The New Spirituality
and the Christ Experience of the Twentieth Century
GA 200
30 October 1920, Dornach
Lecture VI
If an understanding for what one can call the reappearance of Christ is to find its place in the soul in the right way it is necessary to create a preparatory understanding for the course that the Christ-idea, the image people have had of the Christ, has taken in the course of human development. We remember that human development has proceeded from a constitution of soul which we have often called a kind of instinctive perception; a clairvoyance which was dim and dreamlike. And we have, on repeated occasions, characterized the different epochs of human development in such a way that we have placed the corresponding form of this constitution of soul into different times.
Today we will remind ourselves that there were still strong remnants of this old clairvoyant condition of humanity existing at the time of the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha is to be understood in the first place as a fact, but as a fact which, in its inner essence, can never be grasped by the intellect which since the middle of the fifteenth century has constituted the soul-life of modern civilization but which was already prepared for in Greek and Roman times. Thus one can say: During the course of Greek and Roman history, when the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished on the earth, there were still strong remnants of the ancient clairvoyance existing in many people. Other people had already lost this clairvoyance—were already definitely in the beginnings of an intellectual development. This was particularly so in the Romans. And one can therefore say that, in its reality, in its essence, the Mystery of Golgotha was grasped at first only by those who still had a remnant of the old clairvoyance. It could be described—the symbolism too could be indicated—by those who had these remnants. This instinctive clairvoyance was a particular characteristic of the ancient oriental peoples and existed essentially in its last remnants above all in these peoples. And Christ Jesus, too, did, after all, walk on the earth among oriental people.
Thus the Mystery of Golgotha was understood first of all through the remnants of ancient oriental wisdom. And when this Mystery of Golgotha moved towards the West—to the Greeks and the Romans—one could receive what was related by those people who, out of the remains of the old clairvoyance, had understood what had really come to pass on the earth. And in order that there could be a perception through an 'eyewitness' of the soul there arose in St Paul, through a particular enlightenment which came to him at a late period of his life, a clairvoyant state through which he could convince himself of the truth, of the genuine nature, of the Mystery of Golgotha. What St Paul was able to relate out of his conviction—what those who had preserved the remains of an old clairvoyance could bring forward concerning the Mystery of Golgotha out of an ancient oriental wisdom, could be received by people as news—could be clothed in the form of the germinating intellect. Intellect itself, however, was not able to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha.
The way in which those who still had remains of the old clairvoyance spoke about the Mystery of Golgotha is called Gnosis. And, if I can put it so, the form of speaking about the Mystery of Golgotha in the way that was possible with these remnants of old clairvoyance—this was Christian Gnosis. And the presentation of the Mystery of Golgotha then reached posterity in the way I have described in my book Christianity as mystical Fact. Thus the first understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was attained through these remains of the old clairvoyance; through the ancient, instinctive oriental perception. One could say that this ancient oriental perception was preserved up to the Mystery of Golgotha to such a degree that a truly human grasp of this Mystery could find a place before the intellect broke in and understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha could no longer be found. Had the Mystery of Golgotha come during the full flowering of the intellect it would, of course, have made no impression on humanity at all.
Thus the tidings of the Mystery of Golgotha lived in the accounts of the old clairvoyants and, basically, as you know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Gospels are nothing other than accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha gained through clairvoyance. But then there spread out over humanity's development the wave which had already taken root in Greece, as I have described to you, which had its source particularly in Rome and which can be seen as the wave that prepared the later intellectuality but in which this intellectuality already lived. Dialectical-legal thinking spread out and, in turn, led to civic-political thinking. This spread from the South into those northern regions where, as I related yesterday, there was still a nature-based economy. Central European civilization, nourished at first by Rome, took shape primarily in the sign of the intellectual, the dialectical-legal, development of the human soul. In the midst of everything that occurred here people could no longer themselves behold the Mystery in the sense of the old spirituality, but received the accounts, the traditions, and clothed these in the forms of their own soul-constitution. People clothed it more and more in dialectics. Through Rome the Mystery of Golgotha became clothed in dialectics. Out of what was Christian Gnosis, which still relied on vision, there took shape the pure dialectical theology which went hand in hand with the establishing of the European Empire that later became [nation] States. But the first great Empire was actually the secularized ecclesiastical 'Empire of the Church', permeated by Roman judicial forms. Many external facts show how this dialectical-legal, political thinking, in which the old oriental direct perception clothed itself, spread out over Europe.
Charlemagne, for example, was a vassal of the Pope who had bestowed on him his title of Emperor. And when one studies the whole extent of the rulership of Charlemagne, one finds among the forces through which his rulership spread an ecclesiastical-theological influence. It was a kind of theocratic empire that spread there but it was everywhere permeated by dialectical-legal forms. The clergy were the bureaucracy. They held the offices of the State and united in their person the political and ecclesiastical elements. The old spiritual life based on spiritual vision—which, as you know, had abolished the spirit in 869—this old spiritual life moves over entirely into a political Church-Empire which extends over the greater part of Europe.
You know from history and from what I have related here from the spiritual-scientific point of view how this continuous cross-flow of the Roman ecclesiastical element, and that which tried more or less to free itself from it, produced conflicts, and how these conflicts really form a great part of medieval history. But one must look at the immense difference that exists between the whole social structure of the Middle Ages, which then dissolved into the modern states, and the social structure of the ancient Orient which was entirely permeated by the spirit, by the old instinctive clairvoyance, and all that this brought with it.
From what source did this ancient oriental vision receive its content? It was—one cannot put it differently—'inborn' (Angeborensein); for the sages of the Mysteries sought as their pupils those who had inborn faculties of such a nature that they were able to come to this instinctive perception. Out of the great mass of people those were chosen in whose blood it lay to have such vision. Thus one simply knew that in the human beings that were sent as children from the spiritual worlds into this physical world came remnants of the experiences in those spiritual worlds. (I am still speaking of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha approached or was already accomplished.) In one individual these came less; in another, more. With the blood, so to say, echoes from the experiences in the spiritual worlds came in. Those who had the largest number of instinctive memories of experiences before birth or conception were the suitable pupils for the Mysteries. They were able to comprehend and see, or, rather, were able through comprehending vision to recognize the intentions of the gods regarding human beings, for they had experienced this before birth and had an instinctive memory of it in this life on earth. And they were sought out by the wise men of the Mysteries, by the priests, to be placed before humanity as individuals who could bear witness to the will of the spiritual world with regard to the physical world. It was human beings such as these who were the first ones able to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha. One can certainly say that this was a very different way of placing a human being in the social order. He was placed in this social order by the gods themselves through the recognizing of this fact by the Mysteries.
The inborn faculties based on the action of the blood then gave way to the medieval wave. Human beings then had nothing, or they had less and less, of what is brought into the physical world at birth from the spiritual worlds. Certainly the people who counted had nothing of this. Nothing but an instinctive memory remained. So upon what basis could a social structure be founded? What could this be founded on in the dialectical-legal age? It could only be founded on authority—the authority claimed above all by the Popes of Rome. It was this authority that took the place of that which the priests of the ancient Mysteries had beheld and recognized as being sent from the spiritual worlds. In ancient times decisions were made as to what should happen in the social life according to what was brought from the spiritual worlds. This could now only be decided in that certain people—that is the Roman Popes and, by extension, the individual vassal princes of the Popes, the kings and other princes—were ascribed with a certain authority on earth, and ascribed through legal justification, by formal, legal right. Men must now command, since the gods no longer commanded. And who was to command had now to be established through external law.
Thus arose the medieval principle of authority and one can say that into this principle was also incorporated the whole perception of the Mystery of Golgotha which one only received as an account. At most one could clothe it in symbols, in which, however, one only had images. A symbol of this kind is the mass with the sacred Last Supper and all that the Christian could experience in the Church. In the Last Supper he had directly present, according to his comprehension, the entry of the Christ-force into the world. The fact that this Christ-force was able to stream into the physical world for the believers was subject to the authority which in turn proceeded from the ordinations of the Roman Church.
But what was developing here as the dialectical-legal Roman element also bore in its bosom, as it were, its other side. It bore the continuous protest against authority. For when everything is based on authority, as was the case in the Middle Ages, then there also already comes to expression in the human being that which is to come in the future: inner protest against authority. This inner protest against authority came to light through the most diverse historical phenomena, through such people as Wyclif,1 John Wyclif (c. 1324–84). Hus2 John Huss (1369–1415). and so on, who set themselves against the bare principle of authority, who wished to comprehend Christ out of their inner being—for which, however, the time had not yet come. In fact, one could only give onself up to the illusion that one grasped Christ out of one's own inner being.
Those men who still made their appearance as mystics in the Middle Ages also spoke of the Christ, but they did not yet have the Christ-experience. But they did have the old accounts concerning the Christ. And this rebellion against authority became stronger and stronger and because of this the urge to fortify this authority also naturally became stronger and stronger. And the strongest exercise of power to fortify this authority—to put, in a sense, everything that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha only on a basis of authority and permanently so—came from Jesuitism. Jesuitism has nothing more of the Christ. Jesuitism already contains in itself a complete rebellion against the original understanding of Christ. The first understanding occurred in Gnosis with the remains of the oriental clairvoyance. Jesuitism took up only the intellectual-dialectic element and rejected the Christ-principle. It did not develop a Christology but a fighting doctrine for Jesus: a Jesuology. Even though Jesus was seen as one reaching beyond all human beings, that which led to the Mystery of Golgotha through Jesuitism was nevertheless to be something founded purely on authority.
Thus was prepared the situation which then came about, with its culmination in the nineteenth century, in which the Christ-impulse as something spiritual was completely lost—in which theology, in wishing to be a modern theology, wanted to speak only of the man Jesus. But as this whole development took its course it gave rise to many difficult conditions. Take the fact that the existing accounts concerning the Mystery of Golgotha were taken up by the Roman principle into a purely juristic dialectics; that they were taken up through external symbolism which could be explained. It was then impossible to let these accounts, as they existed, come into the hands of the faithful. Thus the strict forbiddance for those of the Roman faith to read the Bible.
This was the most important fact right into the later Middle Ages; that the faithful were forbidden to read the Bible. It was considered by the priesthood and the leading Catholic circles that it would be the most frightful thing if the Gospels were to become known among the broad mass of the faithful. For the Gospels originate out of a completely different constitution of soul. The Gospels can only be understood through a spiritual constitution of soul. A dialectical soul-constitution can make nothing of them. It was therefore impossible for those times, in which the intellect and dialectics were prepared, to allow the masses access to the Gospels. The Church fought furiously against the Gospels becoming known and regarded those who went against the prohibition of reading them as the most flagrant heretics; like, for example, the Waldenses and Albigenses. These claimed the right to teach themselves about the Mystery of Golgotha through the Gospels. The Church opposed this because it knew full well that the way the Church itself presented the Mystery of Golgotha was irreconcilable with a common knowledge of the Gospels. For the Gospel in its true form actually consists of four Gospels which contradict one another. They knew that if they gave out the Gospels to the great mass of the faithful, the faithful would straightaway be confronted with contradictory accounts which, with the dawning intellectuality, they could only grasp as something to be understood as one understands things of the physical plane. After all, with an event on the physical plane one cannot understand why it ought to be described in four different ways. For an event that has to be understood by higher forces one is concerned with how it looks from this or that view, since it must always be seen from different sides. I have often said that this holds true even for dreams. People can dream the same thing; that is to say the same thing can take place within them but the pictures that are formed can differ in the most manifold ways. Thus for someone who stands in a spiritual relation to the Mystery of Golgotha the contradictions are of no significance.
