II
Spiritual
Science as Preparation for a New Etheric Vision
Our lectures at group meetings would contribute little
to our progress if we could not occasionally speak about the more
intimate processes of the spiritual life of humanity. What we should
strive for in our groups is a preparation for the attainment of
higher spiritual truths. At the same time, we must not think that
such a preparation consists merely in learning theories or ideas.
What we call preparation for the attainment of higher truths should
really consist in a certain state of feeling and sensation in our
soul. Through the life in our groups and through the fact that we
meet from week to week, our souls should gradually mature to the
point at which they become receptive even to those elements of
spiritual science that descend — or, if you like, ascend —
from the more general truths, which we are already in a position to
communicate through exoteric lectures to the greater public, to the
concrete facts of life.
Let us then dedicate this particular evening especially
to such a preparation of our souls, that is, to such a preparation of
feeling within our souls. There are certain things that should be
brought before our souls this evening, things that, to be sure, we
shall understand at first only slowly and gradually but that we can
begin to feel and divine if we acquire the necessary degree of
maturity through our life in the groups. It must be taken for granted
in this case that such truths will be received with corresponding
delicacy, that they will be received as a priceless treasure of soul,
not as something we believe we can readily place before an unprepared
audience. We shall gradually ascend in our considerations from the
known to the unknown.
A question intrudes even upon the mind of one familiar
with the elements of an anthroposophical world conception: is there
any sense or purpose in the fact that the human soul appears again
and again in successive incarnations or embodiments on earth? One may
accept the abstract truth of reincarnation, yet such an abstract
truth basically can help us little in life. Truths acquire a
significance in our lives only when they can be transformed, recast,
in our souls into warmth of feeling, into the light that shines forth
within us in such a way that it leads us onward along the path of
life. For this reason, the abstract truth of reincarnation acquires
significance for us only when we are able to know something more
precise and intimate concerning the sense and significance of the
successive incarnations of human beings. This will be one of the
questions with which we shall occupy ourselves today.
The other question is: what particular significance is
contained for us in the fact that we are in a position, during our
present incarnation, to absorb anthroposophy into our souls, to bind
anthroposophical truths with our innermost life? We shall see that
today these two things will unite harmoniously.
You have often heard that two successive incarnations of
a human being do not succeed each other in an arbitrary way but that
when the human being has passed through death and out of one earthly
life he returns to a new earthly life only when it affords him the
opportunity to learn something new about the earth and to unite this
with his soul life. This can be understood, of course, only by one
who does not limit his study of the evolution of the earth to a
period extending over a few centuries or millenia. Only one who
surveys the whole evolution of the earth is in a position to
comprehend things in the right way. Regarding outer physical
conditions, we shall learn to comprehend, even if we limit ourselves
to outer sources, that the very countenance of the earth has changed
during the course of relatively short periods of time.
If, for instance, you read the description of the
regions in which we are now living to see how they must have looked
at the time when Christ was walking about on earth, you will find the
entire countenance of this region has changed during the course of
relatively few centuries. You might then ask yourselves how much the
moral and other conditions of civilization may have changed during
the course of these few centuries. Try for a moment to call before
your soul what a child used to learn at the beginning of our era and
what a modern child learns today; try to imagine all this, and then
recall from what you have learned through anthroposophical teachings
that we are able to look back to a remote past when the countenance
of the earth presented an entirely different appearance. Then, for
the most part, continents that exist today did not yet exist, but
there was an immense, extensive continent in the place occupied today
by the Atlantic Ocean. Think of all that must have taken place
throughout the course of long periods of time in order to change in
this way the countenance of the earth to what it is today.
If you call all this before your soul, you must say to
yourselves that there is the possibility for souls to experience
something new from each existence on earth, always to receive new
fruits, and then to unite these fruits with their own lives in order
to pass through a spiritual life between death and a new birth. When
the conditions have changed so that something new can be learned and
it is worthwhile to descend again to earth, these souls actually come
again in a new incarnation.
