INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
Spiritual Science — The
Gospel — The Future of Mankind
IN the autumn of this
present year Nuremberg can celebrate an important centenary,
for it was in 1808 that this city received one of the
greatest German spirits within her walls. He was one of those
spirits of whom we hear little to-day and whose works are
understood still less; but he will signify very much for
man's intellectual life in the future when he is once
understood. He is doubtless difficult to understated and it
may be some time before people grasp him again. In the autumn
of 1808 Hegel became Director of the Royal Grammar
School in Nuremberg.
Hegel made a
statement that we may perhaps take as foundation for what we
are going to study. He said: The most profound thought is
connected with the figure of Christ, with the outer
historical figure. And it is the greatness of the Christian
religion that every grade of consciousness can grasp the
historical external figure, while at the same time it is a
challenge to the most earnest labours of the mind and the
deepest penetration. The Christian religion is comprehensible
at every stage of culture and yet at the same time it
challenges the deepest wisdom. — These are the words of
Hegel, the German philosopher.
That the
Christian faith, the message of the Gospel, can be understood
at every stage of consciousness has been taught for a period
to be reckoned almost in millennia. To show that it is a
summons to the deepest thought, to a penetration into
humanity's whole fund of wisdom, will be one of the
tasks of Spiritual Science, if this is understood in its true
sense and inmost impulse and made the guide of human life.
What we are to consider to-day will be misunderstood if it is
thought that Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is in any way
a new religion or desires to establish a new religious faith
in place of an old one. One might say, not to be
misunderstood, if Spiritual Science is grasped aright, it
will be clear that though it is a sure and firm supporter of
religious life, in itself it is no religion, nor will it ever
contradict any religion as such. It is another matter,
however, for it to be the instrument to explain the
profoundest truths and the most earnest and vital secrets of
religions and show how they may be understood.
It may seem
somewhat far-fetched if we make the following comparison in
order to show the relation of Theosophy or Anthroposophy to
religious documents (and to-day we shall be concerned with
the religious documents of Christianity). Anthroposophy is
related to the religious documents as mathematical
instruction is related to the books on mathematics which have
appeared in the course of mankind's history. We have an
old work which is really of interest only to students of
history versed in mathematics, namely, the geometry of
Euclid. It contains for the first time in a
scholastic form the mathematical and geometrical facts that
are now taught to children in school. How few of the children
are aware, however, that all that they learn about parallel
lines, triangles, angles, etc., stands in that old book, that
it was given to humanity then for the first time. It is quite
right to make the child conscious that one can realize these
things in oneself, that if the human spirit sets its forces
in motion and applies them to the forms of space it is able
to realize these forms without reference to that ancient
book. Yet someone who has never heard of the book and has
been taught mathematics and geometry will value and
understand it in the right sense if he one day comes across
it. He will know how to prize what was given to mankind by
the one who set this work for the first time before the
human spirit. In this way one might characterize the relation
of Spiritual Science to religious documents.
The sources
of Spiritual Science are of such a nature that if it is
understood in its true impulse it is not to be referred to
any kind of document or tradition. Just as knowledge of the
surrounding sense-world is given us by the free use of our
forces, so can the knowledge of the super-sensible, the
invisible lying behind the visible, be given us by the
deep-lying spiritual forces and faculties slumbering within
the human soul. When man uses the instruments of his senses
he can perceive things lying before him and combine them with
his intellect. In the same way someone using the means given
him through Spiritual Science can look behind the veils of
sense-existence to the spiritual causes, to where beings
weave and work which are imperceptible to the physical eye
and ear. Thus it is in the free use of man's forces,
though they are still slumbering as super-sensible forces in
the majority of men, that we have the independent source of
spiritual knowledge, just as the source of external knowledge
lies in the free use of forces directed to the sense-world.