But the people at the dawn of the Middle Ages did not stand in a spiritual relation; they stood in the sign of dialectics right into the lowest classes of the people. And for dialectics one could not simply give out a fourfold mutually contradictory account of the Mystery of Golgotha. And when Protestantism emerged and the Church could no longer maintain the prohibition of the Bible, there arose that discrepancy in European life which then led to the modern theology of the nineteenth century which finally erased from the Gospels everything that was contradictory. And what the Gospels have now become is, in the end, really just a well-picked carcass. The most meagre that has appeared, the most plucked, are the things which the famous Schmiedel has discovered. He considers the only genuine places in the Gospels are those where someone is not praised, where something disapproving is said, and dismisses everything else. And thus there arose the descriptions of Jesus of the theologians of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, who only wanted to describe Jesus the man and believed that with that they could still remain within Christianity. An intellectual-dialectical age could only remain within Christianity by prohibiting the Gospels. With the Gospels a dialectical-legal age could only have the effect of gradually eliminating the figure of Christ completely.
Modern humanity has actually developed under this untruth. This humanity has absolutely no inkling that, fundamentally, it lives under the principle of authority but continually denies that this is so. There is hardly a stronger stamp of the belief in authority than exists among those who accept modern official science as the standard for the world. Just look how easily people are satisfied when they are told somewhere that something has been 'scientifically proven'. They know nothing more about this proof than that it has been stated by someone who has been to grammar school and university, has become a lecturer or professor and has therefore been appointed again by authority. This is how this is promulgated. And then what gets out among people in this way is supposed to be true science. Just try sometime to hold in mind for yourself everything that people accept nowadays as being true, proven science. In the last analysis it rests upon nothing other than a pure principle of authority, on absolute faith in authority—it is only that people delude themselves about this. This is the belief in authority that has replaced the other way of ordering the social structure which was derived from the Orient.
And one must grasp what hatred developed within those circles who had no understanding at all for the Mystery of Golgotha, who had only tradition continued through authority, and were terrified of the Gospels becoming generally known among the masses. One must grasp the hatred that became ever stronger and stronger and especially in Jesuitism was developed into a complete system—a hatred for Gnosis. And even today we still see how theologians get hot under the collar whenever there is any talk of Gnosis! We have to understand this on the basis of the development of European humanity. One must, for example, understand the development of the universities. How have the universities developed? One should look at history from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries. They developed out of the Church. The monastery schools have become universities. Everything that was taught had to have the stamp of approval from Rome and only what had received this stamp was to be believed. The thought that it had to be approved by Rome was gradually lost but the thought that it had to be approved by something remained. And thus there remained the principle of authority even in those who no longer believed in Roman authority. And this continuation of the Roman authority-principle, but without a belief in Rome itself, is the mentality of our universities today. It is also the mentality in Protestant countries. The Catholic Church only fights on for its authority, with the exclusion of everything spiritual; it calumniates everything that goes beyond its dialectical-legal mode of thinking, calumniates everything which resists being fitted into the social authority principle. One must only understand how deeply this has penetrated into the soul-constitution of those human beings living at the dawn of our modern civilization. In this way the majority lost the power to face the truth for themselves and in the last resort this has produced the great confusion; the frightful chaos in which we are now living.
But at the same time we are now living,in an age in which a faculty of vision, of supersensible perception, is again being prepared. It is the wish of spiritual science to prepare for this faculty which humanity must take hold of again. Not the old instinctive vision, but a supersensible perception founded on full consciousness. Theology professors and others fight against this perception; they confuse it with the old Gnostic visionary gift and say all sorts of things they do not understand themselves against this modern faculty. But this new vision is rising up as a necessity which must take hold of humanity. And it is into this faculty of vision that a true comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha can shine again.
Thus, the course of man's image of Christ is as follows. The Mystery of Golgotha takes place at a time in which remnants of the old clairvoyance still exist. Human beings can still just about understand it. They set down this understanding in the Gospels. Christianity moves westwards and it taken up by Rome in the dialectical spirit. It is understood less and less. People talk in words about the Mystery of Golgotha; in words that are merely words so that the faithful are also quite content when they are in church and the priest speaks words in a language they do not understand. For it is not a matter for them of understanding but a matter, at most, of living in the general atmosphere which is directed to the Mystery of Golgotha. And the real connection of human beings with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost. It is lost more and more. At a certain point in the Middle Ages people begin to debate the significance of the symbol in which the continuous communication of the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself. People begin to debate, for example, the significance of the Last Supper. But as soon as people begin to debate something it means they no longer understand it. What lives in the evolution of humanity lives as experience; as long as people have the experience they do not dispute it. When the conflict over the nature of the Last Supper arose in the Middle Ages the very last traces of understanding for the Last Supper were gone—the play of dialectics had already taken possession of it. And so the modern life of humanity unfolded until the prohibition of the Bible could no longer hold. In theory, all Catholics are still forbidden to read it. Theoretically they are allowed to read only that extract that is prepared as if the Gospels were a unity. Even today it is strictly forbidden for Catholics to occupy themselves with the four Gospels because, of course, the moment one goes into the four gospels with the modern spirit, where they are read in the same way one reads an account of the physical plane, they fragment into shreds. It is irresponsible when people who are fully aware of this and who have also experienced how in the course of the nineteenth century, under the philologizing of theology, the Gospels have been destroyed—when these people have the cheek, it cannot be called anything else, to say that Anthroposophy explains the Gospels in an arbitrary way, that it reads all sorts of things into them. These people know that the connection with the Mystery of Golgotha is lost if the Gospels are not understood in a spiritual sense. One experiences people getting up onto the platform and again and again gabbling from a Catholic or Protestant point of view about how Anthroposophy puts things into the Gospels although they know perfectly well that if no spiritual comprehension is given to the Gospels they must radically destroy the Christian constitution of soul. If people would only pay more attention to how the majority of those who utter such nonsense about Anthroposophy are really only concerned with keeping their office in the most comfortable way, in the way they learnt in their youth—if people knew that in these theologians there is living not the slightest feeling for truth but only fear of losing their comfortable way of comprehending things—then we would get much further in rejecting the sort of Frolinmeyers and similar people who no longer possess the slightest spark of any sense of truth.
What is to be saved today is the Mystery of Golgotha itself. And preparation must be made so that this Mystery of Golgotha may shine forth again to human imagination. For it cannot shine forth to the intellect. The intellect can only dissolve it. The intellect can either only wipe it from the world with its art of philology or preserve it by a tyrannical authority in the Jesuitical sense which does not strive for truth but only for a comfortable life. For those, however, who strive for truth the path today leads towards Imagination; that is to conscious perception of the spiritual world. And the important thing is that, from the vantage point of this conscious perception of the spiritual world, One should be in the position to comprehend once again the whole being of humanity. Above all, it is essential that all human education and instruction be given from this point of view.
We know that until the age of seven, until the change of teeth, the child lives in imitation. Imitation is, in fact, nothing less than a continuation of what, in a completely different form, was present in the spirit world before birth or conception. There, in the spiritual world, one being merges into another and this is then expressed in the child's imitation of the people around it, as an echo of its spiritual experiences. Then, from the seventh Year, from the change of teeth up to puberty, comes the child's need for authority. What still lives in childish imitation lived in a certain way in the whole human nature during the ancient oriental culture. Those who worked out of the Mysteries worked with such a powerful force that other human beings followed them, as the child follows the grown-ups in its environment. Then came the principle of authority. And now the human being is growing out of this principle and is growing into that principle which begins to show itself after puberty—although of course in a personal, individual way, different from the way it is in the development of humanity as a whole. Today the human being is approaching the time when it will be necessary to develop in himself something which cannot be developed of itself. The child comes into the world as an imitator. In the ancient oriental social life it also came into the world as an imitator. But what lived in the child as the principle of imitation remained active even into the time of authority: the time of discerning judgements, remained active with regard to social affairs and everything that was encompassed as the religious life. The authority-principle in the ancient Orient applied only to the immediate environment. The greater affairs of life remained in the form of child-like experience.
These larger affairs of life then came into the times of the Middle Ages. The authority-principle prevailed and now, for the first time, a withdrawl from the authority-principle asserted itself—the principle of individual judgement arose. All that was developed for the affairs of the religious life, the artistic life -for human life in general that goes over and beyond the immediate elementary affairs of nature—could be found in the child, who brought it with him into the physical world from the spiritual worlds through the blood. When the authority principle still held sway, one only needed to build upon something which, with a certain necessity, developed out of the still quite unconscious etheric body. Today, when the principle of independent judgment is appearing, there arises an enormous new responsibility for pedagogy and didactics. There arises the fact that one must look in the growing child towards what will emerge. When a child reaches the age of fifteen the astral body is born in him. There is born in him that which carries into the world—now not unconsciously but in a more and more conscious way- the experiences of the spiritual world.
The time is approaching when in all our education and training we must look to what emerges from the child when he is in the fourteenth, fifteenth years of life. This was not of such great importance in all earlier times for it is connected with what lives independently in the human being which he does not bring with him through birth and which he cannot receive through authority but must really draw out of himself. And in order that he may draw it out of himself rightly we must take care that the child has the right upbringing and education up to the fourteenth, fifteenth years so that in those years he can then develop the astral body in the right way. Education and training take on a completely new significance in our modern time and, in fact, there should be no more teaching without insight into the relation of the human being to the spiritual world. That is the battle that is arising.
The sense of 'I' which pressed to the surface of human consciousness in the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe asserted itself, as it were, out of still instinctive depths. In Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, however, this sense of 'I' dealt only with what man experiences between birth and death and had nothing to do with what is the super-physical human being. I said yesterday that the Mid-European was cut off by Turkey and by the influence of Peter the Great from anything oriental. But what continued to hover before the Mid-European as a revelation still lived on as an inheritance. This was really only understood out of the clairvoyance of the ancient Orient but still had its echoes in Asiatic Russia, the Russia not yet Europeanized.
Revelation is still alive today in Asia although in a completely decadent form. A sense for revelation is there still. The intellectual, the purely dialectical element, belongs to the West and is only developed today for the economic life. The Mid-European element was always hemmed in between these two—the Western intellectualism, still entirely restricted to the earthly economic, human reason that wishes to occupy itself only with external experience, and the oriental revelation. And the clouds gathered ever more threateningly since only a kind of rhythmic balance existed between revelation and reason. What the great Scholastics of the Middle Ages had sought to hold apart—a rational grasp of the outer sense-world and supersensible revelation—collided increasingly into one another as the modern age arose. And we see this mutual interlocking particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century when the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe was born. We see then how the Western element expands in the second half of the nineteenth century; how, to a certain degree, the whole of Europe, even up to Russia, is Anglicized, and how the crushed condition, the devastated state, of Central Europe is an external sign of a deep inner process which humanity today is unwilling to grasp. Everything that is hemmed in between West and East is razed to the ground, is dashed to pieces, and does not know what to do. It lives in upheavals; talks of all sorts of things by which, somehow or other, progress can be made—but talks, however, nothing but nullities. This is expressed right into small details. There is an utter inability to cope with economics under the old conditions. What do people do? They either squeeze out of the old what is still left by a dreadful tightening of taxation or they fill what is lacking by printing worthless notes; millions of bank-notes a week. And though it is perhaps only a symbol, there nevertheless stands before the soul of individual people the following: a decadent clinging to revelation in the East, the nullity of the Centre and the rationality of the West, still bogged down in economics. And yet they talk as if of a future perspective—as though the Centre were simply not there—of the great conflict that lies ahead between Japan and America.
People, of course, picture this purely physically. This also signifies something of immense profundity. And when the decadent element existing in the East and that which is as yet unborn in the West clash together through ignoring the Centre—then the sense of 'I' which came to expression in the Centre is submerged in that chaos that arises through the crushing from East to West. Contemplation of the 'I' vanished with the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe. It has ceased to exist since the middle of the nineteenth century. And what people tried to create as political structure out of the upheavals—that, too, lies on the ground today. Impossible political structures spring up like that of Czechoslovakia which, quite certainly, in the long run cannot live and cannot die. These impossible structures can only spring up through the fact that peace is made by the people of the West who have no idea what the conditions for life are in the Centre. In Zurich people listen to someone or other who comes from Paris and holds forth to them brilliantly, as one says, on the unity of the Slovak and the Czech elements. The listeners are astounded at what such a professor makes known about the predestination of Czechoslovakia, because they have no idea of the conditions for life in the East and because they do not know that what is brought into being there is only the squeezing element, the crushing together of East and West. People still cover their eyes so as not to see what the external symptoms are saying. You won't believe how, even here in Central Europe, scenes take place—though at the present time still very much towards the East—where remnants of the troops who carried the war on their shoulders appear here and there. They are now officers although there is no justification for this under present conditions. They make innocent women dance naked before them and then thrust bayonets into their bellies. Such scenes actually take place at the command of people who, incidentally, fought bravely in the war.
