physical body,
yet felt this physical body as something harmonious and
independent. Today we penetrate at a still earlier age than the
Greeks into that which underlies our physical body, thus
separating ourselves from the spiritual around us. We can
deepen our being only by seeking the union with the God Who
descended from heaven to earth. And we can feel ourselves
united only with that God Who entered the earthly sphere,
because men on earth could no longer enter the heavenly sphere
with their immediate and ordinary consciousness. By finding the
Christ, we also find anew the approach to the super-sensible
world; not now, however, by means of the physical body
(this was the case in ancient times), but by means of
heightened soul-power. And today, when the parallelism between
the development of body and soul lasts only up to the age of
twenty (later on it will last a still shorter period), this
heightened soul-power can be attained alone by immersing
ourselves, in the midst of the sensible events of earthly
evolution, into the knowledge of a super-sensible event:
the Mystery of Golgotha. Everything on earth took place in a
sensible way. Only in the Mystery of Golgotha something
super-sensible mingled with earthly events. And this can be
understood only out of a super-sensible knowledge.
Hence the union with the Christ awakens in our human souls the
powerful faculty of attaining a relationship to the
super-sensible world — a relationship formerly attained by
human beings through being connected with their physical
body in such a way that the body could become sheath-like.
Thus, feeling the approach of death before physical
death occurred, they merged themselves with the spirit
prevailing in their surroundings.
We
must attain by means of the soul what could be attained, in
earlier days, through the mediation of the body. For,
although we admire in the highest degree what has been
preserved of Indian writings — which did not
originate, however, from the earliest primeval Indian epoch,
but from a later period — although we admire what has
been bequeathed to us through the glory of the Vedas, the
grandeur of the Vedanta-philosophy, the radiant splendor of the
Bhagavad-Gita, we must, nevertheless, recognize the fact
that this could be attained in ancient times only because the
body reflected to the human being, as he grew older, a certain
spirituality. Ancient man was compensated for the waning
of his physical existence, which set in after the thirty-fifth
year, by having, as it were, the spirit pressing out of his
body, as the latter became hard, withered and wrinkled. And
this spirit was perceived by the human being. The great
philosophical poems of ancient times were not composed by
youths, but by patriarchs who had acquired wisdom. It resulted
from what was given by the body. In the present stage of human
evolution, which differs from the ancient ones, we must
receive from the soul, as it grows more powerful, what was
formerly contributed by the body. Our body becomes old. We must
remain united with it. We cannot let the spirit emerge from
this body, because we have utilized it since early
childhood.
If
we did not do this, we could never be free men. This must be
accepted as our rightful earthly destiny. One fact, however,
must be made clear to us: Our soul has to gain strength. Since
the spiritual strength formerly corresponding to the waning
body flows to us no longer we must attain it by strengthening
our soul through our own effort. And we shall experience
this strengthening of the soul by looking, in a genuine and
living way, toward a great and powerful event: The divine event
that took place as the Mystery of Golgotha in the midst of
earthly life. In beholding the Mystery of Golgotha and becoming
conscious that its after-effect is still dwelling among us, is
still existing in the spiritual-super-sensible sphere, our
spirit and soul become strengthened and approach the spiritual
world anew.
The
Christ has descended to earth in order that men, who no longer
see Him in heaven by means of their memory, may be permitted to
see Him on earth. Seen from today's viewpoint, this is
what rightly places the Mystery of Golgotha before our
spiritual eye.
The
disciples, who had preserved a remnant of ancient
clairvoyance, could still have the Christ as their
teacher when He dwelt among them after the resurrection in the
spiritual body.
Yet
this power gradually fell away from them. And its complete
disappearance is symbolically represented through the Festival
of the Ascension.
The
disciples sank into profound sadness, because they were forced
to believe that the Christ was no longer among them. They had
taken part in the event of Golgotha. Now, however, they had to
believe that the Christ had moved away from their
consciousness, that the Christ was no longer on earth. Thus
they were plunged into deep sorrow, for they had seen the
Christ-figure disappear in the clouds, that is, move away from
their consciousness.
But
every genuine knowledge is born out of sorrow, of
suffering, of grief. True, profound knowledge is never
born out of joy. True, profound knowledge is born out of
suffering. And out of the suffering, which encompassed the
disciples of the Christ at the Festival of the Ascension, out
of this deep soul-anguish arose the Mystery of Pentecost. The
disciples could no longer view the Christ by means of their
outer, instinctive clairvoyance. But the force of the Christ
unfolded within them. The Christ had sent to them the spirit
enabling their soul to experience the Christ-existence in their
innermost depths.
This experience gave meaning to the first Festival of
Pentecost occurring in human evolution. The Christ, Who
had disappeared from the outer, clairvoyant view still
clinging to the disciples as a heritage of ancient evolutionary
periods, appeared at Pentecost within the disciples' inner
experience. The fiery tongues signify nothing but the arising
of the inner Christ in the souls of His pupils, the souls of
the disciples. Out of inner necessity, the Festival of
Pentecost had to follow the Festival of the Ascension.
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