Pre-Earthly Deeds of Christ
IN our age it has become of ever increasing importance that those
souls who, by reason of their karma, have been led to Spiritual
Science, should acquire a deep understanding of that which we call
“The Mystery of Golgotha.” Those friends who were present at our
recent Group meetings have already heard much concerning this Mystery:
that it had a spiritual pre-history and that it was, as it were, the
conclusion of a series of events. It was also explained that at that
time in our Earth-evolution there took place the union of the
Christ-Being with the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and that thereby a
Being walked upon the Earth of whom it may be said, “By virtue of this
Being moving on the physical plane the Cosmic Christ was present in
our Earth-existence.”
It is important for the whole future of human evolution that through a
deeper understanding of this Mystery men should develop more and more
reverence and loving and true heartfelt devotion for what occurred
through that event for the evolution of mankind.
It has been said repeatedly, and is well known to you, that in
preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha two Jesus-children were born.
The one was the Jesus who descended from the line of Solomon and bore
the Ego of Zarathustra. The other, coming from the Nathan line of the
House of David, was a very special Being. In the twelfth year of the
life of the latter the Ego of Zarathustra passed over into him from
the child of the line of Solomon, and from that time until his
thirtieth year the Nathan child with the Ego of Zarathustra made
himself ready to receive the Christ-Being. This event is indicated
through the Baptism in Jordan when Jesus of Nazareth was permeated by
the Christ-Being. At His death the Christ-Being poured Himself out
into the spiritual Earth-sphere, so that mankind may become more and
more able to participate in that which, proceeding from the Mystery of
Golgotha, can pour forth spiritual forces into the souls and hearts of
all men.
In a certain sense as preparation this Mystery, as I have already
pointed out, had already been accomplished three times before for the
salvation of mankind: once in the old Lemurian epoch, then in the
Atlantean, and once again at the end of Atlantean times. That is,
three times and then a fourth time in the post-Atlantean epoch at the
beginning of our own era. That which we know as the Mystery of
Golgotha, however, was the only one enacted on the physical plane. The
other events, which were preparatory, took place wholly in the
spiritual world; but the forces which were thus developed flowed down
into the earthly souls and bodies for the salvation of mankind. In all
three of these preparatory events that same Being was present who was
born later as the Nathan-Jesus and who was permeated by the
Christ-Being. This is the essential fact in the Mystery of Golgotha
that the Jesus-Being who grew up as the Nathan boy was permeated by
the Christ-Being. He who was later the Nathan-Jesus had been present
in the three earlier events, but not incarnated as physical man; he
lived in the spiritual worlds as a spiritual Being of the nature of
the Archangels; and in the spiritual worlds, in the preparatory stages
of the Mystery of Golgotha, in the Lemurian age and twice in Atlantis,
he was permeated by the Christ-Being.
It may be said, therefore, that there were three Archangel-lives in
the spiritual world, and that the Being who lived those lives was the
same as he who was later incarnated as man and is described in the
Gospel of St. Luke as the Jesus-child. Three times had this Angelic
being, who later sacrificed himself as Man, offered himself for
permeation by the Christ-Impulse. As in Christ Jesus we have a Man
permeated with the Christ-Impulse, so it may be said that three times
previously we have an Angel permeated with that Impulse. And as that
which was accomplished by the Mystery of Golgotha streamed forth into
the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth, so did that which was brought
about by the first three events pour into the Earth from out the
Cosmos. Looking at the course of our human evolution we note that the
Mystery of Golgotha stands in its very center. Everything that went
before was in preparation for and pointed to this Event, which was the
center-point of human development, and everything that has since
happened is a gradual advance in the streaming of the forces of the
Mystery into the hearts and souls of men.
