“I am the Way, the Truth,
and the Life”
S-2392
Hanover, March 4, 1911
When in
Spiritual Science we learn that man is composed of various
members — physical body, etheric body, astral body,
Ego, Manas, Buddhi, Atma — this is only the merest
beginning, and it would be a dangerous fallacy if the belief
were to spread that with such knowledge as is given in
elementary Spiritual Science concerning the nature of man,
his evolution through re-incarnation and karma; and the like,
we already know everything it is necessary to know about the
spiritual life, that this is sufficient for the future
progress of mankind, True, these things must be known but we
must learn more and more to look upon Spiritual Science as
something which penetrates our whole life and is transformed
into practice, not only in respect of high ideals but in
respect of every impulse in life, on however small a scale,
This transformation into practice cannot be achieved through
abstract ideas but only through such knowledge, ideas and
concepts as can grasp the exact way in which these different
members of which man is composed, work together and
interpenetrate in the process of his evolution. We do indeed
know something about man when we know of his several bodies
and members but we only learn really to understand him when
we are aware of how the different members are interrelated.
Now it might
be contended that this too could be grasped and that then
everything would be known, but the truth is that the
interpenetration of the different members of man's being
changes in the progressive stages of evolution. In ancient
Egypt, for example, these members worked quite differently
from the way in which they do in the human body today.
Knowledge of how the members were interrelated in ancient
Egyptian times, therefore, tells us nothing, in reality,
about the nature of man in our own epoch. Any attempt to
transplant the temple-wisdom of ancient Egypt into our own
epoch would be neither right nor suitable for to-day. We
cannot speak of these things in the same way as the
priest-sages of Egypt spoke of them to their pupils.
This
interworking between the members of man's being changes, too,
during the life of the individual. It is not the same in
childhood as it is in later life, Today we shall consider
this interworking as it is in early childhood and then in
later years.
You know well
that the child's consciousness is different from that of a
mature human being. The difference comes to expression in the
fact that the child does not, to begin with, say
“I” of itself. The word that is so important for
us is voiced only later, when the consciousness of
“I” awakens in the child. There are modern
psychologists, so-called investigators of the soul, who deny
this. They maintain that consciousness of the “I”
is already there and it is simply that the child does not
bring is to expression. No importance should be attached to
such statements of modern psychology. Really foolish things
are said, for example that the human being first learns to
think and then to speak. But the reverse is correct. It is
through speaking that the human being learns to think. The
child's consciousness is quite different. The child would not
designate itself by saying, as we do in later years:
“I feel, I wish this or that.”
Between the ages of 2½ and 3½ (varying with the individual)
something happens in the child which we can easily confirm by
looking back into our own childhood. We find that we can
remember back to a certain point and then the thread of
memory whereby the consciousness of our own deeds is
retained, breaks. We know that the “I” existed
before this break in memory, but it was not within the sphere
of consciousness.
Thus there is
the life of the “I” between birth and about the
third year, during which the relation of the “I”
to the physical, etheric and astral bodies is not at all the
same as it is later on. Occult science reveals that in these
first years of childhood, the “I” hovers around
the body like an aura, and only afterwards penetrates into
the human being. In the same measure as the “I”
enters, the human being begins to say “I” of
himself, to relate things to himself. Before this happens the
“I” works from outside and when we study the
child's organism realise how much there is to be done. The
delicate structure of the brain, for example, has to be built
up, and the “I” does this and can only
do it as long as it is not inwardly bound up with the organism.
Now it might
be contended that the human “I” is not clever
enough to build its own brain, to give it the infinitely
delicate furrows and convolutions which enable it to be an
instrument for thinking. But this work is not performed by
the human alone; in its work on the body the “I”
is accompanied and directed by the wisdom of quite other
forces. Why can the child-“I” work with such
wisdom and yet know nothing of it later on? The reason is that
as long as the “I” is outside, is the aura, it is
connected with the spiritual world. While the
child-“I” is working on the body in this way, the
seer can observe that the streams which proceed from it on
the one side enter the body and on the other flow upwards to
the Hierarchies, to the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so
on. It can therefore truly be said that child-“I”
is anchored in the spiritual world.
The truths of
Spiritual Science are not meant to be easily comprehensible.
