The Festivals and their Meaning II:
Easter
GA 198
3 April 1920, Dornach
II. The Blood-relationship and the Christ-relationship
I spoke yesterday about the part played by the figure of Paul at the beginning of Christianity. Easter is an appropriate occasion for such study, and when we think of the numbers of people in the grip of materialism to-day who have no real right to celebrate an Easter festival, it is obvious that the subject is also very relevant to the conditions of the times. A true Easter impulse needs to be inculcated into present-day Europe and indeed into the whole of the civilised world in order to counter the rapid strides now being taken in the direction of decline. It is very necessary to realise how far men are from any real understanding of the Christ Impulse and how closely this lack of understanding is connected with the symptoms of decline in evidence at the present time. These symptoms show themselves clearly to-day in statements often made by well-intentioned people.
In the Basler Nachrichten yesterday you may have read a striking but at the same time tragic article which included the text of a letter from North West Germany. The writer of the letter, with whom the author of the article seems to some extent to agree, emphasises that the universal tendency of the day is to prepare for the destruction of the old without putting anything new in its place, that on all sides—right and left—people are succumbing almost eagerly to illusions. The author of the article himself says: What will come now is the spread of Bolshevism over Europe; that is to be expected, for it is the line of natural development. And then, once people have experienced what Bolshevism really is, something good can emerge. But he adds two or three lines which deserve attention, although the cursory reader will overlook them as he overlooks so many things. The author of the article adds: “It is not these illusions to which people readily succumb to-day that must be heeded, but something else ... We must not listen to what individual dreamers say but detect the general tendencies.”
These well-intentioned people are the really difficult ones to deal with. They realise that civilisation is going downhill and are always warning, warning most pessimistically against listening to those who make an attempt to better this miserable state of things. But as a matter of fact they are only representatives of large masses of people who are immediately satisfied whenever some acute crisis is followed by a measure of peace. They are blind to the fact that there is nothing really important about this interval of peace and that the path must inevitably lead downhill until a sufficiently large number of human beings realise that unless a wave of spiritual revival passes over this unhappy Europe, there can be no improvement. It is impossible to make any progress by perpetuating old conditions and least of all is it possible by means of compromises—which are always dangerous because the new that is trying to come to expression is itself compromised.
Even in their feelings men could promote the right attitude by thinking of the forcefulness with which a personality like Paul at the great turning-point of history introduced something entirely new into earth-evolution, something that has glimmered on but at the present time is covered by a layer of ashes. This turning-point divided the old from the new age, although the transition is not noticed because it came about so gradually. When men looked out at nature in olden times, they perceived the divine and spiritual in everything. And this perception of the divine and spiritual passed over into the views that were held concerning the social order, the configuration of life that ought to prevail among the masses, from whom individuals came forth as rulers, as priestly leaders. We will not at the moment consider how this configuration of the social life was regulated by the Mysteries, but it was respected and was administered in accordance with something bestowed upon man without action on his part, as a gift proceeding from the unity of nature and spirit.
A man who through the circumstances and conditions obtaining at some place or another, became the leader, was recognised and acknowledged as such, because the people said: Divinity itself speaks through him. Just as the divine and spiritual was seen in stones, in mountains, in water, in trees, so too was it seen in an individual man. In those past times it was a matter of course to regard the ruler as a God, that is to say, as one in whom the Godhead was manifest. If people of the present day were a little humbler and did not drag in their own opinion about ancient usages, those usages would be far better understood. To-day, of course, there is no such concept as: a man is a God. But in ancient times there was reality behind it. Just as men saw not merely a flowing stream but the divine and spiritual astir in it, so did they perceive the sway of the divine in the social life, as immediate reality. As time went on, however, this vision of the direct presence of the divine and spiritual grew dimmer and dimmer.
Possessing this ancient vision, how did man conceive of his own being? He knew that his being was rooted in the world of the divine and spiritual; he knew that the divine and spiritual is present wherever sense-objects, wherever human beings themselves are, on the physical earth. He knew that he was born out of the divine and spiritual. Out of God I am born, out of God we are all born—this was a self-evident truth to man in those days, for he beheld its reality. It was the outcome of sensory vision.
Such a conviction was no longer within man's immediate reach at the time when knowledge of the divine and spiritual was to be brought to humanity in a new form by the impulse proceeding from the Mystery of Golgotha. In ancient times a man could say: Everything I see in the world reveals to me that objects and beings come from the gods, that their existence is not enclosed within the limits of earthly life. Man was conscious of the eternal nature of his own being, because he knew that he originated from the gods. This apprehension of spiritual existence before birth lay at the very root of the old Pagan creeds. The characteristics attributed to Paganism by scholars to-day are no more than conjectures.
The essence of Paganism before it fell into decadence, was that men knew: before our birth we were beings of spirit-and-soul; therefore our existence is not limited to earthly life. We have the assurance of eternal life, for we come from God and God will take us to Himself again. That, after all, was the knowledge emanating from the ancient, primeval wisdom. And it can be said that this knowledge came to the various peoples in the form appropriate to each of them, for it was bound up with innate vision of the divine and spiritual in the things of the world of sense. In ancient times, this vision of the divine and spiritual was dependent on the blood, and the particular form in which the primeval wisdom came to a man depended on his blood-relationships, his racial stock and his people.
The Jewish people alone were an exception in the sense that although their particular form of the primeval wisdom was bound up with their blood, they regarded themselves as the “chosen people,” as the people who, while possessing their own racial creed, maintained that this contained the true knowledge of the God of all mankind. Whereas the heathen people round about worshipped their racial Divinities, the Jewish people believed their God to be the God of all the earth.
