Festival of Easter
GA 233a
20 April 1924, Dornach
Lecture II
One may say that the original idea of Festivals was to make people lift their eyes, turning them from dependence on earthly things to dependence on super-earthly ones. And it is consideration of the Easter Festival that can especially bring about such thoughts. In the course of the last four or five hundred years the civilization of the world has gone through a spiritual evolution which has inclined humanity to turn its attention more and more away from its connection with cosmic forces and cosmic powers. Human attention has been restricted increasingly to the study of those conditions prevailing between man and earthly forces and powers. It is also the case that with those means of knowledge which are considered legitimate to-day it is impossible to keep other connections in view. If anyone in pre-Christian times, or even in the first Christian centuries, who was closely associated with the Mysteries could have experienced our present-day knowledge, he would not in the least have understood—if he approached things with the thoughts and feelings of those days—how it was possible for people to live without a consciousness of their super-earthly, their cosmic connections.
I might here give an outline of many things which you find more fully described in different cycles of lectures; but as these present lectures are intended to give a more intimate understanding of the thought of Easter, I naturally cannot bring forward every particular but can only hint at how things are.
If we were to transfer ourselves in thought into the various ancient religious systems of the past, we might choose as an example that one most familiar to modern people, the ancient Hebrew-Jewish system; we would find, when these ancient systems are mono-theistic, the worship of the one Godhead. This is that Godhead of whom, in accordance with Christian acceptance, we call the Father.
Now, in all those religions in which the thought of this Father-God lived, there has existed more or less, but especially among the priests of the Mysteries, a connection between this God and the cosmic moon-forces, a connection with everything streaming down to earth as force from the moon.
Of this ancient consciousness of the connection between man and the moon forces, hardly anything has remained other than the stimulus given to the poetic fancy of the soul by the moon, and the number of months in the gestation period of man, in accordance with the ten lunar months as reckoned in medicine. But in the older ideas concerning such things a clear consciousness did exist, that when man came down from the spiritual world, where in pre-earthly times he had lived as a psycho-spiritual being, into physical life, he was filled with and strengthened by impulses that streamed to him from the moon. When a man considers what it is that has formed him as living being, what lives in him as the forces of nutrition and ˂ breathing, and as forces of growth generally, he must not look to the forces of the earth but to forces outside the earth.
It is easy for him to see how, when looking to earthly forces, these are connected with him. But if our body were not held together by forces outside the earth, if it did not receive its form from forces beyond the earth, what could the mere earthly forces do towards its preservation and cohesion (Zusammengehalt)?
The moment the non-earthly forces—those coming from beyond the earth—leave it, the body is exposed to the forces of the earth: it then perishes, disintegrates, and becomes a corpse. The forces of the earth can only make corpses of men, they cannot construct their human form. Those forces living in man, by which he is raised above what is earthly, so that between birth and death he can live on earth as a coherent organic form and not succumb to the forces of earth that lay hold of him at death and destroy him, against which he wages a life-long struggle here—for they must be struggled against—these forces he owes to the influences of the moon-world.
If on the one hand we can state theoretically that the moon contains the forces by which the human body is formed, we must realize on the other hand that ancient religions reverenced these as the divine Father-forces which were the means of bringing man into physical existence at birth. The ancient Hebrew Initiate had a distinct consciousness of the fact that the forces leading man to earthly existence streamed to him from the moon, maintained him on earth, and were torn from him as physical man when he passed through the gates of death.
A kindly feeling of love for these Father-forces, a looking up to them in the practice of their cult by means of prayers, etc., was the content of certain ancient monotheistic religions. These ancient mono-theistic religions were more consistent than people think. Such matters are very incorrectly represented in history, because history can only go by external documents, not by what is observed with the help of spiritual vision.
Those religions which looked up to the moon, and to that which existed in the moon as spiritual Beings, belonged to a later period. Compared with the opinions held by them concerning the moon, those held by earlier religions concerning the Sun-forces, and even the Saturn forces, of which I shall have something to say later, were very clearly defined, but they concerned themselves principally with the Sun-forces.
With these early religions we enter an historical field of study for which external documents no longer exist, lying as they do many thousands of years earlier than the foundation of Christianity. In order to provide this age with a name I have called it in my book, “An Outline of Occult Science,” the “Old Indian,” which was followed by the “Old Persian,” age. In these civilizations human development was very different from what it became later, and religious beliefs depended upon this development. During the last two thousand years and more we have developed so that we are not aware that a split has occurred in our earthly evolution. This has hardly been noticed. What takes place in the greater part of present-day humanity, inwardly, at about their thirtieth year, has also hardly been noticed. It has remained to a great extent in the subconscious; it has not entered into man's consciousness. Conditions were very different in a humanity that lived eight or nine thousand years before the foundation of Christianity. The development of individuals was then more continuous up to about the age of thirty. With the thirtieth year a great change took place. What I have now to say about this change has naturally to be spoken of somewhat crudely, but these simple descriptions are in accordance with the facts that concern us at the moment.
In those remote times the following might happen: A man might have contracted a friendship with someone (before his thirtieth year who was considerably younger than himself—perhaps three or four years younger. This man shortly afterwards experienced the change that took place about the age of thirty. It might happen, these two men not having seen each other for a long time, that the one who had experienced the change at his thirtieth year was spoken to by the other without his knowing who he was. His memory had been so completely changed. I have had to put this in the language of to-day, hence it may strike you as being somewhat crude. In olden times the control of certain arrangements (Einrichtungen) stood in close connection with the Mystery schools; and by these, in the small societies then existing, a register of the lives of the young people was kept, because they themselves forgot, owing to the great alteration (Umschwung) that had taken place in them, and had to be taught again what they had experienced in life before their thirtieth year. These men then knew: I have become a quite different being in my thirtieth year, I must go to “the registry” (a modern expression, of course) in order to learn what I had previously experienced. This is actually what happened! Through instructions they received, at the same time they were told: Before your thirtieth year the Moon-forces worked in you exclusively; after attaining this age the Sun-forces entered into the development of your earthly life. The Sun-forces work on man with an entirely different purport from the Moon-forces. What does present-day humanity know of the Sun-forces? Only the outer physical part. Man knows that they warm him, that they cause him to perspire; he knows besides this that people practise sun-bathing, that there is something therapeutic connected with the forces of the sun, but all this he learns in a merely external way. He has no idea what the forces that are spiritually connected with the Sun do to him.
Julian the Apostate, the last of the heathen Cæsars, had experienced something of these forces in the last lingering note of the Mysteries, and just when he desired to make proof of these experiences he was murdered on his expedition into Persia; so powerful in the early Christian centuries were the forces which desired all knowledge of such things to be lost.
It is therefore not to be wondered at that even to-day no knowledge concerning them can be acquired. While the Moon-forces are those which determine what man is, which permeate him with an inward necessity (Notwendigkeit), as to his actions, and determine his instincts, his temperament, his emotions and the nature of his physical-etheric body generally, the spiritual Sun-forces free him from this compulsion. They caused this necessity or compulsion to dissolve, as it were, and man became really a free being through the Sun-forces. In that ancient time to which I have referred, the difference between these two forces in human evolution was strictly defined. In his thirtieth year a man then became a Sun-man, a free man; up to his thirtieth year he was a Moon-man, and was not free. To-day these two conditions slide one into the other. To-day the Sun-forces work along with the Moon-forces even in childhood, and the Moon-forces continue to work on into later years; so that to-day these two things, compulsion or necessity and freedom, work one into the other. This was not always the case. In the early pre-historic times of which we are speaking the action of the sun and that of the moon were absolutely distinct in the course of a man's life. This is why it was said at that time concerning the greater part of humanity: a man was born not once but twice. For it was held to be abnormal, something pathological, if a man did not experience this great change of life in his thirtieth year. It came about in the course of human evolution that the second of these births—they were spoken of as the Moon-birth and the Sun-birth—that the Sun-birth was no longer so noticeable in man, and certain ceremonies were carried out, certain exercises and actions were performed on those who desired initiation into the Mysteries. Such persons then experienced, in the Mysteries, what could be no longer experienced generally by men, and they became the “twice-born.”
When this expression “twice-born” is found in Oriental literature to-day it is misleading. Any Oriental scholar, any Sanskrit expert, might be asked—I think Professor Beckh is present here and you can ask him—if it is not the case that, as a matter of fact, no Oriental science can clearly and distinctly put before you, in a few words, what the content of the expression “twice-born” really is. Formal explanations there certainly are in plenty, but what it means in substance no one knows. Only those who are aware that it reaches back to a reality know the reality I have just explained to you. In such things spiritual observation alone can speak. And when once it has spoken, I would like to ask all those who hold with what can be learned from documents, with everything external science can discover—I would like to ask, taking for granted that science has gone to work in an unprejudiced manner, if this science does not corroborate in every particular the investigations made by spiritual science? Your attention must, however, be directed to certain things which take precedence of all documentary science; for the understanding of life, of man, cannot be gained by a science of documents.
Let us turn our gaze back to a very far-off age when people spoke of the Moon-birth of man as creation through the Father. With regard to the Sun-birth, people were quite clear that in the spiritual Sunlight the power of Christ, the Son, was active, and that this was the power that freed people. Consider for a moment what this force, this Sun-force, does. It is the force that enables us as men on earth to make something out of ourselves. We would have been strictly confined within an unchangeable, natural—not fateful—necessity, if the liberating Sun-forces had not by their influence dissolved this necessity.
This fact was known to those who held the more ancient opinions concerning the world. They looked up to the sun and said: This eye of the world, from which the power of Christ streams forth, is the cause of my not having to remain always under that brazen necessity with which I was born from out of the forces of the moon, as a man whose whole life had to evolve under compulsion. It is the Christ-force looking down on me through that cosmic Sun-eye that enables me through my inner freedom to make something of myself during my life on earth, something I could not have been, through the Moon-forces which placed me here.
This consciousness that he could transform himself, could make something out of himself, is what men saw in the forces of the Sun.
I would like to add here, but only by way of parenthesis, that Saturn was also looked up to as a third source of birth. In the Saturn forces these men saw all that preserved them when they passed through the gate of death: the third earthly metamorphosis. Birth on earth, meaning birth through the Moon; the second birth, meaning birth through the Sun; the third birth, meaning Saturn birth or earthly death. Man was here upheld by the mighty forces of Saturn, forces then holding sway at the extreme limit of the planetary system of the earth. These forces preserved him, bore him out into the spiritual world, and provided a connecting link for his being, when the third metamorphosis took place. This was absolutely the mental outlook of the men of those ancient times.
But human evolution goes on. A time arrived when it was no longer known in the Mysteries how the Sun-forces affected mankind. Knowledge concerning these forces was preserved longest among the medical workers in the Mysteries. For the forces which in his ordinary development give man freedom, and the possibility of making something out of himself—the Sun- or Christ-forces—live also under various conditions in certain plants and in other earthly beings and things, and reveal in these earthly things properties of healing.
Generally speaking, all sense of their connection with the sun was lost to humanity; and while for a considerable time the consciousness still remained that man is dependent on the Moon-forces, or Father-forces, all consciousness of his dependence—or rather his liberation by means of the Sun-forces—had long been lost. What to-day we call Nature-forces, almost the only ones we do speak of when discussing our conceptions of the world, are but Moon-forces that have become entirely abstract. But the Sun-forces were still known to One, even Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ, who lived His life in accordance with them. He knew them because he was ordained to receive these forces into his own body as they streamed to earth from the sun—forces which men had only been able to come in touch with in the Ancient Mysteries when they looked up to the sun. This I explained in the last lecture. What was of greatest importance was this, that in the thirtieth year of His life a change took place in the body of Jesus of Nazareth similar to that change which in primeval times took place in everyone, only it was but the reflection (Schein), as it were, of the Spiritual sun that shone into these men, while now the original Lord of the Sun, the Christ himself, came down into human evolution and took up His abode in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This fact lies behind the Mystery of Golgotha as the supremest event (Urergebnis) affecting all earthly life.