They are far, far deeper. — I have often said that the
wisest man can learn much from a child. The
child-“I” which hovers like an aura around the
head and upper part of the child's body is like a telephone
connection with the spiritual world and in this aura the seer
can perceive the weaving deeds of higher Hierarchies. To
spiritual vision this aura continues up into the realms of
the Hierarchies. And in the same measure in which the
“I” penetrates into the body and man begins to say
“I” of himself, yielding as he says it to the
illusion that his “I” is enclosed within the
limits of his body, in that measure the thread of connection
with spiritual worlds is, in a certain respect, severed.
Thus the link
between the “I” and the other bodily members is
not the same in early childhood as it is in later life and it
may be said that there is also a difference between this
“I” while it is working in earliest childhood
outside the body, and the “I” of later life. For
in early childhood the “I” is creative
productive, whereas later on it loses these creative forces.
As the human body is today, we are composed in later life of
physical, etheric and astral bodies and the “I”
which feels itself within these bodies; the spiritual,
life-giving forces which were active in early childhood are
suppressed. In fact we kill them and our whole life is a
process of killing, of deadening the living forces which were
at work in early childhood. The spiritual forces of the Cosmos
live and weave during this period of life and later on our
sheaths have a deadening, destructive effect upon these forces.
In human
life, two kinds of deeds are in evidence. There are deeds
whereby in later life too, these living forces are worked
upon and stimulated to new activity, and there are deeds
which have a destructive effect upon them. There are deeds
which kindle these forces into activity and others which
undermine them, destroy them. We perform deeds in pursuance
of some moral goal, some ideal towards which we strive
because it says to us that as human beings we should have
other aims than those to which we are led by our impulses,
our instincts and passions. By sympathy, by sharing pain and
joy with our fellow-men we are led to perform such deeds as
lead beyond the horizon of our ordinary life to our ideals.
But man can also perform deeds which are impelled merely by
impulse and instinct. There is a tremendous difference
between these two kinds of deeds and this is inevitable in
the present cycle of evolution. It need not always be so in
the future, for we can strive to spiritualize even the most
inferior, most deeply instinctive actions. Today man eats
according to his impulses but when he learns to regard the
plant as being driven as it were by a spiritual force from
the centre of the earth towards the sun, when he learns to
look upon the plant as a spiritual being, then he will no
longer devour it like an animal, but he will feel that through
the plant he is eating he is uniting himself with the
spiritual force pervading it with its sun-nature. Man will
gradually came to feel this. But the feeling that even in
these instinctive actions, these material deeds, there is
something spiritual, is still an ideal of the far future.
Today, deeds born of impulse and instinct are still
intermingled with deeds performed in pursuit of an ideal.
Everyone will
admit that in our life an ideal hovers before us on lofty
heights whereas the deeds we perform in pursuit of this ideal
appear very insignificant in comparison with it. Whoever has
not felt this has little knowledge of what an ideal is in the
true sense. It is necessary for us to feel how widely actions
in life on the physical plane fall short of what we conceive
as an ideal which hovers high above us. Our thinking and
feeling have a far wider compass than our actions on the
physical plane. These latter are like a tiny circle, and the
ideal to which we aspire is like a big circle. The reverse is
the case with the other kind of actions — those that
proceed entirely from impulses. There the action is large and
the feeling and thinking we apply to it small. The difference
between these two kinds of actions is only too evident in life.
Now all deeds
of that kind that proceed from impulses have a destructive
effect upon the life-forces of the child-“I” and
are really the cause of death on the physical plane, whereas
all deeds performed in pursuit of an ideal stimulate and
re-kindle forces which are contained, originally, in the
child-“I.” Thus we oscillate between what
regenerates life and what brings about destruction in us.
When we understand this we shall also realise that as human
beings we must seek life-giving forces for our organism. In
ancient times these life-bestowing forces flowed down from
higher worlds. Together with the old clairvoyance, ideals
streamed down into human souls, and these ideals kindled the
life-giving forces of which man stands in need. Today, in our
present cycle of evolution, man has to pass through the
school where ideals which enter the heart of themselves are
rarer and rarer. Evolution has now reached the point where
the ideals which come of themselves, which are there without
effort on the part of the human being, are becoming extinct.
