Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy
GA 25
VII. The Relationship of Christ with Humanity
[ 1 ] I attempted to show in my last observations how, in the realm of human evolution, the psycho-spiritual existence is transferred to that of the physical senses. Now it depends on the understanding which man can bring to bear on this transference whether he can gain a relationship, in accordance with modern consciousness, to the event of Golgotha and its reference to man's development on earth.
[ 2 ] If one does not realize in one's own physical nature how something psycho-spiritual has so changed itself from a spiritual form of experience as to become manifest in the physical world of the senses, one will also never know how the Christ spirit coming from spirit worlds was made manifest in the man Jesus on earth.
[ 3 ] But it must be once more emphasized that it is not a case of individual knowledge derived from observation, but rather of understanding with one's whole nature and being what observation has brought to light. Only a few men achieve the former, but the latter is possible to all. The man who realizes the worlds through which the human soul has passed in its pre-earthly existence, learns also to look up to Him who before the event of the mystery of Golgotha had lived as Christ only in those worlds, and who through this mystery and since its occurrence had united His life with mortal humanity.
[ 4 ] Our earthly souls have attained the condition in which they now live only through a gradual development. Ordinary consciousness takes the condition of the soul as it is to-day and constructs a ‘history’, in which things are represented as if man in the grey dawn of time had thought and willed and felt practically as he does now. But that is not so. There have been times in which the soul condition was quite different—times when there was no such sharp distinction between sleeping and waking. Dreams now are the only bridge between the two; and their content has something deceptive and questionable about them. Primitive man knew a stage between full wakefulness and unconscious sleep, which was pictorial and remote from the senses, but revealing something really spiritual, just as the sense-observation reveals something of the actually physical.
[ 5 ] In this life of pictures, and not of thoughts, early man had a dream-like experience of his pre-earthly existence. He felt his pre-earthly soul-nature as an echo of what he had gone through. On the other hand he had not that sense of self which present-day man has. He did not find himself in the same degree as to-day as an ‘Ego’. [ 6 ] This feeling has arisen only in the course of human spiritual evolution, and the decisive epoch of this development is that in which occurred also the event of Golgotha.
[ 7 ] At this time in the ordinary consciousness the psychic experience of an echo from pre-earthly existence grew ever fainter. Man's knowledge of himself became more and more limited to what his physical sense-life on earth told him,
[ 8 ] Moreover from, this moment the perception of death took on a new meaning. Previously man knew, as I have described, of the central point of his being. He knew it through the contemplation of this echo in such case that he was convinced this echo could not be affected by death. At the moment of historical time when the view became limited to the physical nature of man, death became a disturbing problem for the soul.
[ 9 ] The further development of purely inner faculties of knowledge did not suffice to solve this problem. It was solved by the events of Golgotha occurring in the evolution of the earth.
[ 10 ] The Christ came down to earthly existence from those worlds in which man had passed his pre-earthly life. By combining the experience of the ordinary awake consciousness with the contemplation of the acts of Christ, man can find, since Golgotha, what he formerly found through a natural function of his consciousness.
[ 11 ] The ‘Initiates’ of the ancient Mysteries spoke to their followers in such a way that they saw in their considerations of pre-earthly life a gift of grace from that spiritual Sun-Being which has its counterpart in the physical sun.
[ 12 ] The Initiates who at the time of the mystery of Golgotha still continued the ancient initiation-methods, told those who had ears to hear how the Being who had before given to man the echo from spiritual worlds of pre-earthly existence that he could carry into the earthly life, had descended as the Christ upon the physical earth and taken flesh in the person of the man Jesus.
[ 13 ] Those who knew the truth about the mystery of Golgotha always, as in the early days of Christianity, spoke of the Christ-Being as one who had descended from spiritual worlds to an earthly one. The teachers of mankind of that time stressed particularly this aspect of the Christ coming from a higher world down to the earth.