This was a transitional stage. When Paul appeared with his interpretation of Christianity there was a fundamental break, with the principle whereby human knowledge was determined by the blood, the principle that had prevailed—and necessarily so—in earlier times. For Paul was the first to declare that neither blood nor identity of race, nor any factor by which human knowledge had been determined in pre-Christian times, could remain, but that man himself must establish his relation to knowledge through inner initiative: that there must be a community of those whom he designated as Christians, a community to which man allies himself in spirit and soul, into which he is not placed by his blood, but of which he himself elects to be a member.
Paul was well aware of the need to establish this spiritual community on earth, because the time was approaching when, in respect of external knowledge, man was destined to succumb to materialism. This being so, it was necessary that man's consciousness of his nature of spirit-and-soul should spring from a source other than that of the mere vision of the physical human being living on earth. In olden times it was a matter simply of looking with the eyes, for the spirit-and-soul in a man was immediately manifest. This was so no longer. Knowledge of the spirit-and-soul was to be sought in a different way. In other words, man had perforce to grasp the problem of death, to learn to realise that what can be seen of the human being here on earth through the senses may perish and disintegrate, but that there is within him an entelechy not immediately perceptible in this physical frame, a being who belongs to the spiritual world. The bond between men in this community of Christians was not to be dependent on the blood; for of this dependence it could always be contended, and rightly so, that if men are to recognise their immortality by what is determined by the blood, immortality is not assured, for the blood is the vitalizer and sustainer of that which ends with death—although in ancient times the spirit-and-soul shone through it. The spirit-and-soul must be revealed in its essence and purity if the possibility of understanding the problem of death in a non-materialistic way is not to be lost. The power to speak to men of a being of spirit-and-soul not bound to physical matter was able to work in Paul only because he had himself experienced this super-sensible reality at Damascus.
Knowledge of the super-sensible, of the spirit-and-soul was dependent in olden times on the blood; the blood itself brought the revelation of the spirit-and-soul to men in the material world. This was so no longer, and it was therefore necessary for men to turn to something not dependent on the blood. But there was a great danger here—the danger that in the age now dawning, man would still be prone to look to the innate qualities of his own being for spirit-and-soul knowledge. Formerly, this was possible because the blood itself was the bearer of super-sensible knowledge. For men of good will the Event of Golgotha had done away with this dependence, but the general trend of evolution was such that for a time men continued the once well-founded habit in regard to the blood. Without being bearers of the now sanctified blood, they still wanted to understand the divine and spiritual through attributes innate in their human blood.
The danger resulting from this consisted in the following, and it is important that this danger should be elucidated.—Man receives his blood through descent, through birth, and when he is 25, 30, 35 years old, he bears this inherited blood within him. In that he is brought into existence by the world-order, he receives his blood. If the blood is itself the guarantee of the existence of the spirit-and-soul, then man can look to the blood. But although little by little the blood had lost the power to be the bearer of the divine and spiritual, men still went on desiring to find in themselves the way to the divine and spiritual through the simple fact of being human. This was less and less possible, for if the blood does not carry into material existence the conviction of the super-sensible, the organism itself can promote no relationship with super-sensible reality. Men came to the point of enquiring into the super-sensible by looking to themselves alone, relying upon what comes with them at birth. But Christianity summons men not to rely upon what is brought into earthly existence at birth; it summons them to undergo a transformation, to allow the soul to develop, to be reborn in Christ, to acquire through effort and training, through earth-life itself, what is not acquired through the mere fact of birth. This could not be grasped all at once and it therefore came about that echoes of the old blood-wisdom persisted right on into the 15th century—and even then a remained the custom to relate the divine and spiritual to descent, to heredity, until in the 19th century even this glimpse of the divine and spiritual was lost and man had eyes for the material alone. Because he was only willing to cognise the divine and spiritual through an organism still untransformed, he lost sight of it altogether, and in the 19th century there befell the great catastrophe; men had forsaken God, had become unchristian, because a situation which had been concealed for a time under the mantle of tradition now came to the surface.
Until the rise of Protestantism a Christian tradition was still alive. What the Apostles, the disciples of the Apostles and the Church Fathers imparted through teachers who preserved a living tradition, was linked with the revelation of Golgotha. But the sustaining power of this tradition steadily diminished. Nor were men able of themselves to reach any true understanding of the Event of Golgotha. Then came the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and connection was lost even with tradition, in the end it was to documents alone that a measure of importance was still attached. Protestantism set store by documents, by scripts; tradition had been abandoned. But even a genuine understanding of documents came to an end in the 19th century and the fact is that the body of belief professed by the vast majority of those calling themselves Christians to-day is no longer Christianity. Thus in the 19th century the dire need arose to discover the Event of Golgotha anew, and with this need came the last flare-up of the anti-Christian impulse, which was of course there under the surface but had for a time been cloaked by tradition and by scripture. This element made its way to the surface during the 19th century and reached full force in the 20th, when for the majority of people neither scripture nor tradition have importance any longer. At the same time they have not yet themselves kindled the light which can lead again to an understanding of the Event of Golgotha.