And when man possesses the knowledge which introduces him
into the super-sensible behind the sensible, the invisible
behind the visible, a knowledge as definite as his knowledge
of outer objects and events, then he may go to the
traditional books and records. Furnished with super-sensible
knowledge he may approach the records through which, during
the course of evolution, tidings have reached man of the
super-sensible world, just as the geometrician approaches the
geometry of Euclid. And then he tests them as the modern
geometrician tests the geometry of Euclid; he can prize and
recognize these documents at their true value. Nor does one
who approaches the records of Christianity equipped with
knowledge of the super-sensible world find that they lose in
value; indeed on the contrary, they appear in a more
brilliant light than they showed first to the mere believer,
they prove to contain deeper wisdom than had been dreamt of
earlier, before the possession of anthroposophical
knowledge.
But we must
be clear on another point before we can realize the right
relation of Anthroposophy to the religious documents. Let us
ask ourselves who is better able to judge the geometry of
Euclid — one who can translate the words and give the
contents without having first penetrated into the spirit of
geometry, or one who already understands geometry and is
therefore able to discover it in the book? Let us think of a
mere philologist, one who knows nothing of geometry, how many
incorrect statements would appear if he tried to convey the
meaning of the contents. Many have done this with the records
of religion, even those who are supposed to be chosen to
fathom their true sense. They have gone to these records
without first having any independent knowledge of
super-sensible facts. And so we have to-day most careful
explanations of religious documents, explanations that
explore the history of the time and show how the documents
originated, and so on. But the explanations resemble
explanations of Euclid's geometry by a
non-geometrician. Religion — and this we will hold fast
— can only be found if one is aided by
spiritual-scientific knowledge, although Spiritual Science
can only be an instrument of the religious life, never a
religion itself. Religion is best characterized through the
content of the human heart, that sum of feelings and emotions
through which man's sensitive soul sends up all that is
best in it to the super-sensible beings and powers. The
character of a man's religion depends on the fire of
these feelings, the strength of his sensitivity, just as it
depends on the warm pulse-beat in the breast and on the
feeling for beauty how a man will stand before a picture.
True it is that the contents of the religious life is what we
call the spiritual or super-sensible world. But just as little
as an aesthetic feeling for art is the same as an inner grasp
of its laws — though it may assist understanding just
as little are the wisdom, the science, that lead into the
spiritual worlds the same as religion. This science will make
religious feeling more earnest, worthier, broader, but it
will not be religion itself. Grasped in its true sense it may
lead to religion.
If we wish to
understand the force and significance, the real spirit of the
Christian religion we must penetrate far into spiritual life.
We must look back into times of a primeval past, the
pre-religious age of mankind, and try to envisage the origin
of religion. Is there a pre-religious age of humanity? Yes, a
time existed on earth when there was no religion; this is
acknowledged by Spiritual Science though in a very different
sense from the assertions of materialistic civilization. What
does religion signify for mankind? It was and for a long time
will still be that which the word itself signifies. The word
“religion” means the uniting of man with his
divine element, with the world of the spirit. The religious
ages are essentially those in which man has longed for union
with the divine, be it out of the sources of knowledge, or
from a certain feeling, or because he felt that his will
could only be strong if it were permeated by divine forces.
Ages in which man had an inner premonition rather than
definite vision, in which he rather sensed that a spiritual
world was around him, than saw it — these are the
religious ages of our earth. And before these ages were
others when man did not need such a sense of longing for
union with the super-sensible spiritual world, because he knew
that world, as to-day he knows things of the sense world.
Does man need to be convinced of the existence of stones,
plants, animals? Does he need documents or doctrines to prove
to him or let him surmise that there are rocks, plants,
animals? No, for he sees them round him and needs therefore
no religion of the sense-perceptible world. Let us imagine
someone from quite another world, possessing quite different
senses and organs of knowledge, one who would not see the
stones, plants and animals because to him they were
invisible. Let us imagine that he was informed through
writings or in some other way of their existence, which to
you is a matter of direct sight and knowledge. What would
that be for him? It would be religion. If he were informed
through some book of the existence of stones and plants and
animals it would be religion to him, for he has never seen
them. There was a time in which humanity lived amongst those
spiritual beings and deeds that are recorded in the religious
teachings and teachings of wisdom.