It is not merely a play of forces and beings active
behind phenomena that brings man down again and again into new
incarnations; it is a case, rather, of every incarnation contributing
a new force and faculty as a new member within the divine plan
representing the totality of human life. Only when we survey life in
this way does the law of repeated lives on earth acquire true
meaning. At the same time, we must also ask ourselves if it is not
possible to miss some opportunity. Is it not possible that there is
something that depends upon whether or not we make the most of any
one incarnation or embodiment in the right way? If we could simply be
sure that we would have a repetition of our present life in the next
incarnation, many people could argue, “I have plenty of time
because I shall live many more times.”
If one considers the most important facts of life,
however, and knows that what the earth can give us during a definite
period of time cannot be experienced again during another period, one
will realize that it is indeed possible to miss opportunities; one
can then acquire an inner sense of obligation and responsibility to
make use of each incarnation, each earthly embodiment, in the right
way. We shall come to see more exactly how we can make use of these
incarnations if we now take a small glance backward, with the help of
what spiritual investigation offers us. I shall now speak to you
about certain facts that are already familiar to you, but I shall
then extend them to include something that is unknown to most of you
who are sitting here. What you already know is the fact that during
our earlier incarnations our souls possessed entirely different
faculties from those they possess today. Those faculties by which
modern humanity lives and works did not always exist. If we ask
ourselves what is especially active in the human soul today, we must
answer by saying that it is the capacity to receive through the
senses, in an exact way, the outer facts of the world. Man possesses
a self-conscious reasoning power, a self-conscious power of judgment,
which he is able to apply to sense perception and by means of which
he can combine what he perceives through the senses, in this way
obtaining a picture of the world through his cognition.
We know, however, that when the human being continues to
develop his soul through the methods described in my book,
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment,
(see Note 1 )
he becomes capable of
perceiving another, a spiritual environment around him. We know that
there is a spiritual eye that can be opened and that higher
super-sensible faculties, dormant in the average human being today,
can be awakened. We know that there was a time when every human being
could perceive the spiritual world, but we know also that the time
will come when the spiritual world will again be able to stream into
our souls, just as light and color stream into the eyes of a blind
man who has been operated on and had his sight restored. This light
and color already existed in his environment but could not stream
into him because the organs capable of admitting them were not yet
opened.
We thus have today a humanity that can look into the
spiritual world only through an abnormal development or by following
special methods. The normal state for modern man is to be able to
perceive the things of the world through his outer senses and to
combine his perceptions through his reason or intellect, which are
connected with the physical brain.
Humanity has not always been the same as it is today,
however. We may look back to a remote period in human evolution and
find, if we have opened the clairvoyant eye to the records we call
the “Akashic Chronicle,” that the normal faculties of the
human soul were entirely different at that time. In ancient times all
human beings had a kind of clairvoyance, not the kind that one may
acquire today through the methods referred to above but a
clairvoyance of an entirely different sort; we must describe it as a
vague, dreamlike, twilit clairvoyance. This clairvoyance existed
especially under certain abnormal conditions. Even then, it came by
itself; it was not necessary to call it forth by unusual methods. We
would have to go back to a very remote past, it is true, if we wished
to find a humanity endowed with constant clairvoyance, but even then
it was only during certain intermediary states, between sleeping and
waking, that man Always possessed a certain clairvoyance. The further
back we go, the more we find this form of clairvoyance.
You will remember that, in tracing our way back through
the various ages of civilization, we also come to particular epochs
of human culture. We are now living in one period of civilization
that was preceded by another that we designate as the Greco-Latin.