You will realise the full connection of these things when we now consider how the festival of Easter, which in those days was an entirely human concern, was actually carried out in the Ancient Mysteries—the Festival of Easter was, in fact, an initiation. The ceremony progressed through three stages. The first requirement, before the neophyte could attain true knowledge, before he could be initiated, was that through all that came to him from the side of the Mysteries he should be made so humble that people to-day can hardly form an idea of this deep, inner humility. People imagine to-day that they have the appearance, as regards knowledge, of being exceedingly modest, while for those who can see into the matter they are really possessed by pride. When about to enter upon initiation a man has, in the first place, to feel convinced that he cannot consider himself to be a man at all, but says rather: I have first to become a man!
It cannot be said of people to-day that at any point in their lives they consider themselves not to be men. But this was the first demand made on them, that they should hold themselves not to be men and should address themselves as follows: I certainly was a man before I came down into an earthly body; in pre-earthly existence I was a man of soul and spirit. The Soul-Spirit then entered a physical body, which it had received from its parents.
It, then, not clothed itself with the physical body—that would be to express it incorrectly—but it permeated itself with this physical body (durchdrungen mit diesem physischen Leibe). Men have really no idea of the manner and means by which the Soul-Spirit, in the course of long ages (das Geistig-Seelische durchsetzt das Physische), permeates the physical, permeates the nerves and sense-system, permeates the rhythmic-system, the digestive-system, and the limbs of man. They have no idea of this. They know very well that they are able to perceive the physical world by means of their senses. But what is a man capable of when he has reached the point where he has permeated his physical body so profoundly with his soul and spirit nature that he considers his development to be complete, when he is a fully evolved, fully developed man. ... What is he then capable of? At present he can certainly see external objects, he can hear external sounds, perceive through his skin things warm or cold, smooth or rough: he can perceive things outwardly; but he cannot perceive inwardly. He cannot look into himself with his eyes; he can at most remove the skin from a dead body and think that he sees into it, but he does not do so really. It is childish to think, for instance, here before me is a house, it has windows but I cannot see through them, so I will take all kinds of instruments, and, if I am strong enough, smash the house down, but then I will have only a heap of broken bricks before me, and these ruins are all I see. This is what people do to-day. They flay, they dissect people, in order to learn about them; but by such means they learn nothing. It is not the man at all they learn to know by such methods. If it is desired really to know something of man, you must be able to turn your eyes inwards and view him exactly as we view him to-day when we direct our eyes to him outwardly, and in the same way you must hear inwardly with your ears. All these activities taken together—those of the eyes, the ears, the whole skin as organ of touch, the organs of smell, etc., all these were called in the Mysteries the door to man (das Tor zum Menschen).
Initiation depended principally upon a person becoming aware that he knew nothing at all of human nature (vom Menschen); therefore, as he had no self-consciousness of human nature, he could not be a man. He had first to learn to look inward through his senses as ordinarily he looked outward. This was the first stage or degree of initiation in the ancient Mysteries. As soon as the pupil learnt to look thus inwards, in that same moment he became conscious of his pre-earthly existence. At that moment he knew: I am now “in my soul and spirit.”

The ordinary man looks outwards; instead of this the pupil of the Mysteries learnt to look inwards. In this inward gazing he became aware of what had entered into him in his pre-earthly existence, what had passed into him through his eyes, his ears, his skin, and so on. He was aware of these things, and through this was also aware of his pre-earthly existence. At this stage he was told that he would learn to know what we call natural science.
When we study natural science to-day, how do we do it? We are led to observe the things of Nature, to describe them, and so on. But this is much the same as if I were to meet a man again whom I had known long ago, and someone were to insist: You have to forget everything you did in company with this man; on seeing him again you are not to recall the intercourse you had with him. It is unbelievable that responsible people would do such a thing as this! I can indeed believe that occasionally this might be agreeable.... but under such conditions life could not go on. But this is imposed on the man to-day simply through the laws of civilization. For he knew the kingdoms of Nature; he knew them from their spiritual side before he came down to earth. To-day he is told to forget all that he knew of the mineral, plant, and animal world before he came down to earth, whereas the ancient Initiates taught him about them in what was called the first stage of the Mysteries. The Initiate said: Look at this piece of quartz. ... And then he did everything he could that might enable the pupil to recall what he had known about quartz before he came down to earth, what he had known, say, of the lily, the rose, etc. What was thus imparted as knowledge of Nature was a remembrance, a re-cognition (wieder erkennen). And anyone who had learnt the teaching regarding Nature as a remembrance of what he had seen before he descended into earthly life was received into the second degree.
In the second degree the pupil learnt Music, which at that time was Architecture, Geometry, Surveying, etc. For in what did this second degree of initiation consist? It comprised all that a man perceived when he not only looked inwards into himself with his eyes, or listened inwardly with his ears, but when he actually entered into himself (in sich hineinsteigt). The neophyte seeking initiation then said to himself: Thou enterest now into the grotto of the human temple (Tempelgrotte). He now learnt to know this grotto of the human temple. This was that physical part of him which was permeated by the soul and spiritual forces which were man before he came down into earthly life. Into this he now entered. He was told that this hidden place had three chambers. The first was the chamber of Thought; there he learnt all that was connected with this. ... Verily seen from outside the head is small.... when a man enters and sees it from within it is as vast as the whole universe. Here he learnt to know his spiritual nature. This was the first chamber. The second chamber was that in which he learnt to know Feeling. The third chamber was where he learnt to know Will.
He then learnt how a man is organised according to his instruments of thought, feeling, and will; he learnt what was of value on earth. Knowledge of Nature was not only of value on earth; man had already acquired knowledge of Nature before he came down to earth. But here we must remember that houses are not built above in the spiritual world as they are here with the help of earthly architecture. Over there, there is music, but it is spiritual Melos. Earthly music is something projected into earthly air; it is a projection of heavenly music, but as experienced by men it is earthly. It is the same when we measure things here on earth. We measure earthly space; the art of measuring, geometry, or surveying is an earthly science. It was important that those seeking initiation in the second degree should be made to realize that all talk of knowledge gained by mere earthly means, unless connected with geometry, architecture, or the art of surveying, is illusory; that true natural science is a recollection of pre-earthly knowledge; and that geometry, architecture, music, and the science of measuring are sciences that have to be learnt here on earth.
Thus in the second degree of initiation a man descended into his own self and learnt to know the men of the three chambers in respect of the single earthly incarnation, as he would otherwise learn to know them from outside, without descending into their inner being.
In the third degree the pupil learnt to know men, not simply by sinking down into himself (wenn er nun nicht bloss in sich untertaucht), by getting to know himself as spiritual being, but when this spiritual part of him learnt further to know the body. Therefore in all the Ancient Mysteries this degree was known as the gate of death. Here he learnt how it is with a man when he lays aside his earthly body; only there is a difference between actual death and that experienced during initiation. Why this must be I will explain in the next lecture; at present I only mentioned the fact.
When man really dies he lays aside his physical body. He is no longer bound to it, nor does he follow any longer the forces of the earth, having been freed from them. But while still bound to his physical body, as was the case in olden times at initiation, he had to attain liberation from the body (which at death comes of itself), and had to maintain it for a certain time through his own inner power. The attainment of those strong powers by which a man is able to maintain his soul in freedom, apart from the body, was necessary to initiation. It is these that give him a higher knowledge concerning the things he can never perceive through his senses, never think through his understanding. They place him as man in the spiritual world as the physical body places him as man in the physical world. He had then advanced so far as to be able to realize what he was as man of soul and spirit, to know that he had been initiated while still in earthly life. From this time onwards the earth for the Initiate was as a star existing outside humanity (Von da ab war die Erde ein ausser dem Menschen befindlicher Stern für den Initiierten), and in the ancient Mysteries he had before all else to learn to live with the sun instead of with the earth. He knew what he had received from the sun, and how the Sun-forces worked in him.
This third degree that I have just described was followed by a fourth. It affected the man seeking initiation in the following way: When on earth a person eats vegetables or game, when he drinks various things, he knows that such things were outside him and that now they are within him. He breathes the air; at first it is outside, then within him, then outside again. He is so closely bound up with the forces of the earth that he bears within him earthly substances and forces which otherwise were outside him. It was clearly explained to those seeking initiation in ancient times: Before initiation thou art a bearer of Earth, of vegetables, game, pork, etc. But when once initiated in the third degree, and when all those things have been imparted to thee that can be imparted to one who is free of the body, thou art no longer a bearer (träger) of cabbage, pork, or veal, but thou then dost become a bearer of those things which the Sun-forces give to thee.
That which the Sun-forces give spiritually was called, in all the Mysteries, Christos. Therefore, he who had surmounted the first three degrees of initiation—though on earth he might feel himself to be a bearer of cabbages—knew that he was a bearer of the Sun-forces and that he was called a Christophoros. In nearly all the Ancient Mysteries this was the name for those who had entered the fourth degree.
In the third degree certain things had to be grasped; the Neophyte had principally to realize that, in moments of knowledge, desire according to the physical body must cease, that as regards his physical body he belonged to the earth, but that really the earth has only to do with the destruction of his physical body, not with its construction. If the man of those former ages had been addressed in the words of to-day, he would have had things explained somewhat as follows (the sense would certainly have been made clear to him, but to you I can only say these things in the language of to-day, not in that of those former times): If you would know the teaching concerning substances, how these unite and separate, you must look up to the spiritual forces that from out the cosmos permeate all substance. This you cannot do unless initiated. For this you must have been initiated in the fourth degree. You must be able to perceive with the forces appertaining to Sun-existence; you can then study chemistry.
Supposing that someone to-day, wishing to take a degree in chemistry or in pharmacy, had first to submit to the necessity of feeling as a cabbage feels with regard to the forces of the sun, how absurd this would seem! But this was a fact. It was made absolutely clear that with such forces as people have in life, and which are generally employed during life, only geometry, surveying, music, and architecture can be studied ... not chemistry. If people speak of studying chemistry to-day, they speak in an entirely external way. All talk of chemistry has been entirely external ever since the time when the ancient initiation-wisdom was lost. This is a fact. It is enough to drive to desperation those who really wish “to know,” when they have to learn modern official chemistry, for it is founded only on assertion, not on any inward understanding of the matter. If men were only unprejudiced they would acknowledge that something else is needed, that people must be able to understand or realize differently if they wish to study chemistry. It is the modern timidity regarding knowledge or realization (erkennen) that has been implanted in people that holds them back from such an impulse.
After this a man was ripe. When sufficiently ripe to become Astronomos, which was a still higher grade (for to learn something of the stars externally, through calculations and the like, was considered absolutely unreal), he knew that in the stars spiritual beings dwelt who can only be known when physical perception has been overcome, when geometry has also been overcome, when man actually lives in the universe (Weltenall) and learns the spiritual nature of the stars—he was then a “Risen One.” He could then see how the Moon-forces and the Sun-forces actually work within earthly humanity.
I must therefore endeavour to-day to help you to understand from two sides how Easter was experienced inwardly in the ancient Mysteries—how this Festival did not take place at any fixed season of the year but when a man attained a certain degree of development. Easter was then experienced by him as a resurrection of his soul and spirit-nature out of the physical body, as a rising into the spiritual universe (Weltenall). It was thus that those who still knew something of the wisdom of the Mysteries at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha regarded this Mystery. They said: What would have happened to mankind if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place? In olden times it was possible for man to be initiated into the secrets of the cosmos, for in quite ancient times he experienced a second birth naturally, as one might say, when he was about thirty years old. At that time at least there were still memories of this, and there was a science of the Mysteries which preserved in its traditions what an earlier age had experienced. All this had faded and been forgotten by the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Mankind would have become entirely decadent, if the Power to which Initiates of the Mysteries rose when they became Christophoroi had not entered into One Jesus of Nazareth—so that it has remained on the earth ever since—and men, through Jesus Christ, have been able to unite themselves with it.