They will eventually cease altogether and men will have to
live without ideals unless, out of their own free will they
find the forces to kindle them to new life. The materialism
that has overcome humanity arose because man's being had
become desert soil for his ideals. Cosmic evolution passes
like a consuming fire over the ideals and the one and only
means to prevent utter desolation within man's being and his
downfall into sheer materialism is the conscious acceptance
of Spiritual Science which brings the knowledge that man has
his origin in the spiritual worlds and that we must penetrate
with ever-growing consciousness into these worlds. It will
then be possible for ideals again to flow down from these
worlds. More and more, human beings will be instinctively
driven to Spiritual Science and with full self-consciousness
unfold a new idealism which will imbue them with new forces
in life. Others will be increasingly unwilling to know
anything of the spiritual worlds. The handful of people who
strive for Spiritual Science will constantly increase, but
the others will have an antipathy against it — an
antipathy growing into hatred — and they will
contribute more and more towards the destruction of the
idealism flowing into the souls of men.
Religious and
other traditions still in existence today give rise to ideals
unconsciously but the more man forgets what the religions and
philosophies have accomplished, the more will these ideals
disappear and die out, and man will succumb to the impulses
of his external bodily nature. And if it were said that the
ideals will not be lost even if men refuse to accept Spiritual
Science, that would be an empty, untrue way of talking.
Thus an
affinity is to be perceived between the forces working in
earliest childhood and the life-giving forces of idealism
contained in human nature. Idealism is a living power in man,
bearing within it the impulse to unite with the forces which
are at work in earliest childhood. About the third year these
forces of childhood cease to be active; thenceforward we kill
these life-bestowing forces and they can only be re-kindled
when idealism becomes an active impulse in the soul. For
three years of our life we have around us that which is the
bearer and sustainer of the truly living forces. We should be
different beings if, in later life too, the young, fresh
forces of life were still accessible to us and if we could
permeate them with fully conscious intelligence. We have the
creative life-forces of the “I” in early
childhood but lose them in later life.
The path of
human evolution is that the physical body develops in the
first sever years, the etheric body up to the age of 14, the
astral body to the age of 21, then the sentient soul to the
age of 28, the intellectual mind-soul from the age of 28
to that of 35, and the consciousness soul from the 35th year
onwards. It is the intellectual soul which, from the 28th
year of life, permeates us fully with the
“I”-consciousness, but the “I” has
for long been deadened through our bodily forces, so that the
strongest life-giving forces of the “I” and the
“I”-consciousness itself, do not coincide.
Man would
evolve quite differently if his bodily constitution before
the 28th year did not develop in such a way as to work with a
deadening effect upon the “I,” but if the
“I” and the “I”-consciousness
were completely in unison and could work in full strength
upon each other between the 28th and the 35th years. As the
result of yielding to our impulses and passions, and thereby
deadening our original “I”-forces, we have pushed
these forces back to where they do not belong, and here, from
another point of view, we come to understand the temptations
of Lucifer and Ahriman. If Lucifer and Ahriman had not been
at work and man had not fallen prey to them, the original
life-giving forces would remain, and would come to their
height when man reaches the peak of his life with the birth
of the intellectual soul in which the “I”-consciousness
awakens and the forces of feeling and understanding come to
their full development. Then all the creative powers of childhood
would be able to function. How differently man would stand in life
if the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman did not work upon him! He
would not maltreat his brain at too early an age and towards the
30th year of life he would have the power, the fully conscious
power, to make his brain into an instrument for his intellect.
What Lucifer
and Ahriman have brought about must, however, have been
rectified when the earth reaches its end; the whole
temptation must be nullified, that is to say, man must have
taken into himself forces whereby he will be able
consciously to work from his own “I.”
The “I”-forces work unconsciously in earliest
childhood but have lost their power as the result of the
temptation, and it is a goal of the future to develop such
lofty idealism that new, life-kindling forces will stream
into us and work back upon our bodily nature. Then, through
the following incarnations we shall carry in the soul an ever
growing idealism which will enable the life-kindling forces
to stream into us in greater and greater abundance, so that
by the end of the earth-evolution we shall have developed
such power that in full consciousness we shall be able to let
the youthful, childlike forces work actively within us.
