I
The
Event of the Appearance of Christ in the Etheric World
When a person who has concerned himself for some time
with the world conception of spiritual science permits the various
thoughts, ideas, and knowledge he has thereby acquired to work upon
him, this knowledge suggests to him the most manifold questions.
Indeed, one develops oneself as a spiritual scientist through
associating such questions — which are in reality questions of
sensation, feeling (Gemuet), and character, in short, questions of
life — with the ideas of spiritual science.
These ideas do not serve merely to satisfy our
theoretical or scientific curiosity. Rather, they elucidate the
riddles of life, the mysteries of existence. Indeed, these thoughts
and ideas become truly fruitful for us only when we no longer merely
think, feel, and sense their content and significance but when, under
their influence, we learn to look differently at the world about us.
These ideas should permeate us with warmth; they should become
impulses in us, forces of feeling (Gemuet) and mind. This they do
increasingly when the answers that we have obtained to certain
questions present us in turn with new questions, when we are led from
question to answer, and the answer gives rise to further questions,
and so on. In this way we advance in spiritual knowledge and in
spiritual life.
It will be some time yet before it will be possible to
reveal in public lectures the more intimate aspects of spiritual life
to present-day humanity, but the time is approaching when the more
intimate questions can be discussed within our own groups. In this
connection it will continually happen that new members of the
Anthroposophical Society may be taken by surprise by one thing or
another and may be shocked. We would never progress in our work,
however, if we were not to advance to discussion of the more intimate
questions of life out of the depths of spiritual scientific research
and knowledge. Today, therefore — though it may give rise to
misconceptions on the part of those of you who have immersed
yourselves in spiritual life for only a comparatively short time —
we shall once more bring before our souls some of the more intimate
facts of spiritual knowledge.
Without doubt, a significant question arises before us
when we do not merely consider abstractly the idea of reincarnation,
of repeated earthly lives, but when instead we allow ourselves to
become thoughtfully absorbed in contemplation of this fact of
spiritual life. Then, with the answer given to us in reincarnation,
which provides such valuable fruit for our lives, there will in turn
arise fresh questions. We may, for example, raise the following
query: if a person lives on earth more than once, if he returns again
and again in new embodiments, what can be the deeper meaning of this
repeated passing through life? As a rule, this is answered by saying
that we undoubtedly keep ascending higher in this way, and, through
experiencing in later earthly lives the fruits of previous lives, we
finally perfect ourselves. This, however, still represents a rather
general, abstract opinion. It is only through more exact knowledge of
the whole meaning of earthly life that we penetrate the significance
of repeated lives on earth. If, for example, our earth were not to
change, if man were to keep returning to an earth that remained
essentially the same, then indeed there would be little to learn
through successive embodiments or incarnations. On the contrary,
their real meaning for us lies in the fact that each of these
incarnations on earth presents us with fresh fields of learning and
experience. This is not so apparent over short periods, but if we
survey long stretches of time, as we are able to do through spiritual
science, it becomes obvious at once that the epochs of our earth
assume quite different forms and that we continually face new
experiences.
Here we must realize something else, however. We must
bear in mind these changes in the life of the earth itself, for if we
neglect something that should be learned, something that should be
experienced during a certain epoch of our earthly evolution, then,
although we will come again into a new incarnation, we will have
missed something entirely; we will have failed to allow something to
stream into us that we should have allowed during the preceding
epoch. As a result we will be unable in the succeeding period to
employ our forces and faculties in the right way.
Speaking still quite generally, one can say that during
our time something is possible on earth, almost anywhere on the
globe, that was not possible, for example, during the previous
incarnations of the people who are living now. It seems strange, but
this fact is nonetheless of definite, indeed, of great significance.
In the present incarnation it is possible for a certain number of
persons to come to spiritual science, that is, to take up such
conclusions of spiritual research as can be taken up today in the
field of spiritual science. Of course, it may be regarded to be of
trifling significance that a few people should come together who
allow the discoveries of spiritual research to stream into them.
Those who find this of little import, however, do not understand at
all the significance of reincarnation and of the fact that one can
take something up only during a particular incarnation. If one fails
to take it up, one has missed something entirely and will lack it
then in the following incarnations.
We must above all impress it upon our minds that what we
learn today through spiritual science unites with our souls and that
we bring it with us again when we descend into the next incarnation.