Thus what rises before our eyes to-day in the Festival of Easter had already formed a part of the history of the Mysteries. Men will only know the real meaning of Easter when they revive this ancient portion of the history of the Mysteries. They will only approach an understanding of the real meaning of Easter when they endeavour in some way at least to understand what men seeking initiation experienced in olden times. Such an Initiate said to himself: Through initiation I have become aware of how sun and moon work in me in their reciprocal relations to each other; I now know that I have been formed as physical man in a certain way; that I have eyes of a certain kind, a nose, a whole bodily form constructed within and without as it is; and the fact that this form is able to grow and continue to grow to-day through the nourishment it receives depends on the Moon-forces. All I require comes from them. That I am inwardly free, that I can be active as a free being within my bodily nature, that I can transform myself, take myself in hand, depends upon the Sun-forces, upon the Christ-forces. These I must stimulate, if I wish to achieve consciously by my labour what the Sun-forces accomplished in me under other conditions through a sort of natural necessity.
From this we can understand how man still looks up to Sun and Moon to-day and from their reciprocal constellations fixes the time of the Easter Festival. This method of reckoning is something that has remained from former times. People ask: When is the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring equinox? And they fix the Easter Festival of the year on the first Sunday after the full moon; indicating thereby that people see something in the structure, in the form of the Easter Festival, that comes from the cosmos and must accord with it. The thought of Easter must be grasped once more. It can only be understood when people look back to the content of the Ancient Mysteries, where man was first made aware of what took place when he looked into himself: the door of humanity! When he entered into himself, living inwardly in himself: the three-chambered inner man! When he made himself free: the Gate of Death! When he moved freely in the spiritual world: when he was a Christophoros.
The Mysteries themselves went back to a time when free human development had to find a place. And the time is now come when the Mysteries have to be found once more. They must be found again. People must realize consciously that preparations have to begin now, by which they can be found again.
Out of this consciousness the “Christmas Session” (Weihnachtstagung) was held, for it is an urgent necessity that a place should exist on the earth where Mysteries can once more be established. The Anthroposophical Society in its further development must provide the means for a renewal of the Mysteries. Your task, my dear friends, must be to co-operate towards this end, doing so out of the right consciousness. This demands that life be considered according to its three stages—according to the stage in which a man looks into the nature of men; according to the stage when he strives towards the inner being of men; according to the stage in which he is in that state of consciousness which otherwise he only experiences in the reality of external death.
As a remembrance of the lesson that has been given here to-day, let us take with us the following words, allowing them to work powerfully in our souls:—
Stand before the portals of the lives of men,
Behold on their lintels words of power.Live in the inward souls of men,
Feel in this realm the beginning of worlds.
—otherwise world-beginning is not always perceived, but only what is in the world—
Ponder the earthly-end of man;
Find in it the Spirit's turning-point.
In these words you have the essence of to-day's lesson—
Steh' vor des Menschen Lebenspforte;
Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte.Leb' in des Menschen Seeleninnern;
Fühl' in seinem Kreise Welt beginnen.Denk an des Menschen Erdenende;
Find' bei ihm die Geisteswende.
Zweiter Vortrag
Man kann schon sagen, daß der ursprüngliche Festesgedanke der ist, den Menschen aufschauen zu machen von seiner Abhängigkeit irdischen Dingen gegenüber zu seiner Abhängigkeit außerirdischen Dingen gegenüber. Und insbesondere ist es das Osterfest, dessen Betrachtung diese Gedanken dem Menschen nahebringen kann. Wir haben ja im Laufe der letzten drei, vier, fünf Jahrhunderte der zivilisierten Welt eine seelisch-geistige Entwickelung durchgemacht, die immer mehr und mehr den Menschen davon abgeleitet hat, seinen Zusammenhang mit den kosmischen Kräften und Mächten ins Auge zu fassen. Der Mensch wurde immer mehr und mehr darauf beschränkt, nur diejenigen Verhältnisse zu betrachten, die zwischen ihm und den irdischen Kräften und Mächten herrschen. Es ist ja auch richtig, daß mit denjenigen Erkenntnismitteln, die man heute als berechtigt anerkennt, andere Verhältnisse gar nicht ins Auge gefaßt werden können. Würde irgend jemand, der in der vorchristlichen Zeit oder auch noch in den ersten Jahrhunderten des Christentums Mysterienstätten nahegestanden hat, unsere heutige Erkenntnis erfahren können, er würde, wenn er mit seiner damaligen Seelenverfassung an die Dinge heranträte, gar nicht verstehen können, wie der Mensch imstande ist, zu leben ohne ein Bewußtsein seines außerirdischen, seines kosmischen Zusammenhanges.
Ich möchte zunächst manches skizzieren, was Sie den genaueren Verhältnissen nach geschildert finden in diesem oder jenem Zyklus. Weil ja diese Vorträge dazu bestimmt sein sollen, gerade den Ostergedanken uns nahezubringen, kann ich natürlich nicht alle Einzelheiten ausführen, ich kann nur andeuten, wie die Dinge sind.
Wenn wir uns zurückversetzen in verschiedene ältere Religionssysteme - wir können ja als Beispiel dasjenige nehmen, welches auch dem modernen Menschen noch am allernächsten liegt: das hebräischjüdische Religionssystem -, da werden wir in gewissen Religionssystemen des Altertums, wenn sie monotheistisch sind, die Verehrung, die Anbetung der einen Gottheit finden. Es ist das diejenige Gottheit, von der wir in christlicher Auffassung als der ersten Person der Gottheit, als dem Vatergotte sprechen.
Nun ist in allen denjenigen Religionen, in denen der Gedanke dieses Vatergottes lebt, mehr oder weniger vorhanden gewesen, ganz vorhanden gewesen sogar bei den Mysterienpriestern, der Zusammenhang dieses Vatergottes mit den kosmischen Mondeskräften, mit alledem, was an Kräften vom Monde auf die Erde herunterstrahlt. Heute ist ja von diesem alten Bewußtsein des Zusammenhanges des Menschen mit den Mondenkräften kaum etwas anderes zurückgeblieben als die Anregung, die das dichterische Gemüt in seiner Phantasie empfindet durch die Mondenkräfte, und das Zählen der Embryonalmonate des Menschen nach zehn Mondenmonaten in der Medizin. Aber in älteren Weltanschauungen war ein deutliches Bewußtsein davon vorhanden, daß der Mensch, wenn er heruntersteigt aus der geistigen Welt, wo er im vorirdischen Dasein als geistig-seelisches Wesen war, zu seinem physischen Dasein, daß er dann durchströmt, durchkraftet wird von den Impulsen, die vom Monde ausgehen. Der Mensch, wenn er auf dasjenige sieht, was ihn lebensvoll gestaltet, was in ihm lebt als Ernährungs-, Atmungsprozeß und so weiter, überhaupt als allgemeine Wachstumskräfte, muß dann nicht auf die Erdenkräfte schauen, sondern er muß schauen auf außerirdische Kräfte. Wenn der Mensch auf die Erdenkräfte schaut, kann er ja gewahr werden, wie diese Erdenkräfte sich zu ihm verhalten. Würden wir unseren Leib nicht zusammenhalten durch äußerirdische Kräfte, würde unserem Leib nicht seine Gestalt gegeben werden eben durch außerirdische Kräfte, was könnten irdische Kräfte dem Zusammenhalt unseres Leibes geben? In dem Augenblicke, wo die außerirdischen Kräfte aus diesem Leib heraußen sind, ist ja dieser Leib ausgesetzt den irdischen Kräften: dann zerfällt er, dann löst er sich auf, dann wird er Leichnam. Die Erdenkräfte können aus dem Menschen nur den Leichnam machen, nicht den Menschen gestalten. Diejenigen Kräfte, die im Menschen leben, so daß sie ihn herausheben aus dem Irdischen, daß er zwischen Geburt und Tod eine in sich zusammenhängende Organisationsgestalt im Irdischen ist, nicht den Kräften verfällt, die mit dem Tode ihn ergreifen und ihn zerstören, daß der Mensch sein ganzes irdisches Leben hindurch Kräfte hat, die gegen diese Zerstörung kämpfen denn sie müssen kämpfen gegen diese Zerstörung -, verdankt er dem Einfluß der Mondgewalt.
Wenn wir auf der einen Seite theoretisch aussprechen können, die Mondenkräfte enthalten die Gestaltung des menschlichen Körpers, so müssen wir auf der anderen Seite sehen, wie alte Religionen diese Kräfte, die sozusagen den Menschen durch seine Geburt ins physische Dasein hereinführten, als die Vaterkräfte, als die Kräfte des göttlichen Vaters verehrten. Und bei den Eingeweihten des alten Hebraismus war ein deutliches Bewußtsein davon vorhanden, daß vom Monde ausstrahlen diejenigen Kräfte, die den Menschen ins Erdendasein hereinführen, die ihn im Erdendasein erhalten und denen er als physischer Mensch sich entreißt, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht.
Gemütvoll diese göttlichen Vaterkräfte liebend, so hinschauend auf diese Vaterkräfte, und das wiederum im Kultus, im Gebet und so weiter auslebend, das war der Inhalt gewisser alter monotheistischer Religionen. Aber konsequenter, als man denkt, waren diese alten monotheistischen Religionen. Diese Dinge werden ja in der Geschichte völlig falsch dargestellt, weil die Geschichte eben nur nach äußeren Dokumenten gehen kann, nicht nach dem, was im geistigen Schauen beobachtet werden kann.
Solche Religionen, die hinschauten auf den Mond, auf dasjenige, was im Mond an geistigen Wesenheiten vorhanden ist, das sind ja eigentlich spätere Religionen. Die ganz ursprünglichen hatten neben dieser Anschauung vom Mond eine deutliche Anschauung von den Sonnenkräften, ja noch, was wir auch hier erwähnen müssen, von den Saturnkräften.
Da kommen wir allerdings in eine geschichtliche Betrachtung hinein, für die es keine äußeren Dokumente mehr gibt, die viele Jahrtausende vor der Begründung des Christentums zurückliegt, da kommen wir in jene Zeit hinein, die ich in meinem «Umriß einer Geheimwissenschaft» als die urindische bezeichnet habe, um eben ein Wort dafür zu haben, weil sie sich auf dem Boden des späteren Indien abspielte -, die spätere Zivilisation ist die urpersische. In diesen Zivilisationen entwickelte sich der Mensch noch ganz anders als später, und von dieser seiner Entwickelung hing dann eben sein religiöses Bekenntnis ab.
Wir Menschen entwickeln uns ja alle schon seit mehr als zwei Jahrtausenden so, daß eigentlich ein Riß in unserer irdischen Entwickelung von uns nicht bemerkt wird, wirklich nicht richtig bemerkt wird. Er ist auch kaum bemerkbar vorhanden. Was mit den Menschen so um das dreißigste Lebensjahr herum innerlich vorgeht, das bleibt ja für den heutigen Menschen zum großen Teil im Unterbewußten, im Unbewußten. Für eine Menschheit, die acht bis neun Jahrtausende vor der Begründung des Christentums lebte, war das ganz anders. Da entwickelte sich der Mensch bis etwa gegen das dreißigste Jahr hin so, daß seine Entwickelung kontinuierlich war. Aber im dreißigsten Lebensjahr trat eine mächtige Metamorphose mit dem Menschen ein. Ich möchte diese Metamorphose ganz radikal aussprechen. Es ist natürlich etwas radikal gesprochen, wie ich es jetzt tun werde; aber es bezeichnet dieses radikale Aussprechen dennoch die Tatsache, mit der man es zu tun hat.
Es konnte in diesen älteren Zeiten das folgende passieren: Ein Mensch hatte Bekanntschaft geschlossen vor seinem dreißigsten Lebensjahr mit irgend jemandem, der viel jünger war als er, vielleicht drei, vier Jahre jünger war als er. Der machte die Metamorphose, die um das dreißigste Jahr herum lag, später durch. Es konnte geschehen, wenn sich diese Menschen längere Zeit nicht gesehen hatten, sich dann begegneten - ich spreche in heutigen Worten, dadurch nimmt es sich noch radikaler aus —, daß derjenige, der die Metamorphose im dreißigsten Lebensjahr durchgemacht hatte, von dem anderen Menschen angesprochen wurde und nicht wußte, wer das ist. So gründlich umgeändert hatte sich sein Gedächtnis.