Before all these things the deluded men of the West, who conclude a peace of which they understand nothing, cover up their eyes. They do not see how, in what is actually going on, significant things proclaim themselves. And, for the most part, people go on with life as though nothing were happening in the world at all. And thus, one could say, things are driven into the very narrowest corner of the consciousness. That which once brought forth such idealistic heights—such ideas as one finds in Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel—in reality no longer exists in public life. And when it tries to assert itself, as here in the Goetheanum, it is slandered. Trumped-up slanderous stuff crops up everywhere; people cite it as something which they pretend to understand and must pass judgment on. Something is developing into nullity which a century ago was still radiant spirit-life. And above this the clouds are rolling together from the East and the West.
And what is the meaning of this that must come to expression In the most frightful way in coming decades? What is its Meaning? On the one hand it is the challenge to stand firm on the ground that would give birth to the new life of the spirit. On the other hand it is the sign in the heavens of that which has been spoken about among us for some time: the approach of the Christ in the form in which He must be seen from the twentieth century onwards. For, before the middle of this century has passed, the Christ must be seen. But before that, all that remains of the old must be driven into nullity, the clouds must gather. The human being must find his full freedom out of nullity and the new perception must be born out of this nullity. The human being must find his whole strength out of the nothingness. It is but the desire of spiritual science to prepare him for it. This is something of which one may not say that it desires to, but that it must desire to!
Sechster Vortrag
Soll das Verständnis für dasjenige, was man nennen kann die Wiedererscheinung des Christus, in der richtigen Art in der Seele Platz greifen, dann ist nötig, daß man sich ein vorbereitendes Verständnis verschafft für den Gang, den die Christus-Idee, die Christus-Vorstellung im Laufe der Menschheitsgeschichte genommen hat. Wir erinnern uns, daß die Menschheitsentwickelung von einer Seelenverfassung ausgegangen ist, die wir oft genannt haben eine Art instinktiver Anschauung, eine Hellsichtigkeit, welche dumpf, traumhaft war. Nun haben wir ja zu wiederholten Malen die verschiedenen Epochen der Menschheitsentwickelung so charakterisiert, daß wir die entsprechende Form dieser Seelenverfassungen in die Zeiten hineingestellt haben.
Heute wollen wir uns daran erinnern, daß starke Reste des alten hellsichtigen Zustandes der Menschheit noch vorhanden waren in der Zeit, als das Mysterium von Golgatha geschah. Das Mysterium von Golgatha hat man zunächst aufzufassen als eine Tatsache, aber als eine solche Tatsache, die ihrer Wesenheit nach niemals durchschaut werden kann mit dem Intellekt, der seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts die Seelenverfassung der modernen Zivilisation ausmacht, der aber sich schon vorbereitete seit der griechischen, der römischen Zeit. So daß man sagen kann: Während die griechische Geschichte abläuft, die römische Geschichte abläuft und das Mysterium von Golgatha sich auf der Erde vollzieht, sind noch starke Reste des alten Hellsehens unter vielen Menschen vorhanden. Andere Menschen haben dieses Hellsehen schon verloren, sind durchaus schon in den Anfängen der intellektuellen Entwickelung darinnen. Das war insbesondere bei den Römern der Fall. Und man kann daher sagen, daß seiner Wirklichkeit nach, seiner Wesenheit nach zunächst das Mysterium von Golgatha nur von denjenigen aufgefaßt werden konnte, die noch Reste des alten Hellsehens hatten. Es konnte beschrieben werden, es konnte das Symbol auch angedeutet werden bei denen, die solche Reste des alten Hellsehens nicht hatten. Dieses instinktive Hellsehen war insbesondere eine Eigenschaft der alten orientalischen Bevölkerung, und im wesentlichen ist es auch in seinen Resten vorzugsweise bei den Orientalen vorhanden gewesen. Schließlich ist ja unter den Orientalen auch der Christus Jesus über die Erde gegangen. So daß aus den Resten alter orientalischer Weisheit zunächst das Mysterium von Golgatha verstanden worden ist. Als dann dieses Mysterium von Golgatha herüberwanderte nach dem Westen zu den Griechen, zu den Römern, da konnte man dasjenige übernehmen, was solche Leute sagten, welche aus den Resten des alten Hellsehens heraus noch verstanden hatten, was da eigentlich auf der Erde sich zugetragen hatte. Und damit auch eine Anschauung durch seelische Augenzeugenschaft vorhanden sei, erstand in Paulus durch eine besondere, im späteren Lebensalter erst eintretende Erleuchtung der Zustand eines solchen Hellsehens, in dem er, Paulus, sich überzeugen konnte von der Wahrheit, von der Echtheit des Mysteriums von Golgatha. Was Paulus sagen konnte aus seiner Überzeugung heraus, was diejenigen, die sich die Reste alten Hellsehens bewahrt hatten, aus der alten orientalischen Urweisheit heraus aufstellen konnten über das Mysterium von Golgatha, das konnte man dann übernehmen als Nachrichten, konnte es einkleiden in die Form des aufkeimenden Intellektes; aber eigentlich durchschauen konnte man mit diesem Intellekt zunächst das Mysterium von Golgatha nicht. Die Art und Weise, wie diejenigen, die noch Reste alten Hellsehens hatten, von dem Mysterium von Golgatha sprachen, die bezeichnete man als die gnostische. Und ich möchte sagen, die Form, vom Mysterium von Golgatha zu sprechen, so wie man es eben vermochte mit diesen Resten alten Hellsehens, das ist die christliche Gnosis. Auf die Art und Weise, wie ich es geschildert habe in meinem Buche «Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache», ist dann die Darstellung des Mysteriums von Golgatha auf die Nachwelt gekommen. Also das erste Verständnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha wurde erreicht durch diese Reste des alten Hellsehens, durch altes orientalisches instinktives Anschauen. Man möchte sagen, dieses alte orientalische instinktive Anschauen hat sich bis zu dem Mysterium von Golgatha in genügender Ausdehnung erhalten, damit auch noch eine wirkliche menschliche Auffassung dieses Mysteriums Platz greifen könne, ehe der Intellekt hereinbricht und das Verständnis für das Mysterium von Golgatha nicht mehr vorhanden sein kann. Wäre das Mysterium von Golgatha in der Zeit der Vollblüte des Intellekts gekommen, so hätte es auf die Menschheit selbstverständlich gar keinen Eindruck gemacht.
Nun also lebten die Mitteilungen von dem Mysterium von Golgatha in den Berichten der alten Hellseher, und im Grunde genommen - Sie wissen das ja aus meiner Darstellung im «Christentum als mystische Tatsache» - sind die Evangelien nichts weiter als solche durch Hellsehen gewonnene Nachrichten über das Mysterium von Golgatha. Nun aber breitete sich über die Menschheitsentwickelung jene Welle aus, die schon im Griechentum, wie ich Ihnen dargestellt habe, Wurzel gefaßt hat, welche vorzugsweise ihren Quell im Römertum hat, und die man bezeichnen kann als die Welle, welche die spätere Intellektualität vorbereitete, in der diese Intellektualität aber schon lebte. Es breitete sich aus das juristisch-dialektische Denken, dasjenige Denken, das dann auch zum staatlich-politischen Denken geführt hat. Das breitete sich vom Süden her aus, drang in jene Gegenden, in denen, wie ich Ihnen gestern gesagt habe, noch Naturalwirtschaft war, drang ein in die nördlichen Gebiete. Es bildete sich die mitteleuropäische Zivilisation, die zunächst, von Rom aus genährt, vorzugsweise im Zeichen der intellektualistischen, also eigentlich der juristisch-dialektischen Entfaltung der menschlichen Seele stand. Innerhalb alles dessen, was sich da abspielte, konnte man nicht mehr im Sinne der alten Geistigkeit das Mysterium selber anschauen, sondern man bekam eben die Berichte, man bekam die Tradition und kleidete das in die Form der Seelenverfassung, die man hatte. Man kleidete es immer mehr und mehr in die Dialektik. Durch das Römertum wurde das Mysterium von Golgatha eingekleidet in diese Dialektik. Aus dem, was christliche Gnosis war, was noch auf Schauen beruhte, bildete sich heraus die reine dialektische Theologie, die Hand in Hand ging mit der Einrichtung der europäischen Reichsgebilde, die dann später zu Staaten wurden. Aber das erste große Reich war eigentlich das verweltlichte Kirchenreich, das von römisch-juristischen Formen durchzogene Kirchenreich. Äußerlich haben sich ja viele Tatsachen abgespielt, welche zeigen, wie sich dieses juristisch-dialektische, politische Denken, in das sich das alte orientalische Schauen einkleidete, über Europa ausbreitete.
Karl der Große zum Beispiel wurde ein Lehensträger des Papstes. Seine Kaiserwürde war ihm vom Papste verliehen. Und wenn man die Ausbreitung der ganzen Herrschaft Karls des Großen studiert, so findet man auf der einen Seite unter den Kräften, durch die diese Herrschaft Karls des Großen sich ausbreitete, den kirchlich-theologischen Einfluß. Eine Art theokratischen Reiches breitete sich aus; aber das wird überall durchsetzt von den Formen des Juristisch-Dialektischen. Die Geistlichen sind die Beamten; sie bekleiden die Staatsämter, sie vereinigen in ihrer Person das politische Element mit dem kirchlichen Elemente. Das alte, auf Schauen beruhende geistige Leben, das den Geist überhaupt schon im Jahre 869 abgeschafft hatte, wie wir öfter besprochen haben, geht ganz und gar über in ein politisches Kirchenreich, das sich über den größten Teil der europäischen Territorien ausbreitete.
Sie kennen aus der Geschichte und aus dem, was ich hier schon dargestellt habe vom geisteswissenschaftlichen Standpunkte, wie dieses fortwährende Ineinanderfluten des Römisch-Kirchlichen und dessen, was mehr oder weniger sich wiederum losmachen wollte vom RömischKirchlichen, gegeneinander kämpfte, und wie diese Kämpfe im Grunde genommen einen großen Teil der mittelalterlichen Geschichte bilden. Aber schauen muß man auf den gewaltigen Unterschied, der besteht zwischen der ganzen sozialen Struktur dieses mittelalterlichen Gebildes, das dann in die neueren Staaten aufging, und der sozialen Struktur des alten Orients, die durchaus durchgeistigt war von dem alten instinktiven Schauen und von alledem, was dieses Schauen im Gefolge hatte.
Woher kam denn eigentlich das, was der Inhalt des alten orientalischen Schauens war? Es kam, man kann nicht anders sagen, vom Angeborensein; denn diejenigen, die Mysterienweise waren, suchten eben zu ihren Schülern wiederum Menschen, die solche angeborenen Fähigkeiten hatten, daß sie zu diesem instinktiven Schauen kommen konnten. Man wählte aus der großen Masse der Menschen diejenigen aus, denen es im Blute lag, solches Schauen zu haben. Man war sich also klar darüber, daß einfach in den Menschen, die aus geistigen Welten als Kinder in diese physische Welt hereingesandt werden, Reste der Erlebnisse in den geistigen Welten mitkommen. Ich rede immer von den Zeiten, in denen das Mysterium von Golgatha herannahte oder schon da war. Mit dem einen kam weniger, mit dem anderen kam mehr herein. Ich möchte sagen, mit dem Blute kamen noch Nachklänge aus den Erlebnissen der geistigen Welten herein. Diejenigen, welche die allermeisten instinktiven Erinnerungen hatten an das Erleben vor der Geburt oder vor der Empfängnis, die waren die geeigneten Mysterienschüler. Sie konnten begreifen und schauen, beziehungsweise sie konnten durch begreifendes Schauen erkennen, was die Götter mit den Menschen für Absichten hatten, denn sie hatten das erlebt vor der Geburt, und sie hatten eine instinktive Erinnerung daran in diesem Erdenleben. Und sie wurden ausgesucht von den Mysterienweisen, von den Priestern, um nun wiederum vor die Menschheit hingestellt zu werden als diejenigen, die nun Zeugen waren für das, was die geistige Welt mit der physischen Welt will. Solche Menschen waren es, die zuerst reden konnten von dem Mysterium von Golgatha. Man kann sagen, es war das ein ganz anderes Hineinstellen des Menschen in die soziale Ordnung. Er wurde so hineingestellt in diese soziale Ordnung, wie die Mysterien erkannten, daß er von den Göttern selber da hineingestellt war.