The word
“evolution” has become a magic word in many
fields of thought to-day, but it has been applied by science
solely to outer sense-perceptible facts. To one who regards
the world from the standpoint of Spiritual Science everything
is in process of evolution, and most of all the human
consciousness. The state of consciousness in which man lives
to-day, through which when he wakes in the morning he is able
to grasp the world with his senses, this state has evolved
from a different one. We call the present consciousness the
clear day-consciousness. But this has evolved from an ancient
state which we call the dull picture-consciousness of
mankind. There, however, we reach back to humanity's
early evolutionary stages of which anthropology tells
nothing, since it uses only the instruments of the senses and
methods of the intellect. It believes that man has gone
through stages in the far past which are the same as the
animal creation passes through to-day. We have seen in
earlier lectures how the relation of man to the animal is to
be understood. Man was never such a being as the present
animal, nor is he descended from beings like them. If we were
to describe the forms out of which man has evolved they would
prove very different in appearance from the present-day
animal. These are creatures which have stayed behind at
earlier stages of evolution, con-served these stages and
hardened them. The human being has grown beyond his earlier
evolutionary stages, the animal has gone down below them. So
in the animal world we see some-thing like laggard brothers
of humanity, who no longer, however, bear the form of those
earlier stages.
The earlier
stages of evolution took their course when there were
different conditions of life on the earth, when the elements
were not distributed as they are to-day, when the human being
was not encumbered with the kind of body he now bears, and
yet was man. He was able to wait, figuratively speaking,
within the course of evolution for his entry into the flesh,
was able to wait until the fleshly materiality had reached a
condition in which he could develop the forces of the present
spirit. The animals were not able to wait, they became
hardened at an earlier stage, took on flesh earlier than was
right. They were therefore obliged to stay behind. We can
thus picture that the human being has lived under other
conditions and other forms of consciousness. If we follow
these back for thousands and thousands of years we shall
always find different ones. What to-day we call logical
thought, intellect, understanding, has only evolved late in
man's history. Much stronger were certain forces in him
which are already beginning to decline, such, for instance,
as memory. In an earlier age memory was far more developed
than it is now. With the growth of the intellect in mankind,
memory has stepped essentially into the background. If one
uses some measure of practical observation one can recognize
that what Spiritual Science relates is not said without
foundation. People might assert that if that were true about
memory, then a person remaining backward in development by
some accident, should be backward least of all in memory. It
could also be claimed that if intellectuality were fostered
in a person artificially kept back, then his memory would
suffer. Here in this city a characteristic case of this very
nature is to be found.
Professor
Daumer, whom one must hold in the highest esteem, observed
this case very thoroughly. It was the case of that human
being, so enigmatic for many people, who was once placed into
this city in a mysterious way, and who in just as mysterious
a way met his death in Ansbach. An author, in order to
indicate the mystery of his life, wrote that as he was
carried out to burial the sun was setting on the one horizon
and the moon was rising on the other. I speak, as you know,
of Caspar Hauser. If you disregard all the pros and cons that
have been asserted, if you look only at what has been fully
verified, you will know that this foundling — who was
one day simply there in the street, and who since he did not
know whence he came, was called the Child of Europe —
could neither read nor write when he was found. At an age of
twenty years he possessed nothing of what is gained through
the intellect but he had a remarkable memory. As they began
to instruct him, as logic entered his soul, his memory
disappeared. This transition in consciousness was accompanied
by something else. He possessed at first an incredible, an
entirely inborn truthfulness and it was precisely in this
truthfulness that he went more and more astray. The more he
nibbled, so to say, at intellectuality, the more it vanished.
There would be many things to study were we to enter deeply
into this human soul which had been artificially held back.