The human principle into which these forces stream, if it makes itself
receptive, is that which is able to develop its consciousness in the
world of the physical plane. We cannot speak to a newborn infant about
Christ Jesus; there are no means whereby we can make him understand
what He is. We may show him a picture such as the Sistine Madonna with
the Jesus Child, or a representation of the Crucifixion, but could we
look into his soul we should know that he cannot possibly be
approached in these first stages of his life by means of our external
methods of education on the physical plane. We may indeed, when he
first begins to lisp, accustom him to pronounce the name of Christ,
and we can surround him with ideas about Christ, but we find that the
deeper understanding of the heart is not yet ready. One thing is clear
to everyone able by means of Spiritual Science to look into the
child's mind: only when he has reached an age when he can look back in
memory, and his Ego-consciousness has awakened, is it at all possible
for us to convey to him by our external education even the faintest
glimmerings of a feeling for Christ. Nor during the first few years
after the awakening of the Ego-consciousness will there be any great
understanding. Nevertheless all that we can give him in the way of
ideas about Christ without dogma, and all we can convey by means of
words and ideas containing something of the Christ-Impulse, will be of
advantage throughout the whole of his later life. After the awakening
of the Ego-consciousness, though it be only a glimmer, and when we are
still unable to work on the child by physical means, he will look upon
a picture of the Madonna and Child or at the Cross on which hangs the
Christ in quite a different way from before. For just as the Mystery
of Golgotha has entered the earthly evolution of man, so is it also
destined to work in the advancement of spiritual life on the physical
plane. Man, in fact, only enters the physical plane consciously when
his Ego awakens. What occurs before this? Three things, which I have
pointed out in former lectures, precede the awakening of the Ego in
the child — three things of immense importance.
The child learns to walk; that is to say, he learns to raise himself
from the position in which he was incapable of lifting his body from
the earth level towards the heavenly heights of the Cosmos. He is now
in that position which, above all, distinguishes man from the animals.
Having learnt by his own inner forces to assume it, he turns his gaze
away from the earth at which the animal is compelled to look by reason
of its nature and form. (There are exceptions in the animal world, but
they are only apparent.)
It is this upright position that the child learns to acquire before
the awakening of his Ego-consciousness. In our present post-Atlantean
life we recapitulate those things which, as man, we have acquired only
in the course of the ages. This power to stand and to walk in an
upright position was acquired by slow stages in the old Lemurian
epoch, and we now recapitulate it in infancy before our Ego awakens to
consciousness. This pre-knowledge is crowded into a time of life when
the process does not yet depend upon our consciousness but works as an
unconscious impulse towards the upright position.
In the case of the animals which have an approximately upright walk
the whole organism is so arranged that they assume this attitude by
nature. But like so many of the comparisons which are made this one is
incomplete. Man, in the early stages of his life and before his
Ego-consciousness has awakened, is destined by means of the rudiments
of this Ego to bring himself to a vertical position, to raise himself
out of the condition he still occupied during the old Moon period when
the line of direction of his spine was practically horizontal,
parallel with the Moon's surface. During the old Lemurian time he
learnt to alter the Moon direction to that of the Earth. This came
about because, during the Earth development, the Spirits of Form
poured the Ego into man out of their own substance. And the first
manifestation of this in-flowing of the “I” was that inner
force by means of which man raised himself into an upright position. Thus,
through this position, he is wrested from the Earth. The Earth
contains within itself spiritual forces capable of streaming through
the spine as in the case of the animal body where in its natural
growth it remains horizontal. But the Earth has no forces enabling it
directly to serve the human being who, through his Ego when it awakens
later to consciousness, can raise himself upright. In order that man
may develop harmoniously with an upright position and vertical walk,
forces had to stream into the Earth from the Cosmos, the
extra-earthly.
If, during the old Lemurian epoch, the first Christ-Event had not
taken place, Lucifer and Ahriman would have been able to bring about
disaster to the whole of humanity since man, through his upright
position, was wrested from the spiritual forces of the Earth. In that
old Lemurian epoch, in the realm which is the nearest spiritual sphere
to our Earth, the Being — at that time, however, of an angelic nature
— who later on became the Nathan-Jesus, was permeated with the
Christ-Being.