This was preceded by another period, named after its leading nations,
the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian epoch. This was preceded by
the one we designate as the ancient Persian; still further back, we
come to what we call ancient India. This last is a civilization to
which only the clairvoyant eye can look back. The period that
produced the Vedas arose in much later times as a weak echo of that
sublime wisdom that was given to the world by the Seven Holy Rishis
during the earliest primeval Indian civilization. Now, if we go even
further back than this, we find the great Atlantean catastrophe that
so transformed the countenance of our earth through cataclysms of
water and fire that the Atlantean continent gradually disappeared. In
its place arose what today forms Africa and Europe on one side and
America on the other. We might go still further back, in which case
the ancient records of the Akashic Chronicle would show us that human
beings dwelling upon this ancient Atlantean continent possessed
entirely different faculties of soul from ours, faculties that would
appear almost incredible to modern man because they were far too
remote from anything he knows today.
During all these different periods, our own souls
already existed; they existed in different bodies, and each time they
possessed different faculties. If we were able to look back, we
should find that our souls were then endowed with a high degree of
clairvoyant receptivity. Especially during certain intermediary
states between sleeping and waking, they were witnesses of a
spiritual world; they were able to look into a spiritual world. You
would find, if you could look back, that you yourselves at that time
could see the facts and beings of the spiritual worlds. In those days
there was no temptation, no possibility, for human souls to deny the
spiritual world, because they saw the spiritual world, because it was
only during a few hours of the day that they turned toward the
physical world. The objects of the outer physical world were not as
yet arranged visibly in the same way as they were in later periods.
Hence, when human beings were in the intermediary state between
sleeping and waking, they were surrounded by a world that they had to
experience as spiritual, that filled them with the conviction that
this was the world of man's origin. He descended from this world in
order to acquire something in the physical world that he could not
have acquired in the spiritual world above.
What is it that man has been able to acquire in this
outer world that he was not also able to have in the spiritual world?
What this spiritual world lacked was the possibility of evolving
self-consciousness, the possibility of saying “I” to
oneself. This is what humanity lacked. The human being was outside
his own self during the most important moments of his life, as in a
state of being enraptured, and in this state he did not even know
that he was an independent individuality possessing an inner life of
his own. He was given up entirely to the spiritual world. To learn to
experience himself as an I was possible for man only here in the
physical world; only here could he attain a real consciousness of
self. With this self-consciousness is inseparably connected what we
call the power of judgment, our modern thinking and our modern
faculty for perception. The human being was compelled, therefore, to
sacrifice his former relationship with the spiritual world, his
former dim clairvoyance, in order to acquire the possibility of
distinguishing himself as an I from his surroundings and through this
coming to the I, to self-consciousness. In the future, the human
being will acquire again, in addition to his consciousness of self,
this capacity to look clairvoyantly into the world of spirits. The
portal of the spiritual world has been closed to him in order that
man might become a self-conscious, inward, spiritual being — in
order that he might ascend to the consciousness of self and be able
thereby to enter the spiritual world again as an independent being.
There was once, therefore, an ancient time in which man
looked upon surroundings that were entirely different from those he
knows today. What do we see today when we look out upon our physical
surroundings? We see the world of minerals, plants, animals, and the
physical shapes of our fellow human beings. This is what surrounds
us; this is the world to which we first belong, the world that is
opened to us between birth and death. Into that world from which
stems this physical world and which lies behind it we can penetrate
only through the gifts of clairvoyance; clairvoyance, as we have
said, is not one of the normal faculties of a human being of our day,
although in those ancient times it was available under certain
conditions to everyone. While in this clairvoyant state, the human
being became familiar with the spiritual world. He perceived there
the spiritual beings and spiritual facts about which we hear through
spiritual science; they do actually exist and cannot be looked upon
as nonexistent simply because the normal perception of our day cannot
see them. In the same way, light and color surround a blind person,
though he may not be able to perceive them.
These spiritual beings were at one time the companions
of the human being, and he could say to himself, “I belong to a
spiritual world; I belong to it as a spirit-soul being. In the same
way that my spirit-soul being lives in this world, so there are in it
also such beings as I see about me during my clairvoyant states.”