Und in diesen ältesten Zeiten standen Einrichtungen im Zusammenhange mit den Mysterienschulen, in denen in den kleinen Gemeinden, die damals waren, registriert wurde das Leben der jungen Leute, weil sie selber es vergaßen, weil sie selber einen mächtigen Umschwung in ihrem Leben durchmachten und lernen mußten, was sie im Erdenleben erlebt hatten bis gegen das dreißigste Jahr hin. Und dann, wenn diese Menschen gewahr wurden: ich bin ein ganz anderer geworden im dreißigsten Jahre, ich muß in die «Registratur» gehen - ein moderner Ausdruck natürlich -, um zu erfahren, was ich vorher erlebt habe - ja, es ist so! -, da wurden sie zu gleicher Zeit gewahr durch den Unterricht, den sie bekamen: vor dem dreißigsten Lebensjahr wirkten auf sie die Mondenkräfte ausschließlich; mit dem dreißigsten Lebensjahre traten die Sonnenkräfte in die Entwickelung ihres Erdenlebens ein; und die Sonnenkräfte wirken in ganz anderem Sinne auf den Menschen als die Mondenkräfte. Was kennt der heutige Mensch von den Sonnenkräften! Er kennt nur das äußerliche Physische. Er weiß, daß er - verzeihen Sie - durch die Sonnenkräfte schwitzt, daß es ihm warm wird, er weiß einiges andere, Sonnenbäder und dergleichen gibt es ja heute, er weiß also einiges Therapeutische und so weiter, aber in ganz äußerlicher Weise. Er kann gar nicht ermessen, was diejenigen Kräfte mit ihm tun, die mit der Sonne geistig verbunden sind.
Julian der Apostat, der letzte der heidnischen Cäsaren, hatte in den Nachklängen der Mysterien noch einiges von diesen Kräften der Sonne erfahren. Und da er es wieder geltend machen wollte, wurde er auf dem Zuge nach Persien ermordet. So stark waren die Mächte, die in den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten verschwinden machen wollten das Wissen von diesen Dingen. Es ist daher gar kein Wunder, daß eben heute ein Wissen von diesen Dingen nicht errungen werden kann. Während die Mondenkräfte dasjenige im Menschen sind, was den Menschen determiniert, was ihn mit einer inneren Notwendigkeit durchzieht, so daß er handeln muß, wie seine Instinkte, wie sein Temperament, wie seine Emotion, wie überhaupt sein ganzer physisch-ätherischer Leib ist, befreien die geistigen Sonnenkräfte den Menschen von dieser Notwendigkeit. Sie schmelzen sozusagen die Kräfte dieser Notwendigkeit in ihm, und der Mensch wird eigentlich ein freies Wesen durch die Sonnenkräfte. Das war in jenen alten Zeiten in der Entwickelung des Menschen streng voneinander geschieden. Da wurde man eben im dreißigsten Lebensjahr ein Sonnenmensch, ein freier Mensch. Man war bis zum dreißigsten Lebensjahr der Mondenmensch, der unfreie Mensch.
Heute schiebt sich das ineinander. Heute wirken die Sonnenkräfte schon neben den Mondenkräften im kindlichen Alter, und die Mondenkräfte wirken weiter im späteren Alter, so daß heute diese Dinge, Notwendigkeit und Freiheit, durcheinander wirken. Aber so war es ja nicht immer. In den vorgeschichtlichen Zeiten, von denen ich hier rede, war es so, daß die Mondenwirkungen und Sonnenwirkungen im Laufe des Lebens streng voneinander geschieden waren. Und daher sprach man in jenen älteren Zeiten den meisten Menschen gegenüber - denn es wurde als etwas Pathologisches, als etwas Abnormes betrachtet, wenn der Mensch diese Metamorphose, diesen Umschwung seines Lebens im dreißigsten Lebensjahr nicht erlebte -, man sprach davon, daß der Mensch nicht einmal, sondern zweimal geboren wird. Und als die menschliche Entwickelung so weiterschritt, daß diese zweite, die Sonnengeburt des Menschen - die erste nannte man die Mondengeburt — nicht mehr so bemerkbar war, da wendete man dann gewisse Übungen, gewisse Kultushandlungen, überhaupt gewisse Tatsachen auf diejenigen an, die eingeweiht wurden in den Mysterien. Die machten dann dasjenige durch, was für die allgemeine Menschheit nicht mehr da war. Und sie waren die Zweimal-Geborenen.
Wenn man heute den Ausdruck «Zweimal-Geborene» in orientalischen Schriften findet, so ist dieser Ausdruck eben schon ein abgeleiteter. Im Grunde genommen möchte ich wirklich jeden Orientalisten, jeden Sanskritisten fragen - ich glaube, es ist ja auch unser Freund Professor Beckh in unserer Mitte, Sie können ihn fragen, ob die Dinge so sind, auch nach seinen fachlichen Studien -, man kann jeden Sanskritisten fragen, ob aus der heutigen orientalischen Wissenschaft mit klipp und klaren Worten hervorgeholt werden kann, was der Ausdruck «Zweimal-Geborene» seiner Substanz nach bedeute. Gewiß, formale Erklärungen sind massenhaft da, aber was er seiner Substanz nach bedeutet, das weiß man nicht; das können nur diejenigen wissen, welche wissen, daß er auf eine Realität zurückgeht, die ich jetzt eben auseinandergesetzt habe. In diesen Dingen spricht schon einmal die geistige Beobachtung. Und wenn dann die geistige Beobachtung gesprochen hat, dann möchte ich jeden, der das, was nach den Dokumenten vorliegt, was man an äußerer Wissenschaft aufbringen kann, fragen, wenn er unbefangen mit der äußeren Wissenschaft zu Werke geht, ob diese äußere Wissenschaft nicht Stück für Stück dann die geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungen bestätigt. Das wird sie tun, wenn die Dinge nur im rechten Lichte gesehen werden. Aber es muß auf gewisse Dinge aufmerksam gemacht werden, die jeder Dokumenten-Wissenschaft vorangehen. Denn mit Dokumenten-Wissenschaft versteht man das Leben des Menschen eben nicht.
So blicken wir auf eine ältere Zeit zurück, in der gesprochen wurde von der Mondengeburt des Menschen als der Menschenschöpfung durch den Vater. Bezüglich der Sonnengeburt war man sich klar darüber, daß in den geistigen Sonnenstrahlen wirkt die Kraft des Christus, des Sohnes, und diese Kraft ist die den Menschen befreiende. Denn denken Sie, was bewirkt diese Kraft, die Sonnenkraft? Die Sonnenkraft bewirkt, daß wir als Menschen überhaupt auf der Erde etwas aus uns machen können. Wir würden streng determiniert in eine unabänderliche, nicht Schicksalsnotwendigkeit, sondern Naturnotwendigkeit hineingestellt sein, wenn die befreienden Sonnenkräfte, die die Notwendigkeit zerschmelzenden Impulse, nicht an uns herantreten würden.
Das wußte der Mensch der älteren Weltanschauungen, wenn er zur Sonne hinaufschaute: Dieses Auge der Welt, aus dem die Kraft des Christus hervorstrahlt, dieses Auge der Welt macht, daß ich nicht jener ehernen Notwendigkeit unterworfen bleiben muß, mit der ich aus den Mondenkräften herausgeboren bin, mein ganzes Leben hindurch ein in Notwendigkeit sich entwickelnder Mensch. Diese Sonnenkräfte, diese Christus-Kräfte, welche durch das kosmische Sonnenauge herunterschauen, diese Christus-Kräfte machen es, daß ich während meines Erdenlebens durch meine innere Freiheit etwas aus mir machen kann, was ich nicht gewesen bin durch die Mondenkräfte, da ich ins Erdenleben hereingestellt worden bin.
Dieses Bewußtsein des Menschen, daß er sich umgestalten kann, daß er aus sich etwas machen kann, das ist es, was man in den Sonnenkräften sah.
Ich möchte zur Ergänzung, gewissermaßen nur in Parenthese, anmerken, daß dann zum dritten hingeschaut wurde auf die Saturnkräfte. In den Saturnkräften wurde alles dasjenige gesehen, was den Menschen erhält, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht, also die dritte irdische Metamorphose durchmacht.
Geburt: Mondengeburt,
zweite Geburt: Sonnengeburt,
dritte Geburt: Saturngeburt, Tod, irdischer Tod.
Da wird er erhalten durch die für damals am äußersten Ende des Planetensystems der Erde waltenden Saturnkräfte. Die halten ihn aufrecht, die tragen ihn hinaus in die geistige Welt, die machen aus seiner Wesenheit einen Zusammenhang, wenn die dritte Metamorphose eintritt. Das war durchaus in einer älteren Zeit Weltanschauung.
Aber die Menschheit entwickelt sich eben. So trat eine Zeit ein, in der nur noch in den Mysterien bekannt war, wie die Sonnenkräfte auf den Menschen wirken. Am längsten erhielten sich die Kenntnisse über die Sonnenkräfte in den medizinischen Abteilungen der Mysterien, weil gerade diejenigen Kräfte, die dem Menschen in seiner gewöhnlichen Entwickelung die Freiheit geben, die Möglichkeit geben, aus sich etwas zu machen, weil diese Sonnenkräfte, die Christus-Kräfte, zu gleicher Zeit in vieler Beziehung in gewissen Pflanzen auf der Erde wieder leben, auch in anderen Erdenwesenheiten, Erdendingen leben, und dann in diesen Erdendingen Heilmittel darstellen. Aber es ist im allgemeinen der Menschheit gerade der Zusammenhang mit der Sonne verlorengegangen. Während noch lange das Bewußtsein vorhanden geblieben ist: der Mensch hängt von den Monden-, von den Vaterkräften ab, ging viel früher das Bewußtsein der Abhängigkeit von den Sonnenkräften - eigentlich der Befreiung, müßte man sagen, durch die Sonnenkräfte verloren. Und was wir heute Naturkräfte nennen, wovon wir fast einzig und allein im Weltanschauungsleben sprechen, das sind ja nur die ganz und gar abstrakt gemachten Mondenkräfte.
Aber die Sonnenkräfte, sie hat noch erkannt und sich darnach richten können eben der Träger des Christus, Jesus von Nazareth. Und er mußte sie kennen aus dem Grunde, weil er ja dazu bestimmt war, diese Sonnenkräfte, die man in den alten Mysterien nur durch die Aufschau zur Sonne erreichen konnte, in ihrem Herunterströmen auf die Erde in den eigenen Leib aufzunehmen. Das habe ich ja gestern auseinandergesetzt. Das Wesentliche der Christologie bei der Begründung des Christentums war eben dieses, daß in dem dreißigsten Lebensjahre in dem Leibe des Jesus von Nazareth sich eine Umwandlung vollzogen hat, jene Umwandlung, die in Urzeiten in allen Menschen sich vollzogen hat, nur daß sozusagen in alle Menschen damals der Schein der geistigen Sonne eingezogen ist, während jetzt das Urwesen der Sonne, der Christus selbst, heruntergestiegen ist in die menschliche Entwickelung und Wohnung genommen hat in dem Leibe des Jesus von Nazareth. Das ist eben dasjenige, was dem Mysterium von Golgatha als ein Urereignis des ganzen Erdenlebens zugrunde liegt.
Den vollen Zusammenhang dieser Dinge wird man erblicken, wenn man jetzt hinschaut auf die Art, wie in älteren Mysterien, ich möchte sagen, das damals ganz menschlich vorhandene Osterfest denn es war ja das Osterfest die Initiation, die Einweihung - eigentlich vollzogen worden ist. Die Einweihung ging zunächst durch drei Stufen. Aber das erste Erfordernis, um zur wirklichen Erkenntnis, zur Initiation zu kommen, war ja das, daß der Mensch durch alles, was von seiten der Mysterien an ihn herangebracht wurde, so bescheiden gemacht worden ist, daß sich heute eigentlich niemand eine Vorstellung von dieser inneren Bescheidenheit machen kann. Heute glauben die Menschen schon, daß sie in bezug auf die Erkenntnisse ungeheuer bescheiden seien, während sie für den, der die Dinge durchschaut, noch von einem wahren Hochmut besessen sind.
Vor allen Dingen mußte das über den Menschen beim Ausgangspunkte der Einweihung kommen, daß er sich gar nicht für einen Menschen hielt, daß er sagte: Ich muß erst ein Mensch werden! Heute kann man ja das dem Menschen nicht zumuten, daß er in irgendeinem Zeitpunkte seines Lebens sich für keinen Menschen hält.