It is not difficult for the student of Spiritual Science to
credit the popular tradition, so unacceptable to the learned
people of to-day, which relates that while Caspar Hauser
still knew nothing, while he still had no idea that there
were beings besides himself of different form, he exercised a
remarkable effect upon quite savage creatures. Savage animals
humbled themselves and became mild, something streamed from
him that made such beasts gentle, although they savagely
attacked anyone else. We could in fact penetrate deeply into
the soul of this remarkable personality, so enigmatic to
many, and you would see how things that cannot be explained
from ordinary life are led back through Spiritual Science to
spiritual facts. Such facts cannot be learnt by speculation
but only by spiritual observation, though they are
comprehensible to an unbiased and logical thinking.
All this has
only been said in order to show you that the modern
consciousness has evolved from another, an age-old-state when
man was not in direct touch with outer objects in the modern
sense, but on the other hand was in connection with facts and
beings of the spiritual world. A human being did not see
another's physical form — nor did this form
resemble that of to-day. When another being approached him a
sort of dream-picture arose and by its shape and colouring he
knew whether the other was antagonistic to him or
sympathetic. Such a consciousness perceived spiritual facts
and the spiritual world. To-day man is among beings of flesh
and blood, at that time, when he turned his gaze to himself
and himself was soul and spirit, he lived among spiritual
beings. They were present to him, he was a spirit among
spirits. Although his consciousness was only dreamlike, yet
the pictures that arose in him were in living relation to his
environment. That was the far distant age when man still
lived in a spiritual world. Later he descended from it in
order to take on a corporeal nature suited to his present
consciousness. Animals already existed as physical creatures
while man still perceived in spiritual realms. He lived at
that time among spiritual beings, and just as you need no
proof to be convinced of the presence of stones, plants and
animals, so man in those primeval times needed no testimony
in order to be convinced of the existence of spiritual
beings. He lived among spirits and divine beings and
therefore needed no religion. That was the pre-religious
age.
Then man
descended, the earlier form of consciousness changed into the
modern. Colours and forms are no longer perceived as floating
in space, colour is laid upon the surfaces of sense-objects.
In the same measure as man learnt to direct his senses to the
outer world, did this outer world draw itself like a veil,
like the great Maja, over the world of spirit. And humanity
had to receive tidings of the spiritual world through this
sheath, religion became necessary.
There is also
a state, however, between the time preceding a religious
consciousness and the time of actual religion: there is an
intermediate condition. Thence are derived the mythologies,
sagas, folk-stories of the spiritual worlds. It is a dreary
arid learning that has no inkling of real spiritual events
and asserts that all the figures of Nordic or German
mythology, of Greek mythology with its accounts of the deeds
of the gods are merely inventions of popular fantasy. They
are not inventions, the peasant folk do not indulge in such
fancies and if they see a few clouds stretched across the
sky, say that they are little sheep. That the people have
such fantasies is a fiction of our modern learnedness which
abounds in lively fantasy about such things. The truth of the
matter is quite different. The old saga and stories of the
gods are the last relics, the last memories of the
pre-religious consciousness. They are records of what men
themselves have seen. Those who described Wotan, Thor, Zeus,
etc., did so because they remembered that such things had
been experienced once upon a time. Mythologies are fragments,
broken pieces of what had once been experienced. The
intermediate stage was shown in another way as well. Even
when clever men had already — let us say — become
very clever, there were still persons who under exceptional
conditions (call them states of insanity or being carried
away, as you will) could see into the spiritual worlds, who
could still be aware of what in earlier times was seen by
all. They recounted that they themselves still saw something
of the spiritual world. This was linked with the memories and
led to a living faith among the people. That was a state
transitional to the state of actual religion.
We may ask:
what paved the way in mankind to an actual religion? It was
because men found a means of so developing their inner being
that they were once more able to behold the worlds from which
they had sprung, which they used to see in a dull
consciousness. And here we touch upon a chapter which to many
modern minds contains but little probability, the question of
initiation. What are initiates? They were those who so
developed their inner nature of soul and spirit through
certain methods that they grew again into the spiritual
world. There is initiation! In every soul super-sensible
forces and faculties lie dormant. There is, or at least there
can be, a great and mighty moment when these forces awaken.