Man was a companion of spirit-soul beings during those distant ages
of an ancient past. The insight into — the world and knowledge
that looked back into these conditions has always been able to
distinguish clearly, even today, the various stages through which man
has passed in the course of different periods of time. First, there
was the stage when he was still entirely within the spiritual world,
when he scarcely descended with consciousness into the physical,
sensible world but felt himself as belonging entirely to the
spiritual world, so that he drew all his forces from this spiritual
world. Spiritual knowledge distinguished this stage from those
following it, during which this force gradually disappeared and in
its stead there arose first the capacity to perceive sharply outlined
objects in the outside world, then the elaboration of these
impressions through logical thought and judgment and at the same time
the definition of the I, of self-consciousness.
Oriental philosophy, which was able to see into these
conditions because it still possessed remnants of the ancient sacred
teaching of the Rishis, continued to have special designations for
the various periods of human evolution. For the most ancient times of
all — for those clairvoyant periods of human evolution when
this clairvoyance ascended into the highest regions of the spiritual
world, to beings that we must picture to ourselves as the highest of
those connected with our world — the designation Krita Yuga was
used; this was later called the Golden Age.
Another epoch followed, during which human beings
already could see much less of the spiritual world; the influences of
the spiritual world upon man were no longer so strong and alive as
they had been. This period was originally called Treta Yuga, later
on, the Silver Age. During this epoch, human beings living between
birth and death obtained their certainty of the spiritual world in
yet another way. Their immediate experiences of the spiritual world
were unclear, it is true, but to compensate for this they could
remember the time that preceded their birth when they had lived
together with the spiritual beings. This period, therefore, was one
in which the human being was still as certain of the existence of the
spiritual world as is the case today when he has grown old and cannot
deny that he has passed through his youth. This age was designated as
Treta Yuga by the wisdom that knows about such things. Later on, it
was replaced by the less clear expression, Silver Age. All of these
ancient expressions have at the same time their deep significance,
and it is really childish when modern science explains them in the way
it does, since it has not the faintest idea of the realities from
which these designations flow.
This Silver Age was followed by an age in which there
still existed a clear knowledge, a kind of true knowledge of the
spiritual world; yet by that time the human being had already
descended sufficiently deeply into the physical, sensible world to be
able to choose between the two worlds and to have his own convictions
concerning them. The old clairvoyance became darker and darker during
this third age, the Iron Age or Dvapara Yuga. Nevertheless, it still
existed to a certain extent in a twilit state and the human being
could, as a result of his own conviction, connect himself more or
less with the spiritual world. He had formerly experienced this
spiritual world, and this he still knew during the Iron Age.
Then came the age we designate with an Oriental
expression, Kali Yuga, the Dark Age. This was the age during which
the portal of the spiritual world gradually closed completely to the
faculties of the human soul. Through the fact that human beings had
to depend increasingly upon their perceptions in the physical,
sensible world, they were also able to cultivate within this world
their feeling of self, their feeling for the I, their
I-consciousness. This age began at a comparatively late date, about
3100 BC, and it continued into our own times.
It is our purpose to study this today in such a way that
we can distinguish these different ages so that we may understand our
most important tasks in this present incarnation.
We must go back as far as the Atlantean time if we wish
to trace the beginnings of Krita Yuga. Treta Yuga, however, still
partly coincides with the time of the Holy Rishis, that is, with the
Indian civilization but in part also with the ancient Persian
civilization. Dvapara Yuga coincides in turn with later epochs of
civilization, that is with the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian
times, and a certain degree of ancient, dim clairvoyance still
existed in those days. The moment in time in which the portals of the
spiritual world began slowly and gradually to close, so that humanity
had to limit itself to the physical plane, began with the year 3101
before Christ Jesus walked on earth. Thus we see an age beginning
about 3,000 years before the Christ event, an age that has gradually
made us into what we are today. When we know that it is during this
age that the most important deed in the whole evolution of the earth
took place — the deed of Christ — we can then appreciate
the full significance of this deed.