We will endeavor today to gain an understanding of what
this means for our souls. Toward this end we must link together many
facts of spiritual life, which are more or less new or even entirely
unknown to you, with much that you already know from other lectures
and from your reading. To begin with, we must go back to earlier
periods in the evolution of humanity. We have often looked back to
earlier periods of our earthly evolution. We have remarked that we
are now living in the fifth period after the great Atlantean
catastrophe. This fifth period was preceded by the fourth or
Greco-Latin period, in which the Greek and Latin peoples indicated
the principle ideas and feelings for the earth-will. This, in turn,
was preceded by the third or Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian
period, and this by the ancient Persian, which followed the ancient
Indian. If we delve even further into antiquity, we come upon the
great Atlantean catastrophe that destroyed an ancient continent, an
ancient mainland, Atlantis, which once extended into the place where
today lies the Atlantic Ocean. This cataclysm gradually engulfed the
continent and thereby gave our solid earth its present countenance.
Then, going further back, we come upon still earlier periods that
existed before the Atlantean catastrophe; we arrive at those
civilizations and conditions of life that developed on this Atlantean
continent, the civilizations of the Atlantean races. Even earlier
conditions preceded these.
If one considers what history tells us — and it
does not, indeed, reach very far back — one can fall quite
easily into the belief (although this is, even in relation to shorter
periods of time, an entirely unfounded belief) that things on earth
have always appeared as they do now. This, however, is not the case.
On the contrary, conditions on our earth have altered fundamentally,
and the soul conditions of human beings have also changed to a
tremendous extent. The souls of the persons sitting here were
incarnated during each of these ancient periods in bodies that were
in keeping with the various epochs, and they absorbed what was to be
absorbed in these periods of earthly evolution. With each succeeding
incarnation, then, the soul developed new faculties. Our souls were
entirely different from what they are today — perhaps not so
noticeably different during the Greco-Latin era, but in the old
Persian period they differed greatly from those of today, and still
more in the ancient Indian period. In those ancient periods, our
souls were endowed with quite different faculties, and they lived
under quite different conditions.
Today, therefore, in order that we may clearly
understand each other with reference to what follows, we shall call
before our mind's eye as distinctly as possible the nature of our
souls in the age, let us say — so as to be dealing with
something full of significance — after the Atlantean
catastrophe, when they were incarnated in the bodies that were
possible on earth only during the first Indian civilization. We must
not understand this first Indian civilization as having been of value
only in India. The Indian people were at that time merely the most
advanced, the most important, but the civilization of the whole earth
derived its characteristic qualities from what the leaders indicated
to the ancient Indians.
If we consider our souls as they were at that time, we
must first say that the kind of knowledge human beings have today was
as yet utterly impossible. At that time there was no such clearly
defined consciousness of self, no such clearly defined
I-consciousness. It had hardly occurred to human beings that they
were I's. To be sure, the I already existed as a force in human
beings, but knowledge of the I is something different from the force
of the I, from its effectiveness. Human beings were not yet endowed
with such an intimate inner life as they now have. They possessed
instead entirely different faculties, for example, what we have often
called an ancient, shadowy clairvoyance.
When we consider the human soul as it was during the
daytime in that period, we find that it did not actually feel itself
to be an I; instead, man felt himself to be a member of his tribe, of
his people. Just as the hand is a member of the body, so the separate
I represented, as a member, the whole community formed by the tribe,
the people. Man did not yet perceive himself as an individual I, as
he does today; it was the tribal-I, the folk-I, on which he fixed his
attention. One thus lived during the day not knowing clearly that one
was a human being. When evening came, however, and one passed into
sleep, consciousness did not become totally darkened as it does
today, but instead the soul during sleep was able to perceive
spiritual facts. One thus perceived in one’s environment, for
example, facts of which the modern dream is only a shadow —
spiritual events, spiritual facts, of which the dreams of the present
day are as a rule no longer true representations. Such were the
perceptions of the human beings of that time, so that they knew that
a spiritual world existed. To them the spiritual world was a reality,
not through any kind of logic, through anything that required proof,
but simply because each night they found themselves within the
spiritual world, though only with a dull and dreamlike consciousness.
That, however, was not the essential thing. Besides the
conditions of sleeping and waking, there were also in between states
during which the human being was neither wholly asleep nor wholly
awake. At such times the I-consciousness abated even more than by
day, but at the same time the perception of spiritual events, that
dreamlike clairvoyance, was substantially stronger than during the
night. There were thus intermediate states in which human beings
lacked consciousness of self, to be sure, but in which they were
endowed with clairvoyance. In such states the human being was as
though entranced, so that he knew nothing of himself. He was not able
to know, “I am a man,” but he clearly knew “I am a
member of a spiritual world in which I am able to perceive; I know
that there is a spiritual world.” These were the experiences of
the human souls of that time, and this consciousness, this life in
the spiritual world, was much clearer still in the Atlantean period —
very much clearer. When we survey this, therefore, we look back to an
ancient era of dim, dreamlike clairvoyance for our souls, which
gradually diminished during human evolution.