This was a first stage of the Mystery of Golgotha. The consequence was
that in that old Lemurian epoch — but in etheric spiritual heights
— the being who later became the Nathan-Jesus, and who otherwise would
have had the form of an angel, took on human form (not of flesh, but a
human etheric form). In the super-earthly region Jesus of Nazareth is
to be found as an etheric angel-form. Through permeation with the
Christ he then assumed etheric human form. Thereby something new
entered the Cosmos and rayed down upon Earth and made it possible for
man, the physical earthly human form, into whom streamed the force of
the etheric super-earthly Christ-Being, to protect himself from that
destruction which must have overtaken him had not the Formative Force,
which enabled him to become an upright harmonious being, permeated and
lived on in him. Disorder must inevitably have entered had not this
form-giving force, which was able to stream into mankind because of
the first Christ Event, poured in with the forces of the physical Sun.
This which man received into himself in the old Lemurian epoch has
since lived on in the evolution of humanity. We take the right view of
a growing child when we see him emerging from the crawling, wriggling,
helpless state and managing for the first time to stand upright or
walk, when we realize that his being able to do so has only become
possible because the first Christ-Event took place in the old Lemurian
time for the help and salvation or mankind; because he who, as the
Nathan-Jesus, was permeated by Christ, took on as a spiritual etheric
being the human etheric form as the result of that permeation.
Yes, my dear friends, Spiritual Science is here that we may enrich our
feelings. Such a feeling as can live in our souls when we see a little
child learning to stand upright and to walk has most certainly a deep
religious background. We should often call to mind why the child walks
and realize how we must thank the Christ-Impulse for it. Then we have
enriched our conception of the world through Spiritual Science and
acquired a feeling for our environment which we could not possess
otherwise. Through Spiritual Science we take note, as it were, of the
protectors and guardians of a child's growth and development and see
how the Christ-Force radiates around his being.
You will have seen from my descriptions of Atlantean times taken from
the Akashic Records that our Atlantean forefathers were dumb. The
Atlantean man was actually the first to learn to speak, and the
Akashic Records show how that came about. Learning to speak is the
second capacity which a child acquires before the actual
Ego-consciousness awakens, the awakening coming after he has learnt to
speak. Learning to speak depends altogether on a kind of imitation,
the aptitude for which, however, is deeply embedded in human nature.
Speech came to man as a consequence of progressive development. The
Spirits of Form poured themselves into man and permeated him, and
thereby he became able to speak a language, to live his earth life on
the physical plane.
Thus, by means of two principles, viz., the upright position and
speech, he wrests himself free from those spiritual forces that are
active upon the Earth. Animals are permeated by those forces; they do
not in reality speak. Speech through gestures is not the speech of
man. If, by means of training or other methods, animals were to be
taught a speech similar to man's, special conditions would arise
external to their bodily structure. These conditions must some day be
dealt with by Spiritual Science, but they are outside our subject
to-day. We will restrict ourselves to the normal development of man by
saying that human speech was established in man from out of divine
heights through that which the Spirits of Form poured into him, and we
will consider how he has transformed himself from a dumb into a
speaking being.
Man has made himself independent of those forces which spiritually flow
through the Earth, just as through acquiring the power to stand
upright he made himself independent of the first stream. If he had
been abandoned entirely to the Earth, if Cosmic-spiritual influences
had not come down to Earth and poured into him, everything connected
with his speech must have become debased through the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic influences. If nothing had been brought about by Christ, man
in the Atlantean epoch would so have developed his whole life-culture
— all his bodily organs: larynx, tongue, throat, etc., and indeed
even the organs lower down such as the heart in so far as they are
connected with the former — that he would only have been capable of
expressing his own selfish joy or pain, desire or bliss, in poor
babbling sounds somewhat like the utterances of Sibyls or mediums.