What, then, were human beings like in this age of Kali
Yuga as Christ descended to the earth? They had already been for more
than 3,000 years in an evolution that had limited them to the
physical world; it had limited them between birth and death to absorb
only what could be offered to them in this physical world, what
appeared to them in this physical world. Had this evolution
continued, man's I-consciousness would have grown ever stronger, to
be sure, but solely in an egotistical direction. Man would have
become an indulgent being, a being full of desires; he would have
enclosed everything coolly within his I. Had something else not
occurred, he would have lost completely the consciousness that there
is a spiritual world. What was it that occurred just at that time?
The whole significance of what occurred arises before our souls when
we once understand that there are times of transition in the
evolution of the earth. Many persons who merely speculate or who
merely indulge in an abstract philosophy, or in the cultivation of
any other sort of ideology, call every age a time of transition.
Indeed, one may find that almost every period as far
back as one can go with the help of the printing press (and how much
has been printed!) has been called a time of transition. One who
stands upon the foundations of spiritual science will not be so free
with the use of this word, because only those times can be called
periods of transition in which something takes place that is really
more essential and decisive than what takes place in other ages.
There is a statement that has been taken for granted by
official science but that anthroposophists should learn to realize is
without meaning: “Nature makes no leaps.” This sounds
objective, yet it is senseless, because nature continually makes
leaps. If you follow the development of a plant, you find that there
is a leap whenever something new appears in the course of its
development. A leap takes place from the regular leaf formation to
the blossom, from the calyx to the petals, from the petals to the
stamen, and so on. After nature has developed gradually for some
time, it makes further leaps; indeed, all existence makes leaps.
Therein lies the essential nature of evolution, that crises and leaps
take place. It is one of those commonplaces resulting from the
terrible laziness of human thinking when human beings say that
“nature makes no leaps”; in reality it makes many leaps.
Spiritual life especially proceeds in leaps. Great and
significant leaps take place in the course of spiritual development.
Life then moves gradually forward until significant spiritual leaps
again take place. One such tremendous leap in the life of humanity —
one that was important not only for those who were with Christ —
took place at the time when He walked on earth. In this sense we may
call the age when Christ lived and taught in Palestine an age of
transition. Please do not say that such a leap, such a passage as
this, must be noticed easily by everyone. No, indeed! The most
essential events occurring in an age may remain completely concealed
from the eyes of those who are alive, and they may pass people by
completely unnoticed. We know that such an event once took place,
leaving not a trace as it passed completely unnoticed by millions of
human beings. We know that the important Roman writer, Tacitus, in a
passage in one of his works, described the Christians as a secret and
unknown sect, and we also know that one hundred years after
Christianity had spread over the southern regions of Europe, strange
tales were related in Rome concerning it.
There were thus many circles in Rome at that time that
knew nothing about Christianity except that it was a disturbing sect
that existed in some remote back street and was led by a certain
Jesus who incited people to all kinds of misdeeds. This was one of
the versions that circulated in Rome even a century after
Christianity was already in existence. It shows us how the most
significant of all events, not only for that time but also for the
whole of human evolution, passed without a trace, unnoticed by a vast
number of human beings. We must be able to picture the fact that,
while human beings are noticing nothing, absolutely nothing, the most
important and significant event may be taking place. When people say,
therefore, that we are living in a time when nothing essential,
nothing important is taking place, it does not prove that they are
right.