If we had remained at the stage of this ancient,
dreamlike clairvoyance, we could not have acquired the individual
I-consciousness we have today. We could never have known that we are
human beings. We had to lose that awareness of the spiritual world in
order to exchange it for I-consciousness. In the future, we shall
have both at the same time. While maintaining our I-consciousness, we
shall all gain once more what amounts to full clairvoyance, as is
possible today only to one who has traveled the path of initiation.
In the future, every person will be able once more to look into the
spiritual world and yet feel himself as a human being, as an I.
Picture to yourselves again what has taken place. The
soul has passed from incarnation to incarnation. At first it was
clairvoyant; later, the consciousness of becoming an I grew ever more
distinct and with it the possibility of forming one's own judgments.
As long as one still looks clairvoyantly into the spiritual world and
does not feel oneself to be an I, it is impossible to form judgments,
to combine thoughts. The ability to form judgments gradually emerged,
but in exchange the old clairvoyance diminished with each succeeding
incarnation. A person dwelt less and less in those states in which he
could look into the spiritual world. Instead, he became acclimated to
the physical plane, cultivated logical thinking, and felt himself as
an I; clairvoyance thereby gradually receded. The human being now
perceives the outer world and becomes ever more entangled in it, but
his connection with the spiritual world becomes more tenuous. One can
therefore say that in the distant past man was a kind of spiritual
being, because he associated directly with other spiritual beings,
was their companion, so to speak; he felt that he belonged with other
spiritual beings to whom he can no longer look up with normal senses
today. As we know, there are also today, beyond the world that
immediately surrounds us, other spiritual worlds inhabited by other
spiritual beings, but the person of today cannot look into those
worlds with his ordinary consciousness. Earlier, however, he dwelt in
them, both during the sleeping consciousness of the night and in that
intermediate state of which we spoke. He lived in the spiritual world
and had intercourse with these other beings. He can no longer do this
normally. He has been, as it were, cast out of his home, the
spiritual world, and with each new incarnation he becomes more and
more firmly established in this world of the earth below.
In the sanctuaries of spiritual life and in those fields
of knowledge and science in which such things were still known, it
was always taken into consideration that our incarnations have passed
through these different earthly periods. They looked back to an
ancient period, even before the Atlantean catastrophe, when human
beings dwelt in direct contact with the gods, or spirits, and when
they naturally had entirely different feelings and sensations. You
can imagine that the human soul must have had quite different
sensations in an age when it knew certainly that it could look up to
the higher beings and when it was aware of itself as a member of that
higher world. It has thus learned to feel and to sense entirely
differently.
When you consider these facts, you must picture to
yourselves that we can learn to speak and to think today only if we
grow up among humankind, because these faculties can be acquired only
among human beings. If a child were to be cast upon some lonely
island and were to grow up there, lacking association with human
beings, he would be unable to acquire the faculties of thinking and
speaking. We thus see that the way in which any being develops
depends in part on the kind of beings among which it lives and
matures. Evolution is affected by this fact. You can observe this
among animals. It is known that dogs removed from association with
human beings to some place where they never meet a human being
actually forget how to bark. As a rule, the descendants of such dogs
are unable to bark at all. Something depends upon whether a being
grows up and lives among one kind of being or another kind. You can
therefore imagine that it makes a difference whether you dwell on the
physical plane among modern human beings or whether you — the
same souls, as it were — lived earlier among spiritual beings
in a spiritual world that can no longer be penetrated by the normal
vision of today. At that time the soul developed differently; the
human being had within him different impulses when he dwelt among the
gods. The human being developed one kind of impulse among men and
another kind when he dwelt with gods.
A higher knowledge has always known this; such a
knowledge has always looked back to that time when human beings were
in direct intercourse with divine-spiritual beings, on account of
which the soul felt itself to belong to the divine-spiritual world.
This, however, also engendered forces and impulses in the soul that
were divine-spiritual in a totally different sense from the forces of
today. At that time, when the soul still operated in such a way that
it felt itself to be a part of the higher world, a will spoke out of
this soul that also derived from the divine-spiritual world. One
could say that this will was inspired, because the soul dwelt among
the gods. This period when man was still united with the
divine-spiritual beings is spoken of in the ancient wisdom as the
Golden Age or Krita Yuga. We must look back to a time preceding the
Atlantean catastrophe to find the greater part of this age.