An die Stelle der angeborenen Fähigkeiten durch die Blutwirkung trat nun jene mittelalterliche Welt, wo nichts mehr oder immer weniger in den Menschen war, wo jedenfalls in den maßgebenden Menschen nichts mehr war von dem, was durch die Geburt aus geistigen Welten in die physische Welt hereingebracht wird, wo nichts mehr als instinktive Erinnerung da war. Worauf konnte man also dasjenige begründen, was soziale Struktur unter den Menschen war? Worauf konnte man das im dialektisch-juristischen Zeitalter begründen? Man konnte es nur begründen auf Autorität. Die Autorität, welche vor allen Dingen die römischen Päpste für sich in Anspruch nahmen, diese Autorität war es, welche an die Stelle dessen trat, was erkennend die alten Mysterienpriester schauten als das von den geistigen Welten Herübergebrachte. Nach dem, was aus den geistigen Welten herübergebracht wurde, hatte man in alten Zeiten auch das entschieden, was im sozialen Leben geschehen soll. Jetzt konnte man das nur dadurch entscheiden, daß gewissen Leuten, also den römischen Päpsten, und in übertragener Bedeutung dann den einzelnen Lehensfürsten der römischen Päpste, den Königen und anderen Fürsten, eine gewisse Autorität auf Erden zugesprochen wurde, daß ihnen gewissermaßen durch juristische Rechtfertigung, durch formales Recht solch eine Autorität zugesprochen wurde. Die Menschen hatten jetzt zu befehlen, da die Götter nicht mehr befahlen. Und dieses: wer zu befehlen hatte, das mußte eben nur durch äußeres Recht festgelegt werden.
So kam das Autoritätsprinzip des Mittelalters herauf, und man kann sagen, in dieses Autoritätsprinzip wurde auch eingegliedert die ganze Anschauung von dem Mysterium von Golgatha, die man ja eben nur als Mitteilung empfing. Höchstens konnte man sie in Symbole kleiden, wo man aber nur Bilder hatte. Ein solches Symbol ist das Meßopfer mit dem heiligen Abendmahl, ist alles das, was der Christ in der Kirche erleben konnte. In dem Abendmahl hatte er unmittelbar gegenwärtig nach seiner Auffassung, was das Hereinkraften der ChristusKraft in die physische Welt war. Daß diese Christus-Kraft für die Gläubigen hereinströmen konnte in die physische Welt, das wurde unter Autorität gestellt, das ging wiederum aus von den Weihen der römischen Kirche.
Aber das, was sich da als juristisch-dialektisch-römisches Element heraufentwickelte, das trug gewissermaßen in seinem Schoße auch seine andere Seite. Es trug wiederum den fortwährenden Protest in sich gegen die Autorität. Denn wenn alles auf Autorität gestellt ist, wie es im Mittelalter der Fall war, dann äußert sich im Menschen schon wiederum dasjenige, was zukünftig kommen soll: der innerliche Protest gegen die Autorität. Dieser innerliche Protest gegen die Autorität trat durch die verschiedensten geschichtlichen Erscheinungen zutage durch solche Leute wie Wyclif, Hus und so weiter, die sich auflehnten gegen das bloße Autoritätsprinzip, die den Christus aus ihrem Inneren heraus begreifen wollten, wozu die Zeit aber dazumal noch nicht da war. So daß man sich im Grunde genommen nur der Täuschung hingeben konnte, man begreife den Christus aus dem Inneren heraus.
Diejenigen, die noch in mittelalterlichen Zeiten als Mystiker auftraten, sprachen auch von dem Christus, aber sie hatten noch nicht das Christus-Erlebnis. Sie hatten doch im Grunde genommen nur die alten Nachrichten von dem Christus. Und immer stärker und stärker wurde diese Auflehnung gegen die Autorität. Dadurch wurde auch natürlich immer stärker der Drang, diese Autorität zu befestigen. Und die stärkste Aufwendung von Kraft, um diese Autorität zu befestigen, um gewissermaßen das, was von dem Mysterium von Golgatha ausgeht, nur auf Autorität zu stellen, gewissermaßen so auf Autorität zu stellen, daß es ewig nur auf Autorität sein könne, das ist dann der Jesuitismus. Der Jesuitismus hat nichts mehr von dem Christus. Der Jesuitismus enthält in sich schon die ganze volle Auflehnung gegen das erste Verständnis des Christus. Das erste Verständnis war eben mit den Resten des orientalischen Hellsehens in der Gnosis geschehen. Der Jesuitismus nahm nur das Intellektuell-Dialektische in sich auf, er wies zurück das Christus-Prinzip. Er bildete keine Christologie aus, er bildete eine Kampflehre für den Jesus aus, eine Jesulogie. Wenn auch der Jesus angesehen wurde als etwas über alle Menschen Hinausragendes, so sollte aber doch dasjenige, was durch den Jesuitismus zu dem Mysterium von Golgatha hinführte, eben nur etwas sein, was rein auf Autorität gestellt ist.
So wurde vorbereitet, was dann kam, und dessen Kulmination wir dann im 19. Jahrhundert die Menschen erleben sehen, wo der ChristusImpuls als etwas Spirituelles, als etwas Geistiges vollständig verlorengegangen war, wo die Theologie, insofern sie moderne Theologie sein wollte, nur noch von dem Menschen Jesus reden wollte. Indem diese ganze Entwickelung vor sich gegangen war, hatten sich aber manche, ich möchte sagen, Mißstände ergeben. Nehmen Sie die Tatsache, daß von dem römischen Prinzip in rein juristischer Dialektik übernommen worden ist, was an Nachrichten über das Mysterium von Golgatha vorhanden war, daß es übernommen worden ist durch äußere Symbolik, die gedeutet werden kann: dann war keine Möglichkeit, die Nachrichten, wie sie vorhanden waren, unter die Gläubigen kommen zu lassen. Daher das strenge Verbot für die Gläubigen Roms, die Bibel zu lesen. Das ist ja die wichtigste kirchliche Tatsache bis ins späteste Mittelalter herein, daß das Verbot bestand für die Gläubigen, die Bibel zu lesen. Als das Furchtbarste sah man an innerhalb der Priesterschaft, innerhalb der leitenden katholischen Kreise, wenn das Evangelium bekannt würde in der breiten Masse der Gläubigen. Denn das Evangelium stammt aus einer ganz anderen Seelenverfassung. Das Evangelium ist nur verständlich aus einer geistigen Seelenverfassung heraus. Eine dialektische Seelenverfassung kann mit dem Evangelium gar nichts anfangen. Es ist unmöglich gewesen daher für diese Zeiten, in denen sich der Intellekt, in denen sich die Dialektik vorbereitete, das Evangelium in die Massen kommen zu lassen. Die Kirche kämpft wütend gegen das Bekanntwerden des Evangeliums, und sie sieht als die wildesten Ketzer diejenigen an, die sich gegen das Verbot des Lesens des Evangeliums auflehnen, wie zum Beispiel die Waldenser oder die Albigenser; die machten Ansprüche darauf, durch das Evangelium selber unterrichtet zu werden über das Mysterium von Golgatha. Dagegen lehnte sich die Kirche auf, denn die Kirche wußte ganz gut: Mit der Art, wie sie das Mysterium von Golgatha behandelte, ist das Bekanntwerden des Evangeliums nicht vereinbar, denn dieses Evangelium in seiner wahren Gestalt besteht ja aus vier Evangelien, die einander widersprechen. Man wußte, wenn man der großen Masse der Gläubigen hinausgibt die Evangelien, so bekommen sie zunächst nichts anderes als widersprechende Berichte, die sie aber unter der aufkeimenden Intellektualität nur als etwas auffassen konnten, das sie so verstehen mußten, wie man auf dem physischen Plan versteht. Ja, bei einem Ereignis auf dem physischen Plan kann man nicht verstehen, daß es in vier verschiedenen Formen beschrieben werden soll. Für ein Ereignis, das verstanden werden muß mit höheren Kräften, kommt es darauf an, wie es, da es immer von verschiedenen Seiten angesehen werden muß, von der einen oder von der anderen Seite sich ausnimmt. Ich habe öfter gesagt, selbst für Träume gilt das; Menschen können das Gleiche träumen, das heißt, in ihrem Inneren kann das Gleiche vorgehen; dasjenige aber, was sich ihnen in Bildern formt, das kann in der verschiedensten Weise differieren. So können für den, der in einer spirituellen Art zu dem Mysterium von Golgatha steht, die Widersprüche der Evangelien nichts bedeuten. Aber in spirituellem Verhältnis standen ja die Menschen des heraufkommenden Mittelalters nicht, sie standen im Zeichen der Dialektik bis in die untersten Schichten des Volkes hinein. Für diese Dialektik konnte man nicht ein vierfach sich widersprechendes Berichterstatten über das Mysterium von Golgatha herausgeben. Und als die Kirche das Bibelverbot nicht mehr halten konnte, als der Protestantismus heraufkam, da ergab sich eben jene Diskrepanz im europäischen Leben, die dann zu der modernen Theologie des 19. Jahrhunderts führte, wo man zuletzt alles hinwegradiert hat aus den Evangelien, was sich widersprach. Und zuletzt ist ja nun wirklich aus den Evangelien ein sehr gerupftes Hühnchen geworden. Das Magerste, was entstanden ist, das am meisten Gerupfte sind die Dinge, die der von dieser Seite her berühmte Schmiedel herausgefunden hat, der die Stellen, wo irgend jemand in den Evangelien nicht gelobt wird, wo irgend etwas Abfälliges gesagt wird, für das einzig Echte hielt und alles übrige abfertigte. Und so entstanden die Jesus-Beschreibungen der Theologen des 19. Jahrhunderts und des beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts, die nur den Menschen Jesus beschreiben wollten und glaubten, sie könnten damit noch innerhalb des Christentums stehen. Innerhalb des Christentums konnte eine intellektualistisch-dialektische Zeit nur stehen bei dem Verbot der Evangelien. Mit den Evangelien konnte eine dialektisch-juristische Zeit nur das bewirken, daß sie den Christus nach und nach als solchen vollständig ausschaltete.
Unter dieser Unwahrheit entwickelte sich eigentlich die neuere Menschheit. Diese neuere Menschheit ahnt gar nicht, daß sie im Grunde genommen ganz und gar unter dem Prinzip der Autorität lebt, sich aber fortwährend selber ableugnet, daß sie unter diesem Prinzip der Autorität lebt. Es gibt kaum eine stärkere Ausprägung des Autoritätsglaubens, als es bei all denen der Fall ist, welche die heutige offizielle Wissenschaft als das Mafßgebende für die Welt annehmen. Sehen wir doch, wie die Leute sich befriedigt erklären, wenn sie irgendwo gesagt bekommen, irgend etwas sei «wissenschaftlich festgestellt». Sie wissen gar nichts anderes über diese wissenschaftliche Feststellung, als daß es von einem Menschen gesagt worden ist, der sein Gymnasium, seine Universitätsstudien durchgemacht hat, der Privatdozent, Universitätsprofessor geworden ist, der also durch Autoritäten wiederum eingesetzt worden ist; da wird das verbreitet. Dann ist das, was auf diese Weise unter die Menschen kommt, sichere Wissenschaft. Versuchen Sie sich einmal zusammenzuhalten dasjenige, wovon die Menschen heute annehmen, es sei festgestellte sichere Wissenschaft. Es beruht letzten Endes man täuscht sich nur darüber, man gibt sich nur Illusionen darüber hin — auf nichts anderem als auf einem ganz reinen Autoritätsprinzip, auf reinstem Autoritätsglauben. Das ist der Autoritätsglaube, der eben heraufgekommen ist, indem er ersetzt hat die andere Art, auf die soziale Struktur zu wirken, die noch vom Orientalischen herstammte.