[ 14 ] This view was conditioned by the fact that one still knew enough, from the ancient initiation, about the supernatural worlds, to see in Christ a Being of the spiritual world before his descent to earth.
[ 15 ] The remnants of this knowledge lasted into the Fourth Century, and then faded in man's consciousness. The event of Golgotha thus became an event which was known only through the construction of political history.
The principles of initiation of the old world were lost to the outer world, and took root only in almost unknown places. Only now in the last third of the nineteenth Century has a stage in human evolution been reached again in which the new Initiation, as has been described leads to an aspect of Christ's nature within the spiritual world.
[ 16 ] It was necessary for the complete unfolding of the ego-consciousness, which was to come into being in the development of humanity, that initiate knowledge should disappear for a few centuries, and that man should turn his attention to the outer world of the senses in which the ego-consciousness could be freely cultivated.
[ 17 ] Thus it was only possible for the Christian community to direct the attention of believers to the historical tradition concerning the mystery of Golgotha and to clothe what was once known by spiritual knowledge in ‘Dogmas of Belief’ for the Earth. The content of these Dogmas does not concern us here, but only the manner in which they affect the soul, whether through faith, belief or through knowledge.
[ 18 ] It is again possible to-day to have a direct knowledge of the Christ. The figure of Jesus stood for centuries in front of the ordinary consciousness, and the Christ who lived in him, had become an object of faith. But more and more the inclination to dogmatic faith grew less, precisely among the spiritual leaders of mankind; Jesus was seen more and more only as history made him appear to the ordinary consciousness. The sense of Christ was gradually lost; and so there grew up a modern branch of Theology which concerns itself really only with the man Jesus, and which lacks a living sense of the Christ. But a mere Jesus-Faith is really -no longer Christianity.
[ 19 ] In the consciousness which early man had of his pre-earthly existence, he had also an anchorage for a proper relationship to his existence, after death on earth.
In later times his union with the Christ was to give him in another way what had thus been given him in primæval time by nature, through the sense of his own life-experience concerning the problem of death. The Christ was so to permeate him, in the words of St. Paul, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’, that He might be his guide through the gate of death. Man now had indeed something in the ordinary consciousness which could develop the complete Ego-sense, but nothing which could give the soul the strength to approach the gates of Death with certain knowledge of its living passage through them. For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body, and therefore can give the soul only such strength as must be regarded as extinguished in death.
[ 20 ] To those who could learn all this from their old initiation, the human physical organism appeared out of order, for they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a comprehensive consciousness as to enable it to live its full life. Christ appeared as the soul-doctor of the world, as the Healer, the Saviour, and as such in His fundamental relationship to humanity He must be recognized.
[ 21 ] The event of death and its relationship to the Christ is to be the subject of my next study.
[ 22 ] Through the taking-up of the Christ-experience a Philosophy has grown out of what the ancient consciousness, deepened by the saying of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity, and a philosophy which can include the divine Father principle. The Father in Spirit can be regarded again as the all-pervading Being. Cosmology gains its Christian character through the knowledge of the Christ who, as a Being from outside the earth, assumed mortal shape in the person of Jesus. In the events of human evolution the Christ is recognized as the Being to whose lot has fallen a decisive part in this evolution. And through the re-awakening of the half-forgotten knowledge of the ‘Eternal Man’, the human mind is led out of the purely sense-world in which the ego-consciousness develops, to the spirit, which can be experienced with full understanding by the soul in conjunction with God the Father and the Christ in a renewed perceptive knowledge of Religion.
VII. Christus in seinem Zusammenhang mit der Menschheit und das Rätsel des Todes
[ 1 ] Wie das seelisch-geistige Dasein auf dem Gebiete der Menschenentwickelung in das sinnlich-physische über-geht, versuchte ich in der letzten Betrachtung zu schildern. Von dem Verständnisse, das der Mensch diesem Übergange entgegenbringt, hängt es ab, ob er ein dem gegenwärtigen Bewußtsein entsprechendes Verhältnis gewinnen kann zu dem Ereignis von Golgatha und seiner Beziehung zur Erdenentwickelung des Menschen.