Afterward, a time followed when human beings no longer
felt their connection with the spiritual world so strongly as during
Krita Yuga, when they felt their impulses to be less determined by
their association with the gods, when even their vision began to grow
dimmer regarding the spirit and the soul. They retained the memory,
however, of having dwelt with the spirits and the gods. This was
especially distinct in the ancient Indian world. There they spoke
quite easily of spiritual matters; they could call attention to the
outer world of physical perception and yet, as we say, recognize the
maya or illusion in it, because human beings had had these physical
perceptions for only a comparatively short time. That was the
situation in ancient India. The souls in ancient India no longer saw
the gods themselves, but they still saw spiritual realities and lower
spiritual beings. The higher spiritual beings were still visible to a
few people, but a living companionship with the gods was obscured
even to these. Will impulses from the divine-spiritual world had
already disappeared. It was still possible, however, to glimpse
spiritual realities during particular states of consciousness: during
sleep and during the intermediate state we have already mentioned.
The most important realities of the spiritual world, however, which
had previously been a matter of experience, had become merely a sort
of knowledge of the truth, like something that the soul still knew
distinctly but that had only the effect of knowledge, of truth. To be
sure, human beings were still in the spiritual world, but their
assurance of it was less strong in this later time than it had been
before. This is known as the Silver Age or Treta Yuga.
Following this came the period of the incarnations in
which human vision became more and more cut off from the spiritual
world, became more and more adjusted to the immediate outer world of
the senses and accordingly more firmly entrenched in this world of
the senses. This period, during which emerged the inner
I-consciousness, the consciousness of being human, is known as the
Bronze Age or Dvapara Yuga. Although human beings no longer had the
lofty, direct knowledge of the spiritual world belonging to earlier
periods, at least something of the spiritual world still remained in
humanity in general. One could perhaps describe this by comparing it
to human beings of the present day who, when they grow older, retain
something of the joy of youth. It has indeed fled, but once having
experienced it, one knows it and can speak of it as something with
which one is familiar. Similarly, the souls of that time were still
somewhat familiar with what leads to the spiritual worlds. This is
the essential feature of Dvapara Yuga.
A period followed when even this familiarity with the
spiritual world ceased, when, as it were, the doors of the spiritual
world were closed. Thereafter, human vision became so confined to the
outer world of the senses and to the intellect that elaborated the
sense impressions that they could now only reflect upon the spiritual
world. This is the lowest means by which something about the
spiritual world can be known. What human beings now actually knew
from their own experience was the physical, sensible world. If human
beings wished to know something of the spiritual world, they had to
accomplish this through reflection. This is the period when human
beings became the most unspiritual and accordingly the most attached
to and rooted in the world of the senses. This was necessary in order
that consciousness of self might gradually attain the peak of its
evolution, since only through the sturdy opposition of the outer
world could man learn to distinguish himself from the world and to
sense himself as an individual being. This last period is called Kali
Yuga or the Dark Age.
I should like to emphasize that these expressions can
also be used to refer to more extensive epochs. The designation of
Krita Yuga, for example, may be applied to a much broader period,
since before the Golden Age even existed, the human being
participated with his experience in still higher spheres; hence, all
these still earlier periods might be included in the term “Golden
Age.” If one is moderate, so to speak, in one's claims,
however, if one is content with that measure of spiritual experience
that has been described, it is possible to divide in this way what
has occurred in the past. Definite periods of time can be assigned to
all such eras. To be sure, evolution moves forward slowly, through
gradual stages, but there are certain boundaries of which we may say
that prior to this, such a thing was primarily true, and after this
some other condition of life and consciousness prevailed.
Accordingly, we must calculate that, in the sense in which we first
used the term, Kali Yuga began approximately in the year 3101 BC. We
thus see that our souls have appeared repeatedly on earth in new
incarnations, during which human vision has become increasingly shut
off from the spiritual world and at the same time ever more
restricted to the outer world of the senses. We thus see that our
souls actually come with each new incarnation into new conditions
from which something new can always be learned. What we can gain from
Kali Yuga is the possibility of becoming established in our
I-consciousness. This was not possible previously, because the human
being had first to absorb the I into himself.
When souls have neglected in a given incarnation what
that particular epoch has to offer, it is very difficult to make up
for the loss in another epoch. They must then wait a very long time
before it becomes possible to make good the loss in a certain way,
but we certainly must not depend on this chance. Let us, therefore,
remember that something essential took place at the time when, as it
were, the doors of the spiritual world were made fast. That was the
period in which John the Baptist worked, as well as the Christ. It
was essential for this time, which had already witnessed the passing
of 3,100 years of the Dark Age, that the people living then had all
incarnated several times, or at least once or twice, during this Dark
Age. I-consciousness had become firmly established, memory of the
spiritual world had already evaporated, and, if human beings did not
wish to lose all connection with the spiritual world, they had to
learn to experience the spiritual within the I. They had to develop
the I in such a way that this I, within its inner being, could at
least be sure that there is a spiritual world, that man belongs to
this spiritual world, and that there are also higher spiritual
beings. The I had to make itself capable of inwardly feeling, of
believing in, the spiritual world.