Let us
imagine that the highest ideal was once embodied with its
full life-giving power, in one human being. The question then
would be: For how long does man allow the
child-“I” to work in him unconsciously? He allows
it for three years and then, having fallen victim to the
Luciferic influence, he begins to deaden and destroy it. Now
it before the end of earth-evolution, when men will
have acquired the power to work upon themselves in full
consciousness — if somewhere about the middle of
earth-evolution this Ideal were embodied, then in keeping
with the forces of Karma, this high Ideal could work, only
for three years, the Ideal would have to descend into the
body towards the 30th year of life and work in that body in
the same way as the forces which work in us unconsciously,
during the first three years of childhood. When the
intellectual soul awakens it must take root in the human body
as conscious soul-force, towards the 30th year. The
wise cosmic forces would have to provide for a human body so
prepared, that towards the 30th year it could receive a
“I” containing the forces which reach up to the
Hierarchies, are able to carry these forces down into a human
body. And this “I” would have to descend in full
consciousness into this human body, in which it could dwell
for 3 years — but no longer.
Only so could
this sublime Ideal be embodied. A man would have to be there
on earth with a physical body, etheric body, astral body and
an “I,” and this “I” would have to
depart from the sheaths at about the 30th year and a
child-“I” would have to descend, in full
consciousness, into these sheaths with forces reaching up to
the Hierarchies. The embodied Ideal was Christ Jesus. And as
the members of man's being gradually develop, we so learn to
understand the Christ that we say: In Him were working, in
full consciousness, those divine forces which work
unconsciously in the human being to the third year of life.
This Christ-“I,” filled with the full forces of
childhood, came down at the Baptism in the Jordan into the
body of Jesus of Nazareth and worked for three years in a
human body. Such was the working of World-Karma. This
Christ-“I” dwelt in a human body for three years,
after which the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished. The
power proceeding from the Mystery of Golgotha is able to make
men realise that this Christ-“I” is the
wellspring and source of those forces which kindle to life
the power to create ideals. When the power to create ideals
is filled with new life by looking to the highest of them
all, when the forces of human feeling and intellect are
utterly permeated with this ideal, then it will be as if the
Christ Himself were to fill the human soul, and then, in such
a soul, the words of St. Paul would find fulfillment:
“Not I, but Christ in me.”
When we
understand this, we also understand something else, namely,
that at the time of the Events of Palestine, the intellectual
soul was in its normal stage of development, because it was
into the intellectual or mind-soul that the
Christ-“I” was to be received. We realise that in
order to understand the Christ we must understand the nature
and being of man and many a passage in the Bible takes on new
meaning and significance, for example the words:
“Unless ye become as little children, ye cannot enter
the kingdom of heaven,” that is to say, the region of
the spiritual worlds. With full consciousness, such as is
ours at the height of life, we must dive down into the forces
which were at work in us in earliest childhood. Our
intellectual soul, together with the “I” in its
development from the age of 28 to 35, must receive into
itself these child-forces so that what was accomplished from
outside, unconsciously, in early childhood, shall be
accomplished spiritually, with full consciousness on
a higher plane.
Human beings
are distinguishable from the higher animals in that the
latter find their equilibrium from the outset. The animal, as
climbing, jumping, running animal, acquires the equilibrium
its life demands. Man, however, has to learn to find his
poise as an upright being. This, too, is work of the
“I.” The “I” brings about our state
of poise, of equilibrium, whereas the animal acquires its
equilibrium through implanted instincts. In man, the
“I” creates the equilibrium and points the way to
be taken in life. The “I” points the way to man
and also gives him his ideas, his thoughts, his knowledge.
The animal has instincts; man acquires wisdom and attains to
truth through knowledge. Thus we can say: through the work of
the “I,” man receives, in early childhood, those
forces which give him Life. Through the
“I,” man acquires knowledge, which leads him to
Truth. Through the “I,” man raises
himself into the upright posture and finds the Way.
That is what is proceeding unconsciously, while the human
body is developing in early childhood. The same thing, raised
to a higher level and striven for in a spiritual way, happens
to man when he permeates his being with the power of Christ.