Und begreifen muß man, welcher Haß sich ausbildete innerhalb derjenigen Kreise, die gar kein Verständnis mehr hatten für das Mysterium von Golgatha, die ein nur traditionell durch Autorität Fortgepflanztes hatten, denen angst und bange war vor dem Bekanntwerden des Evangeliums unter der großen Masse, begreifen muß man den Haß, der eigentlich immer stärker und stärker wurde und besonders innerhalb des Jesuitismus dann zum vollständigsten System ausgebildet worden ist: den Haß auf dasjenige, was die Gnosis war. Und heute sehen wir immer noch gerade die Theologen da, wo irgendwo von Gnosis die Rede ist, rote Köpfe bekommen! Wir müssen das aus der historischen Entwickelung der europäischen Menschheit heraus verstehen. Man muß zum Beispiel die Entwickelung der Universitäten verstehen. Wie haben sich die Universitäten entwickelt? Man sehe die Geschichte vom 11. bis zum 13.,14. Jahrhundert nach: Aus der Kirche heraus haben sie sich entwickelt. Die Klosterschulen sind Universitäten geworden. Alles, was gelehrt wurde, sollte von Rom abgestempelt sein, nur was von Rom abgestempelt war, das war wirklich zu glauben. Dafür, daß es von Rom abgestempelt sein sollte, verlor sich dann allmählich der Gedanke. Aber daß es irgendwie doch abgestempelt sein mußte, das blieb. Und so blieb das Autoritätsprinzip auch bei denen, die nicht mehr an die römische Autorität glaubten. Und ohne daß man an Rom, an die römische Autorität selber glaubt, ist dieses Fortleben des römischen Autoritätsprinzipes die Seelenverfassung des heutigen Universitätslebens. Es ist die Seelenverfassung auch in protestantischen Ländern. Die katholische Kirche kämpft eben nur für ihre Autorität mit Ausschluß alles Geistigen weiter, verleumdet alles, was über ihre dialektisch-juristische Denkweise hinausragt, verleumdet alles, was sich nicht in das soziale Autoritätsprinzip einfügen lassen will. Man muß nur verstehen, wie tief das hineingekraftet hat in die Seelenverfassung derjenigen Menschen, die dann im Heraufkommen der modernen Zivilisation lebten. Bei den meisten ging ja gerade dadurch ein SichStellen zu dem Inhalt der Wahrheit verloren, und das gab dann letzten Endes die große Verwirrung, das furchtbare Chaos, innerhalb dessen wir jetzt leben.
Nun aber leben wir zugleich in einer Zeit, in welcher sich wieder vorbereitet ein Schauen. Geisteswissenschaft will ja vorbereiten auf dieses Schauen, das die Menschheit wiederum ergreifen muß. Nicht das alte instinktive Schauen, sondern ein Schauen, das auf volles Bewußtsein gebaut ist. Theologieprofessoren und andere kämpfen gegen dieses Schauen. Sie verwechseln es mit dem alten gnostischen Schauen; sie reden allerlei Dinge, die sie selber nicht verstehen, gegen dieses moderne Schauen. Aber dieses moderne Schauen zieht herauf als eine Notwendigkeit, von der die Menschheit ergriffen werden muß. Und in dieses Schauen kann nun wiederum ein wirkliches Erfassen des Mysteriums von Golgatha hineinleuchten.
So daß der Gang der Christus-Vorstellung eigentlich dieser ist: Das Mysterium von Golgatha geschieht in einer Zeit, in der noch Reste alten Hellsehens vorhanden waren. Die Menschen können es gerade noch verstehen. Sie legen dieses Verständnis in die Evangelien hinein. Das Christentum wandert nach Westen, wird vom Römertum mit dialektischem Geiste aufgenommen. Es wird immer weniger und weniger verstanden. Man redet in Worten von dem Mysterium von Golgatha, man redet in Worten, die bloße Worte bleiben, so daß die Gläubigen auch zufrieden sind, wenn sie in der Kirche sind und der Priester in einer ihnen unverständlichen Sprache die Worte sagt. Denn es kommt ihnen nicht darauf an, die Sache zu verstehen, es kommt ihnen höchstens darauf an, in der allgemeinen Atmosphäre zu leben, die hinweist auf das Mysterium von Golgatha. Und es geht verloren der wirkliche Zusammenhang der Menschen mit dem Mysterium von Golgatha. Immer mehr geht er verloren. In einer bestimmten Zeit des Mittelalters beginnt man zu diskutieren über die Bedeutung eines Symbols, in das sich die fortdauernde Benachrichtigung vom Mysterium von Golgatha gekleidet hat. Man beginnt zu diskutieren zum Beispiel über die Bedeutung des Abendmahls. Aber in dem Moment, wo man über etwas zu diskutieren anfängt, versteht man es ja schon nicht mehr. Dasjenige, was in der Entwickelung der Menschheit lebt, das lebt als Erlebnis. Solange man es als Erlebnis hat, so lange disputiert man nicht. Als der Abendmahlsstreit im Mittelalter auftrat, da war schon der letzte, der allerletzte Rest des Verständnisses für das Abendmahl verlorengegangen, da bemächtigte sich schon das dialektische Spiel dieses Abendmahles. Und so entwickelte sich das neuere Menschheitsleben herauf, bis das Bibelverbot nicht mehr gelten konnte. Theoretisch ist allen Katholiken heute noch verboten, die Bibel zu lesen. Nur jener Auszug der Bibel, der zubereitet wird, wie wenn die Evangelien eine Einheit wären, ist ihnen theoretisch gestattet zu lesen. Es ist den Katholiken noch heute streng verboten, sich mit den vier Evangelien zu befassen, denn selbstverständlich, in dem Augenblicke, wo man in den modernen Geist die vier Evangelien hereinbekommt, wo man sie so liest, wie man eine Darstellung des äußeren physischen Planes liest, in dem Augenblicke zerflattern die Evangelien. Es ist unverantwortlich, wenn Leute, die das ganz gut wissen, die auch erlebt haben, wie im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts eben unter der Philologisiererei der Theologie die Evangelien zerflattert sind, wenn die sich erfrechen - man kann es nicht anders bezeichnen -, von der Anthroposophie zu sagen, daß sie die Evangelien in einer willkürlichen Weise auslege, daß sie allerlei hineinlege in die Evangelien. Diese Leute wissen, daß der Zusammenhang mit dem Mysterium von Golgatha verloren wird, wenn die Evangelien nicht im spirituellen Sinne verstanden werden. Man erlebt es, wie sich alle die Leute aufs Podium stellen vom Standpunkte katholischer oder protestantischer Theologie aus und immer wieder und wiederum davon schwätzen, daß Anthroposophie in die Evangelien etwas hineinlege, während sie ganz genau wissen: Wenn nichts von geistiger Auffassung in die Evangelien hineingelegt wird, so müssen die Evangelien die christliche Seelenverfassung vom Grunde aus zerstören. Würden die Menschen nur ein wenig besser darauf hinschauen, wie es den meisten von denen, die solches Zeug schwätzen über die Anthroposophie, im Grunde genommen nur darauf ankommt, in bequemster Weise ihr Amt weiter zu verwalten, so zu verwalten, wie sie es gelernt haben in ihrer Jugend, würden die Menschen wissen, daß in diesen Theologen nicht ein eigentliches Wahrheitsgefühl lebt, sondern nur die Furcht, es könnte ihnen ihre bequeme Art, die Dinge aufzufassen, verlorengehen, dann würde man schon viel weiterkommen im Ablehnen derlei Frohnmeyers und ähnlicher Leute, die eben durchaus nicht mehr von dem geringsten Funken irgendeines Wahrheitssinnes durchzogen sind.
Was heute zu retten ist, das ist das Mysterium von Golgatha selbst. Und vorbereitet darauf muß werden, daß dieses Mysterium von Golgatha der menschlichen Imagination wiederum erscheine. Denn dem Intellekt kann es nicht erscheinen. Der Intellekt kann es nur auflösen. Der Intellekt kann es nur durch seine Philologiekünste aus der Welt schaffen, oder er kann es durch eine tyrannische Autorität im jesuitischen Sinne für diejenigen erhalten, die nicht nach Wahrheit, sondern nur nach einem bequemen Leben streben. Für solche aber, die nach Wahrheit streben, geht heute der Weg der Imagination, das heißt, dem bewußten Schauen der geistigen Welten entgegen. Da handelt es sich darum, daß man von dem Gesichtspunkte dieses bewußten Schauens der geistigen Welten auch das ganze Menschheitswesen wiederum aufzufassen in der Lage ist. Da handelt es sich vor allen Dingen darum, daß das ganze Menschenerziehen und Menschenunterrichten von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus geschieht.
Wir wissen, das Kind lebt bis zu seinem siebenten Jahre, bis zum Zahnwechsel, in der Nachahmung. Die Nachahmung ist im Grunde genommen nichts anderes als ein Weiterleben dessen, was in ganz anderer Form vor der Geburt oder Empfängnis in der geistigen Welt vorhanden war, wo das Untertauchen des einen Wesens in das andere vorhanden ist; das drückt sich dann in der Nachahmung des Kindes gegenüber seiner Menschenumgebung als Nachklang des geistigen Erlebens aus. Dann kommt vom siebenten Lebensjahre, vom Zahnwechsel bis zur Geschlechtsreife, das Bedürfnis des Kindes nach Autorität. Gerade dasjenige, was heute nur noch in der Nachahmung des Kindes lebt, das lebte in einer gewissen Weise durch den ganzen Menschen hindurch innerhalb der alten orientalischen Struktur. Diejenigen Menschen, die aus den Mysterien heraus wirkten, wirkten mit einer so starken Kraft, daß ihnen die anderen Menschen folgten, wie das Kind den Erwachsenen folgt, die in seiner Umgebung sind. Dann kam das Prinzip der Autorität. Und jetzt wächst der Mensch heraus aus dem Prinzip der Autorität. Er wächst hinein in das Prinzip, welches nach der Geschlechtsreife im Menschen sich andeutet, allerdings in persönlich-individueller Weise, anders als in bezug auf die ganze Menschheitsentwickelung. Heute lebt der Mensch einer Zeit entgegen, wo es notwendig wird, in ihm auszubilden dasjenige, was nicht von selbst ausgebildet werden kann. Das Kind kommt als Nachahmer zur Welt. Im alten orientalischen sozialen Leben kam es auch schon als Nachahmer zur Welt. Aber das, was bei ihm als Nachahmungsprinzip lebte, das blieb auch in die Autoritätszeit, in die Urteilszeit hinein noch immer wirksam in bezug auf die sozialen Angelegenheiten, auch in bezug auf alles das, was religiöses Leben war. Das Autoritätsprinzip machte sich im alten Orient nur geltend in bezug auf dasjenige, was nächste Umwelt war. Die großen Angelegenheiten des Lebens blieben in der Form des kindlichen Erlebens stehen.