If, in the time of Christ Jesus, someone were to have
expressed what was indeed the truth in that period, he might have
said, “Once upon a time human beings were able to experience
the kingdom of heaven outside of their own I's, in those spiritual
distances they reached when they emerged from their lower selves. The
human being had to experience the kingdom of heaven, the spiritual
world, at a distance from the I. Now this kingdom of heaven cannot be
so experienced; now the human being has changed so much that the I
must experience this kingdom within itself. The kingdom of heaven has
approached man to such an extent that it now works into the I.”
John the Baptist proclaimed this to humanity, saying, “The
kingdom of heaven is at hand,” that is, approaches the I.
Previously, it was to be found outside of man, but now man must
embrace in the very core of his being, in the I, a kingdom of heaven
now come near at hand.
Precisely because in this Dark Age, in Kali Yuga, man
was no longer able to go forth from the world of the senses into the
spiritual world, the divine being, the Christ, had to come down into
the physical, sensible world. This is the reason that Christ had to
descend into a man of flesh, into Jesus of Nazareth, in order that
through beholding the life and deeds of Christ on the physical earth,
human beings in physical bodies might gain a connection with the
kingdom of heaven, with the spiritual world. The period when Christ
walked upon earth thus fell in the midst of Kali Yuga, of the Dark
Age, when human beings who comprehended their time and did not live
in it in a dull and unenlightened way could say to themselves, “It
is necessary that the God should descend among human beings in order
that a connection with the spiritual world that has been lost can be
won again.”
If there had been no human beings at that time capable
of understanding this, capable of establishing an active soul
connection with the Christ, all human connection with the spiritual
world would gradually have been lost and human beings would not have
accepted into their I's the connection with the kingdom of heaven. If
all the human beings living at such a crucial time had persisted in
remaining in darkness, it might have happened that this significant
event would have passed by them unnoticed. Then human souls would
have become withered, desolate, and depraved. To be sure, they would
have continued to incarnate for a time without the Christ, but they
would not have been able to implant in their I's what was necessary
for them to regain their connection with the kingdom of heaven. It
might have happened that the event of the appearance of Christ on
earth could have been overlooked by everyone, just as it passed
unnoticed, for example, by the inhabitants of Rome. Among these it
was said, “Somewhere in a dingy side street lives a strange
sect of horrid people, and among them lives a detestable spirit who
calls himself Jesus of Nazareth and who preaches to the people,
inciting them to all kinds of heinous deeds.” That is how much
they knew of Christ in Rome at a certain period! You are perhaps also
aware that it was the great Roman historian, Tacitus, who described
Him in some such way about a hundred years after the events in
Palestine.
Indeed, it is true, not everyone realized that something
of the utmost importance had taken place, an event which, striking
into the unearthly darkness as divine light, was capable of carrying
human beings over Kali Yuga! The possibility for further evolution
was given to humanity through the fact that there were certain souls
who comprehended that moment in time, who knew what it meant that
Christ had walked upon the earth.
If you were to imagine yourselves for a moment in that
period, you could then easily say, “Yes, it was quite possible
to live at that time and yet know nothing of the appearance of Christ
Jesus on the physical plane! It was possible to dwell on earth
without taking this most significant event into one's consciousness.”
Might it not then also be possible today that something of infinite
importance is taking place and that human beings are not taking it
into their consciousness? Could it not be that something tremendously
important is taking place in the world, taking place right now, of
which our own contemporaries have no presentiment? This is indeed so.
Something highly important is taking place that is perceptible,
however, only to spiritual vision. There is much talk about periods
of transition. We are indeed living in one, and it is a momentous
one. What is important is that we are living just at the time when
the Dark Age has run its course and a new epoch is just beginning, in
which human beings will slowly and gradually develop new faculties
and in which human souls will gradually undergo a change.
It is hardly to be wondered at that most human beings
are in no way aware of this, considering that most human beings also
failed to notice the occurrence of the Christ event at the beginning
of our era. Kali Yuga came to an end in the year 1899; now we must
adapt ourselves to a new age. What is beginning at this time will
slowly prepare humanity for new soul faculties.
The first signs of these new soul faculties will begin
to appear relatively soon now in isolated souls. They will become
more clear in the middle of the fourth decade of this century,
sometime between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935, and 1937 will
be especially significant. Faculties that now are quite unusual for
human beings will then manifest themselves as natural abilities. At
this time great changes will take place, and Biblical prophecies will
be fulfilled. Everything will be transformed for the souls who are
sojourning on earth and also for those who are no longer within the
physical body. Regardless of where they are, souls are encountering
entirely new faculties. Everything is changing, but the most
significant event of our time is a deep, decisive transformation in
the soul faculties of man.