It is indeed a fact that today we are living again in an
age of transition in which the most important spiritual events are
taking place unknown to large numbers of our contemporaries, yet
going on nevertheless. It is this fact that we should make clear to
ourselves: we can indeed speak of ages of transition, but we should
not use these words too freely. What was the essential characteristic
of that age of transition in which Christ Jesus appeared? It is
expressed in those significant words that one must only learn to
understand in the right way. It was expressed in the prophecy of John
the Baptist, quoted later by Christ: “Change the disposition of
your souls; the kingdoms of heaven are at hand.” A whole world
is contained in this saying, and it is precisely this same world that
is so intimately connected with the most important of events that was
consummated at that time for the evolution of humanity as a whole.
Through the natural evolution during Kali Yuga, human
beings had gradually attained power of judgment and I-consciousness,
but they had become incapable of acquiring again, out of this
I-consciousness and through their own powers, the connection with the
spiritual world. John the Baptist said, “The time has come when
your I must be so trained that this I can penetrate completely into
the depths of your soul, that it can find within itself the bond with
the kingdoms of heaven,” for the human being normally is no
longer able to ascend outside of himself in the clairvoyant state
into a spiritual world. The kingdoms of heaven had to descend as far
as the physical world. They must now reveal themselves in such a way
that the I can recognize them through the ordinary consciousness of
self, through the sense for truth inherent in ordinary
self-consciousness. “Change the inclination, change the former
disposition of your soul, so that you can believe that your soul life
is capable of being kindled into warmth within itself, within the I,
and that you are able to grasp, by observing everything that takes
place about you, that there is a spiritual world. You must learn to
comprehend the spiritual worlds in your I, through your I. They have
descended and are near at hand. They must no longer be sought in a
world of rapture outside of consciousness!”
It was for this reason that Christ had to descend and to
appear in a human physical body, because man's disposition of soul
was attuned to the comprehension of the physical plane. God had to
come to human beings upon the physical plane because, through the
cultivation of the I and through the closing of the portal leading to
the spiritual world, they were no longer capable of approaching the
gods in the old way. Herein lies the greatness of the event that took
place at that time: that through the natural evolution of human
faculties, the old relationship with the spiritual worlds was lost
and the attainment of I-consciousness was achieved, but that it was
also possible as a result of this to gain consciousness of these
spiritual worlds within the physical world. Christ thus became the
mediator of the spiritual worlds for those human beings who have
reached such a stage of development that they can, in the I that
lives on the physical plane, gain the connection with the spiritual
world. “Change the disposition of your souls; do not believe
any longer that the human being can ascend normally to the spiritual
world by being enraptured; rather believe that through the
development of capacities inherent to the I, and with the help of
Christ, you can find the path leading into the spiritual worlds. Only
in this way will humanity now be able to find the spirit.”
Today we are again living in a similar age, since Kali
Yuga, the Dark Age, had run its course by 1899, and once again new
dispositions of soul, new soul faculties, are slowly being prepared
in a similar way. It is quite possible that our contemporaries, the
human beings living in our age, may sleep through this. We shall
learn gradually to recognize what is to take place for all humanity
during the age that began with the close of Kali Yuga. It is our task
today to see to it that this transitional event may not pass us by
unnoticed and without effect upon the progress of humanity.
Kali Yuga came to an end only a few years ago; 1899 is
the approximate date of its termination. We are now approaching a
time when, in addition to the already evolved self-consciousness,
certain clairvoyant faculties will again evolve quite naturally.
Human beings will have the strange and remarkable experience of not
knowing what is really happening to them! They will begin to receive
premonitions that will become reality, and they will be able to
foresee events that will actually take place. Indeed, people
everywhere will gradually begin actually to see, although only in
shadowy outline and in its first elements, what we call man's etheric
body. The human being of today sees only the physical body; the
capacity to see the etheric body will gradually be added. People will
have learned that this etheric body is a reality, or they will think
it is an illusion of their senses, since such a thing, so they will
say, does not exist. Things will come to a point at which many people
who have such experiences will ask themselves, “Am I really
mad?”