[ 2 ] Erkennt man in seinem eigenen physisch-sinnlichen Wesen nicht, wie ein Geistig-Seelisches aus einer geistigen Erlebensform sich so gewandelt hat, daß es zur Erscheinung in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt geworden ist, so muß einem auch verschlossen bleiben, wie der Christusgeist aus Geisteswelten in dem Jesusmenschen innerhalb der physischen Welt erschienen ist.
[ 3 ] Es muß aber immer wieder betont werden, daß nicht das schauende Erkennen selbst bei jedem Einzelnen in Betracht kommt, sondern das gemütvolle Verstehen des durch das Schauen Erforschten. Das schauende Erkennen erringen sich Einzelne. Das begründete Verstehen ist jedem möglich.
[ 4 ] Wer die Welten anerkennt, welche die Menschenseele im vorirdischen Dasein durchlebt, der lernt auch auf-blicken zu Dem, der vor dem Geschehen des Mysteriums von Golgatha nur in diesem Dasein gelebt, als Christus, und der durch dieses Mysterium und seit dessen Geschehen sein Leben mit der Erdenmenschheit verbunden hat. Die Seelen der Erdenmenschheit haben diejenige Verfassung, in der sie heute leben, erst in einer allmählichen Entwickelung erlangt. Das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein nimmt die Seelenverfassung, wie sie heute ist, und konstruiert sich eine «Geschichte», in welcher die Sache so dargestellt wird, als ob die Menschen der grauen Vorzeit fast ebenso gedacht, gewollt und gefühlt hätten wie heute. Aber das ist nicht so. Es hat Zeiten gegeben im Erdendasein der Menschheit, in denen diese Seelenverfassung ganz anders war als gegenwärtig. Damals war nicht ein so schroffer Gegensatz zwischen Schlafen und Wachen. Einen Übergang zwischen beiden bildet heute nur das Träumen. Aber dessen Inhalt hat etwas Trügerisches, Fragwürdiges. Der Mensch der Vorzeit erlebte zwischen dem vollen Wachen und dem bewußtlosen Schlafen einen Zwischenzustand, der bildhaft und sinnentrückt war, durch den aber ein wirklich Geistiges sich offenbarte, wie durch die Sinneswahrnehmung ein wirkliches Physisches.
[ 5 ] In diesem Erleben durch Bilder, nicht durch Gedanken, hatte der Mensch der Vorzeit eine traumhafte Erfahrung von seinem vorirdischen Dasein. Er erlebte sich selbst als vorirdisches Seelenwesen wie in einem Nach-klang des damals Durchgemachten. Aber er hatte dafür nicht das volle deutliche Ich-Erleben, das der Mensch der Gegenwart hat. Er empfand sich nicht in demselben Grade wie heute als ein «Ich». Dieses «Ich»-Erleben ist erst im Laufe der menschlichen Geistesentwickelung eingetreten.
[ 6 ] Die entscheidende Entwickelungsepoche für die Entwickelung des Ich-Erlebens der Menschheit ist diejenige, in die auch das Ereignis von Golgatha gefallen ist.
[ 7 ] In dieser Zeit wurde für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein das seelische Erleben eines Nachklanges des vorirdischen Daseins immer dumpfer. Der Mensch wurde mit dem, was er von sich selbst wissen kann, immer mehr auf das beschränkt, was sich ihm von sich selbst als physischsinnliches Erden-Sein offenbart.