Aber das war die allererste Anforderung, sich wirklich für keinen Menschen zu halten und das folgende sich zu sagen: Gewiß, ich war ein Mensch, bevor ich in einen irdischen Leib heruntergestiegen bin; ich war im vorirdischen Dasein ein Mensch geistig-seelisch. - Da ist das Geistig-Seelische in den physischen Leib eingezogen, den es von der Mutter her, von den Eltern her bekommen hat. Da hat es sich nicht umkleidet, das ist ein falscher Ausdruck -, aber durchdrungen mit diesem physischen Leibe. Von der Art und Weise, wie das Geistig-Seelische nun im Laufe einer längeren Zeit durchsetzt das Physische, durchsetzt das Nerven-Sinnessystem, durchsetzt das rhythmische System, durchsetzt das Stoffwechsel-Gliedmaßensystem, von dem haben ja die Menschen kein Bewußtsein. Sie werden gewahr, sie sehen aus ihren Sinnen heraus, sehen die physische Umwelt. Aber was kann denn der Mensch, wenn er nun wirklich dazu gekommen ist, daß er mit seinem Geistig-Seelischen seinen physischen Leib so weit durchdrungen hat, daß er sich nun für einen ganz entwickelten, voll entwickelten erwachsenen Menschen hält? Was kann er dann? Er kann ja nur aus seinen Augen herausschauen, aus seinen Ohren heraushören, mit der Haut heraus wahrnehmen Wärme und Kälte, Rauheit und Glätte: er kann ja nur heraus wahrnehmen, er kann nicht herein wahrnehmen. Er kann durch die Augen nicht in sich hineinschauen, kann höchstens den physischen Leichnam schinden und dann glauben, daß er in sich hineinschaut. Aber da schaut er nicht in Wirklichkeit hinein. Es ist ja kindisch, das zu glauben.
Wenn ich hier ein Haus vor mir habe: das hat Fenster, aber ich schaue nicht hinein, sonder ich nehme, wenn ich stark genug dazu bin, alle möglichen Instrumente und zerschlage das Haus - dann habe ich die einzelnen Ziegel vor mir liegen, und nur diesen Haufen schaue ich mir dann an. So macht man es ja heute. Man zerschindet, man zerstückelt den Menschen, um ihn kennenzulernen, aber da lernt man ihn nicht kennen. Es ist gar nicht der Mensch, den man da kennenlernt. Will man den Menschen kennenlernen, so muß man so, wie man heute aus den Augen herausschaut, nun wieder zurück durch die Augen hineinschauen können, durch die Ohren wiederum zurück hineinhören können. Das alles zusammen - Augen, Ohren, die ganze Haut als Tast- und Wärme-Organ, Geruchsorgan und so weiter —, das nannte man in den alten Mysterien das Tor zum Menschen, die Pforte zum Menschen. Und davon ging überhaupt die Initiation aus, daß irgend jemand klar wurde darüber: Er weiß ja gar nichts vom Menschen; also kann er, da er kein Selbstbewußtsein vom Menschen hat, auch kein Mensch sein. Er muß erst lernen, durch die Sinne hineinzuschauen, wie er sonst nur hinausschaut.
Das war die erste Stufe der Einweihung in älteren Mysterien. Und in dem Augenblicke, wo der Mensch lernte dieses Hineinschauen, in dem Augenblicke erlebte er sich auch im vorirdischen Dasein. Denn da wußte er: Ich bin in meinem Geistig-Seelischen.

Schematisch gezeichnet: Der Mensch schaute also heraus (gelbe Striche nach außen). Statt dessen lernte er hineinschauen (roter Pfeil nach innen). Aber in diesem Hineinschauen wurde er gewahr desjenigen, was eingezogen ist in den Menschen als das vorirdische Dasein (grün), was hineingezogen ist durch Auge, Ohr, Haut und so weiter. Da wurde der Mensch dessen gewahr: Da hatte er sein vor irdisches Dasein. Und jetzt wurde ihm gesagt, nun erst würde er kennenlernen dasjenige, was wir heute Naturwissenschaft nennen würden. Wenn wir heute Naturwissenschaft lernen, wie tun wir das? Wir tun es so, daß wir dazu geführt werden, die Dinge der Natur anzuschauen, zu beschreiben und so weiter. Aber das ist ja so, wie wenn ich einen Menschen lange gekannt hätte, ich ihn wiedersehen soll, und jemand würde mir auferlegen: Du mußt aber alles vergessen, was du mit diesem Menschen gemeinschaftlich gehabt hast, wenn du ihn jetzt wiedersiehst; du darfst dich an gar nichts erinnern, was du mit ihm gemeinschaftlich gehabt hast. - Denken Sie - das ist gar nicht auszudenken -, wenn das zum Beispiel Eheleuten auferlegt würde, daß sie, wenn sie sich irgendeinmal nach längerer Zeit wiederum sehen, alles vergessen, was sie irgendwie miteinander durchgemacht haben! Ja, ich kann mir schon denken, daß es zuweilen auch angenehm sein dürfte; aber das Leben könnte unter solchen Voraussetzungen nicht bestehen. Das aber wird dem modernen Menschen einfach durch die Zivilisationsordnung auferlegt. Denn der Mensch hat die Reiche der Natur kennengelernt, kennengelernt von ihrer geistigen Seite, bevor er heruntergestiegen ist auf die Erde. Während man heute den Menschen dazu anleitet, all das zu vergessen, was er, bevor er heruntergestiegen ist, gelernt hat über Mineralien, über Pflanzen, über Tiere, machte man den alten Eingeweihten in dem sogenannten ersten Mysteriengrad darauf aufmerksam: Du siehst jetzt den Quarz. - Und nun tat man alles, damit er sich erinnere, was er, bevor er heruntergestiegen war, vom Quarz wußte oder was er von der Lilie oder von der Rose wußte. Wiedererkennen war dasjenige, was als Naturwissen beigebracht wurde. Und hatte jemand so Naturlehre gelernt als ein Wiedererkennen dessen, was er angeschaut hatte, bevor er ins irdische Leben heruntergestiegen war, dann wurde er aufgenommen in den zweiten Grad.
Im zweiten Grad lernte man Musik, das, was dazumal Architektur war, was dazumal Geometrie war, Meßkunde und so weiter. Denn was enthielt dieser zweite Grad? Dieser zweite Grad enthielt alles das, was der Mensch dann wahrnimmt, wenn er nun nicht bloß durch die Augen hineinschaut in sich, durch die Ohren hineinhört, sondern wenn er wirklich nun in sich hineinsteigt. Dann sagte man dem Einzuweihenden: Du kommst in die menschliche Tempelgrotte. Diese menschliche Tempelgrotte lernte er kennen. Sie war dasjenige, was physisch durchdrungen wurde von den geistig-seelischen Kräften, aus denen der Mensch bestand, bevor er zum Erdenleben heruntergestiegen war. Da drang er in sich selber nun ein. Drei Kammern hat diese Tempelgrotte, sagte man ihm. Die eine Kammer war die Kammer des Denkens: da lernte man erkennen alles das - ja, wenn man es von außen anschaut, ist es der Kopf. Der ist klein. Wenn man hineinsteigt und ihn von innen anschaut, dann ist er so groß wie die Welt, und dann lernt man sein Geistiges kennen. Das war die erste Kammer, die zweite Kammer war diejenige, wo man das Fühlen kennenlernte. Die dritte Kammer war diejenige, wo man das Wollen kennenlernte. Und da lernte man erkennen, wie der Mensch organisiert ist seinen Denk-, Fühl- und Willensorganen nach, da lernte man erkennen das, was auf Erden Geltung hat.
Naturwissen hat nicht bloß auf Erden Geltung. Naturwissen erwirbt man schon, bevor man auf die Erde heruntersteigt. Hier soll man sich daran erinnern. Häuser werden nicht gebaut drüben in der geistigen Welt wie mit der Erdenarchitektur. Musik ist drüben, aber geistiges Melos. Was irdische Musik ist, das ist herunterprojiziert in die irdische Luft; sie ist eine Projektion der himmlischen Musik, aber wie sie der Mensch erlebt, ist sie irdisch. Ebenso ist es, wenn wir auf der Erde messen. Wir messen den Erdenraum; Meßkunst, Geometrie ist Erdenwissenschaft. Das war wichtig für den im zweiten Grad zu Initiierenden, überhaupt aufmerksam darauf gemacht zu werden, daß ja alles Reden von Erkennen mit bloßen Erdenmitteln, wenn es sich nicht auf die Geometrie, Architektur und Meßkunde bezieht, Unsinn ist. Daß eine wirkliche Naturkunde das wiedererinnerte vorirdische Wissen sein muß, das lernte er erkennen. Und daß für die Erde eben Geometrie, Architektur, Musik, Meßkunde die Wissenschaften sind, die hier gelernt werden können. Da also stieg der Mensch in sich selber hinunter, lernte den dreikammerigen Weltmenschen kennen gegenüber der einen Erdenorganisation, die man sonst kennt, wenn man, ohne in den Menschen hineinzusteigen, den Menschen von außen kennenlernt.
Und im dritten Grad lernte man den Menschen kennen, wenn er nun nicht bloß in sich untertaucht, sich als Geistiges erkennen lernt, sondern wenn dieses Geistige noch den Leib kennenlernt. Daher war dieser dritte Grad in allen alten Mysterien der, den man nennen mußte die Pforte des Todes. Da wurde der Mensch gewahr, wie man ist, wenn man den Erdenleib abgelegt hat. Nur besteht ein Unterschied zwischen diesem wirklichen Sterben und dem Eingeweihtensterben. Warum dieser Unterschied bestehen muß, werde ich noch in den nächsten Vorträgen auseinandersetzen; jetzt will ich nur die Tatsachen hervorheben.
Wenn man wirklich stirbt, legt man seinen physischen Leib ab. Man ist nicht mehr an ihn gebunden und folgt nicht mehr den irdischen Kräften, man ist befreit von ihnen. Wenn man aber noch gebunden ist an seinen physischen Leib, wie es bei der Initiation in alten Zeiten der Fall war, dann muß man das, was man im Tode von selber hat, dieses Freisein vom Leibe, durch innere Kraft erringen, man muß sich für eine gewisse Zeit frei halten. Das war für die Initiation notwendig, diese starken inneren Seelenkräfte zu erringen, durch die man sich in der Seele frei halten konnte von dem physischen Leib. Und diese Kräfte, die einem also die Macht gaben, sich frei zu halten vom irdischen Leib, diese Kräfte, die gaben einem höhere Erkenntnis in bezug auf das, was man durch die Sinne niemals sehen kann, durch den Verstand niemals denken kann. Sie versetzen einen als Mensch in die geistige Welt, wie man durch seinen physischen Leib als Mensch in die physische Welt versetzt ist. Aber dann war man ja so weit, daß man sich als geistig-seelischer Mensch, als Initiierter, schon während des Erdendaseins erkannte. Von da ab war die Erde ein außer dem Menschen befindlicher Stern für den Initiierten, und er konnte vor allen Dingen in den älteren Mysterien mit der Sonne leben statt mit der Erde. Er wußte, was er von der Sonne hatte, wie die Sonnenkräfte in ihm wirkten.