Although it will be only a small number of people who
will develop these faculties during the next few decades, spiritual
science is something that will spread, because the responsibility one
feels is for something that in reality is taking place; it must take
place in accordance with the natural course of events. Why do we
teach spiritual science? Because phenomena will appear in the near
future that only spiritual science will be able to grasp and that
will remain misunderstood if spiritual science is not there.
These faculties will develop relatively quickly in the
case of a small number of human beings. It is quite true, to be sure,
that through an esoteric training man may ascend, even today, far
beyond what is preparing itself on a small scale for humanity. At the
same time, that to which man can ascend in our day by his own
efforts, through appropriate training, is already being slightly
prepared in small beginnings for all of humanity. It is something
about which it will be necessary to speak, whether one understands it
or not, during the years 1930 to 1940. Only a few decades separate us
from that moment in time when such phenomena will have begun to be
more frequent.
By that time, however, something else will also take
place for those human beings who will have acquired these faculties.
For them, the proof will be yielded of one of the most powerful
sayings contained in the New Testament, and it will deeply move their
souls. In these souls will arise the words, “Lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world,” that is to say, if we
translate it correctly, “even unto the end of the earth eons.”
This expression says to us that Christianity is not merely what books
once described it to be or what was learned in recent times. These
words tell us that Christianity is not merely what is embraced today
in the form of this or that dogma but that it is something living,
which contains within it the vision and experience of revelations,
something that will unfold with ever-increasing strength. We stand
today only at the beginning of the working of Christianity, and
anyone who has really united himself with Christ knows that ever-new
revelations will spring forth from it. He knows that Christianity is
not giving way but that it is growing and becoming, that it is
something living, not dead.
One who undertakes spiritual development today can even
begin already to experience the truth of this expression, “Lo,
I am with you always, even unto the end of the ages of the earth.”
He is with us and hovers about the earth in spirit form. Previous to
the event of Golgotha, the clairvoyant was unable to find Christ in
the atmosphere of the earth. Only after the event of Golgotha did
Christ become visible in the atmosphere of the earth, because it is
since that time that He has been present there. One who was
experienced in clairvoyance during pre-Christian times knew that the
time would come in which this would occur. He knew that it was not
yet possible to find in the astral sphere of our earth what one calls
the Christ, but the time will come when the clairvoyant eye will be
opened and will be able to see Christ in the earthly sphere. He knew
that a great change would take place regarding earthly clairvoyance,
yet he was not sufficiently advanced to be convinced by the events in
Palestine that these events had already taken place. No physical
events could convince him that Christ had already descended to the
earth.
One thing alone could convince him: when he saw Christ
clairvoyantly in the atmosphere of the earth. Through this he became
convinced that the descent of Christ to the earth, which was expected
in the mysteries, had actually been consummated. What Paul
experienced as the presence of Christ in the atmosphere of the earth
is what modern man may train himself to experience clairvoyantly
through an esoteric schooling; this is also what single persons here
and there will be able to experience through a natural clairvoyance,
as I have already characterized it, beginning with the years 1930 to
1940. Then it will continue through long periods of time as something
that has become entirely natural to humanity.
The event of Damascus will repeat itself for many
persons, and we can designate this event as a return of Christ, a
return in the spirit. Christ will be present for all those who will
be able to ascend as far as the vision of the etheric body. He
descended only once in the flesh, at the time when He lived in
Palestine, but in His etheric body He is always present within the
etheric atmosphere of the earth. Because human beings will be able to
develop etheric vision, they will also be able to behold Him. The
return of Christ thus will come to pass for humanity through the fact
that human beings will advance to the faculty of beholding Christ in
the etheric. This is what we may look forward to in our time of
transition. It is the task of spiritual science to prepare human
souls so that they may be able to receive Christ, Who has come down
to them.
We see that by this time we have already taken account
of the second question we posed. We have seen that it makes good
sense to use our incarnations well, but we have also seen that the
best use to make of our present incarnation is to prepare ourselves
for that insight that will become for us the future of Christ. We
must learn to understand in the right sense this return of Christ. We
shall then also be able to understand how great the dangers are that
are connected with it. This is what I must now explain to you.