We can gain some idea of this moment if we picture the
general course of human evolution. To speak in the words of
Goethe we can say that we look back into the far past when
the human body had no such physical eye or physical ear as
exist to-day. We look back to times when there were
undifferentiated organs, able neither to see nor to hear, at
the places where these organs are now situated. A time came
for physical humanity when such blind organs evolved to
radiant points, gradually evolved until light itself dawned
upon them. In the same way a time came when the human ear had
developed to such a stage that the former silent world
revealed itself in tones and harmonies. The sun's
forces worked upon the formation of the human eye. And to-day
man can live the life of spirit and thus develop the organs
of soul and spirit which are largely undeveloped in present
mankind.
The moment is
possible and for many has already dawned when the soul and
spirit are transformed just as once the external physical
organism was transformed. New eyes and ears arise through
which the light shines and tones resound out of the
spiritually dark and silent world. Development is possible,
even to the point of living into the higher worlds. That is
initiation. And the Mystery Schools provided methods of
initiation as in ordinary life the methods of the chemical
laboratory or of biological research are made available. The
difference is only this — official science has to
prepare instruments and other apparatus for its use, while he
who would become an initiate has but one instrument to
perfect, namely, himself in all his forces just as the force
of magnetism can lie dormant in iron, so there slumbers in
the human soul the power to penetrate into the spiritual
world of light and sound. And so the time came when normal
humanity saw only physical sense-existence and when the
leaders were initiates. These could see into the spiritual
worlds and give information and explanation of the facts of
that world in which man had earlier lived.
To what does
the first stage of initiation lead? How does it appear to the
human soul? Do not imagine that this development is merely a
matter of philosophic speculation, a spinning out, a
refinement of ideas. The ideas man has about the sense-world
are transformed when he grows into the spiritual world. No
longer does he apprehend things through sharply outlined
concepts, but through pictures, through Imaginations. For the
human being grows into the spiritual process of world
creation. The firm definite contours of the physical material
world exist, in fact, nowhere else. In the world creative
process the animal does not appear with clear outline. One
has there something like a basic idea of the animal from
which the diverse external forms can originate, a living
reality, membered in itself. One must take one's stand
strictly on the basis of Goethe's words: “All
things corruptible are but a semblance.” The initiate
learns at first to know and grasp in pictures, he learns to
ascend into the spiritual world. There his consciousness must
be more mobile than that which serves us for apprehending the
surrounding sense-world. Hence this stage of development is
called the Imaginative Consciousness. It leads man again into
the spiritual world, but not in a dull twilight state. The
initiate consciousness to be gained is clear and bright, as
clear as man's consciousness by day. There is thus an
enrichment, the spiritual consciousness is added to the
day-consciousness. In the first stage of initiation man lives
in the imaginative consciousness. The documents of humanity
record what the initiates experienced in the spiritual world
just as information with regard to the science of geometry
was imparted to mankind through Euclid. We recognize what
stands in these records when we go back to the sources
— the spiritual vision of the initiates.
Those were
the conditions prevailing among men up to the appearance of
the greatest Being who has trodden upon the earth, Christ
Jesus. With his appearance anew element entered evolution. If
we would understand the essential nature of the new element
bestowed on mankind through Christ Jesus, we must realize
that in all pre-Christian initiation the candidate was
completely withdrawn from ordinary life, he must work upon
his soul in centres of profoundest secrecy. Above all we must
realize that when man raised himself again into the spiritual
world something of that merely dreamlike
picture-consciousness still remained. Man had to retreat from
this sense-world to be able to enter the spiritual world.
That this is no longer necessary to-day has been brought
about through the appearing of Christ Jesus on earth. Through
the fact that the Christ-principle has entered humanity, the
Central Being, the very Centre of the spiritual world, has
once existed historically in a human being on this earth. It
is the same Being for whom all these have longed who have
developed a religious life, who have beheld in the Mystery
Centres, who have left the sense-world in order to enter the
spiritual world. The Being of whom it has been proclaimed
that man confronts it as his highest nature, this has entered
humanity's evolution with Christ Jesus. One who
understands something of genuine spiritual science knows that
all religious proclamation before the coming of Christ Jesus
is a prophecy of him.