Dann kamen diese großen Angelegenheiten des Lebens in die Zeiten des Mittelalters hinein. Das Autoritätsprinzip herrschte. Jetzt macht sich zuerst geltend das Heraustreten aus dem Autoritätsprinzip, das Prinzip des eigenen Urteils macht sich geltend. Was für die Angelegenheiten des religiösen, des künstlerischen, überhaupt des über das unmittelbare Elementar-Natürliche hinausgehenden menschlichen Lebens im alten Orient entfaltet wurde, man konnte es im Kinde aufsuchen, das es durch das Blut hereintrug aus den geistigen Welten in diese physische Welt. Als das Autoritätsprinzip herrschte, brauchte man ja nur auf etwas zu bauen, was sich mit einer gewissen Notwendigkeit aus dem noch ganz unbewußsten ätherischen Leib herausentwickelt. Jetzt, wo auftritt das Prinzip des freien Urteils, da tritt für Pädagogik und Didaktik eine neue große Verantwortung auf. Da tritt das auf, daß man in dem werdenden Kinde hinzuschauen hat auf das, was herauskommen wird. Wenn das Kind das fünfzehnte Lebensjahr erreicht, dann wird in ihm der astralische Leib geboren. Dasjenige wird in ihm geboren, was hereinträgt in die Welt, jetzt nicht in unbewußter Weise, sondern in immer mehr und mehr bewußter Weise die Erlebnisse der geistigen Welt.
Die Zeit rückt heran, wo wir bei aller Erziehung und allem Unterricht zu sehen haben, was aus dem Kinde herauswächst, wenn es im vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Lebensjahre steht. Das war für alle alten Zeiten von keiner so großen Wichtigkeit, denn das ist verknüpft mit dem, was frei im Menschen lebt, was der Mensch sich nicht durch Geburt mitbringt, was er auch nicht durch Autorität empfangen kann, was er wirklich aus sich selber herausholen muß. Und daß er es auf rechte Weise aus sich herausholt, dafür hat man zu sorgen, indem man in der richtigen Weise das Kind heranerzieht und heranunterrichtet bis zum vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Lebensjahre, damit es dann in diesem vierzehnten, fünfzehnten Lebensjahr in der richtigen Weise den astralischen Leib entwickeln kann. Erziehung und Unterricht bekommen eine ganz neue Bedeutung in dieser neueren Zeit, und ohne die Zusammenhänge des Menschen mit der geistigen Welt zu durchschauen, sollte eigentlich nicht mehr unterrichtet werden. Das ist der Kampf, der heraufzieht.
Gewissermaßen noch aus instinktiven Untergründen hat sich geltend gemacht dasjenige, was sich dann in der idealistischen Philosophie Mitteleuropas an die Oberfläche des menschlichen Bewußtseins drängte: das Ich-Gefühl, das ja im Grunde bei Fichte, Schelling und Hegel nur zu tun hatte mit dem, was der Mensch erlebt zwischen Geburt und Tod, das nichts zu tun hatte mit dem, was überphysisch-menschlich ist. Ich habe gestern gesagt, der mitteleuropäische Mensch war abgeschlossen durch das Türkentum, durch das Element Peters des Großen von dem, was orientalisch war, aber es lebte als Erbschaft dasjenige fort, was ihm noch so vorschwebte als eine Offenbarung, die eigentlich nur im alten Orient verstanden wurde aus dem alten Hellsehen heraus, die noch ihre Nachklänge hat in dem asiatisch empfindenden Russentum, in dem noch nicht europäisierten Russentum. Offenbarung lebt im Grunde genommen, wenn auch ganz dekadent, heute noch immer in Asien drüben. Da ist noch Sinn für Offenbarung vorhanden. Das intellektualistische Element, das rein dialektische Element ist das westliche Element, das heute nur für das wirtschaftliche Leben ausgebildet ist. Zwischen diesen beiden Elementen, dem ganz noch auf das Irdisch-Wirtschaftliche beschränkten westlichen Intellektualismus, der menschlichen Vernünftigkeit, die sich nur mit der äußeren Erfahrung beschäftigen will, und der orientalischen Offenbarung, war immer das mitteleuropäische Element eingeklemmt. Und immer drohender und drohender zogen sich die Wolken zusammen, indem im Grunde genommen nur eine Art rhythmischer Ausgleich vorhanden war zwischen Offenbarung und Vernünftigkeit. Was bei den großen Scholastikern des Mittelalters versucht wird auseinanderzuhalten, vernünftiges Begreifen der äußeren Sinneswelt und übersinnliche Offenbarung, das schlug aber immer mehr ineinander, als die neuere Zeit heraufzog. Und wir sehen dieses Ineinanderschlagen insbesondere in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, wo die mitteleuropäisch-idealistische Philosophie geboren wird, wir sehen dann, wie das Westlertum übergreift in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, wie gewissermaßen ganz Europa bis nach Rußland hinein anglisiert wird, und wie das äußere Zeichen für einen tief inneren Vorgang, den die Menschheit gegenwärtig nur noch nicht begreifen will, wie das äußere Zeichen für diesen inneren Vorgang das Zermalmtsein, das auf dem Bodenliegen des Mitteleuropäischen in der Gegenwart ist. Alles, was da zwischen Westen und Osten eingeklemmt ist, liegt auf dem Boden, ist zermalmt, weiß überhaupt nicht, was es mit sich anfangen soll, lebt in Konvulsionen, redet von allerlei, wodurch man irgendwie weiterkommen will, redet aber im Grunde genommen nur von lauter Nullitäten. Bis in die Einzelheiten drückt sich das aus. Ein ungeheures Unvermögen des Wirtschaftens mit den alten Verhältnissen zeigt sich. Was tut man? Man preßt entweder aus dem Alten heraus, was noch drinnen ist, durch eine furchtbare Steuerschraube, oder man füllt dasjenige, was fehlt, durch wertloses Notendrucken an, indem man in einer Woche Milliarden von Noten druckt. Und wenn es vielleicht auch nur ein Symbolum ist, einzelnen Leuten steht doch vor der Seele: dieses dekadente Festhalten an der Offenbarung im Osten, die Nullität der Mitte und das nur noch im Wirtschaftlichen steckende Vernünftigsein des Westens. Und sie reden wie von einer Zukunftsperspektive - als ob das Mittlere gar nicht da wäre — von dem großen Kampfe, der zwischen Japan und Amerika in Aussicht steht. Das stellen sich die Leute natürlich bloß physisch vor. Das bedeutet auch etwas ungeheuer Tiefes. Und wenn dasjenige, was real ist als Dekadentes im Osten, was noch nicht Geborenes im Westen ist, wenn das aufeinanderstößt mit Ignorierung der Mitte, dann sozusagen versinkt das Ich-Gefühl, das namentlich in der Mitte zum Ausdruck gekommen ist, in jenem Chaos, das durch das Zerquetschen vom Osten und vom Westen entsteht. Das Denken über das Ich ist ja verschwunden mit der mitteleuropäisch-idealistischen Philosophie. Es ist seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht mehr da. Auch dasjenige, was man aus den Konvulsionen heraus als Staatsgebilde hat schaffen wollen, es liegt heute am Boden. Unmögliche Staatsgebilde erheben sich, wie die Tschechoslowakei, die ganz gewiß auf die Dauer nicht leben und nicht sterben kann. Diese unmöglichen Gebilde können sich nur erheben dadurch, daß Friede geschlossen wird von Leuten des Westens, die keine Ahnung davon haben, welches die Lebensbedingungen der Mitte sind. Man hört sich in Zürich irgend jemanden an, der von Paris kommt und der die Einheit des slowakischen mit dem tschechischen Elemente in einer geistreichen Form, wie man sagt, den Leuten vortradiert. Man ist erstaunt über das, was solch ein Professor verkündigt über die Prädestination der Tschechoslowakei, weil man keine Ahnung hat, welches die Lebensbedingungen im Osten sind, weil man eben auch nicht weiß, daß, was da entsteht, nur das zerquetschende Element ist, der zusammenstoßende Osten und Westen. Die Leute verhüllen sich noch die Augen, um nicht zu sehen, wie sich die äußeren Symptome ankündigen. Sie wollen nicht glauben, wie in diesem Mitteleuropa selbst solche Szenen sich abspielen — allerdings gegenwärtig noch stark nach Osten vorgeschoben -, daß die Reste derjenigen Menschen, die die Träger des Krieges waren, jetzt als Offiziere, die nicht mehr eine Rechtfertigung haben innerhalb der gegenwärtigen Verhältnisse, da oder dort erscheinen, unschuldige Frauen nackt vor sich tanzen lassen und ihnen dann das Bajonett in den Bauch stoßen und es im Bauche umdrehen, Szenen, wie sie durchaus befohlen werden von Menschen, die nebenher tapfer im Kriege gefochten haben.
Vor allen diesen Dingen verhüllt die geblendete Menschheit des Westens, die Frieden schließt über Dinge, von denen sie nichts versteht, die Augen. Sie sieht nicht, wie sich Bedeutsames ankündigt in dem, was da eigentlich vor sich geht. Und die Leute leben zum großen Teile so fort, als ob eigentlich gar nichts in der Welt geschähe. So wird etwas, man möchte sagen, in die vollständigste Enge des Bewußtseins hineingetrieben. Dasjenige, was einmal hervorgebracht hat solche idealistische Höhe, solche Ideen, wie man sie bei Goethe, Fichte, bei Schelling, bei Hegel findet, das ist in Wirklichkeit im öffentlichen Leben nicht mehr da. Und wenn es sich geltend machen will wie hier im Goetheanum, dann verleumdet man es, dann tritt überall verleumderisches Lumpentum auf, um es als etwas hinzustellen, wovon es vorgibt, daß es etwas davon verstünde und es verurteilen müsse. In die Nullität hinein entwickelt sich etwas, was vor einem Jahrhunderte noch leuchtendes Geistesleben war. Und darüber ballen sich zusammen die Wolken aus dem Osten und aus dem Westen.
Und was bedeutet das, was in den nächsten Jahrzehnten in der furchtbarsten Weise zum Ausdrucke kommen muß, was bedeutet es? Es ist von der einen Seite die Aufforderung, festzustehen auf dem Boden, der das neue Geistesleben gebären will, und auf der anderen Seite ist es das Wetterleuchten dessen, was seit längerer Zeit unter uns besprochen wird, das Herannahen des Christus in der Form, in der er wird geschaut werden müssen vom 20. Jahrhunderte an. Denn ehe dieses Jahrhunderts Mitte verflossen sein wird, wird der Christus geschaut werden müssen. Aber vorher muß alles das, was Rest des Alten ist, in die Nullität hineingetrieben sein, müssen sich die Wolken zusammenballen. Der Mensch muß finden seine volle Freiheit aus der Nullität heraus. Und das neue Anschauen muß sich gebären aus dieser Nullität heraus. Der Mensch muß seine ganze Kraft aus dem Nichts heraus finden. Nur ihn dazu vorbereiten möchte die Geisteswissenschaft. Das ist etwas, wovon man nicht sagen darf, daß sie es will, sondern daß sie es wollen muß.
Sixth Lecture
If an understanding of what can be called the reappearance of Christ is to take root in the soul in the right way, it is necessary to acquire a preparatory understanding of the course that the idea of Christ, the conception of Christ, has taken in the course of human history. We remember that human development began with a state of soul that we have often called a kind of instinctive perception, a clairvoyance that was dull and dreamlike. We have repeatedly characterized the various epochs of human development by placing the corresponding forms of these states of soul into the respective periods.