Kali Yuga has run its course, and now human souls are
beginning to develop new faculties, faculties that — because
this is precisely the purpose of the age — will cause souls,
seemingly out of themselves, to exhibit certain clairvoyant powers
that were necessarily submerged in the unconscious during Kali Yuga.
There will be a number of souls who will have the singular experience
of having I-consciousness and at the same time the feeling of living
in another world, essentially an entirely different world from the
one of their ordinary consciousness. It will seem shadowy, a dim
presentiment, as it were, as though one born blind were to have been
operated on and had his sight restored. Through what we call esoteric
training, these clairvoyant faculties will be acquired much more
readily, but because humanity progresses they will appear, at least
in rudimentary form, in the most elementary stages, in the natural
course of human evolution.
It might easily happen in our epoch (indeed, more easily
than has ever been the case before) that human beings would not be
able to comprehend such an event that is of the utmost significance
for humanity. It could be that they would fail to grasp that such a
thing is an actual glimpse into the spiritual world, though still
only shadowy and dim. There might, for example, be so much
wickedness, such great materialism on earth that the majority of
humanity would not show the slightest understanding but would
consider those people who had this clairvoyance as fools and would
clap them into insane asylums along with others whose souls develop
in a muddled fashion. This epoch could pass by humanity without
notice, as it were, although we are letting the call sound forth
today, even as John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Christ, and
Christ Himself once let it resound: A new age is at hand, in which
the souls of human beings must take a step upward into the kingdom of
heaven!
It could easily happen that this great event might pass
by without the understanding of human beings. If, then, in the years
between 1930 and 1940, the materialists were to triumph and say,
“Yes, there have indeed been a number of fools but no sign of
the great happenings that were anticipated,” it would not
disprove what we have said. If they were to triumph, however, and if
humanity overlooked these events, it would be a great misfortune.
Even if they were unable to perceive the great occurrence that can
take place, it will nonetheless occur.
The event to which we refer is that human beings can
acquire the new faculty of perception in the etheric realm — a
certain number of human beings to begin with, followed gradually by
others, because humanity will have 2,500 years in which to evolve
these faculties increasingly. Human beings must not miss the
opportunity offered in this period. To let it pass unheeded would be
a great misfortune, and humanity would then have to wait until later
to make up the loss, in order ultimately to develop this faculty.
This ability will enable human beings to see in their surroundings
something of the etheric world, which up to now they have not
normally been able to perceive. The human being now sees only man's
physical body; then, however, he will be able to see the etheric
body, at least as a shadowy image, and also to experience the
relationship of all deeper events in the etheric. He will have
pictures and premonitions of events in the spiritual world and will
find that such events are carried out on the physical plane after
three or four days. He will see certain things in etheric pictures
and will know that tomorrow, or in a few days, this or that will take
place.
Such transformations will come about in human soul
faculties, resulting in what may be described as etheric vision. And
Who is bound up with this fact? That being Whom we call the Christ,
Who appeared on earth in the flesh at the beginning of our era. He
will never come again in a physical body; that event was unique. The
Christ will return, however, in an etheric form in the period of
which we have been speaking. Then human beings will learn to perceive
Christ, because through this etheric vision they will grow upward
toward Him Who no longer descends as far as into a physical body but
only into an etheric body. It will therefore be necessary for human
beings to grow upward to a perception of Christ, for Christ spoke
truly when He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of
the earth.” He is here; He is in our spiritual world and those
who are especially blessed can perceive Him always in this
spiritual-etheric world.
St. Paul was convinced through such perception in the
event of Damascus. This same etheric vision will be cultivated as a
natural faculty by individual persons. To experience an event of
Damascus, a Paul event, will be an increasing possibility for human
beings in the coming period.
We thus comprehend spiritual science in a completely
different sense. We learn that it imposes a tremendous responsibility
upon us, since it is a preparation for the concrete occurrence of the
reappearance of Christ. Christ will reappear because human beings
will be raising themselves toward Him in etheric vision. When we
grasp this, spiritual science appears to us as the preparation of
human beings for the return of Christ, so that they will not have the
misfortune to overlook this great event but will be ripe to seize the
great moment that we may describe as the second coming of Christ. Man
will be capable of seeing etheric bodies, and among these etheric
bodies he will also be able to see the etheric body of Christ; that
is, he will grow into a world in which the Christ will be visible to
his newly awakened faculties.