To this cause alone are to be attributed the utterly unchristian impulses which laid hold of mankind in the 19th century and have persisted into the 20th. Two of the most unchristian impulses of all are those which took effect in the 19th century. The first impulse which came to the fore and gained an ever stronger hold of men's minds and emotions, was that of nationalism. Here we see the shadow of the old blood-principle. The Christian impulse towards universal humanity was completely overshadowed by the principle of nationalism, because the new way to bring this element of universal humanity to its own had not been found. The anti-Christian impulse makes its appearance first and foremost in the form of nationalism. The old Luciferic principle of the blood comes to life once again in nation-consciousness. We see a revolt against Christianity in the nationalism of the 19th century, which reached its apex in Woodrow Wilson's phrase about the self-determination of nations, whereas the one and only reality befitting the present age would be to overcome nationalism, to eliminate it, and for men to be stirred by the impulse of the human universal.
The second phenomenon is that men seek to draw their knowledge of the world, not from awakened powers of soul, but from the material image of these powers only. Vision of the soul has faded, and in his physical being, man is only an image of the divine and spiritual. This image can bring forth intellectualism, but not knowledge of the spirit. A secret of which I have often spoken to you is that man can only recognise and know the spiritual by lifting himself to the spirit; the brain is merely the instrument for intellectual apprehension. Intellectualism and materialistic thinking are one and the same, for all the thinking that goes on in science, in theology, in the sphere of modern Christian consciousness—all of it is merely the product of the human brain, it is materialistic. This manifests itself, on the one side, in formalism of belief; on the other, in Bolshevism. Bolshevism owes its destructive power to the fact that it is a product of the brain pure and simple, of the material brain. I have often described how the material brain really represents a process of decay: materialistic thinking unfolds only through processes of destruction, death-processes, which are taking place in the brain. If this kind of thinking is applied, as it is in Leninism and Trotskyism, to the social order, a destructive process is set in motion inevitably, for such ideas about the social order issue from what is itself the foundation of destruction, namely, the Ahrimanic impulse.—That is the other side of the picture.
These two impulses, Nationalism, the Luciferic form of anti-Christianity, and that which culminated in the tenets of Lenin and Trotsky, the Ahrimanic form of anti-Christianity, have insinuated themselves into what ought to have been the Christian impulse of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nationalism and Leninism are the spades with which the grave of Christianity is being dug to-day. And wherever these principles, even in a mild form, become a cult, there the grave of Christianity is being prepared. Those who have insight can discern here a mood that is in the real sense the mood of Easter Saturday. Christianity lies in the grave and men place a stone over the grave. In truth, two stones have been laid over the grave of Christianity—the stones of Nationalism and of external forms of Bolshevism. It now behoves humanity to inaugurate the epoch of Easter Sunday, when the stone or the stones are rolled away. Christianity will not rise from the grave until men overcome nationalistic passions and false forms of socialism; until they learn how to find, out of themselves, the forces that can lead to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.
When with the mood-of-soul prevailing at the present time, men profess belief in Christ, the Angel can only give the same answer as was given in the days of the Mystery itself: “He Whom ye seek is not here.” At that time He was no longer there, because men had first to find the way through tradition and then through documents and scripts before reaching knowledge of their own concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. The need for such understanding is urgent to-day, for neither scripture nor tradition tell us those things that need to be known; direct knowledge alone can reveal these things. The age must be brought about when the Angel can answer: “He Whom ye seek is here indeed!” But that will not be until the anti-Christian impulses of our time are cast aside. The community which Paul wished to found, a community filled with the consciousness that immortality is assured to man beyond death—this is what must become reality. “In Christo morimur”—In Christ we pass through death.—Not until it is realised that spiritual knowledge alone can lead to an understanding of what Paul wished to establish, will any improvement in the social life of men be possible; there can only be decline.
What must be understood with regard to Christianity to-day is that man must train himself for the attainment of spiritual knowledge, whereas in ancient times it was given him together with the blood.
In the light of these thoughts, the gravity of the present time comes vividly before us—above all the need to work for the spiritualising of our civilisation. Must the bridge leading to the spiritual world—into which man will in any case enter when he passes through the gate of death and in which he will sojourn between death and a new birth—must this bridge be utterly demolished? True it is that this bridge is broken by nationalism and by false socialism; for these tendencies are at the root of all the urgent and fundamental crises of our time. Those who cannot realise this, who want to continue with a consciousness that is merely the outcome of material processes in the human being—such people are lending all their forces to the furtherance of decadence. The time has come when these issues must be decided, and they can be decided only by the free will of man. Free will itself, however, is possible only on the foundation of actual spirit-knowledge.
At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, remarkable tolerance towards all faiths was practised in Rome. Little by little, having long refrained, people even brought themselves to exercise a certain tolerance towards Judaism. There was great tolerance in Rome in the days when the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha was finding its way into the evolution of humanity. Towards the Christians alone did intolerance become more and more vehement. There developed in Rome an intolerance towards the Christians as great as the intolerance now prevailing in one nationality towards the other nationalities. The attitude of the different nationalities to-day towards each other has its prototype in the intolerance of the Romans towards a genuine knowledge of the spirit, for this meets with opposition on all sides. There are alliances to-day—all unperceived—between Jesuitism and the extremist elements here and there. For in the repudiation of spiritual knowledge the ultra-radical Communists and the Jesuits are completely at one. That too is reminiscent of the intolerance of the Roman State towards Christianity, and then, as now, the fundamental impulse is the same: in the unconscious part of their being, men hate the spirit, yes, actually hate the spirit. This unconscious hatred of the spirit confronts us from the side of nationalism as well as from that of false socialism. For think what this hatred of the spirit means to-day, what nationalism means to-day! In ancient times nationalism had its good purpose, because knowledge of the spirit was connected with the blood; to be swayed by nationalistic passions as people are swayed to-day is completely senseless, because blood-relationship is no longer a factor of any real significance. The factor of blood-relationship as expressed in nationalism is a pure fiction, an illusion.