Certainly he would have been able to utter much more artistic or
intelligent sounds than an animal can produce, but these sounds would
only have been expressive of that which lived within him, of the
bodily processes taking place in his organism. He would have found
expressive interjections for these only; his speech would have
consisted entirely of interjections. Whereas we now limit our
interjections to a few words, the human art of speech with all its
subtleties would have developed at that time only as far as a language
of such interjections. This disorder in the power of speech in so far
as it would have affected man's inner being was averted; the second
Christ-Event prevented it from entering human evolution. Through the
fact that for the second time the Being in the etheric heights, who
later became the Nathan-Jesus child, received into himself the
Christ-Being who henceforward permeated the bodily organs of man, man
became capable of uttering more than interjections. The power of
grasping the objective was brought about through the second
Christ-Event.
But the human capacity for expressing the working of the mind in words
was again faced with danger. Through the second Christ-Event it might
indeed have come to pass that man would have found not only sounds,
interjections and words to express the feelings of his inner being; in
a certain sense he might also have been able to give out what he had
called forth as an inner speech movement. But the power of so
describing outer things in words, in order that the words should
rightly indicate them, was still in danger from the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic influences right into the Atlantean epoch. Then came the
third Christ-Event. For the third time that Being in the spiritual
heights, later to be born as the Nathan-Jesus, united himself with the
Christ-Being and again poured the forces so received into the human
power of speech. The force of this Christ-Jesus Being now permeated
once more the organs of the human body in so far as those organs come
to expression in the power of speech. In this way it was made possible
for the power of speech to create, by means of words, actual signs
representative of the external environment, thus enabling mankind to
create language as a means of communication between the different
inhabited regions. A child learns to speak, but he could never do so
if these two Christ-Events had not taken place during the Atlantean
epoch. Through Spiritual Science we can enrich anew our inner feelings
if we remember, when we see a child beginning to speak and gradually
improving his power of expression, that the Christ-Impulses rule
within the unconscious nature and that the Christ-Force lives in the
child's power of speech, guarding and stimulating it.
After the occurrence of the three Christ-Events, which have again been
described to-day from a certain standpoint in their influence on human
evolution, came the post-Atlantean epoch. In this evolution the
mission of the peoples belonging chiefly to that stage of man's
development known to us as the Egyptian-Chaldean was to recapitulate
what had happened for humanity in the Lemurian epoch; but at the same
time to permeate it with consciousness. Quite unconsciously man learnt
to stand upright in the Lemurian epoch, and to become a speaking being
in the Atlantean epoch. Quite unconsciously he took in the
Christ-Impulse at that time because his power of thought had not been
awakened. In the post-Atlantean times he has had to be led slowly to
understand what it was that he had thus taken in unconsciously in
prehistoric ages. It was the Christ-Impulse which enabled him to stand
upright and look up into the cosmic heights. In the Lemurian epoch man
lived as he was obliged to do. Later the peoples of Egypt, who were
not yet fully conscious but in a condition preparatory to the
attainment of full consciousness, had to be led to revere what dwells
in the human power of erectness. The Initiates, whose mission it was
to influence the culture of Egypt, taught the people to revere that
power by causing them to build the Pyramids which reach up from the
earth towards the Cosmos. Even now we cannot but marvel at the way in
which, through the working of the cosmic forces into the whole form
and position of these structures, this power of the upright is brought
to expression. The Obelisks were erected so that man might begin to
penetrate into the power of the perpendicular. The wonderful
hieroglyphics in the Pyramids and on the Obelisks, which were intended
to point to the Christ, awakened to consciousness the super-earthly
forces of the Lemurian epoch.
As regards the power of speech, however, the Egyptians could not even
acquire that dim comprehension which they had for the power which
enables man to stand upright. Their souls had first to undergo the
right schooling, so that in later times they might be able to
understand the riddle — how the Christ lives in man's gift of speech.