Today we want to remember that strong remnants of the old clairvoyant state of humanity still existed at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The Mystery of Golgotha must first be understood as a fact, but as a fact that, by its very nature, can never be comprehended by the intellect that has characterized the soul state of modern civilization since the middle of the 15th century, but which had already been preparing since Greek and Roman times. So we can say that while Greek history was unfolding, Roman history was unfolding, and the mystery of Golgotha was taking place on earth, strong remnants of the old clairvoyance were still present among many people. Other people had already lost this clairvoyance and were already in the early stages of intellectual development. This was particularly the case with the Romans. And so we can say that, in reality, in its essence, the mystery of Golgotha could initially only be understood by those who still had remnants of the old clairvoyance. It could be described, and the symbol could also be hinted at to those who did not have such remnants of the old clairvoyance. This instinctive clairvoyance was a characteristic of the ancient Oriental peoples in particular, and in essence it has remained in its remnants mainly among Orientals. After all, Christ Jesus also walked the earth among the Orientals. So the mystery of Golgotha was initially understood from the remnants of ancient Oriental wisdom. When this mystery then migrated from Golgotha to the West, to the Greeks and Romans, it was possible to take over what those people said who, from the remnants of ancient clairvoyance, still understood what had actually happened on Earth. And so that a view through spiritual eyewitnesses might also be available, Paul, through a special enlightenment that came only in his later life, attained a state of clairvoyance in which he, Paul, was able to convince himself of the truth, of the authenticity of the mystery of Golgotha. What Paul was able to say out of his conviction, what those who had preserved the remnants of ancient clairvoyance were able to establish from ancient Oriental wisdom about the mystery of Golgotha, could then be taken over as news, could be clothed in the form of the burgeoning intellect; but actually, with this intellect, one could not at first see through the mystery of Golgotha. The way in which those who still had remnants of ancient clairvoyance spoke of the mystery of Golgotha was called Gnostic. And I would say that the form of speaking about the mystery of Golgotha, as was possible with these remnants of ancient clairvoyance, is Christian Gnosis. In the way I have described in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, the presentation of the mystery of Golgotha has come down to posterity. So the first understanding of the mystery of Golgotha was achieved through these remnants of ancient clairvoyance, through ancient Oriental instinctive perception. One might say that this ancient Oriental instinctive perception was preserved in sufficient measure until the Mystery of Golgotha, so that a true human understanding of this Mystery could take hold before the intellect intervened and understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha became impossible. If the mystery of Golgotha had come at the height of the intellect, it would naturally have made no impression on humanity.
Now, the messages about the mystery of Golgotha lived on in the reports of the ancient clairvoyants, and basically—as you know from my description in Christianity as Mystical Fact—the Gospels are nothing more than messages about the mystery of Golgotha obtained through clairvoyance. But then a wave spread over human development which, as I have explained to you, had already taken root in Greek culture and had its source primarily in Roman culture. This wave can be described as the wave that prepared the way for later intellectualism, in which this intellectualism was already living. Legal-dialectical thinking spread, the kind of thinking that then also led to state-political thinking. This spread from the south, penetrating those areas where, as I told you yesterday, there was still a natural economy, penetrating into the northern regions. The Central European civilization was formed, which, initially nourished by Rome, was primarily characterized by the intellectual, that is, the legal-dialectical development of the human soul. Within the context of everything that was happening, it was no longer possible to view the mystery itself in the sense of the old spirituality, but rather one received reports and traditions and clothed them in the form of the soul state that one had. One clothed it more and more in dialectics. Through Romanism, the mystery of Golgotha was clothed in this dialectic. From what Christian Gnosis was, which was still based on vision, pure dialectical theology emerged, which went hand in hand with the establishment of the European empire structures, which later became states. But the first great empire was actually the secularized church empire, the church empire permeated by Roman-legal forms. Outwardly, many events took place which show how this legal-dialectical, political thinking, in which the old Oriental vision was clothed, spread throughout Europe.
Charlemagne, for example, became a vassal of the Pope. His imperial dignity was conferred on him by the Pope. And if one studies the spread of Charlemagne's entire reign, one finds, on the one hand, among the forces through which Charlemagne's reign spread, the ecclesiastical-theological influence. A kind of theocratic empire spread; but this is permeated everywhere by legal-dialectical forms. The clergy are the officials; they hold public office and unite in their persons the political element with the ecclesiastical element. The old spiritual life based on contemplation, which had already abolished the spirit in 869, as we have often discussed, is completely transformed into a political ecclesiastical empire that spread over most of the European territories.
You know from history and from what I have already presented here from the spiritual-scientific point of view how this constant intermingling of the Roman Church and that which more or less wanted to break away from it fought against each other, and how these struggles basically make up a large part of medieval history. But we must look at the enormous difference that exists between the entire social structure of this medieval entity, which then merged into the newer states, and the social structure of the ancient Orient, which was thoroughly imbued with the ancient instinctive way of seeing and with everything that this way of seeing entailed.
Where did the content of the ancient Oriental view actually come from? It came, one cannot say otherwise, from innate qualities; for those who were initiates sought out as their disciples people who had such innate abilities that they could attain this instinctive vision. From the great mass of people, those were chosen who had such seeing in their blood. It was clear, then, that remnants of experiences in the spiritual worlds simply came with those people who were sent into this physical world as children from spiritual worlds. I am always talking about the times when the mystery of Golgotha was approaching or was already here. Some people received more of this, others less. I would say that echoes of experiences in the spiritual worlds came in with the blood. Those who had the most instinctive memories of their experiences before birth or before conception were the most suitable mystery students. They were able to understand and see, or rather, through understanding seeing, they were able to recognize what the gods intended for human beings, because they had experienced this before birth and had an instinctive memory of it in this earthly life. And they were chosen by the mystery sages, by the priests, to be placed before humanity as witnesses to what the spiritual world wants for the physical world. It was such people who were the first to speak of the mystery of Golgotha. One can say that it was a completely different way of placing human beings in the social order. They were placed in this social order in such a way that the mysteries recognized that they had been placed there by the gods themselves.
In place of innate abilities through the influence of blood, there now arose the medieval world, where nothing or less and less was in human beings, where in any case there was nothing left in influential people of what had been brought into the physical world from spiritual worlds at birth, where there was nothing left but instinctive memory. On what basis, then, could one justify what constituted the social structure among human beings? On what could this be based in the dialectical-legal age? It could only be based on authority. The authority that the Roman popes, above all, claimed for themselves was the authority that replaced what the ancient mystery priests had recognized as having been brought over from the spiritual worlds. In ancient times, what was brought over from the spiritual worlds also determined what was to happen in social life. Now this could only be decided by granting certain people, namely the Roman popes, and in a transferred sense then the individual feudal princes of the Roman popes, the kings and other princes, a certain authority on earth, by granting them such authority, as it were, through legal justification, through formal law. People now had to command, since the gods no longer commanded. And this: who was to command had to be determined by external law.
Thus arose the principle of authority in the Middle Ages, and one can say that the entire view of the mystery of Golgotha, which was received only as a communication, was also incorporated into this principle of authority. At most, it could be clothed in symbols, but these were only images. One such symbol is the sacrifice of the Mass with the Holy Communion, everything that Christians could experience in the church. In the Last Supper, they believed they were directly present at the entry of the Christ force into the physical world. The fact that this Christ force could flow into the physical world for believers was placed under authority, which in turn emanated from the consecrations of the Roman Church.
But what developed there as a legal-dialectical-Roman element also carried its other side within it, so to speak. It carried within itself a constant protest against authority. For when everything is based on authority, as was the case in the Middle Ages, then what is to come in the future is already expressed in human beings: the inner protest against authority. This inner protest against authority came to light through various historical phenomena, through people such as Wyclif, Hus, and so on, who rebelled against the mere principle of authority and wanted to understand Christ from within themselves, but the time was not yet ripe for this. So that, basically, one could only delude oneself into thinking that one understood Christ from within.
Those who still appeared as mystics in medieval times also spoke of Christ, but they did not yet have the Christ experience. Basically, they only had the old stories about Christ. And this rebellion against authority grew stronger and stronger. This naturally led to an ever stronger urge to consolidate this authority. And the strongest effort to consolidate this authority, to base what emanates from the mystery of Golgotha solely on authority, to base it on authority in such a way that it could only ever be based on authority, is what we call Jesuitism. Jesuitism has nothing left of Christ. Jesuitism contains within itself the entire rebellion against the first understanding of Christ. The first understanding had come about with the remnants of Eastern clairvoyance in Gnosticism. Jesuitism took in only the intellectual-dialectical, rejecting the Christ principle. It did not develop a Christology, but rather a doctrine of struggle for Jesus, a Jesulogy. Even if Jesus was regarded as something transcending all human beings, what led to the mystery of Golgotha through Jesuitism was to be something based purely on authority.
Thus was prepared what then came, and whose culmination we then saw people experience in the 19th century, when the Christ impulse as something spiritual, as something spiritual, was completely lost, when theology, insofar as it wanted to be modern theology, wanted to speak only of the man Jesus. However, as this whole development took place, some, I would say, abuses arose. Take the fact that what was available in terms of information about the mystery of Golgotha was taken over from the Roman principle in purely legal dialectic, that it was taken over by external symbolism that could be interpreted: then there was no possibility of allowing the information, as it existed, to reach the believers. Hence the strict prohibition for the believers of Rome to read the Bible. This is indeed the most important ecclesiastical fact until late into the Middle Ages, that there was a prohibition for believers to read the Bible. The clergy, the leading Catholic circles, considered it the most terrible thing if the Gospel became known to the broad masses of believers. For the Gospel comes from a completely different state of mind. The Gospel can only be understood from a spiritual state of mind. A dialectical state of mind cannot deal with the Gospel at all. It was therefore impossible in those times, when the intellect and dialectics were preparing themselves, to allow the Gospel to reach the masses. The Church fought furiously against the Gospel becoming known, and it regarded as the wildest heretics those who rebelled against the ban on reading the Gospel, such as the Waldensians or the Albigensians; they claimed to be taught by the Gospel itself about the mystery of Golgotha. The Church rebelled against this because it knew very well that the way it treated the mystery of Golgotha was incompatible with the spread of the Gospel, for this Gospel in its true form consists of four Gospels that contradict each other. It was known that if the Gospels were given to the great masses of believers, they would initially receive nothing but contradictory accounts, which, however, under the influence of their burgeoning intellectuality, they could only understand as something that had to be understood in the same way as things are understood on the physical plane. Indeed, in the case of an event on the physical plane, it is impossible to understand that it should be described in four different forms. For an event that must be understood with higher powers, it depends on how it appears from one side or the other, since it must always be viewed from different sides. I have often said that this even applies to dreams; people can dream the same thing, that is, the same thing can happen within them, but what forms itself in images can differ in the most varied ways. Thus, for those who have a spiritual attitude toward the mystery of Golgotha, the contradictions in the Gospels mean nothing. But the people of the emerging Middle Ages did not have a spiritual relationship with this; they were dominated by dialectics, right down to the lowest strata of society. For this dialectic, it was impossible to publish four contradictory accounts of the mystery of Golgotha. And when the Church could no longer uphold the ban on the Bible, when Protestantism arose, the very discrepancy arose in European life that then led to the modern theology of the 19th century, where everything that contradicted itself was ultimately erased from the Gospels. And in the end, the Gospels have really been plucked clean. The meagerest thing that has emerged, the most plucked things, are the things that Schmiedel, famous from this side, discovered, who considered the passages where someone in the Gospels is not praised, where something derogatory is said, to be the only true ones and dismissed everything else. And so arose the descriptions of Jesus by the theologians of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, who only wanted to describe the man Jesus and believed that they could still remain within Christianity. Within Christianity, an intellectual-dialectical era could only exist with the prohibition of the Gospels. With the Gospels, a dialectical-legal era could only achieve the gradual elimination of Christ as such.
It was under this falsehood that the newer humanity actually developed. This newer humanity has no idea that it is basically living entirely under the principle of authority, but continually denies to itself that it is living under this principle of authority. There is hardly a stronger expression of belief in authority than that found in all those who accept today's official science as the measure of the world. Let us see how people declare themselves satisfied when they are told somewhere that something has been “scientifically proven.” They know nothing else about this scientific finding than that it was said by a person who went through high school, university, became a private lecturer, a university professor, and was thus appointed by authorities; and then it is spread around. Then what comes to the people in this way is certain science. Try to gather together everything that people today assume to be established, certain science. Ultimately, it is based on nothing else than a pure principle of authority, on the purest belief in authority. This is the belief in authority that has arisen by replacing the other way of influencing the social structure, which still originated in the East.