[ 8 ] Von diesem Zeitpunkt an bekam auch die Wahrnehmung des Todes eine neue Bedeutung. Vorher wußte der Mensch in der angedeuteten Art von seinem eigenen Wesenskerne. Er kannte denselben durch das Schauen des erwähnten Nachklanges so, daß ihm klar war, dieser werde vom Tode nicht berührt. In dem weithistorischen Zeitabschnitt, in dem der Blick auf das physische Menschenwesen beschränkt wurde, stellte sich der Tod als ein quälendes Rätsel vor die Seele hin.
[ 9 ] Dieses Rätsel wurde dem Menschen nicht durch die weitere Entwickelung bloß innerer Erkenntniskräfte gelöst. Es wurde ihm gelöst, indem das Ereignis von Golgatha in die Erdenentwickelung eintrat.
[ 10 ] Auf den Boden des Erdendaseins ist der Christus aus denjenigen Welten herabgestiegen, in denen der Mensch sein vorirdisches Dasein verlebt. In der Vereinigung der Erlebnisse des wachen gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins mit der Wesenheit und in dem Aufblick zu Christi Taten kann der Mensch seit dem Ereignis von Golgatha finden, was er vorher durch eine natürliche Beschaffenheit seines Bewußtseins gefunden hat.
[ 11 ] Die Initiierten der alten Mysterien haben zu ihren Bekennern so gesprochen, daß diese in den Wahrnehmungen über das vorirdische Dasein eine Gnadengabe des geistigen Sonnenwesens gesehen haben, das seinen Abglanz in der physischen Sonne hat.
[ 12 ] Die Initiierten, die zur Zeit des Mysteriums von Golgatha noch in einer Fortsetzung der alten Initiationsmethoden lebten, sprachen zu denjenigen, die es hören wollten, davon, wie das Wesen, welches früher den Menschen aus den geistigen Welten den Nachklang des vorirdischen Daseins in das irdische mitgegeben hat, als der Christus heruntergestiegen ist in die physische Erdenwelt und in dem Menschen Jesus Körper angenommen hat.
[ 13 ] Von Seite derjenigen, die dadurch aus der Initiation das Rechte über das Mysterium von Golgatha wußten, wurde in den ersten Zeiten der christlichen Entwickelung durchaus von dem Christuswesen als einem solchen gesprochen, das aus geistigen Welten in die irdische heruntergestiegen ist. Auf den Christus der überirdischen Welt und auf seinen Weg zu den Erdenmenschen kam es den damaligen Lehrern der Menschheit vorzüglich an.
[ 14 ] Die Voraussetzung zu einer solchen Anschauung war, daß man aus der alten Initiation noch so viel über die übersinnlichen Welten wußte, um in Christus ein Wesen der geistigen Welt vor seinem Abstieg zur Erde zu schauen.
[ 15 ] Die Reste eines solchen Wissens dauerten etwa bis in das vierte nachchristliche Jahrhundert hinein. Dann dämmerten sie in den menschlichen Bewußtseinen ab. Das Ereignis von Golgatha wurde dadurch ein nur durch die Fortpflanzung der äußeren Geschichte gewußtes Ereignis. Die Initiationsprinzipien der alten Welt gingen der Außenwelt verloren und pflanzten sich nur noch in Stätten fort, von denen die Menschen kaum etwas wußten. Erst jetzt, seit dem letzten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, ist innerhalb der Menschheitsentwickelung wieder ein Stadium erlangt, in dem die neue Initiation, die in den vorangehenden Darstellungen geschildert worden ist, zu einer Anschauung des Wesens Christi innerhalb der Geisteswelt führt.
[ 16 ] Zur vollen Entfaltung des Ichbewußtseins, das innerhalb der Menschheitsentwickelung zutage treten sollte, war es notwendig, daß die initiierte Erkenntnis für einige Jahrhunderte zurücktrat und der Mensch sich zunächst auf die sinnliche und äußerlich-historische Welt verwiesen sah, in der er das Ichbewußtsein frei entfalten konnte.