When this Christ Power has become reality in the soul, when
the Christ has become a living experience in the soul, when
the soul has thereby found the direction of its path, when it
knows the Truth of the higher worlds, then this
“I” in man can affirm: I am the Way, the Truth
and the Life — while realising that it is not his
personal, earthly “I” which speaks, but the
Christ in him.
The Christ in
man is the child-“I,” working in later life as a
spiritual power. Therefore the words: “Except
ye become as little children ye cannot enter the kingdom of
heaven” contain the exhortations: Become like little
children, become strong, stand upright, learn to find your
Way through the Christ within you, become seekers after the
Truth and then, in full consciousness, you will also find in
yourselves the Life-kindling forces which streamed into your
organism in childhood unconsciously. Think of this
child-“I” spiritualised and enhanced — that
is what must work in us through all following incarnations.
We must live with this spiritualised child-“I” as
we now live with our earthly “I.” It is with the
Christ-“I” that we shall then be living. In order
that this should be possible, the events in Palestine took place.
Thus we see
how through what once took place, when the highest human
Ideal was given an actual basis in life, the way was laid
down for man for all subsequent evolution. The Mystery of
Golgotha stands at the pivotal point of all existence, and
must be regarded as the one and only true guide for all
following incarnations. This is the Truth that must become
the deepest of all human experiences.
What happens
to the forces of the child-“I”? These forces of
the first three years are deadened by the egoistic impulses
and passions of men. If man had not received at the beginning
of earth-evolution a sufficient fund of wisdom and life-force
to enable him to hold firmly to his existence in face of
these destructive forces, no development would have been
possible for him. Through the influences of Lucifer and
Ahriman, man gradually deadened these original life-forces
and they could only be re-kindled through that unique
Individuality Who did not take the ordinary path of human
evolution, Who did not succumb to the working of Lucifer and
Ahriman, Who entered once and only once into a human body,
Who shared all human experiences during the time He was on
earth, and Who stands before all human souls as the sublime
Ideal. The Christ had resolved to descend to the earth, to
live for three years in a human body and then to offer
Himself in sacrifice on Golgotha.
And now let
us ask ourselves this great question: Who then, is
responsible for the death of Christ on Golgotha? At a certain
stage of evolution we may indeed put this question to
ourselves. And the answer to it is; All human beings are
responsible for this death! just as we continually kill the
child-“I” as the result of the working of Lucifer
and Ahriman in us, so did we bring death to Christ Jesus on
Golgotha through having gradually killed the seed of the
life-forces from the time when our incarnations began, until
the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The deepest of all
Christian experiences is the knowledge that upon man lies the
guilt for the Mystery of Golgotha and that the very
constitution of human nature made this inevitable.
Is there a
healing force for this guilt in which every human being
shares? The things that happen in the world have their effect
upon human nature and cannot be resisted. Men have killed the
Christ because of the evolution through which they passed
before His descent to earth. We all share the responsibility
for Christ's death. We have all loaded ourselves with this
guilt which can be healed only by knowing and realising it.
And through this knowledge Christ will be received into the
hearts and souls of men and human souls who recognise the
Christ are those who will be saved. The Christ will pass over
with these souls to Jupiter when the earth has reached the
goal of its evolution. Therefore in future evolution, either
this consciousness of guilt will prevail and Christ be
received into man's consciousness, or, if there are any who
reject this, they will be unable to share in the healing
forces which are accessible to humanity. They will fall away
from evolution for they can no longer participate in it.
Thus we see
what it will mean in the future to be a Christian. Only he
who bears the Christ in himself in this way is truly a
Christian. The Christian is not made by reading and pondering
over the Gospels, nor by abstract knowledge. One thing alone
makes the Christian, namely the realization: You, as man,
have killed the Christ. You must let the Christ live again in
you; you must prepare a place in your heart for the Christ.
In Spiritual
Science this consciousness can arise independently of any
documentary records, for one can become a Christian through
learning to know and understand man's nature. The human mind
and intellect today can yield the knowledge that the Christ
has lived. Let us imagine that all the Gospels were lost,
that all documents concerning the Mystery of Golgotha no
longer existed, that there were no contemporary narratives,
no evidence to support this existence of Christ. Even so
there would still be an infallible means for knowing that the
Christ lived. This knowledge is possible because the
human being is capable of grasping spiritual truths through
his thoughts. This ability to grasp spiritual truths
through thought reveals the fact that something of the
original life-forces unfolds in the intellectual soul. That
is why such thoughts are so full of life and power. The
thoughts of materialistic science are utterly uncreative; in
such thoughts the Spirit is dead.