That riddle was to be received with the most sacred reverence by the
maturing human soul. This was provided for in the most wonderful way
by the Hierophants, the Initiates of the Egyptian civilization, when
they erected the enigmatic Sphinx with its dumb, granite form which
only produced sound under the influence of the Cosmos when the human
beings of that day were in an exalted state of consciousness. In the
contemplation of the silent Sphinx, from which sound only proceeded at
sunrise under certain cosmic conditions and in certain relations,
there came to man that deep reverence by which the soul was prepared
to understand the language which must be spoken when it would be
brought to higher consciousness how the Christ-Impulse gradually
enters into the evolution of earthly humanity. That which the Sphinxes
themselves could not yet say, although they prepared the way for it,
had to be said to mankind. In the forming of the word-movement lies
the Christ-Impulse.
This was announced to mankind in the words: —
In the Primal Beginning was the Word
And the Word was with God
And a God was the Word.
The same was in the Primal Beginning with God.
It was there where all things came into being,
And nothing came into being but through the Word.
In the Word was the Life, and the Life was the Light of men.
“In the Word was the Life, and the Life was the Light of men.”
These words are to be found where the Gospel was born out of the fourth
post-Atlantean age; when man, prepared by the Greco-Latin
civilization, had reached the stage when he was to recapitulate in the
fourth post-Atlantean age what had taken place before. Just as the
reverence for the upright position was recalled in the Egyptian epoch,
so now the reverence for the Word was recalled. Thus do the
super-human spiritual forces work into the evolution of humanity.
A third thing which the child has to learn before he actually awakens
to the Ego-consciousness is to form ideas, to think. This power of
thinking was reserved for the humanity of the post-Atlantean epoch;
and, indeed, for the humanity of the fourth age in that epoch. Before
that men thought in pictures. I shall treat of this subject further in
my book,
Riddles of Philosophy,
which is about to be published. [It is on-line now. e.Ed.]
The child, too, thinks in pictures. It was only gradually given to
humanity to think in thoughts, this faculty not being aroused in man
until the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ. From that time
onwards the thinking of thoughts has developed more and more; we now
stand in the middle point. It is through the development of this power
that the Ego can be grasped. In order that thinking, too, might be
united with the Christ-Impulse, that thinking as such might not come
into disorder in its activity on the Ego, there came the fourth
Christ-Event, the Mystery of Golgotha.
If our thinking is gradually to be brought more and more into order,
to develop on the right lines so that our thoughts shall no longer be
chaotic and confused, but filled, permeated with inner feeling, if
there is to be an increasing development of healthy thinking based
upon truth — it will be because thinking has acquired, through the
Mystery of Golgotha, the fourth Christ-Event, the impulse which it
could only acquire as a result of the Christ-Impulse having poured
itself out into the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth.
This outpouring occurred for the first time in the Lemurian epoch when
the upright position of man was threatened by Lucifer.
It occurred for the second time in the Atlantean epoch when man's
power of speech which, as an expression of his inner being, was in
danger of being disordered, was saved.
Towards the end of the Atlantean epoch it occurred for the third time.
When the Christ permeated the spiritual being of the later Jesus of
Nazareth, the gift of speech, inasmuch as words are signs which
represent things in the outer world, was delivered by Christ from
danger.
The fourth danger was to man's thinking, the inner representation of
his ideas. From this danger man is saved by permeation with thoughts
on such forms as live within him — forms such as that which flowed
out into the spiritual sphere of the Earth through the Mystery of
Golgotha. This can be the case even now if man will prepare himself
for it through Spiritual Science.
My dear friends, we have progressed so far in the evolution of
humanity that the first words of the Gospel of St. John may be set
forth in another form, in the following form: —
In the Primal Beginning is the Thought,
And the Thought is with God,
And a God-like being is the Thought.
In it is Life,
And the Life shall become the Light of my Ego.
And may the Divine Thought shine into my Ego
That the darkness of my Ego may grasp the Thought Divine.
It was not expressed quite clearly, but human evolution strove forward
in this direction.
The fourth post-Atlantean civilization began in the eighth century
before Christ. About three and a-half centuries later thought had
ripened sufficiently to be expressed by the Greek philosophers with
such clarity that it led to the Platonic Philosophy. Then the life of
man was permeated with the Christ-Impulse. With the dawn of the
fifteenth century after Christ the fifth post-Atlantean age began.