Aus diesem dritten Grad, den ich eben beschrieben habe, folgte dann der vierte. Dieser vierte Grad wirkte etwa in der folgenden Art auf die Einzuweihenden. Wenn man auf der Erde ißt, weiß man, man ißt Kohl, Wildbret, man trinkt alles mögliche: man weiß, das ist jetzt draußen, das ist dann drinnen. Man atmet Luft: die ist erst draußen, dann drinnen, dann wieder draußen. Man steht mit den Erdenkräften so in Verbindung, daß man die Erdenkräfte und Substanzen, die sonst draußen sind, in sich trägt. Du bist, ehe du eingeweiht bist — so machte man dem alten zu Initiierenden klar - ein Erdenträger, ein Kohlträger, ein Wildbretträger, ein Schweinefleischträger und so weiter. Wenn du aber im dritten Grad eingeweiht warst und nun dasjenige dir übermittelt wird, was dir übermittelt werden kann, wenn du frei geworden bist vom Leibe, dann wirst du nicht sein ein Kohlträger, ein Schweinefleischträger, ein Kalbfleischträger, sondern dann wirst du sein ein Träger dessen, was dir die Sonnenkräfte geben. - Und das, was geistig die Sonnenkräfte geben, das nannte man überall in den Mysterien Christos. Daher wurde derjenige, der über die drei Grade hinausgekommen war und sich nun ebenso, wie er sich auf der Erde fühlen konnte als Kohlträger, sich fühlen konnte als ein Träger der Sonnenkräfte, er wurde ein Christophor, ein Christophorus genannt. Das war in den meisten alten Mysterien die Bezeichnung für den, der nun im vierten Grade war.
Im dritten Grade mußte man gewisse Dinge begreifen. Vor allen Dingen mußte man in diesem dritten Grade begreifen, daß die Begierde nach dem physischen Leib aufhören muß für die Momente der Erkenntnis, daß eine klare Anschauung darüber da sein muß, daß der Mensch seinem physischen Leibe nach der Erde angehört, aber eigentlich die Erde nur zum Zerstören dieses physischen Leibes hat, nicht zum Aufbauen. Jetzt lernte er erkennen die aufbauenden Kräfte, die aus dem Kosmos stammen. Nun aber lernte er noch etwas kennen. Er lernte kennen, gerade wenn er ein Christophor wurde, daß auch in den Stoffen der Erde geistige Kräfte wirken, die nur nicht sichtbar sind für das irdische Anschauen. Und hätte man in den heutigen Worten zu dem Menschen der damaligen Zeit gesprochen - dem Sinne nach wurde schon zu ihm so gesprochen, aber ich kann Ihnen die Dinge nur mit den heutigen Worten sagen, nicht mit den damaligen -, ihm wäre folgendes klargemacht: Willst du die Stoffeslehre kennen, wie sich die Stoffe verbinden und voneinander trennen, so mußt du auf die geistigen Kräfte, die vom Kosmischen die Stoffe durchdringen, hinschauen. Das kannst du gar nicht, wenn du uneingeweiht bist. Du mußt im vierten Grad eingeweiht sein. Du mußt mit den Kräften des Sonnenseins schauen können, dann kannst du Chemie studieren.
Nun denken Sie sich, wenn man heute einem Pharmazeuten oder einem Chemiker, der Doktor werden will, die Verpflichtung auferlegen würde, er solle erst sich den Kräften der Sonne gegenüber so fühlen, wie er sich dem Kohl der Erde gegenüber fühlt: denken Sie, wie wahnsinnig dies schiene! Aber das waren ja Realitäten. Und dies wurde den Menschen klar: Mit all den Kräften, die im Leibe leben und deren man sich im gewöhnlichen Erkennen bedient, kann man nur Geometrie, Meßkunde, Musik und Architektur studieren. Man kann nicht Chemie studieren mit diesen Kräften. Wenn man heute Chemie studiert, so redet man eben äußerlich. Aber so ist es: Alles Reden von Chemie von der Zeit ab, wo die alte Initiationsweisheit verlorengegangen ist, ist ja ganz äußerlich. Es ist für den, der wirklich erkennen will, sogar zum Verzweifeln, die heutige offizielle Chemie kennen zu müssen, denn sie beruht nur auf Angaben, nicht auf einem innerlichen Durchschauen der Sache. Würden die Menschen unbefangen sein, so würden sie eben sagen: Da ist doch noch etwas anderes notwendig, da muß man anders erkennen können, wenn man Chemie studieren will. Und es ist eben die heutige Feigheit des Erkennens, die den Menschen eingepflanzt wird, die sie nicht zu einem solchen Impuls kommen läßt.
Dann, wenn der Mensch so weit reif war, war er reif, Astronomus zu werden, was ein noch höherer Grad war. Denn die Sterne von außen kennenlernen durch Rechnung und dergleichen, das galt als absolut wesenlos. In den Sternen leben geistige Wesen; die kann man nur erkennen, wenn man das leibliche Anschauen überwunden hat, wenn man aber auch die Geometrie überwunden hat, wenn man tatsächlich im Weltenall leben kann und das Geistige der Sterne kennenlernen kann. Dann aber war der Mensch ein Auferstandener. Dann konnte er wirklich sehen, wie hereinwirkten auch in den irdischen Menschen die Mondenkräfte und die Sonnenkräfte.
So mußte ich Ihnen heute von zwei Seiten her nahelegen, wie in den alten Mysterien - nicht zu einer bestimmten Jahreszeit, sondern in einem bestimmten Entwickelungsgrad des Menschen - innerlich Ostern erlebt wurde: Ostern als das Auferstehen des geistig-seelischen Menschen aus dem physischen Leibe im geistigen Weltenall. So haben diejenigen, die noch von Mysterienwissen etwas gewußt haben zur Zeit des Mysteriums von Golgatha, dieses Mysterium von Golgatha angeschaut. Sie haben gesagt: Was wäre aus der Menschheit geworden, wenn das Mysterium von Golgatha nicht gekommen wäre? In alten Zeiten gab es die Möglichkeit, eingeweiht zu werden in die Geheimnisse des Kosmos, denn in ganz alten Zeiten erlebte der Mensch wie selbstverständlich seine zweite Geburt um das dreißigste Jahr herum. Dann wenigstens gab es noch Erinnerungen und eine Mysterienschulwissenschaft, die in der Tradition das erhalten hatte, was in älteren Zeiten erlebt wurde.
In der Zeit, als das Mysterium von Golgatha auftrat, da war das alles verweht und vergessen. Da wäre die Menschheit völlig in die Dekadenz gekommen, wenn nicht die Macht, zu der sich die Mysterieneingeweihten erhoben hatten, wenn sie Christophor geworden sind, wenn nicht diese Macht in den Einen, Jesus von Nazareth, heruntergestiegen wäre, so daß sie seither auf der Erde da ist, und der Mensch durch den Christus Jesus mit dieser Kraft verbunden sein kann.
So hängt dasjenige, was heute im Osterfest uns vor Augen tritt, zusammen mit einem Stück Mysteriengeschichte. Man wird eigentlich nur den Inhalt des Osterfestes gewahr, wenn man dieses alte Stück Mysteriengeschichte wieder belebt. Und man wird nun wenigstens in die Nähe kommen - das soll dann der Gegenstand der weiteren Betrachtungen sein -, man wird, wie Sie einsehen können, wenigstens demjenigen nahe kommen, was noch ein alter zu Initiierender erlebt hat. Er konnte sich sagen: Wie Sonne und Mond in mir wirken in ihrem gegenseitigen himmlischen Verhältnisse, dessen bin ich mir durch die Einweihung klar geworden; denn nun weiß ich, daß ich in einer gewissen Weise gestaltet bin als physischer Mensch, daß ich soundso geartete Augen, eine so geartete Nase, eine so geartete ganze Körperform innen und außen habe, daß diese Körperform wachsen konnte, heute noch immer wächst in der Ernährung, das hängt von den Mondenkräften ab. Von ihnen hängt alle Notwendigkeit ab. Daß ich mich als freies inneres Wesen innerhalb meiner Körperlichkeit rühren kann, mich selber umbilden kann, mich in der Hand habe, das hängt von den Sonnenkräften, von den Christus-Kräften ab. Sie muß ich in mir rege machen, wenn ich auch wissentlich das, was sonst die Sonnenkräfte in mir wiederum durch eine Notwendigkeit bewirken müssen, in mir selber erarbeitend gestalten will.
So werden wir auch begreifen, wie heute noch der Mensch hinaufschaut zu Sonne und Mond und aus ihrer gegenseitigen Konstellation die Zeit des Osterfestes bestimmt. Das ist das, was noch übriggeblieben ist, daß man rechnet: Wann ist der erste Sonntag nach dem ersten Vollmond nach der Frühlings-Tagundnachtgleiche? Auf den auf den ersten Vollmond folgenden Sonntag setzt man das Osterfest des Jahres fest, andeutend damit - ich will das morgen dann weiter ausführen -, daß man in der Gestaltung, in der Struktur des Osterfestes etwas sieht, was von oben, vom Kosmos aus bestimmt werden muß.
Aber der Ostergedanke muß wieder erfaßt werden. Er kann nur erfaßt werden, wenn man schaut auf das alte Mysterienwesen, das zunächst den Menschen aufmerksam machte, wie es ist, wenn er in sich hineinschaut: die Pforte des Menschen! - wenn er in sich hineindringt, sich innerlich durchlebt: dreikammeriger Innenmensch! wenn er sich freimacht: Pforte des Todes! - wenn er frei sich in der geistigen Welt bewegt: er wird ein Christophor.
Die Mysterien selbst sind ja zurückgegangen in der Zeit, in der die menschliche freie Entwickelung Platz greifen mußte. Nun ist die Zeit gekommen, in der die Mysterien wieder gefunden werden müssen. Sie müssen wieder gefunden werden. Dessen muß man sich voll bewußt sein, daß heute Anstalten dazu gemacht werden müssen, die Mysterien wieder zu finden.
Aus diesem Bewußtsein heraus ist die Weihnachtstagung gehalten worden, denn es ist eine dringende Notwendigkeit, daß auf der Erde eine Stätte ist, wo wiederum Mysterien begründet werden können. Die Anthroposophische Gesellschaft muß in ihrem weiteren Fortgange der Weg zu den erneuerten Mysterien werden. Das, meine lieben Freunde, wird mit Ihre Aufgabe sein: aus dem rechten Bewußtsein heraus dabei mitzuwirken. Dazu aber wird das Menschenleben betrachtet werden müssen nach seinen drei Etappen: nach derjenigen Etappe, wo man in den Menschen hineinschaut, nach derjenigen Etappe, wo man nach dem Innern des Menschen hineinstrebt, nach der Etappe, wo man im Bewußtsein so wird, wie sonst in äußerer Realität nur im Tode.
Und ich möchte sagen, als Merkzeichen wollen wir von dieser Stunde, die heute gehalten worden ist, die Worte mit hinwegtragen, in unserer Seele wirksam sein lassen:
Steh’ vor des Menschen Lebenspforte:
Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte.Leb’ in des Menschen Seeleninnern:
Fühl’ in seinem Kreise Weltbeginnen.Denk’ an des Menschen Erdenende:
Find’ bei ihm die Geisteswende.
(Der Spruch wurde an die Tafel geschrieben):
Steh’ vor des Menschen Lebenspforte:
Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte.Leb’ in des Menschen Seeleninnern:
Fühl’ in seinem Kreise Weltbeginnen.
Man sieht sonst nicht immer das Weltbeginnen, sondern nur irgend etwas innerhalb der Welt
Denk' an des Menschen Erdenende:
Find' bei ihm die Geisteswende.
Das sei der Extrakt der heutigen Stunde:
Steh’ vor des Menschen Lebenspforte:
Schau an ihrer Stirne Weltenworte.Leb’ in des Menschen Seeleninnern:
Fühl’ in seinem Kreise Weltbeginnen.Denk an des Menschen Erdenende:
Find’ bei ihm die Geisteswende.
Second Lecture
It can already be said that the original idea of the feast is to make man look up from his dependence on earthly things to his dependence on extraterrestrial things. And in particular it is Easter, the contemplation of which can bring these thoughts closer to man. In the course of the last three, four or five centuries of the civilized world we have undergone a development of the soul and spirit which has increasingly led man away from considering his connection with cosmic forces and powers. Man became more and more restricted to considering only those relationships that exist between him and the earthly forces and powers. It is also true that other relationships cannot be considered with the means of knowledge that are recognized as legitimate today. If anyone who was close to mystery sites in pre-Christian times or even in the first centuries of Christianity were able to experience our present-day knowledge, he would not be able to understand how man is able to live without an awareness of his extraterrestrial, his cosmic context, if he approached things with the constitution of his soul at that time.
I would first like to outline a few things that you will find described in more detail in this or that cycle. Because these lectures are intended to bring us closer to the Easter idea, I cannot, of course, go into all the details, I can only hint at how things are.