When the
ancient initiates wished to speak of the highest that was
accessible to them in the spiritual world, of that which they
were able to see as the origin of all things, then under the
most diverse names it was of Christ Jesus that they spoke. We
need only remember the Old Testament, itself a prophecy. We
remember how when Moses was to lead his people he received
the command: “Say to thy people that the Lord God has
said unto thee what thou shalt do.” Then Moses asks:
“How will the people believe me, how can I convince
them? What shall I say when they ask who has sent me?”
And he was commanded: “Say the ‘I-am’ has
sent thee.” Read it again and compare as exactly as you
can with the original text and you will see its significance.
The “I-Am,” what does that mean? The
“I-Am” is the name for the divine Being, the
Christ-principle of man — the Being of whom man feels
like a drop, a spark, when he can say “I am.” The
stone, the plant, the animal cannot say “I am.”
Man is the crown of creation inasmuch as he can say “I
am” to himself, he can utter a name which does not hold
good for anyone but the one who utters it. You alone can call
yourself “I”; no one else can call you
“I.” Here the soul speaks within itself in a word
to which none other has entrance except a Being which comes
to the soul through no external sense, on no outer path. Here
Divinity speaks. Hence the name “I-Am” was given
to the Godhead whose being fills the world. “Say that
the ‘I-am’ has told thee !” Thus was Moses
to speak to his people.
Men learn
only gradually to understand the true, deep meaning of this
“I-am.” Human beings did not feel themselves as
individuals at once. You can still find this in the Old
Testament, these men did not as yet feel individual. Even the
members of the German tribes, right into the time of the
Christian Church, did not feel themselves to be
individualities. Think back to the Cherusci, the Teutons,
etc., the German tribes in whose land modern Germany now
lies. The separate members felt the tribal ego, and
themselves as a part of it. A man would not have said
“I am” in the clear, definite way it is said
to-day; he felt himself part of an organism composed of those
who were related by blood. This blood-relationship assumes
the greatest proportions among the followers of the Old
Testament religion. The individual felt himself sheltered in
the whole folk which for him was ruled by one Ego. He knew
the meaning of “I and the Father Abraham are
one,” for he traced the blood-relationship back through
the generations to Abraham. If he wished to go beyond his
single ego he knew himself to be sheltered in the Father
Abraham, from whom flows all the blood through the
generations, which is the external bearer of the common
Folk-Ego.
Now if this
expression, which signified the highest they knew to the
people of the Old Testament is compared with what has been
brought through Christ Jesus then a lightning-flash illumines
the whole advance that has come about through Christian
evolution. “Before Abraham was, was the
‘I-am.’” What does this mean? “Before
Abraham was the ‘I-am.’” (That is the right
rendering of the biblical passage.) It means: Go back through
all generations, and you find something in yourself, in your
own individuality which is even more eternal than what flows
through all blood-related generations. Before the ancestors
were, was the “I-am,” that Being which draws into
every human being, of which each human soul can directly feel
something in itself. Not “I and the Father
Abraham,” not I and a temporal Father, but I and a
spiritual Father, who has no part in anything perishable, we
are one! I and the Father are one. The Father dwells in each
separate individual, the Divine Principle lives in him,
something which was, which is, and which is to be.
Men have
actually only begun after 2,000 years to feel the force of
this world-impulse; in future ages, however, they will
realize the significance for mankind of this forward step in
the remission and evolution of the earth. What the ancient
initiates tried to reach could only be realized if one went
beyond the individual human being and grasped the spirit of a
whole people. If the normal man heard that he would say: That
is a transient entity which begins with birth and ends with
death. But if he were initiated in the secrets of the
Mysteries, he saw as the Folk Spirit, as the actual Being who
flows through the blood of the generations, that which was
only dimly sensed by the others. He could see what can be
reached only in the spiritual realm and not in external
reality. He could see a divine Being who flows through the
blood of the generations. To stand face to face in the spirit
before this God could only take place in the Mysteries.