For this reason, people who cling to such ideas have no real right to celebrate an Easter festival. To celebrate an Easter festival is for them a piece of untruthfulness. The truth would consist in the Angel again being able to say—or rather to say for the first time: “He Whom ye seek is here indeed!” But of this we may be sure: His presence will be vouchsafed only where the principle of the human universal takes effect! It is to-day as it was among the Romans, who showed the greatest intolerance of all to the Christians. What were all the others doing—all of them with the exception of the Christians? The others were still venerating the Roman Emperor as a God, were also making sacrifice to him. The Christians could do no such thing; the only King whom the Christians could acknowledge was the Representative of universal humanity—Christ Jesus.
This is one of the points from which a direct line has continued right into the present time. One has only to think of it as follows.—Does the formula “In the Name of His Majesty the King” which appears on every ministerial decree, really mean anything to individuals in England, for example? If the truth as demanded by the spirit were to prevail, such a formula would simply not be there. And how, I ask you, are the interests of a true Frenchman to-day furthered by Clemenceau's nationalism, with its inner untruthfulness? It would be Christian to-day to acknowledge such things, but such acknowledgment would at once be the target of intolerance.
These are the domains where untruthfulness is rampant, deep down in the souls of men. And this untruthfulness makes the other stones of nationalism and of false socialism into one stone which is rolled upon the grave and covers it. The grave will remain covered until men again acquire a true knowledge of the spirit and through this knowledge an understanding of universal Christianity. Until then there can be no true Easter festival; until then the black of mourning cannot with integrity be replaced by the red of Easter, for until then this replacement is a human lie. Men must seek for the spirit—that and that alone can give meaning to present existence.
It devolves upon those who understand the evolution of mankind to bring to fulfilment the words: “My kingdom is not of this world.” If the future is to contain hope, what must be striven for cannot be ‘of this world.’ But that, of course, runs counter to man's love of ease. It is more convenient to set up old customs as ideals and then to bask in the glow of self-congratulation; this is far pleasanter than to say: The great responsibility for the future must be shouldered, and this can be done only when striving for spiritual knowledge becomes a driving force in mankind.
Therefore Easter to-day remains a festival of warning instead of being a festival of joy. And in truth those who would fain speak honestly to mankind will not use the Easter words, “Christ is risen” ... but rather: “Christ shall and must arise!”
Fünfter Vortrag
Gestern versuchte ich einiges zu sagen über die besondere Art der ersten christlichen Anfänge, wie diese ihre Gestalt durch die Persönlichkeit des Paulus bekommen haben. Es ist gewiß in diesen Tagen die Veranlassung der österlichen Zeit, die zu solchen Betrachtungen hinweist. Allein, gerade indem wir gesehen haben, wie unberechtigt heute die Feier des Osterfestes bei zahlreichen Menschen ist, die vom Materialismus angekränkelt sind, wird es sich uns vor die Seele gerückt haben, daß eine solche österliche Betrachtung schon auch eine Zeitbetrachtung sein könne, wenn wir uns bewußt werden, wie eine Art Osterzeit heraufgeführt werden muß in diesem gegenwärtig mit so raschen Schritten in die Dekadenz hineingehenden Europa, überhaupt dieser gegenwärtigen zivilisierten Welt. Sich zu erinnern an die Art und Weise, wie das Christentum in die Welt hereingetreten ist, ist heute berechtigte Osterbetrachtung; denn gerade heute hat man nötig, zu verstehen, wie die Menschen sich selber einer wesenhaften Auffassung des Christentums immer ferner und ferner gerückt haben, und wie dieses Entfernen von einer wesenhaften Auffassung des Christentums doch alles andere bedingt, wovon wir ja oft gesprochen haben und was sehr stark zusammenhängt mit den Niedergangserscheinungen unserer Zeit. Diese Niedergangserscheinungen treten uns besonders dann entgegen, wenn wir einzelne Menschen, die es zuweilen gut meinen, heute anhören.
Sie konnten gestern einen merkwürdigen Artikel in den «Basler Nachrichten» lesen, der einen außerordentlich traurig stimmen kann. Er bringt die Wiedergabe eines Briefes aus dem Nordwesten Deutschlands. Der Briefschreiber, dem in einer gewissen Weise, wie es scheint, in diesem Artikel zugestimmt wird, macht darauf aufmerksam, wie überall sich heute Impulse geltend machen, die einfach die Zerstörung des Alten vorbereiten, ohne irgend etwas Neues an die Stelle zu setzen, wie sich alle Menschen von links und rechts Illusionen hingeben und eigentlich gern immer lllusionen hingeben. Und der Artikelschreiber selber sagt: Nun wird es schon so sein, daß eben über Europa der Bolschewismus hereinbrechen müsse, daß man ihn ruhig erwarten muß; dann wird das schon die richtige Entwickelung sein, dann wird sich, wenn die Leute den Bolschewismus kennengelernt haben, daraus ja etwas Richtiges entwickeln können. — Aber der Artikelschreiber fügt auch einige Zeilen hinzu, die beachtet werden sollten, und über die der gewöhnliche Leser wie bei so vielem hinwegliest. Er fügt hinzu: Man müsse auf etwas anderes heute sehen als auf das, was sich als Illusion die Leute links und rechts machen. Aber man solle auch nicht hören auf das, was einzelne Träumer sagen, sondern was die allgemeinen Impulse sind.