If we go back to various older religious systems - we can take as an example the one that is still closest to modern man: the Hebrew-Jewish religious system - we will find in certain religious systems of antiquity, if they are monotheistic, the veneration, the worship of the one deity. This is the deity that we speak of in the Christian view as the first person of the Godhead, as the Father God.
Now in all those religions in which the idea of this Father God lives, the connection of this Father God with the cosmic lunar forces, with all the forces that radiate down from the moon to the earth, has been more or less present, has been completely present even among the mystery priests. Today hardly anything has remained of this ancient consciousness of man's connection with the lunar forces other than the stimulation that the poetic mind feels in its imagination through the lunar forces, and the counting of man's embryonic months according to ten lunar months in medicine. But in older world views there was a clear awareness that man, when he descends from the spiritual world, where he was in his pre-earthly existence as a spiritual-soul being, to his physical existence, that he is then flowed through, is strengthened by the impulses that emanate from the moon. Man, when he looks at that which shapes him full of life, that which lives in him as a process of nourishment, respiration and so on, as general forces of growth in general, must then not look at the earth forces, but he must look at extraterrestrial forces. When man looks at the earthly forces, he can become aware of how these earthly forces relate to him. If we would not hold our body together through external earthly forces, if our body would not be given its form precisely through extraterrestrial forces, what could earthly forces give to the cohesion of our body? The moment the extraterrestrial forces are out of this body, this body is exposed to the earthly forces: then it disintegrates, then it dissolves, then it becomes a corpse. The earthly forces can only make the corpse out of the human being, they cannot shape the human being. Those forces that live in man, so that they lift him out of the earthly, so that he is a coherent organizational form in the earthly between birth and death, does not fall prey to the forces that seize him with death and destroy him, that man has forces throughout his earthly life that fight against this destruction - for they must fight against this destruction - he owes to the influence of the moon power.
If on the one hand we can theoretically say that the lunar forces contain the formation of the human body, then on the other hand we must see how ancient religions worshipped these forces, which, so to speak, brought man into physical existence through his birth, as the father forces, as the forces of the divine Father. And among the initiates of ancient Hebraism there was a clear awareness that those forces radiate from the moon which lead man into earthly existence, which sustain him in earthly existence and from which he snatches himself as a physical man when he passes through the gate of death.
Loving these divine father forces, thus looking towards these father forces, and in turn living this out in worship, prayer and so on, that was the content of certain ancient monotheistic religions. But these old monotheistic religions were more consistent than you might think. These things are completely misrepresented in history because history can only go by external documents, not by what can be observed in spiritual vision.
Such religions, which looked at the moon, at that what is present in the moon of spiritual beings, are actually later religions. In addition to this view of the moon, the very original ones had a clear view of the forces of the sun and, what we must also mention here, of the forces of Saturn.
There, however, we come into a historical consideration for which there are no longer any external documents, which lies many thousands of years before the foundation of Christianity, there we come into that time which I described in my “Outline of a Secret Science” as the primeval Indian, just to have a word for it, because it took place on the soil of the later India - the later civilization is the primeval Persian. In these civilizations, man developed quite differently than later, and his religious beliefs depended on this development.
We humans have been developing for more than two millennia in such a way that we do not actually notice a rift in our earthly development, we really do not notice it properly. It is also barely noticeable. What happens to people around the age of thirty remains for the most part in the subconscious, in the unconscious. For a humanity that lived eight to nine millennia before Christianity was founded, it was quite different. Until about the age of thirty, man developed in such a way that his development was continuous. But in the thirtieth year of life a mighty metamorphosis occurred with man. I would like to express this metamorphosis quite radically. Of course, I am speaking somewhat radically, as I will do now; but this radical expression nevertheless describes the fact that we are dealing with.
The following could happen in those older times: A person had made the acquaintance before the age of thirty of someone who was much younger than he was, perhaps three or four years younger than he was. He later underwent the metamorphosis that took place around the age of thirty. It could happen when these people hadn't seen each other for a long time and then met - I'm speaking in today's words, which makes it seem even more radical - that the person who had gone through the metamorphosis in his thirtieth year was approached by the other person and didn't know who he was. That's how thoroughly his memory had changed.
And in these earliest times, institutions were connected with the Mystery Schools, in which the lives of young people were recorded in the small communities that existed at that time, because they themselves had forgotten, because they themselves had undergone a mighty change in their lives and had to learn what they had experienced in earthly life up to the age of thirty. And then, when these people realized: I have become a completely different person in my thirtieth year, I must go to the “registry” - a modern expression, of course - in order to learn what I have experienced before - yes, it is so! -At the same time they became aware, through the instruction they received, that before the age of thirty the lunar forces had an exclusive effect on them; at the age of thirty the solar forces entered into the development of their earthly life; and the solar forces have a completely different effect on man than the lunar forces. What does man today know of the solar forces! He knows only the external physical. He knows that he sweats - forgive me - through the solar forces, that he gets warm, he knows some other things, sunbaths and the like exist today, so he knows some therapeutic things and so on, but in a completely external way. He cannot even fathom what those forces do to him that are spiritually connected to the sun.
Julian the Apostate, the last of the pagan Caesars, had still experienced some of these powers of the sun in the afterglow of the Mysteries. And because he wanted to make use of it again, he was murdered on his way to Persia. So strong were the powers that wanted to make the knowledge of these things disappear in the first Christian centuries. It is therefore no wonder that knowledge of these things cannot be gained today. While the lunar forces are that in man which determines him, which permeates him with an inner necessity, so that he must act according to his instincts, his temperament, his emotions, his whole physical-etheric body, the spiritual solar forces free man from this necessity. They melt the forces of this necessity in him, so to speak, and man actually becomes a free being through the solar forces. In those ancient times this was strictly separated in the development of man. At the age of thirty one became a sun person, a free person. Until the age of thirty, one was a man of the moon, an unfree man.
Today, the two are intertwined. Today the solar forces are already at work alongside the lunar forces in childhood, and the lunar forces continue to work in later life, so that today these things, necessity and freedom, work in confusion. But it was not always like this. In the prehistoric times of which I am speaking, it was the case that the lunar and solar effects were strictly separated from each other in the course of life. And that is why in those older times it was said to most people - for it was regarded as something pathological, something abnormal, if man did not experience this metamorphosis, this change in his life at the age of thirty - that man is not born once, but twice. And when human development progressed to such an extent that this second, the sun-birth of man - the first was called the moon-birth - was no longer so noticeable, then certain exercises, certain acts of worship, certain facts in general were applied to those who were initiated into the Mysteries. They then went through what was no longer there for humanity in general. And they were the twice-born.
When you find the expression “twice-born” in oriental writings today, this expression is already a derivative one. Basically, I would really like to ask every Orientalist, every Sanskritist - I believe our friend Professor Beckh is also in our midst, you can ask him whether things are like this, also according to his professional studies - you can ask every Sanskritist whether it is possible to bring out from today's Oriental science in clear and plain words what the expression “twice-born” means in its substance. Certainly, there are plenty of formal explanations, but what it means in substance is not known; that can only be known by those who know that it goes back to a reality which I have just explained. In these things spiritual observation already speaks. And when spiritual observation has spoken, then I would like to ask everyone who, according to the documents, can muster what external science is available, if he goes to work with external science in an unbiased way, whether this external science does not then confirm the spiritual scientific research bit by bit. It will do so, if only things are seen in the right light. But attention must be drawn to certain things that precede any documentary science. Because documentary science does not understand the life of man.
So we look back to an older time in which the moon birth of man was spoken of as the creation of man by the Father. With regard to the birth of the sun, it was clearly understood that the power of the Christ, the Son, works in the spiritual rays of the sun, and this power is the power that liberates man. For do you think, what does this power, the solar power, do? The power of the sun ensures that we as human beings can make something of ourselves on earth. We would be strictly determined into an unalterable, not fateful necessity, but natural necessity, if the liberating solar forces, the impulses that melt away necessity, did not approach us.
The man of the older world views knew this when he looked up to the sun: This eye of the world, from which the power of the Christ shines forth, this eye of the world makes that I do not have to remain subject to that iron necessity with which I am born out of the lunar forces, a man developing in necessity throughout my whole life. These solar forces, these Christ-forces, which look down through the cosmic solar eye, these Christ-forces make it possible that during my life on earth I can make something of myself through my inner freedom which I have not been through the lunar forces, since I have been placed into life on earth.
This awareness of man that he can transform himself, that he can make something of himself, that is what was seen in the solar forces.
I would like to add, in a sense only as a parenthesis, that the third thing that was looked at was the forces of Saturn. In the forces of Saturn everything was seen that sustains the human being when he passes through the gate of death, that is, when he undergoes the third earthly metamorphosis.
Birth: moon birth,
second birth: birth of the sun,
third birth: Saturn birth, death, earthly death.
There he is sustained by the forces of Saturn at the far end of the Earth's planetary system. They keep him upright, they carry him out into the spiritual world, they make a connection out of his being when the third metamorphosis occurs. That was definitely the world view in an older time.
But humanity is developing. Thus a time arose when it was only known in the Mysteries how the solar forces affect man. Knowledge of the solar forces was preserved longest in the medical departments of the Mysteries, because precisely those forces which give man freedom in his ordinary development give him the possibility of making something of himself, because these solar forces, the Christ forces, at the same time live again in many respects in certain plants on earth, also live in other earth beings, earth things, and then represent remedies in these earth things. But in general mankind has lost the connection with the sun. While the consciousness remained for a long time: man depends on the moon forces, on the father forces, the consciousness of dependence on the sun forces - actually of liberation, one would have to say, through the sun forces - was lost much earlier. And what we today call the forces of nature, which we speak of almost exclusively in worldview life, are only the entirely abstract lunar forces.
But the solar forces were still recognized and acted upon by the bearer of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. And he had to know them for the reason that he was destined to receive these solar forces, which in the ancient mysteries could only be attained by looking up to the sun, into his own body as they streamed down to earth. I explained this yesterday. The essence of Christology in the founding of Christianity was precisely this, that in the thirtieth year of life a transformation took place in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, that transformation which took place in all men in primeval times, only that at that time the light of the spiritual sun, so to speak, entered into all men, while now the primal being of the sun, the Christ himself, has descended into human development and has taken up residence in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is precisely what underlies the Mystery of Golgotha as a primordial event of all earthly life.
The full context of these things will be seen if we now look at the way in which in older mysteries, I would like to say, the Easter feast that was then quite humanly present - for it was the Easter feast that was the initiation, the initiation - was actually carried out. Initiation initially went through three stages. But the first requirement in order to come to real knowledge, to initiation, was that man was made so humble by everything that was brought to him from the side of the Mysteries that today no one can actually form an idea of this inner humility. Today people already believe that they are tremendously humble in terms of knowledge, while they are still possessed by a true arrogance for those who see through things.
First of all, it must have come over man at the starting point of initiation that he did not consider himself a man at all, that he said: I must first become a man! Today one cannot expect a human being to think that he is not a human being at any point in his life.
But that was the very first requirement, to really consider himself not to be a human being and to say the following to himself: Certainly, I was a human being before I descended into an earthly body; I was a human being spiritually and emotionally in my pre-earthly existence. - There the spiritual-soul moved into the physical body, which it received from the mother, from the parents. It has not clothed itself - that is a wrong expression - but has permeated itself with this physical body. Of the way in which the spiritual-soul now in the course of a long time permeates the physical, permeates the nervous-sensory system, permeates the rhythmic system, permeates the metabolic-limb system, of this people have no consciousness. They become aware, they see out of their senses, they see the physical environment. But what can the human being do when he has really come to the point where he has penetrated his physical body with his spiritual-soul system to such an extent that he now considers himself to be a fully developed, fully mature human being? What can he do then? He can only look out of his eyes, hear out of his ears, perceive warmth and cold, roughness and smoothness with his skin: he can only perceive out, he cannot perceive in. He cannot look into himself through his eyes, he can at most scrub the physical corpse and then believe that he is looking into himself. But he is not really looking into himself. It is childish to believe that.