There was exactly the same length of time between the beginning of the
fourth post-Atlantean age and the understanding of thought as there
was between the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age and the
conscious utterance of the nature of thought, that is to say, until
Hegel. Human thought attained its highest point with Hegel: “The
living and weaving of thought in truth is the causative Spirit.” What
Hegel says, in a form so apparently quite incomprehensible, can really
be expressed as follows: —
In the Primal Beginning is the Thought,
And Infinite is the Thought.
And the Life of the Thought is the Light of the Ego.
May light-giving Thought fill the Darkness of my Ego,
That the Darkness of my Ego may grasp the Living Thought
And live and weave in its Divine Primal Beginning.
Thus with rhythmical steps the evolution of humanity goes forward.
Humanity has not yet advanced very far; even Hegel was much maligned.
It may well be said that “The Light-giving Thought did indeed shine
into the Darkness, but the Darkness wished to know nothing of it.”
When man learns to understand the Life of Thought he will understand
what devolves upon humanity in its further existence.
And now there is still something more to be said, as we are standing
on the ground of Spiritual Science. Later epochs are always being
prepared for during those that precede them. And inasmuch as we stand
within the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, inasmuch as we foster Spiritual
Science and have continuously more to contribute to the understanding
of living thought, of the thinking which is becoming clairvoyant — we
have at the same time the sixth Post-Atlantean epoch.
Just as the Christ-Impulse now streams into the thoughts of life, so
will it stream later into something which is indeed one of the
qualities of the human soul but must not be confused with mere
thinking. The child develops his capacities out of the unconscious.
When he attains to Ego-consciousness he enters the sphere in which he
can acquire, in which he must develop, all that can come to him from
outside through the Christ-Impulse. When the child has learnt to walk,
when he has learnt to speak, and when with learning to think, he has
begun to work through to the Ego, we can see how the conscious
Christ-Impulse, which entered through the Mystery of Golgotha, begins
gradually to work upon him. At the present time there is something
else among the powers of the human soul which is not yet able to take
in the Christ-Impulse. It is possible to introduce the Christ-Impulse
into the power of walking upright, and into speaking and thinking;
these things are possible because of that which has been done for the
civilization of mankind for centuries.
We have now to prepare for the introduction of the Christ-Impulse into
a fourth element, a fourth human capacity, if we truly stand on the
foundation of Spiritual Science. We must consider this, too! The
soul-capacity into which the Christ-Impulse cannot yet be directed,
but into which we must prepare to direct it, is the human memory. For
in addition to the walking and standing upright, the speaking and
thinking, the Christ-Force is now entering the memory. We can
understand the Christ when He speaks to us through the Gospels. But we
are only now being prepared as human beings for His entrance also into
the thoughts which live in us and which then, as remembered thoughts
and ideas, live on further in us. And a time will come for humanity
which is now being prepared but which will only be fulfilled in the
Sixth Great Period of humanity when men will look back upon that which
they have lived through and experienced, upon that which lives on
within them as memory. They will be able to realize that Christ
Himself is present in the power of Memory. He will be able to speak
through every idea. And if we make concepts and ideas alive within us
Christ will be united with our memories, with that which as our memory
is so closely and intimately bound up with us.
Man, looking back at his life, will realize that just as he can
remember, just as the power of recollection lives within him, so in
this recollection there also lives the Christ-Impulse which has
streamed into it. The path which is shown to man is to make the words,
“Not I, but Christ in me,” more and more true. And the way
will be made smooth through the Christ-Impulse gradually drawing into man's
power of memory. The Christ-Impulse is not yet within the memory. When
it actually comes, when it lives not only in the understanding of man
but is poured out over the whole length and breadth of his memories,
he will not have to turn to external documents to learn history, for
then his whole power of memory will be extended. Christ will live in
this memory. And when Christ has entered into the power of Memory,
when Christ lives in that power, man will know that until the Mystery
of Golgotha Christ worked outside the Earth; that He prepared for and
went through that Mystery, and that He works on further as an Impulse
in history. Man will be able to survey this in the same way as he now
perceives facts which live in his ordinary life as Memory. He will not
be able inwardly to survey the earthly evolution of humanity otherwise
than by seeing the Christ-Impulse as the central point. The whole
power of Memory will be penetrated, and at the same time strengthened,
by the entrance into it of the Christ-Impulse. In time to come, if we
grasp Christianity in a living way, the following words will also hold
good for us: —
In the Primal Beginning is Memory,
And the Memory lives on further,
And Divine is the Memory.