Diese einzelnen gutmeinenden Menschen sind die eigentlich schwierigen Menschen in der Gegenwart, die im Grunde genommen einsehen, wie es immer mehr und mehr talab geht, und die immer eigentlich ermahnen, wenn auch mit starkem Pessimismus ermahnen, man solle nicht hören auf diejenigen, die einen Versuch machen, aus der Misere herauszukommen. Denn diese einzelnen sind ja eigentlich nur die Repräsentanten einer sehr, sehr breiten Masse der Menschen, die doch immer wieder, wenn nach irgendeinem akut auftretenden Chaos ein bißchen Ruhe eingetreten ist, gleich zufrieden sind, weil sie gar nicht sehen, wie in diesem Ruhe-Eintreten nichts wirklich Bedeutsames liegt, sondern wie der Weg so lange talab gehen muß, bis einmal von einer genügend großen Anzahl von Menschen gehörig erfaßt wird, daß über dieses unglückliche Europa eine Welle geistiger Erneuerung gehen müsse. Sonst kann es nicht besser werden. Es ist nicht möglich, mit irgendeiner Fortsetzung des Alten irgendwie weiterzukommen, und es ist am wenigsten möglich, mit Kompromissen weiterzukommen; denn die Kompromisse verderben, indem es mit ihnen kompromittiert ist, auch dasjenige, was als Neues sich geltend machen will.
Schon gefühlsmäßig könnte man sich vorbereiten auf die Stimmung, die da notwendig ist, wenn man zurückblicken würde auf die energische Art, wie um die große Erdenwende durch Persönlichkeiten wie Paulus etwas ganz Neues in die Erdenentwickelung hereingebracht worden ist, was fortglimmt, was aber vorläufig zugedeckt ist von viel Asche. Dazumal war ja eben jener Zeitpunkt, der das Alte von dem Neuen trennte, wenn auch der Übergang deshalb nicht bemerkbar ist, weil er allmählich geschah — das Alte, durch das die Menschen, wie ich schon gestern angedeutet habe, wenn sie hinausblickten in die Natur, überall ein Göttlich-Geistiges sahen. Aber dieses Sehen des Göttlich-Geistigen setzte sich auch fort, hinein in die Menschheitsanschauungen, in die Anschauungen von der menschlichen sozialen Ordnung, die Konfiguration der Menschen, wie sie lebten als Masse, wie sich einzelne hervortaten als Regierende, als priesterlich Führende. Wir wollen jetzt nicht darauf sehen, wie durch die Mysterienkultur diese Konfiguration geregelt wurde; aber diese Konfiguration wurde angesehen, und sie wurde auch danach geregelt, als etwas auch ohne des Menschen Zutun Gegebenes, gewissermaßen als ein vom Naturgeist Gegebenes.
Derjenige, der durch die besonderen Einrichtungen und Tatsachen, die an irgendeiner Stelle vorhanden waren, der Führer war, den anerkannte man, weil man sich sagte, mit so oder so großer Kraft spricht sich durch ihn das Göttliche selber aus. Wie in an das Göttlich-Geistige verfolgte im Stein, im Berg, im Wasser, im Baum, so auch in den einzelnen Menschen. Und ich habe ja hier schon ausgeführt, daß für diese alten Zeiten es einfach selbstverständlich war, den Regierenden als den Gott selber anzusehen, das heißt als denjenigen, in dem sich die Gottheit wirklich manifestierte. Wenn die Menschen der Gegenwart nur etwas bescheidener wären und tatsächlich nicht ihre eigenen Meinungen hineintragen würden in dasjenige, was ihnen aus alten Dingen übermittelt wird, würde viel klarer gesehen in diesen Dingen. Gewiß, heute hat man keinen solchen realen Begriff: ein Mensch ist ein Gott. Aber in jenen alten Zeiten war es so, daß man damit einen realen Begriff verband. Geradeso wie man nicht bloß den fließenden Bach sah, sondern das Göttliche, das sich da bewegte, so auch in dem, was im sozialen Menschenleben vor sich ging, sah man das göttliche Walten selber in unmittelbarer Gegenwart. Dieses Schauen des Göttlich-Geistigen in unmittelbarer Gegenwart kam immer mehr und mehr zum Abklingen.
Aber bedenken wir, wie der Mensch sich finden konnte als Mensch in dieser Anschauung. Der Mensch konnte sich finden in dieser Anschauung, weil er sich eingebettet wußte in die Welt des GöttlichGeistigen. Er wußte, das Göttlich-Geistige lebt da, wo die Sinnendinge sind und wo die Menschen sind hier auf der physischen Erde. Der Mensch wußte das. Er wußte, daß er herausgeboren ist aus dem Göttlich-Geistigen. Das «Ich bin aus dem Gott geboren, wir sind alle aus dem Gotte geboren», das wurde dem Menschen etwas ganz, ganz Selbstverständliches, denn er sah es. Es war für ihn ein Ergebnis seiner sinnesmäßigen Anschauung.