[ 17 ] So wurde es der christlichen Gemeinschaft nur möglich, die Gläubigen auf die historische Tradition über das Mysterium von Golgatha zu verweisen, und dasjenige, was einmal durch Geisterkenntnis über dasselbe gewußt wurde, in Dogmen für den Glauben zu kleiden. Nicht um den Inhalt dieser Dogmen handelt es sich hier, sondern um die Art, wie er in der Seele erlebt wird, ob durch Glauben oder durch Wissen.
[ 18 ] Heute ist es wieder möglich, ein unmittelbares Wissen von dem Christus zu erlangen. Aber es stand die Gestalt Jesu durch Jahrhunderte vor dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein; und der Christus, der in ihm lebte, war ein Gegenstand des Glaubens geworden. Immer mehr aber verlor sich gerade in dem geistig führenden Teil der Menschheit die Hinneigung zu den Glaubensdogmen; Jesus wurde immer mehr nur so gesehen, wie er sich aus der Geschichte heraus vor das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein hinstellt. Man verlor nach und nach ein Erleben des Christus. Und so ergab sich sogar ein moderner Zweig der Theologie, der sich eigentlich nur beschäftigt mit dem Menschen Jesus, und dem ein lebendiges Verhältnis zu dem Christus fehlt. Aber ein bloßer Jesusglaube ist eigentlich kein Christentum mehr.
[ 19 ] In dem Bewußtsein von seinem vorirdischen Dasein hatte der Mensch der Vorzeit auch einen Halt für ein rechtes Verhältnis zu seinem Dasein nach dem Erdentode. Das, was ihm auf diese Art in der Vorzeit für das Rätsel des Todes ein natürliches Sich-Erleben gegeben hatte, das sollte ihm in der späteren Zeit in einer anderen Art durch seine Verbindung mit dem Christus gegeben werden. Dieser sollte ihn nach dem Paulusworte: «Nicht ich, sondern der Christus in mir», so durchdringen, daß er ihm dadurch der Führer durch die Todespforte werden konnte. Im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein hatte der Mensch jetzt zwar etwas, was das volle Ich-Erleben zur Entfaltung bringen konnte, nicht aber etwas, was der Seele die Kraft geben konnte, an ihren lebendigen Durchgang durch die Todespforte erkennend heranzukommen. Denn das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein ist ein Ergebnis des physischen Leibes. Es kann also auch der Seele nur eine Kraft geben, die sie als mit dem Tode erlöschend ansehen muß.
[ 20 ] Denjenigen, die noch aus der alten Initiation heraus das alles erkennen konnten, erschien der menschliche physische Organismus krank. Denn sie mußten annehmen, er könne nicht die Macht entfalten, ein so umfassendes Bewußtsein der Seele zu geben, daß diese ihr volles Dasein erleben kann. Christus erschien als der Seelenarzt der Welt, als der Heiler, der Heiland. Und als solcher muß er in seinem tiefbegründeten Zusammenhang mit der Menschheit erkannt werden.
[ 21 ] Das Ereignis des Todes im Zusammenhange mit dem Christus soll den Gegenstand der nächsten Betrachtungen bilden.
[ 22 ] Durch das Aufnehmen des Christuserlebens wird, was das alte Bewußtsein, vertieft durch die Aussagen der Initiierten, als Ewigkeitserlebnis dem Menschen gegeben hatte, zu einer Philosophie, die im Weltendasein mit dem göttlichen Vaterprinzip rechnen kann. Der Vater im Geiste kann wieder angesehen werden als das alles-durchdringende Seiende. Durch die Erkenntnis des Christus, der, ein Wesen der außerirdischen Welt, in dem Menschen Jesus irdischen Körper annahm, erlangt die Kosmologie ihren christlichen Charakter. In den Geschehnissen der Menschheitsentwickelung wird der Christus mit-erkannt als das Wesen, dem ein Entscheidendes in dieser Entwickelung zugefallen ist. - Und durch das Wiederanfachen der abgedämmerten Erkenntnis von dem «ewigen Menschen» wird das menschliche Gemüt aus der bloßen Sinneswelt, die das Ichbewußtsein entwickelt, zu dem Geiste gelenkt, der mit dem Vatergott und dem Christus zusammen in einer erneuten Erkenntnisgrundlage der Religion von der Seele verständnisvoll erlebt werden kann.