And the Memory is Life.
And this Life is the Ego of Man
Which streams into Man himself,
Not he alone, the Christ in him.
When he remembers the Divine Life
In his Memory is the Christ.
And as the radiant Life of Memory
Christ will pour Light
Into every Darkness of the immediate present.
We shall be able to say that Christ is in our inner soul-life. Many of
us will feel it to be so if we learn to unite ourselves with the
Christ-Impulse, even as the human child learns to stand upright and to
speak because he has united himself with the Christ-Impulse. Looking
upon our present faculty of memory as a preparatory stage, many of us
also realize that it must fall into disorder in the future unless it
has the will to allow itself to be permeated with the Christ-Impulse.
Should there be upon the Earth a state of materialism in which the
Christ is denied, the power of Memory would fall into disorder. More
and more people would appear whose memory was chaotic; who would
become duller and duller in their dark Ego-consciousness if memory
were not to shine into this darkness of the Ego.
Our power of Memory can only develop in the right way if the
Christ-Impulse is perceived aright. History will then be a living
memory because a true understanding of events has entered the memory;
human memory will understand the central point of world-evolution. A
perceptive faculty will then arise in man and his ordinary memory,
which at present is only directed to one life, will extend over former
incarnations. Memory at the present time is in a preparatory stage,
but it will be endowed through the Christ. Whether we look without and
see how as children we have developed as yet unconsciously, or through
an intensive deepening of our soul forces look within to what remains
in our memory as our inner being — everywhere we behold the living
force and activity of the Christ-Impulse.
The Christ-Event which is now approaching us — not in the physical
but in the etheric, and connected with the first kindling of the power
of Memory, with the first kindling of the Christ-permeated Memory —
will be such that Christ will approach man as an Angel-like Being. For
this event we must prepare ourselves.
Spiritual Science is not simply to enrich us with mere theories. It is
to pour into us something which will enable us to accept that which
meets us in the world, and that which we ourselves are, with new
feelings and perceptions. Our life of feeling and perception can be
enriched if, through Spiritual Science, we penetrate in the right way
into the nature of the Christ-Impulse and its sovereignty in man, in
the spiritual being of man. It is well for us to think often on the
following: —
In the Primal Beginning was the power of Memory.
The power of Memory shall become Divine;
And a Divinity shall the power of Memory become.
All that arises within the Ego shall become
Something which has arisen
Out of the Christ-permeated, God-permeated Memory.
In it shall be the Life;
In it shall be the radiant Light
Which, out of the Thinking which remembers,
Shines into the Darkness of the present time.
May that Darkness as it is to-day
Comprehend the Light of the Memory which has become Divine!
When we take into our hearts the meaning of such words as these, we
take in something which is right for us human beings to receive. Just
as the plant forms the seed for the next plant life, so do we learn to
perceive and feel within ourselves not only the fruits that come to us
from former incarnations, but also how to pass over into our future
incarnations. It would go ill with our power of Memory in future
incarnations if we were not permeated with the Christ-Impulse. Our
Thinking is at yet permeated with the Christ-Impulse in the barest
measure, and already this Impulse is approaching our Memory. May we
learn, through Spiritual Science, to live not only for the transitory
man who exists between birth and death but for that man who passes
through ever-recurring incarnations. Let us learn, through Spiritual
Science, what it means for the full development of the individual soul
to have the right understanding, the right feeling and perception for
the most powerful Impulse in the whole evolution of humanity — the
Christ-Impulse.
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