Zu solch einem Ergebnis konnten die Menschen unmittelbar nicht mehr kommen, oder wenigstens immer weniger und weniger kommen in der Zeit, in der das Mysterium von Golgatha eben in einer neuen Art die Kunde von dem Göttlich-Geistigen bringen sollte. Der Mensch konnte sich ja in jenen alten Zeiten sagen: Alles, was ich sehe in der Welt, zeigt mir, daß die Dinge und Wesen von den Göttern kommen, daß sich ihr Dasein nicht erschöpft im irdischen Dasein. — Der Mensch hatte ein Bewußtsein des Ewigkeitscharakters seiner eigenen Wesenheit, weil er sein Herkommen von den Göttern durchschaute. Dieses Durchschauen eines vorgeburtlichen geistigen Seins, das ist es eigentlich, was die alten heidnischen Bekenntnisse durchtränkt. Alles, was heute durch die landläufige Wissenschaft als Charakteristik des Heidentums anzuschauen ist, das ist eigentlich mehr oder weniger eine Rederei.
Das Wesentliche des noch nicht in die Dekadenz gekommenen alten Heidentums war, daß die Menschen wußten, sie waren Geist-Seelenwesen, bevor sie geboren wurden; also erschöpfte sich ihr Dasein nicht im irdischen Dasein. Wir Menschen können sicher sein, ewig zu sein, denn wir kommen von Gott, und Gott wird uns zu sich wieder zurücknehmen. Das war schließlich doch die aus der Urweisheit kommende Erkenntnis der alten Zeiten. Und man kann sagen, diese aus der Urweisheit kommende Erkenntnis der alten Zeiten wurde mehr oder weniger jedem Volke in seiner Art für sich gegeben, denn sie war gebunden an eine elementar-geistige Anschauung, an ein Sehen des Göttlich-Geistigen in den Sinnendingen. Dieses Sehen des Göttlich-Geistigen in den Sinnendingen, das war in jenen alten Zeiten abhängig vom Blute. Und je nachdem der Mensch zugehörte dieser oder jener Blutsverwandtschaft, das heißt diesem oder jenem Stamme, diesem oder jenem Volke, mußte ihm eine besondere Form der Urweisheit über die Welt gegeben werden.
So sehen wir denn mannigfaltige einzelne Arten der Urweisheit über die einzelnen Völker der alten Zeiten ausgebreitet. Eine Ausnahme machte nur das jüdische Volk, welches zwar seine besondere Form der Urweisheit auch gebunden hat eben an das Blut dieses Volkes, welches sich aber betrachtete als das «auserwählte Volk», als dasjenige Volk, das zwar ein Volksbekenntnis oder eine Volkserkenntnis hat, aber eine Volkserkenntnis, die die eigentliche Erkenntnis des Menschengottes ist. Während die heidnischen Völker ringsherum im wesentlichen ihren Volksgott verehrten, glaubte das jüdische Volk den Gott der ganzen Erde zu haben.
Nun, das war ein Übergangsverhältnis. In der Art, wie nun Paulus auftrat mit seiner Interpretation des Christentums, war gründlich gebrochen mit alledem, was vom Blute heraus die menschliche Erkenntnis bestimmte, was vom Blute heraus die menschliche Erkenntnis in alten Zeiten bestimmen mußte. Denn Paulus machte zuerst geltend, daß nicht das Blut, nicht die Volksgemeinschaft, nicht all das, was überhaupt in vorchristlichen Zeiten bestimmend war für die Erkenntnis, weiter bleiben könne, sondern daß der Mensch selber seine Beziehung zur Erkenntnis durch innere Initiative herstellen müsse, daß es eine Gemeinschaft geben müsse derjenigen, die Paulus als die Christen bezeichnete, eine Gemeinschaft, zu der man sich geistig-seelisch bekennt, in die man nicht hineingestellt wird durch das Blut, in die man sich gewissermaßen selber hineinwählt.
Diese besondere Art, die geistige Gemeinschaft über die Erde hin so festzulegen, war für Paulus notwendig, weil die Zeit herannahte, in der der Mensch für die äußere Erdenerkenntnis dem Materialismus verfallen mußte. Da mußte für die äußere Erdenerkenntnis der Mensch von etwas anderem her sein Bewußtsein über seine geistig-seelische Wesenheit bekommen als von der Anschauung des sinnlichen Erdenmenschen. In alten Zeiten brauchte man den sinnlichen Erdenmenschen nur anzuschauen durch die Augen; durch alles das, was er in sich trug, manifestierte sich zugleich das Geistig-Seelische des Menschen. Das hörte jetzt auf. Man suchte über das Geistig-Seelische auf anderem Wege zur Erkenntnis gelangen zu können. Man mußte, mit anderen Worten, das Problem des Todes begreifen lernen. Man mußte begreifen lernen, daß dasjenige, was man allein durch sinnliche Anschauung hier auf dieser Erde vom Menschen sehen kann, hinstürzen und in zahlreiche Teile zerfallen mag, daß aber im Menschen eine Wesenheit ist, die nicht in diesem sinnlichen Menschen unmittelbar schaubar ist, und die der geistigen Welt angehört.
Es durfte also fernerhin dasjenige, was die Menschen zusammenhielt zu dieser christlichen Gemeinschaft, nicht abhängig sein vom Blut, denn gegen die Abhängigkeit vom Blute hätte sich immer der Einwand ergeben: Ja, wenn die Menschen an dem, was durch das Blut bestimmt ist, ihre Unsterblichkeit erkennen sollen, dann wäre diese Unsterblichkeit nicht gesichert. Für die Alten mag das Blut sich dargestellt haben so, daß es durch sich scheinen ließ die geistig-seelische Wesenheit des Menschen, aber jetzt stellt sich ja das Blut dar als der Beleber und Träger desjenigen, was mit dem Tode endigt. Es ist notwendig, auf das Geistig-Seelische in seiner Reinheit hinzuweisen, wenn man nicht auf das Verständnis des Problems des Todes im nichtmaterialistischen Sinne überhaupt verzichten will. Paulus konnte den starken Impetus, zu den Menschen zu sprechen von einem geistig-seelischen Wesen, das nicht an die sinnliche Materie gebunden ist, nur dadurch gewinnen, daß ihm selber die Realität dieses übersinnlichen Wesens durch das Ereignis von Damaskus aufgegangen war.