And one must understand the hatred that developed within those circles that no longer had any understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, that had only what had been traditionally perpetuated by authority, that were fearful and anxious about the Gospel becoming known to the masses. One must understand the hatred which actually grew stronger and stronger and then developed into a complete system, especially within Jesuitism: the hatred of what Gnosis was. And today we still see theologians turning red in the face whenever Gnosis is mentioned! We must understand this from the historical development of European humanity. For example, we must understand the development of universities. How did universities develop? Look at history from the 11th to the 13th, 14th centuries: they developed out of the Church. The monastery schools became universities. Everything that was taught had to be stamped by Rome; only what was stamped by Rome was really to be believed. The idea that it had to be stamped by Rome was then gradually lost. But the idea that it had to be stamped somehow remained. And so the principle of authority remained even among those who no longer believed in Roman authority. And without believing in Rome, in Roman authority itself, this survival of the Roman principle of authority is the soul of today's university life. It is also the soul of Protestant countries. The Catholic Church continues to fight for its authority to the exclusion of everything spiritual, slandering everything that goes beyond its dialectical-legal way of thinking, slandering everything that cannot be fitted into the social principle of authority. One only has to understand how deeply this has penetrated the soul of those people who then lived in the emergence of modern civilization. For most of them, this meant losing their ability to relate to the content of truth, and this ultimately led to the great confusion and terrible chaos in which we now live.
But now we are also living in a time when a new way of seeing is being prepared. Spiritual science wants to prepare us for this way of seeing, which humanity must once again embrace. Not the old instinctive vision, but a vision based on full consciousness. Theology professors and others are fighting against this vision. They confuse it with the old Gnostic vision; they say all kinds of things they themselves do not understand against this modern vision. But this modern vision is emerging as a necessity that must seize humanity. And into this way of seeing, a real grasp of the mystery of Golgotha can now shine in.
So the development of the Christ concept is actually this: the mystery of Golgotha happens at a time when remnants of old clairvoyance still exist. People can just about understand it. They put this understanding into the Gospels. Christianity migrates westward and is taken up by Roman culture with its dialectical spirit. It is understood less and less. People speak in words about the mystery of Golgotha, they speak in words that remain mere words, so that believers are satisfied when they are in church and the priest speaks words they do not understand. For it is not important to them to understand the matter; at most, it is important to them to live in the general atmosphere that points to the mystery of Golgotha. And the real connection between human beings and the mystery of Golgotha is lost. It is lost more and more. At a certain time in the Middle Ages, people began to discuss the meaning of a symbol in which the continuing message of the mystery of Golgotha was clothed. They began to discuss, for example, the meaning of the Lord's Supper. But the moment you start discussing something, you no longer understand it. What lives in the development of humanity lives as an experience. As long as you have it as an experience, you do not dispute it. When the dispute about the Last Supper arose in the Middle Ages, the last, very last remnant of understanding of the Last Supper had already been lost, and the dialectical game of this Last Supper had already taken hold. And so the newer human life developed until the ban on the Bible could no longer apply. Theoretically, all Catholics are still forbidden to read the Bible today. Only that excerpt from the Bible which is prepared as if the Gospels were a unity is theoretically permitted to them to read. Catholics are still strictly forbidden to study the four Gospels, because it goes without saying that the moment the four Gospels are brought into the modern spirit, the moment they are read as a representation of the outer physical plane, the Gospels fall apart. It is irresponsible for people who know this very well, who have also experienced how the Gospels fell apart in the course of the 19th century under the philologizing of theology, to presume—there is no other way to describe it—to say of anthroposophy that it interprets the Gospels in an arbitrary manner, that it puts all kinds of things into the Gospels. These people know that the connection with the mystery of Golgotha is lost if the Gospels are not understood in a spiritual sense. One experiences how all these people stand on the podium from the standpoint of Catholic or Protestant theology and talk again and again about how anthroposophy puts something into the Gospels, while they know very well: If nothing of a spiritual nature is put into the Gospels, then the Gospels must destroy the Christian soul from its very foundations. If people would only look a little more closely at how most of those who talk such nonsense about anthroposophy are basically only interested in continuing to administer their office in the most comfortable way possible, to administer it as they learned in their youth, people would know that these theologians do not have a real sense of truth, but only fear that they might lose their comfortable way of understanding things. Then we would make much more progress in rejecting such Frohnmeyers and similar people, who are no longer imbued with the slightest spark of any sense of truth.
What must be saved today is the mystery of Golgotha itself. And we must prepare ourselves for this mystery of Golgotha to appear once again to the human imagination. For it cannot appear to the intellect. The intellect can only dissolve it. The intellect can only remove it from the world through its philological arts, or it can preserve it through a tyrannical authority in the Jesuit sense for those who do not strive for truth but only for a comfortable life. For those who strive for truth, however, the path today leads toward imagination, that is, toward conscious perception of the spiritual worlds. The point is that from the standpoint of this conscious perception of the spiritual worlds, one is again able to understand the whole of human existence. Above all, it is important that the entire process of educating and teaching human beings takes place from this standpoint.
We know that children live until the age of seven, until they lose their baby teeth, in imitation. Imitation is basically nothing more than a continuation of what existed in a completely different form before birth or conception in the spiritual world, where one being is immersed in another; this is then expressed in the child's imitation of its human environment as an echo of spiritual experience. Then, from the age of seven, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the child's need for authority arises. Precisely what today lives only in the imitation of the child lived in a certain way through the whole human being within the old Oriental structure. Those people who worked out of the mysteries did so with such a strong force that other people followed them as children follow the adults around them. Then came the principle of authority. And now human beings are growing out of the principle of authority. They are growing into the principle that emerges in human beings after puberty, but in a personal, individual way, unlike in relation to the development of humanity as a whole. Today, human beings are living toward a time when it will be necessary to develop within them that which cannot develop on its own. The child comes into the world as an imitator. In ancient Oriental social life, it also came into the world as an imitator. But what lived in it as the principle of imitation remained effective in the age of authority, in the age of judgment, in relation to social affairs, and also in relation to everything that was religious life. In the ancient Orient, the principle of authority only applied to the immediate environment. The great matters of life remained in the form of childlike experience.Then these great matters of life entered the Middle Ages. The principle of authority prevailed. Now, first of the principle of authority, the principle of one's own judgment asserts itself. What unfolded in the ancient Orient in matters of religious, artistic, and indeed all human life that went beyond the immediate, elementary, natural realm could be found in the child, who brought it into this physical world through the blood from the spiritual worlds. When the principle of authority prevailed, it was only necessary to build on something that developed with a certain necessity out of the still completely unconscious etheric body. Now that the principle of free judgment is emerging, a new and great responsibility arises for pedagogy and didactics. What emerges is that one must look into the developing child to see what will come out. When the child reaches the age of fifteen, the astral body is born within them. That which carries the experiences of the spiritual world into the world is born within them, now not in an unconscious way, but in an increasingly conscious way.
The time is approaching when, in all education and teaching, we must see what grows out of the child when it reaches the age of fourteen or fifteen. This was not so important in ancient times, because it is connected with what lives freely in the human being, what the human being does not bring with him at birth, what he cannot receive through authority, what he must really bring out of himself. And we must ensure that they bring this out of themselves in the right way by raising and teaching the child in the right way until the age of fourteen or fifteen, so that in this fourteenth or fifteenth year of life they can develop the astral body in the right way. Education and teaching take on a whole new meaning in these newer times, and without understanding the connections between human beings and the spiritual world, teaching should no longer take place. That is the struggle that is looming.
In a sense, what then came to the surface of human consciousness in the idealistic philosophy of Central Europe arose from instinctive foundations: the sense of self, which in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had to do only with what humans experience between birth and death, and had nothing to do with what is superphysical and human. Yesterday I said that Central Europeans were cut off from the Orient by the Turks and by the element of Peter the Great, but that what still lingered in their minds as a revelation, which was actually only understood in the ancient Orient from ancient clairvoyance, still lived on as a legacy and still has its echoes in Asian-minded Russians, in the not yet Europeanized Russian people. Revelation still lives on today, albeit in a very decadent form, in Asia. There is still a sense of revelation there. The intellectual element, the purely dialectical element, is the Western element, which today is only developed for economic life. Between these two elements, Western intellectualism, which is still entirely limited to the earthly and economic, to human rationality that only wants to deal with external experience, and Eastern revelation, the Central European element has always been wedged in. And the clouds gathered ever more threateningly, because basically there was only a kind of rhythmic balance between revelation and reason. What the great scholastics of the Middle Ages attempted to keep separate, namely rational understanding of the external sensory world and supersensible revelation, became increasingly intertwined as modern times dawned. And we see this intertwining particularly in the first half of the 19th century, when Central European idealistic philosophy was born. We then see how Western culture spreads in the second half of the 19th century, how, in a sense, the whole of Europe, right up to Russia, becomes anglicized, and how the outward sign of a deep inner process, which humanity is currently unwilling to understand, how the outward sign of this inner process is the state of being crushed, of lying on the ground, which is the condition of Central Europe at present. Everything that is caught between the West and the East lies on the ground, crushed, with no idea what to do with itself, living in convulsions, talking about all sorts of things that will somehow get us forward, but basically talking about nothing but nullities. This is expressed down to the smallest detail. A tremendous inability to manage the old conditions is evident. What can be done? Either one squeezes what is still left out of the old system through terrible tax increases, or one fills what is missing by printing worthless emergency money, printing billions of bills in a week. And even if it is perhaps only a symbol, individual people still feel it in their souls: this decadent clinging to the revelation in the East, the nullity of the middle, and the rationality of the West, which now exists only in economic terms. And they talk as if it were a future prospect—as if the middle ground did not exist at all—about the great struggle that lies ahead between Japan and America. Of course, people imagine this in purely physical terms. But it also has a profound meaning. And when what is real as decadence in the East, what is not yet born in the West, collides with the ignorance of the middle, then the sense of self that has found expression in the middle sinks, so to speak, into the chaos created by the crushing of the East and the West. Thinking about the self disappeared with Central European idealistic philosophy. It has not been around since the middle of the 19th century. Even what people wanted to create as a state out of the convulsions lies in ruins today. Impossible states arise, such as Czechoslovakia, which certainly cannot live or die in the long run. These impossible structures can only arise through peace being made by people in the West who have no idea what living conditions are like in the middle. In Zurich, you hear someone from Paris presenting the unity of the Slovak and Czech elements to the people in a witty way, as they say. One is astonished at what such a professor proclaims about the predestination of Czechoslovakia, because one has no idea what the living conditions in the East are like, because one does not know that what is emerging there is only the crushing element, the clash between East and West. People are still covering their eyes so as not to see the outward signs. They do not want to believe that such scenes are taking place in Central Europe itself—albeit currently still largely confined to the East—that the remnants of those who were the architects of the war are now appearing as officers who no longer have any justification in the current circumstances, appear here and there, make innocent women dance naked before them and then stab them in the stomach with bayonets and twist them around, scenes that are ordered by people who fought bravely in the war.
The blinded humanity of the West, which makes peace about things it does not understand, closes its eyes to all these things. It does not see how something significant is looming in what is actually happening. And most people continue to live as if nothing were happening in the world. Thus, one might say, something is driven into the most complete narrowness of consciousness. That which once produced such idealistic heights, such ideas as we find in Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, is in reality no longer present in public life. And when it tries to assert itself, as here in the Goetheanum, it is slandered, and slanderous rabble appears everywhere to portray it as something they claim to understand and must condemn. Something that was a shining spiritual life a century ago is developing into nothingness. And above it, clouds are gathering from the east and the west.
And what does this mean, what must come to expression in the most terrible way in the coming decades, what does it mean? On the one hand, it is a call to stand firm on the ground that wants to give birth to the new spiritual life, and on the other hand, it is the lightning flash of what has been discussed among us for a long time, the approach of Christ in the form in which he will have to be seen from the 20th century onwards. For before the middle of this century has passed, Christ will have to be seen. But before that, everything that is a remnant of the old must be driven into nothingness, the clouds must gather. Man must find his full freedom out of nothingness. And the new way of seeing must be born out of this nothingness. Man must find all his strength out of nothing. Spiritual science wants only to prepare him for this. This is something that one cannot say it wants, but rather that it must want.