VII Christ in his connection with humanity and the riddle of death
[ 1 ] In the last consideration I tried to describe how the soul-spiritual existence in the field of human development passes over into the sensual-physical. It depends on the understanding that man brings to this transition whether he can gain a relationship to the event of Golgotha and its relationship to man's development on earth that corresponds to his present consciousness.
[ 2 ] If one does not recognize in one's own physical-sensual being how a spiritual-soul has changed from a spiritual form of experience in such a way that it has become a manifestation in the physical-sensual world, then it must also remain closed to one how the Christ spirit has appeared from spiritual worlds in the Jesus-man within the physical world.
[ 3 ] However, it must always be emphasized that it is not the seeing cognition itself that comes into consideration for each individual, but rather the comfortable understanding of that which is investigated through seeing. The seeing cognition is achieved by individuals. Reasoned understanding is possible for everyone.
[ 4 ] Whoever recognizes the worlds which the human soul lives through in the pre-earthly existence, also learns to look up to the One who, before the event of the Mystery of Golgotha, only lived in this existence, as Christ, and who, through this Mystery and since its event, has united his life with earthly humanity. The souls of earth humanity have only gradually developed into the state in which they live today. The ordinary consciousness takes the constitution of the soul as it is today and constructs a "history" in which the matter is presented as if the people of ancient times had thought, willed and felt almost exactly as they do today. But that is not the case. There have been times in humanity's existence on earth when this state of mind was quite different from the present. At that time there was not such a sharp contrast between sleeping and waking. Today only dreaming forms a transition between the two. But there is something deceptive and questionable about its content. Prehistoric man experienced an intermediate state between full wakefulness and unconscious sleep, which was pictorial and removed from the senses, but through which a real spiritual being revealed itself, just as a real physical being revealed itself through sensory perception.
[ 5 ] In this experience through images, not through thoughts, prehistoric man had a dreamlike experience of his pre-earthly existence. He experienced himself as a pre-earthly soul being as if in an echo of what he had gone through at that time. But he did not have the full, clear experience of the self that man has today. He did not feel himself as an "I" to the same degree as he does today. This "I" experience only occurred in the course of human spiritual development.
[ 6 ] The decisive developmental epoch for the development of the ego experience of humanity is the one in which the event of Golgotha took place.
[ 7 ] During this time, the spiritual experience of an echo of the pre-earthly existence became increasingly dull for the ordinary consciousness. Man's knowledge of himself became more and more limited to that which revealed itself to him as physical-sensory earthly existence.
[ 8 ] From this point on, the perception of death also took on a new meaning. Previously, man knew of his own essence in the manner indicated. He knew it through seeing the aforementioned echo in such a way that it was clear to him that it was not affected by death. In the far historical period in which the view was limited to the physical human being, death presented itself as a tormenting riddle to the soul.
[ 9 ] This riddle was not solved for man by the further development of merely inner powers of cognition. It was solved for him by the event of Golgotha entering into earthly development.
[ 10 ] The Christ descended to the ground of earthly existence from those worlds in which man lives out his pre-earthly existence. In the union of the experiences of the waking ordinary consciousness with the Being and in looking up to Christ's deeds, man can find since the event of Golgotha what he previously found through a natural constitution of his consciousness.
[ 11 ] The initiates of the ancient mysteries spoke to their confessors in such a way that they saw in the perceptions of the pre-earthly existence a gift of grace of the spiritual solar being, which has its reflection in the physical sun.