Es war die Erkenntnis des Übersinnlichen, des Geistig-Seelischen in alten Zeiten an das Blut gebunden; so daß, indem der Mensch durchsetzt wurde von seinem Blute, ihm dieses Blut in die sinnliche Welt hereinbrachte die Offenbarung des Geistig-Seelischen. Das hörte auf, und notwendig war, daß die Menschen sich hinwendeten zu etwas, was nicht durch das Blut gegeben ist. Damit war aber eine große Gefahr verbunden. Damit war die Gefahr verbunden, daß die Menschen in dem Zeitalter, das heraufkam, auch noch in irgendeiner Weise beim Erkennen des Geistig-Seelischen auf sich selbst zurückreflektieren wollten. In alten Zeiten konnte man auf sich selbst zurückreflektieren, denn das Blut, das man in sich trug, war der Träger der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis. Man war gewohnt worden, in.sich den Träger der übersinnlichen Erkenntnis zu sehen. Daß die Menschen das fortan nicht nötig haben, war für die Gutwilligen gegeben durch das Ereignis von Golgatha. Aber der allgemeine Entwickelungsgang ging noch eine Weile so fort, daß die Menschen diese Gewohnheit, die sie früher in bezug auf das Blut berechtigt gehabt hatten, nun fortsetzten, ohne daß sie das gottgeheiligte Blut in sich trugen; daß sie auch das Göttlich-Geistige erkennen wollten durch dasjenige, was ebenso in sich selbst gegeben war wie das Blut.
Die Gefahr, die sich da herausstellte, bestand in folgendem, und es ist heute wichtig, daß diese Gefahr sich aufkläre. Das Blut bekommt man durch seine Abstammung, das Blut bekommt man durch die Geburt, und man trägt, wenn man fünfundzwanzig, dreißig, fünfunddreißig Jahre alt ist, dieses Blut in sich, das man angestammt hat. Indem man in die Welt hereingetragen wird von den Weltenkräften, ‚bekommt man das Blut. Lebt im Blute die Garantie für das menschliche seelisch-geistige Wesen, dann kann man sich auf dieses Blut verlassen. Aber dieses Blut hatte allmählich die Tragfähigkeit für das göttlich-geistige Wesen abgelegt. Die Menschen aber wollten noch immer den Weg zu diesem göttlich-geistigen Wesen auf dieselbe Art in sich finden, einfach dadurch, daß sie geboren sind. Aber die Menschen konnten immer weniger finden den Weg in das Göttlich-Geistige einfach dadurch, daß sie geboren sind. Denn wenn das Blut nicht hereinträgt in unser sinnliches Dasein die Überzeugung von dem Übersinnlichen, so trägt unser Organismus keine Beziehung zu dem Übersinnlichen herein. Und so kam es, daß die Menschen sich nur fragen wollten nach dem Übersinnlichen, indem sie sich auf sich selbst zunächst verließen, das heißt auf alles dasjenige, was sie mit der Geburt in dasErdendasein hineintragen. Aber im Christentum liegt die Aufforderung, sich nicht auf das zu verlassen, was man mit der Geburt ins Erdendasein hineinträgt, sondern innerhalb dieses Erdendaseins eine Umwandelung durchzumachen, die Seele sich entwickeln zu lassen, wiedergeboren zu werden in dem Christus, das, was man nicht durch die Geburt empfangen hat, durch die Erziehung zu empfangen, durch das Erdenleben selbst zu empfangen. Das konnte nicht so schnell verstanden werden. Daher kam es, daß noch die Nachklänge der alten Blutsweisheit bis in das 15. Jahrhundert blieben, daß von da aus noch die Gewohnheit blieb, das Göttlich-Geistige zu sehen durch die Abstammung, daß aber zuletzt im 19. Jahrhundert bei dieser Gewohnheit der Mensch nicht mehr das Göttlich-Geistige sah, sondern nurmehr das Materielle. Weil der Mensch das Göttlich-Geistige nur noch sehen wollte durch den nicht umgewandelten Organismus, so sah er zuletzt dieses Göttlich-Geistige überhaupt nicht mehr, und so kam mit dem 19. Jahrhundert die große Katastrophe der Gottverlassenheit der Menschen, des Unchristlichwerdens der Menschen, weil jetzt im Grunde erst endgültig herauskam, was zuerst durch die Tradition verdeckt war.