If I have a house in front of me: it has windows, but I don't look inside, instead, if I am strong enough, I take all kinds of instruments and smash the house - then I have the individual bricks lying in front of me, and I only look at this pile. That's how it's done today. You break people up, you dismember them in order to get to know them, but you don't get to know them. It's not the person you get to know. If you want to get to know the human being, you have to be able to look back in through your eyes, just as you look out through your eyes today, and listen back in through your ears. All this together - eyes, ears, the whole skin as an organ of touch and warmth, an organ of smell and so on - was called the gateway to the human being in the ancient mysteries. And it was from this that the initiation started, that someone became clear about it: He knows nothing of man; therefore, since he has no self-awareness of man, he cannot be a man. He must first learn to look in through the senses, as he otherwise only looks out.
This was the first stage of initiation into older mysteries. And at the moment when man learned to look in, at that moment he also experienced himself in the pre-earthly existence. For then he knew: I am in my spiritual-soul.

Schematically drawn: The human being looked out (yellow lines pointing outwards). Instead, he learned to look inwards (red arrow pointing inwards). But in this looking inwards he became aware of that which had entered the human being as the pre-earthly existence (green), that which had entered through the eye, ear, skin and so on. Then man became aware of it: there he had his pre-earthly existence. And now he was told that only now would he get to know what we would call natural science today. When we learn natural science today, how do we do it? We do it in such a way that we are led to look at the things of nature, to describe them and so on. But that's like if I had known a person for a long time, I was to see him again, and someone would tell me: But you must forget everything you had in common with this person when you see him again; you must not remember anything you had in common with him. - Think - it's unthinkable - if this were imposed on married couples, for example, that when they see each other again after a long time, they forget everything they've been through together! Yes, I can imagine that it might be pleasant at times, but life could not exist under such conditions. But this is simply imposed on modern man by the order of civilization. For man got to know the realms of nature, got to know them from their spiritual side, before he descended to earth. Whereas today man is taught to forget everything he learned about minerals, plants and animals before he descended, the ancient initiate in the so-called first degree of the Mysteries was told: "You now see quartz. - And now everything was done to make him remember what he knew about quartz before he descended, or what he knew about the lily or the rose. Recognition was what was taught as natural knowledge. And if someone had learned natural science as a recognition of what he had looked at before he descended into earthly life, then he was admitted to the second degree.
In the second degree one learned music, what was then architecture, what was then geometry, metrology and so on. Because what did this second degree contain? This second degree contained everything that man then perceives when he does not merely look into himself through his eyes and listen through his ears, but when he really enters into himself. Then the initiate is told: You will enter the human temple grotto. He got to know this human temple grotto. It was that which was physically permeated by the spiritual-soul forces of which the human being consisted before he descended to earthly life. There he now penetrated into himself. He was told that this temple grotto had three chambers. One chamber was the chamber of thought: there he learned to recognize all that - yes, if you look at it from the outside, it is the head. It is small. If you go inside and look at it from the inside, then it is as big as the world, and then you get to know its spiritual side. That was the first chamber, the second chamber was the one where you got to know feeling. The third chamber was where you got to know your will. And there one learned to recognize how man is organized according to his organs of thinking, feeling and will, there one learned to recognize that which has validity on earth.
Natural knowledge is not only valid on earth. One acquires knowledge of nature even before one descends to earth. Here you should remember that. Houses are not built over there in the spiritual world as with earthly architecture. Music is over there, but spiritual melos. What is earthly music is projected down into the earthly air; it is a projection of heavenly music, but as man experiences it, it is earthly. It is the same when we measure on earth. We measure earthly space; the art of measurement, geometry is earthly science. It was important for the initiate in the second degree to be made aware of the fact that all talk of cognition with mere earthly means, if it does not refer to geometry, architecture and metrology, is nonsense. He learned to recognize that a real natural history must be the recollected pre-earthly knowledge. And that for the earth geometry, architecture, music and metrology are the sciences that can be learned here. Thus man descended into himself, learned to know the three-chambered world-man as opposed to the one earth organization, which is otherwise known when, without entering into man, one gets to know man from the outside.
And in the third degree one got to know the human being when he now not only submerges into himself, learns to recognize himself as spiritual, but when this spiritual still gets to know the body. Therefore, in all the ancient mysteries, this third degree was called the gate of death. There man became aware of what he is like when he has laid aside the earthly body. But there is a difference between this real death and the initiatory death. I will explain why this difference must exist in the next lectures; now I just want to emphasize the facts.
When you really die, you lay down your physical body. You are no longer bound to it and no longer follow the earthly forces, you are liberated from them. But if you are still bound to your physical body, as was the case with initiation in ancient times, then you have to gain what you have in death by yourself, this freedom from the body, through inner strength, you have to keep yourself free for a certain time. This was necessary for initiation, to gain these strong inner soul forces through which one could keep oneself free from the physical body in the soul. And these powers, which gave one the power to keep oneself free from the earthly body, these powers gave one higher knowledge with regard to that which one can never see through the senses, can never think through the intellect. They transport you as a human being into the spiritual world, just as you are transported into the physical world through your physical body. But then one was so far that one recognized oneself as a spiritual-soul man, as an initiate, already during one's earthly existence. From then on, the earth was a star outside the human being for the initiate, and he was able to live with the sun instead of the earth, especially in the older mysteries. He knew what he had from the sun, how the solar forces worked in him.
This third degree, which I have just described, was followed by the fourth. This fourth degree had the following effect on those to be initiated. When one eats on earth, one knows, one eats cabbage, venison, one drinks all kinds of things: one knows that this is now outside, this is then inside. You breathe air: it is first outside, then inside, then outside again. You are in contact with the forces of the earth in such a way that you carry within you the earth forces and substances that are otherwise outside. Before you are initiated - as was made clear to the old initiate - you are a carrier of earth, a carrier of cabbage, a carrier of venison, a carrier of pork and so on. But if you were initiated in the third degree and now that which can be transmitted to you is transmitted to you, if you have become free from the body, then you will not be a bearer of cabbage, a bearer of pork, a bearer of veal, but then you will be a bearer of that which the solar forces give you. - And that which the solar forces give spiritually was called Christos everywhere in the Mysteries. Therefore, the one who had gone beyond the three degrees and could now feel himself as a carrier of the solar forces, just as he could feel himself on earth as a coal carrier, was called a Christophor, a Christophorus. In most of the ancient mysteries this was the designation for those who were now in the fourth degree.
In the third degree one had to understand certain things. Above all, in this third degree one had to understand that the desire for the physical body must cease for the moments of realization, that there must be a clear view of the fact that man belongs to the earth according to his physical body, but actually has the earth only for destroying this physical body, not for building it up. Now he learned to recognize the constructive forces that come from the cosmos. But now he learned something else. He learned, just when he became a Christophore, that spiritual forces are also at work in the substances of the earth, but that they are not visible to the earthly eye. And if one had spoken to the man of that time in today's words - in the sense he was already spoken to in this way, but I can only tell you things in today's words, not in those of that time - the following would have been made clear to him: If you want to know the doctrine of matter, how the substances combine and separate from each other, you must look at the spiritual forces that permeate the substances from the cosmic. You cannot do this if you are uninitiated. You must be initiated in the fourth degree. You must be able to look with the forces of being in the sun, then you can study chemistry.
Now imagine if today a pharmacist or a chemist who wants to become a doctor were required to first feel towards the forces of the sun as he feels towards the coal of the earth: think how insane that would seem! But these were realities. And this became clear to people: with all the forces that live in the body and are used in ordinary cognition, one can only study geometry, metrology, music and architecture. You cannot study chemistry with these forces. If you study chemistry today, you are talking externally. But that's the way it is: All talk of chemistry from the time when the old initiatory wisdom was lost is entirely external. For those who really want to recognize, it is even despairing to have to know today's official chemistry, because it is only based on information, not on an inner understanding of the matter. If people were unbiased, they would say: something else is necessary, you have to be able to recognize things differently if you want to study chemistry. And it is precisely today's cowardice of cognition, which is implanted in people, that prevents them from coming to such an impulse.
Then, when man was so far mature, he was ripe to become an astronomer, which was an even higher degree. For to get to know the stars from the outside by calculation and the like was regarded as absolutely insubstantial. Spiritual beings live in the stars; you can only recognize them if you have overcome physical observation, but also if you have overcome geometry, if you can actually live in the universe and get to know the spiritual aspects of the stars. But then man was resurrected. Then he could really see how the powers of the moon and the powers of the sun also worked into the earthly human being.
So today I had to explain to you from two sides how in the ancient mysteries - not at a certain time of year, but in a certain degree of development of man - Easter was experienced inwardly: Easter as the resurrection of the spiritual-soul man from the physical body in the spiritual universe. Thus those who still knew something of mystery knowledge at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha looked at this Mystery of Golgotha. They said: What would have become of mankind if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come? In ancient times there was the possibility of being initiated into the secrets of the cosmos, because in very old times man experienced his second birth around the thirtieth year as a matter of course. Then at least there were still memories and a mystery school science that had preserved in tradition what had been experienced in older times.
At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, all that had been blown away and forgotten. Mankind would have fallen into complete decadence if the power to which the initiates of the Mystery had risen, if they had not become Christophores, if this power had not descended into the One, Jesus of Nazareth, so that it has been there on earth ever since, and man can be connected with this power through Christ Jesus.
So what we see today in Easter is connected with a piece of mystery history. We only become aware of the content of Easter when we revive this old piece of mystery history. And now we will at least come close to it - this will be the subject of further considerations - as you can see, we will at least come close to what an old initiate experienced. He could say to himself: "How the sun and moon work in me in their mutual celestial relations, I have become clear about this through the initiation; for now I know that I am formed in a certain way as a physical human being, that I have such-and-such eyes, such-and-such a nose, such-and-such a whole body form inside and outside, that this body form could grow, is still growing today in nourishment, that depends on the lunar forces. All necessity depends on them. That I can move as a free inner being within my corporeality, that I can transform myself, that I have myself in my own hands, depends on the solar forces, on the Christ forces. I must make them active in me if I also want to consciously work out in myself what the solar forces must otherwise bring about in me through necessity.
In this way we will also understand how man today still looks up to the sun and moon and determines the time of Easter from their mutual constellation. That is what is still left, that one calculates: When is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox? On the Sunday following the first full moon, the Easter festival of the year is set, indicating - I will explain this further tomorrow - that in the organization, in the structure of the Easter festival, one sees something that must be determined from above, from the cosmos.
But the Easter idea must be grasped again. It can only be grasped if one looks at the old mystery being, which first made man aware of what it is like when he looks into himself: the gate of man! - when he penetrates into himself, lives through himself inwardly: the three-chambered inner man! when he frees himself: the gate of death! - when he moves freely in the spiritual world: he becomes a Christophor.
The Mysteries themselves have receded in the time in which human free development had to take hold. Now the time has come when the Mysteries must be found again. They must be found again. One must be fully aware of this, that today efforts must be made to find the Mysteries again.
It is out of this awareness that the Christmas Conference was held, for it is an urgent necessity that there should be a place on earth where the Mysteries can be re-established. The Anthroposophical Society must in its further progress become the path to the renewed Mysteries. That, my dear friends, will be one of your tasks: to contribute to this from the right consciousness. For this purpose, however, human life will have to be viewed according to its three stages: according to the stage where one looks into the human being, according to the stage where one strives into the inner being of the human being, according to the stage where one becomes in consciousness as otherwise in outer reality only in death.
And I would like to say that we want to carry the words from this lesson, which has been held today, as a marker, and let them be effective in our souls:
Stand before the gate of man's life:
Look at their forehead world words.Live within the soul of man:
Feel the beginning of the world in his circle.Think of man's end on earth:
Find with him the turning of the spirit.
(The saying was written on the blackboard):
Stand before the gate of man's life:
Look at their forehead world words.Live in the inner soul of man:
Feel the beginning of the world in his circle.
Otherwise one does not always see the beginning of the world, but only something within the world
Think of man's end on earth:
Find the spiritual turning point with him.
This is the extract of today's lesson:
Stand before the gate of man's life:
Look at their forehead world words.Live within the soul of man:
Feel the beginning of the world in his circle.Think of man's end on earth:
Find with him the turning of the spirit.