[ 12 ] The initiates, who at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were still living in a continuation of the old methods of initiation, spoke to those who wanted to hear about how the Being who had previously given people from the spiritual worlds the echo of the pre-earthly existence into the earthly world, descended as the Christ into the physical earthly world and took on the body of the man Jesus.
[ 13 ] In the first times of Christian development, those who knew what was right about the Mystery of Golgotha from the initiation spoke of the Christ being as one who descended from the spiritual worlds into the earthly world. It was the Christ of the supernatural world and his path to the people of earth that was of primary importance to the teachers of humanity at that time.
[ 14 ] The prerequisite for such a view was that one still knew so much about the supersensible worlds from the old initiation in order to see in Christ a being of the spiritual world before his descent to earth.
[ 15 ] The remnants of such knowledge lasted until about the fourth century AD. Then they dimmed in human consciousness. The event of Golgotha thus became an event known only through the propagation of external history. The initiatory principles of the old world were lost to the outside world and were only propagated in places of which people hardly knew anything. Only now, since the last third of the nineteenth century, has a stage been reached again within the development of mankind in which the new initiation, which has been described in the preceding descriptions, leads to a view of the nature of Christ within the spiritual world.
[ 16 ] For the full unfolding of the I-consciousness, which was to emerge within the development of mankind, it was necessary that the initiated cognition receded for a few centuries and that man first saw himself referred to the sensual and external-historical world, in which he could freely unfold the I-consciousness.
[ 17 ] So it only became possible for the Christian community to refer believers to the historical tradition about the Mystery of Golgotha and to clothe what was once known about it through spiritual knowledge in dogmas for faith. It is not the content of these dogmas that is at issue here, but the way in which it is experienced in the soul, whether through faith or through knowledge.
[ 18 ] Today it is again possible to attain a direct knowledge of the Christ. But for centuries the figure of Jesus stood before ordinary consciousness; and the Christ who lived in him had become an object of faith. More and more, however, the spiritually leading part of humanity lost its inclination towards the dogmas of faith; Jesus was seen more and more only as he presented himself to the ordinary consciousness from history. One gradually lost the experience of Christ. And so even a modern branch of theology emerged, which actually only deals with the man Jesus and lacks a living relationship with Christ. But a mere belief in Jesus is actually no longer Christianity.
[ 19 ] In the awareness of his pre-earthly existence, man of prehistoric times also had a basis for a proper relationship to his existence after his death on earth. That which in this way had given him a natural self-awareness for the riddle of death in prehistoric times was to be given to him in a different way in later times through his connection with Christ. According to St. Paul's words: "Not I, but the Christ in me", the Christ was to permeate him in such a way that he could thereby become his guide through the gate of death. In ordinary consciousness man now had something that could bring the full ego experience to fruition, but not something that could give the soul the strength to come to recognize its living passage through the gate of death. For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body. It can therefore also only give the soul a power that it must regard as extinguishing with death.
[ 20 ] To those who could still recognize all this from the old initiation, the human physical organism appeared sick. For they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a comprehensive consciousness that it could experience its full existence. Christ appeared as the world's physician of the soul, as the healer, the Savior. And as such, he must be recognized in his profound connection with humanity.
[ 21 ] The event of death in connection with Christ is to form the subject of the next considerations.
[ 22 ] By taking up the experience of Christ, what the old consciousness, deepened by the statements of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity, becomes a philosophy that can reckon with the divine Father principle in the existence of the world. The Father in the spirit can again be seen as the all-pervading Being. Through the realization of the Christ, who, a being of the extraterrestrial world, took on an earthly body in the human being Jesus, cosmology attains its Christian character. In the events of human development, the Christ is recognized as the being who has played a decisive role in this development. - And through the rekindling of the dimmed knowledge of the "eternal man", the human mind is directed from the mere sensory world, which develops the ego consciousness, to the spirit, which together with the Father God and the Christ can be comprehensively experienced by the soul in a renewed cognitive basis of religion.