Those who
were round Christ Jesus with full understanding as his
intimate pupils were conscious that a Being of divine
spiritual nature stood outwardly before them, clothed in the
flesh as human personality. They were sensible of Christ
Jesus as the first human being to bear a Spirit who otherwise
was felt only by interrelated groups, and who could only be
seen in the spiritual world by initiates. He was the
Firstborn among men.
The more
individualized a man becomes the more he can become a bearer
of Love. Where the blood links men together they love because
they are led to what they should love. When man is granted
individuality, when he tends and nurtures the divine spark
within him then the impulses of love, the waves of love,
pass from man to man out of the free heart. And thus with
this new impulse man has enriched the old bond of love that
is bound to the blood-tie. Love passes over gradually into
spiritual love which flows from soul to soul and which will
ultimately encompass all humanity in a common bond of
brother-love. But Christ Jesus is the Force, the living
Force, once historically and externally present, through whom
for the first time mankind has been brought to the bond of
brother-love. Men will learn to understand this bond of
brother-love as the perfected spiritualized Christianity.
People say
very lightly to-day that theosophy should seek the common
kernel of truth in all religions, for the contents of all
religions are the same. People who talk like that and only
compare religions in order to note the abstract resemblance
have no understanding of the principle of evolution. World
evolution is not without meaning. All religions undoubtedly
contain the truth, but inasmuch as they evolve from form to
form they evolve to higher forms. It is true that if you
search deeply enough you can find teachings in other
religions that are also to be found in Christianity.
Christianity has not brought new doctrine. The essential
element of Christianity does not lie in its teachings. Take
the founders of pre-Christian religions, in their case it was
a matter of what they taught. If they themselves had remained
unknown, their teaching would have been preserved and this
would have been enough. But with Christ Jesus that is not the
point. What matters is that he was there, that he has lived
here on this earth in a physical body. Not belief in his
teaching but in his Person — that is the essential
thing. The point is that he has been beheld among mortals as
the Firstborn; whom one asks: if Thou wert in the position in
which I find myself, wouldst Thou feel as I do? Wouldst Thou
think as I am now thinking? Will, as I am willing? That is
the important thing, that he is the greatest example as
Personality, with whom it is not a matter of listening to his
teaching, but of looking at him himself, and seeing how
he acted. And so the intimate pupils of Christ Jesus
speak quite differently from the pupils and disciples of
other religious founders. It is said of those: The Master has
taught this or taught that. The disciples of Christ Jesus
say: We are not telling you invented myths and doctrines; we
say to you what our eyes have seen, our ears heard. We have
heard his voice, our hands have touched the Source of Life
whereby we have community with you. And Christ Jesus himself
said: “You shall bear witness for me in Jerusalem, in
Judea to the end of the world.” These words contain a
very great significance; testimony shall you bear for unto
the end of the world. That means that there will at all times
be those who, just as the men in Judea and Galilee, could say
out of direct knowledge who Christ was, in the sense of the
Gospel.
“In the
sense of the Gospel” — what does that mean?