It will then no longer be necessary to prove the
existence of Christ through all sorts of documents, because there
will be eye-witnesses to the presence of the living Christ, those who
will experience Him in His etheric body. Through this experience they
will learn that this being is the same as the One Who consummated the
Mystery of Golgotha at the beginning of our era and that this is the
Christ. Just as Paul was convinced near Damascus that this was the
Christ, so there will be human beings who will be convinced through
experiences in the etheric realm that Christ truly lives.
The greatest mystery of our time is this one concerning
the second coming of Christ, and it takes on its true form in the way
I have described. The materialistic mind, however, will in a certain
way usurp this event. What has just been said, namely, that all
genuine spiritual knowledge points to this time, will often be
proclaimed in the coming years. The materialistic mind today corrupts
everything, however, and so it will come about that this sort of mind
will be unable to imagine that the souls of human beings must advance
to etheric vision and with it to Christ in the etheric body.
The materialistic mind will conceive of this event as
another descent of Christ into the flesh, as another physical
incarnation. There will be a number of persons who in their colossal
conceit will turn this to their own advantage by letting it be known
among human beings that they are the reincarnated Christ.
Accordingly, the coming period may bring us false Christs.
Anthroposophists, however, should be people who will be so ripe for
spiritual life that they will not confuse the second coming of Christ
in a spiritual body, perceptible only to a higher vision, with such a
reappearance in a physical body. That will be one of the direst
temptations that will beset humanity. To help humanity overcome this
temptation will be the task of those who learn through spiritual
science to raise themselves to a comprehension of the spirit —
of those who do not wish to drag the spirit down into matter but to
ascend into the spiritual world themselves. It is in this way,
therefore, that we must speak of the second coming of Christ and of
the fact that we raise ourselves up to Christ in the spiritual world
by acquiring etheric vision.
Christ is always present, but He is in the spiritual
world; we can reach Him if we raise ourselves into that world. All
anthroposophical teaching should be transformed in us into the strong
wish to prevent humanity from letting this event pass by unnoticed
but rather, in the time remaining at our disposal, gradually to
educate a humanity that may be ripe to cultivate these new faculties
and thereby to unite anew with the Christ. Otherwise, humanity would
have to wait a long time for such an opportunity to be repeated —
indeed, until another incarnation of the earth. If humanity were to
ignore this event of the return of Christ, the vision of Christ in
the etheric body would be limited to those who, through esoteric
training, prove themselves to be ready to rise to such an experience.
But the momentous event — the possibility that these faculties
might be acquired by humanity in general and that this great event
might, by means of these naturally developed faculties, be understood
by all human beings — would be impossible for a long time to
come.
We thus see that there is indeed something in our epoch
that justifies the existence and the activity of spiritual science in
the world. Its aim is not merely to satisfy theoretical needs or
scientific curiosity. Spiritual science prepares human beings for
this event, prepares them to relate themselves in the right way to
their period and to see with the full clarity of understanding and
cognition what is actually there but that may pass human beings by
without being brought to fruition. This is its aim!
It will be of utmost importance to grasp this event of
Christ's appearance, because other events will follow upon this. Just
as other events preceded the Christ event in Palestine, so, after the
period when Christ Himself will have become visible again to humanity
in the etheric body, will those who previously foretold Him now
become His successors. All those who prepared the way for Him will
become recognizable in a new form to those who will have experienced
the new Christ event. Those who once dwelt on earth as Moses,
Abraham, and the prophets will again become recognizable to human
beings. We shall realize that, even as Abraham preceded Christ,
preparing His way, he has also assumed the mission of helping later
with the work of Christ. The human being who is awake, who does not
sleep through the greatest event of the near future, gradually enters
into association with all those who, as patriarchs, preceded the
Christ event; he unites with them. Then appears once more the great
host of those toward whom we shall be able to raise ourselves. He who
led humanity's descent into the physical plane appears again after
Christ and leads man upward to unite him once more with the spiritual
worlds.
Looking far back into human evolution, we see that there
is a certain moment after which humanity may be said to be descending
even further from its fellowship with the spiritual world and
entering more and more into the material world. Although the
following image has its material side, we may nevertheless use it
here: man was at one time a companion of spiritual beings, his spirit
dwelt within the spiritual world and, by reason of the fact that he
dwelt in the spiritual world, he was a son of the gods. What
constituted this constantly reincarnating soul, however, participated
increasingly in the outer world. The son of the gods was then within
man, who took delight in the daughters of the earth, that is, in
those souls who had sympathy for the physical world. This, in turn,
means that the human spirit, who had previously been permeated by
divine spirituality, sank down into the physical world of the senses.