The Christ
Event took place at the beginning of the era when the Spirit
had fallen away from the course that had been taken by human
evolution. And just as in a chemical experiment one can
calculate, by mingling the substances, what the outcome will
be, with clairvoyance, one can calculate from the barren
and abstract nature of modern thinking, the year in which the
Christ entered a human body at the Baptism in the Jordan.
Standing as
we do in life with Spiritual Science and hearing that we can
learn to experience the Christ in ourselves, a feeling of
dismay may well overwhelm us in the face of such a sublime
truth. The only way of overcoming this dismay is to unfold
the right kind of humility.
In the first
half of the 19th century men were not as unspiritual as they
have become today. There were still many who had some inkling
of man's connection with spiritual worlds. One such
personality was Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of Johann
Gottlieb Fichte, whose thoughts lived on in his soul.
Immanuel Hermann Fichte brought forward whatever it was
possible at that time to bring forward in order to prove the
existence of a spiritual world. His writings are unique in their
own way, and at one place in his writings there is to be
found a suggestion, an inkling of this original guilt in man.
He did not, nor could he, reach the point of asserting that
in reality all human beings have killed the Christ, but a
kind of inkling of this original guilt breathes through his
writings. In the first half of the 19th century he asserts
that human beings live in darkness with reference to
spiritual things. He rails against the worthlessness of the
clairvoyance of various visionaries and prophets of his time
and says that the day must come when the minds of men must be
directed in a way quite different from this to the deep
secrets of the spiritual world. Is this not like a
premonition of the coming of Spiritual Science? And we may
well ask ourselves: Are we really able to fulfil this
premonition? We can only hope that this will be possible in
some humble degree.
And yet
another truth must be written deeply in our hearts. Christ
was once and once only in the world in order that the impulse
to ascend to a new spiritual world might be bestowed upon
mankind. It is a sacred truth and must so be regarded by us,
that Christ could live only once on the Earth. The assertion
that He will live again in a body of flesh on the Earth would
be comparable to saying that scales must be supported at two
points in order to be able to weigh. Everyone knows that a
balance must have one pivot only. If it had two
pivots points it could not weigh. There could only be one
Christ Impulse and anyone who maintains that He will come
again to impart the same Impulse, understands as little of
the truth as a man understands of a balance who says that it
must be supported at two points. It was only necessary for
Christ to give once what He had to give. Therefore
man must make greater and greater efforts to acquire
knowledge of this Christ Impulse and through this knowledge
the truth will more and more be borne in upon him that since
the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has been united with the
Earth and that there lies the source of the power which
enables him to find the Christ. Men must first receive the
Christ into their hearts and then, for such men, the Event of
Damascus will repeat itself and they will grow towards a new
experience of the Christ. But they will know the Christ in a
spiritual way. Christ will not come before them in a
body of flesh. The return of Christ is not to be confused
with His one and only sojourn in a human body of flesh. It is
Spiritual Science which will give men the power to experience
the Christ in this spiritual way.
And so we see
how Spiritual Science substantiates a saying of Christ, a
saying that is sinned against by those who maintain that this
Science is unchristian and that it runs counter to the
tradition of the gospels. Christ said: “I am with you
until the end of earthly days” — which means
nothing else than that He lets His revelations, His new
Gospel stream to us continually, thus confirming the words:
“I have still much to say to you but ye cannot bear it
now.” He spoke these words to His disciples who were
not yet able to receive the full truth of the Gospel.
Humanity will, however, become more and more ready to receive
Christ's message. The revelation of the new Gospel will not
cease. But Spiritual Science must be in the world in order
that mankind may have understanding for this unceasing
revelation of the Christ. Spiritual Science is here in order
to give to men that which in the sense of Christ's utterance,
was still lacking in them at that time. They could not, then,
hear everything that the Christ would fain have said to them,
but it was not to be withholden from a future humanity.
Christ will in very truth speak to men — and blessed
are they who receive His words with understanding.
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