Nothing less than that he was from the beginning the
Principle that lived in all creation. He says, “If you
do not believe in me, believe at least in Moses, for if you
believe in Moses, then you believe in me, for Moses has
spoken of me.” We have to-day seen this. Moses has
spoken of him by saying: The “I-Am” has said it
to me; the “I-am,” who up to then was only
perceptible in the spirit. The fact that the Christ has
entered visibly into the world, appearing as man among men,
is what distinguishes the Christ-gospel from the divine
proclamations of other religions. In all of these religions
spiritual wisdom was directed to something which was outside
the world. Now, with Christ Jesus, something entered the
world which was to be grasped as the sense-perceptible
itself. What did the first disciples experience as the ideal
of their wisdom? No longer merely to understand the life of
the spirits in spirit-land, but how the Highest Principle
could have been present on the earth in the historical
Personality of Christ Jesus. It is much easier to deny
divinity to this Personality than to acknowledge it. Here
lies the distinction between a certain doctrine of early
Christian times and what we may call inner Christianity
— the distinction between Gnosis and esoteric
Christianity. The Gnosis certainly recognizes Christ in his
divinity, but it could not raise itself to the conception
that the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us, as the
writer of the John Gospel emphasizes. He says: You shall look
upon Christ Jesus; not as something to be grasped purely in
the invisible, but as the Word which has become flesh and
dwelt among us. You must know that with this human
personality a force has appeared which will work into the
farthest future, which will encircle the earth with the true
spiritual love as a force that lives and works in all that
lives into the future.
And if man
gives himself up to this force he grows into the spiritual
world from which he has descended. He will ascend again to
where the initiate's vision can already reach to-day.
Man will divest himself of what belongs to the senses when he
penetrates into the spiritual world. The candidate who was
initiated in ancient times could see in retrospect the far
past of spirit-life; those who are initiated in the Christian
sense through receiving the impulse of Christ Jesus are
enabled to see what becomes of this earthly world of ours
when humanity acts in the sense of the Christ Impulse. As one
can look back to earlier conditions, so, starting from the
coming of Christ, one can look into the farthest future.
Consciousness will alter again, there will be a new relation
of the spiritual to the sense-world. Earlier initiation was
directed to time past, to age-old wisdom; Christian
initiation reveals the future to one who is to be initiated.
That is a necessity; man is to be initiated not only in
wisdom, or in feelings but in his will. For then he knows
what he is to do, he can set himself a goal for the future.
Ordinary everyday people set themselves aims for the
afternoon, for the evening or the morning; the spiritual man
is able, out of spiritual principles, to set himself distant
aims which pulse through his will and make his forces
quicken. To set goals before humanity means in the true,
highest sense, in the sense of the original Christ principle,
to grasp Christianity esoterically. In this way it was
grasped by the one who has written the great principle of the
initiation of the will — the writer of the Apocalypse.
We misunderstand the Apocalypse, if we do not understand it
as the impulse given for the future, for action and deed.
Everything
that we have let pass before us to-day can be understood out
of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. I have been unable to
give more than a slight sketch. When through Spiritual
Science one grasps what lies behind the sense-world, one can
look with understanding at all that has been given in the
Gospels, at what has been proclaimed in the Apocalypse. And
the more deeply penetrating is one's approach to the
super-sensible worlds, the more profound is what one will find
in the Christian documents. The records of Christianity will
appear in higher brilliance, with deeper truths when one goes
to them strengthened with the spiritual vision that may be
gained by the help of Anthroposophy. True it is that the
simplest heart can have some feeling of what truths lie
hidden in Christianity. But man's consciousness will
not be satisfied for ever with a dim sensing, it will evolve
higher and wish to have knowledge and under-standing. Yet
even when it mounts to the highest teachings of wisdom, there
will always be mysteries in Christianity still more profound.
It is for the simplest heart but also for the most developed
intellectuality. The initiate experiences it again as
pictures, and so the naive consciousness may divine what
truths are slumbering there. Man, however, will demand
knowledge and not faith — and even then he will find
satisfaction in Christianity. If the explanations of the
Gospels are given him through Spiritual Science he will be
able to find the fully satisfying content in Christianity.
Hence Spiritual Science will take the place of the highest
philosophies of the past. It will bear testimony to the
beautiful words of Hegel quoted at the beginning:
“Profoundest thought is linked with the historical
external figure of Christ Jesus, and every degree of
consciousness — therein lies the greatness of
Christianity — can grasp it externally. At the same
time, however, Christianity demands the deepest and most
penetrating wisdom. Christianity is for every stage of
culture, but it can meet and satisfy the highest demands.”
|