He became the mate of the intellect, which is bound to the brain and
which entangled him in the sense world. Now this spirit must find the
path by which he descended and, climbing upward again, become once
more the son of the gods. The son of man, which he has become, would
perish here below in the physical world if he were not to ascend once
more as son of man to the divine beings, to the light of the
spiritual world, if he were not in the future to find delight in the
daughters of the gods. It was necessary for the evolution of humanity
that the sons of gods should unite with the daughters of men, with
the souls that were fettered to the physical world, in order that, as
son of man, the human being would learn to master the physical plane.
It is necessary for the human being of the future, however, that, as
the son of man, he shall find delight in the daughters of the gods,
in the divine-spiritual light of wisdom with which he must unite
himself in order to rise once again into the world of the gods.
The will shall be enkindled by divine wisdom, and the
mightiest impulse toward this will arise when, for him who has
prepared himself for it, the sublime etheric figure of Christ Jesus
becomes perceptible. The second coming of Christ will be, for human
beings who have developed clairvoyance naturally, the same as when
the etheric Christ appeared to Paul as a spiritual being. He will
appear once more to human beings, if they come to understand that
these faculties that will arise through the evolution of the human
soul are to be used for this purpose.
Let us use spiritual science so that it may serve not
merely to satisfy our curiosity but in such a way that it will
prepare us for the great tasks, the great missions of the human race
for which we must grow ever more mature.
Rudolf Steiner's Answers to Questions in Connection with
the Preceding Lecture
When things are spoken of such as those we have
discussed today, when we attempt to shed light upon the more intimate
mysteries, let us not regard them thoughtlessly as one is likely to
listen to certain things today, but let us be quite clear that
anthroposophy should become for us something totally different from
mere theory. Of course, the teaching must be there; how would one be
able to rise to such thoughts as have been uttered here today if it
were not possible to absorb them in the form of teaching? What is
essential, however, is that it should not remain teaching but rather
be remolded in our souls into traits of feeling (Gemuet) and
character, into an entirely different disposition, and that it should
thus make totally different human beings of us. It should guide us in
making the right use of our incarnations, so that we may be able
during their course to develop into something entirely different.
In trying to say not a word too much nor a word too
little, I have not made more than fleeting reference to important
subjects. What was said, however, is significant not only for those
souls who will be incarnated on the physical plane in the period
between 1930 and 1940 but also for those who will then be in the
spiritual world, between death and a new birth. We must realize that
souls in the spiritual world have an influence on the world of the
living, though the latter may be quite unaware of it. Through the new
Christ event, however, this relationship between those who are
embodied here on the physical plane and those who are already in the
spiritual world will become increasingly conscious. Cooperation
between physically embodied human beings and spiritual beings will
then be possible. This should already have been implied in our having
visualised the reappearance of the prophets to human beings on earth.
Therefore, you must picture to yourselves that, when
these great moments arrive in the future of humanity, human beings
will work together with one another more consciously in the physical
and in the spiritual worlds. Today this is not possible because of
the lack of a common language. People here in the physical world use
in their speech words descriptive only of physical things and
physical conditions. Human beings between death and a new birth,
however, live in a world quite different from the one immediately
surrounding us, and they speak a different language. Of all that is
spoken in our world, the dead can receive only what is spoken in
spiritual science. Thus, in anthroposophy, we are concerned with
something that will be increasingly intelligible to the dead. What we
say in this province also benefits those who are between death and a
new birth.
Humanity is ripening toward a time when the influences
of the spiritual world will be felt ever more widely. The tremendous
occurrences of the coming period will be discernible in all worlds.
Even the human beings between death and a new birth will have new
experiences in the other world as a result of the new Christ event in
the etheric world. Unless they have prepared themselves on earth to
do so, however, they will no more be able to understand these events
than will the human beings now incarnated on earth; they must have
prepared themselves rightly to receive the events of this important
moment. It is essential for all the souls now incarnated (regardless
of whether or not they will still be embodied then) that they shall
have prepared themselves for these significant coming events by
taking up anthroposophical truths. Should they fail to do this, they
will have to wait. If they have not received with their earthly
consciousness what anthroposophy or spiritual science has to give,
they will have to wait until they are again incarnated to have the
possibility of receiving corresponding teachings here on earth. There
are things that can be learned or experienced only on earth. One
could say, for example, that in the spiritual world it is impossible
to gain any knowledge of death, and a God had to descend to the
physical world to be able to die. One cannot in any other world learn
what the Mystery of Golgotha actually is in the same way as here in
the physical world. We have been led down into the physical world to
acquire what can only be acquired here. Christ descended among human
beings because only here in the physical world could He give evidence
to them, by causing them to experience something in the Mystery of
Golgotha, of what was to bear far-reaching fruit in the spiritual
world. The seeds, however, must be sown here in the physical world.
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