The most sublime experience possible for humanity is now
in store for human beings in what I have described to you as the
return of Christ in the spirit. Yet modern materialism will continue
to be so powerful that even such a truth will be interpreted in a
materialistic way. This materialistic interpretation will transform
itself into reality. This truth will be interpreted as a return of
Christ in the flesh. False Christs, false messiahs, will walk about
on the earth in the not too distant future, persons who will claim to
be the returning Christ. Anthroposophists, however, should be those
who are not deceived by such materialism that believes Christ can
descend again to earth in the flesh. They know that the Dark Age has
come to an end, that age in which human beings needed, for the
development of their I-consciousness, the life within physical matter
without insight into the spiritual worlds. Man must now develop
himself so that he can ascend again to the spiritual sphere where he
will be able to behold Christ living and ever-present in the etheric.
Humanity will be granted a period of about 2,500 years
in which to develop these faculties; 2,500 years will be at his
disposal to attain etheric vision as a natural, universal human
faculty, until human beings advance again to another faculty in
another time of transition. During these 2,500 years, more and more
human souls will be able to develop these faculties in themselves. It
will make no difference whether they are then living their lives
between birth and death or whether they are dwelling in the spiritual
world after death. The period of human life between death and a new
birth will also be passed differently if human souls have experienced
the reappearance of Christ. The life after death will also change as
a result of this experience. This is why it is so important for the
souls now incarnated to be well prepared for the Christ event that is
to take place during this century. It is just as important for those
who are incarnated here on earth in a physical body as for those who
will already have passed through the portal of death and will be
living the life between death and a new birth. It is of the greatest
importance for all souls alive today to be prepared for this event
and thus to be well armed against the dangers.
When we speak in this way, we feel what anthroposophy
should and can mean to us, how it should prepare us to fulfill our
task by seeing to it that a sublime event such as this not pass
humanity by, leaving no trace behind. If it were to pass without
leaving a trace, humanity would forfeit its most important
possibility for evolution and would sink into darkness and gradual
death. This event can bring light to human beings only if they awaken
to this new perception and thereby open themselves also to the new
Christ event.
This will be repeated again and again in the near
future; at the same time, it must also be stated repeatedly that the
false prophets would be able to prevent the good and the great were
they to succeed in spreading the opinion that Christ would appear
again in the flesh. If anthroposophists were to fail to grasp this,
it would be possible for them to fall prey to that illusion that
would enable false messiahs to arise. These false messiahs will
appear; they will count on souls that are so weakened by materialism
that they cannot imagine anything but that when Christ appears again,
He must necessarily appear in material substance, in the flesh. This
misinterpretation of the prophecy is an evil thing, and it will
appear in the form of a dangerous temptation for humanity. It is the
task of anthroposophy to protect human beings from this temptation.
This cannot be emphasized too strongly for all who have ears to hear.
We can see by this, moreover, that anthroposophy has important things
to say; we do not merely “pursue” anthroposophy because
we are curious to know all kinds of truths but because we know that
these truths must be used for the salvation and gradual perfecting of
humanity.
Christ will later appear to humanity in many forms. The
form that He chose for the events in Palestine was chosen by Him
because, at that time, human beings were dependent upon the faculty
of unfolding their consciousness on the physical plane and, through
this, conquering the physical plane. Humanity is called upon to
develop ever-higher faculties, however, so that the course of
evolution may be able, again and again, to make new leaps.
Christ will be there in order that He can be experienced
also on these higher stages of knowledge. Christianity is in this
connection not at the end but at the beginning of its influence.
Humanity will continue to advance from stage to stage, and
Christianity will also be there at every stage in order that it may
satisfy the deepest requirements of the human soul throughout all
future ages of the earth.
|