Bis zur Entstehung des Protestantismus gab es eine christliche Tradition. Was sich die Apostel und Apostelschüler und die Kirchenväter erzählt haben, die eine lebendige Tradition fortbewahrt haben, das knüpfte an die Offenbarung von Golgatha an. Aber die Tragfähigkeit dieser Tradition wurde immer dünner und dünner. Aus sich selbst her-, aus kamen aber die Menschen nicht zu einer Auffassung des Ereignisses von Golgatha. Nun kam das 15.,16.,17., das 18. und das 19. Jahrhundert; die Menschen verloren den Zusammenhang mit der Tradition. Sie gaben zuletzt nur noch etwas auf die Schrift. Es kam die Zeit des Protestantismus, in der nur auf die Schrift etwas gegeben wurde. Die Tradition war aufgegeben worden. Aber im 19. Jahrhundert verfiel auch das richtige Verständnis der Schrift, und im Grunde genommen ist es bei der größten Zahl derer, die heute noch vorgeben, Christen zu sein, eben durchaus kein Christentum mehr, zu dem sie sich bekennen. Daher kam erst im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts, wo die Notwendigkeit auftrat, das Ereignis von Golgatha wieder neu zu finden, das letzte Aufflackern des antichristlichen Elementes, das ja natürlich schon da war unter der Oberfläche der Erscheinungen, das aber übertüncht war eine Zeitlang durch Tradition und Schriftwerk, herauf und wurde im Beginne des 20. Jahrhunderts am stärksten. Schrift und Tradition hatten für die meisten Menschen keine Bedeutung mehr. Selbst aber hatten sie noch nicht entzündet dasjenige Licht, das sie hinführte zu einem Wiederbegreifen des Ereignisses von Golgatha.
Nur weil das so kam, konnten noch im 19. Jahrhundert und ins 20. Jahrhundert herein die allerunchristlichsten Erscheinungen die Menschheit ergreifen. Zwei der unchristlichsten Erscheinungen sind gerade diejenigen, die ins 19. Jahrhundert hereinspielten. Da ist die erste Erscheinung, die wir allmählich aufglimmen sehen, im 19. Jahrhundert heraufkommend, immer mehr und mehr die Gemüter ergreifend: es ist das Aufkommen des Nationalitätsprinzips. Der Schatten des Blutsprinzips kommt herauf. Es wird aus dem Prinzip der Nationalität heraus das christliche Allgemeinmenschliche vollständig zurückgedrängt, weil noch nicht der neue Weg da war, dieses christliche Allgemeinmenschliche zu finden. Das Antichristliche tritt auf zunächst in der Form des Nationalitätenprinzips. In den Nationalitätsbewußtseinen lebt wieder auf das alte Luziferische des Blutes. Und wir sehen die Auflehnung gegen das Christentum in den Nationalismen des 19. Jahrhunderts, was zuletzt gipfelt in der Phrase Woodrow Wilsons von dem Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationalitäten, während die einzige Realität in der Gegenwart nur sein könnte die Überwindung der Nationalismen, die Auslöschung der Nationalismen und das Ergriffenwerden der Menschen von dem allgemeinen Menschtum.
Das zweite ist, daß die Menschen nicht aus dem erweckten Seelischen ihre Welterkenntnis entnehmen wollen, sondern aus dem bloßen Abbild, aus dem materiellen Abbild dieses Seelischen. Der Anblick des Seelischen selber ist erstorben, aber der Mensch ist als natürliches Wesen ein Abbild dieses Göttlich-Geistigen. Dieses Abbild kann zwar nicht Geist-Erkenntnisse hervorrufen, aber intellektualistische Erkenntnisse. Das ist ja das Geheimnis, von dem ich Ihnen hier öfter gesprochen habe: daß die Menschen das Geistige zwar erkennen müssen, indem sie sich zum Geist erheben, daß aber für das, was heute intellektualistisch ergriffen wird, das Gehirn das wirkliche Werkzeug ist.
Über den Intellektualismus sollte man materialistisch denken; denn alles das, was gedacht wird, so wie die heutige Wissenschaft denkt, so wie die heutige Theologie denkt, wie das im Umkreis liegende heutige christliche Bewußtsein denkt, all das ist nur vom menschlichen Gehirn gedacht, ist Materialismus. Die eine Seite sind die Wortbekenntnisse, die andere Seite ist der Bolschewismus. Der Bolschewismus ist dadurch so zerstörend für die Menschheit, weil er das Bekenntnis des bloßen Gehirns ist, des materiellen Gehirnes. Und ich habe Ihnen öfter geschildert, wie dieses materielle Gehirn eigentlich ein Dekadenzprozeß ist. Wir können unseren Materialismus eigentlich nur dadurch entfalten, daß in unserem Gehirn fortwährend Zerstörungs-, Todesprozesse sind. Wenden wir das, was auf diese Weise gedacht wird in dem Leninismus, in dem Trotzkismus, auf die soziale Ordnung an, dann muß ein Zerstörungsprozeß hervorgehen, denn es wird gedacht über die soziale Ordnung aus dem heraus, was selbst Boden der Zerstörung ist: das Ahrimanische. Das ist diese andere Seite.
Diese zwei Dinge sind heraufgekommen für die gesamten christlichen Elemente des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts: der Nationalismus, die luziferische Gestalt des Anti-Christentums, und dasjenige, was gipfelt in den Leninismen und Trotzkismen, die ahrimanische Gestalt des AntiChristentums. Das sind die Schaufeln, mit denen heute das Grab des Christentums gegraben werden soll, die Nationalismen und die Leninismen. Und überall, wo Kultus getrieben wird mit Nationalismen und mit Trotzkismen, wenn auch in abgeschwächter Gestalt, dort wird heute dem Christentum das Grab gegraben, dort herrscht für den Einsichtigen eine Stimmung, die im rechten Sinne eine Karsamstag-Stimmung ist.
Der Träger des Christentums ruht im Grabe, und die Menschen legen einen Stein darauf. Zwei Steine legten die Menschen auf den Repräsentanten des Christentums: die Nationalismen und die äußerlichen Sozialismen. Und notwendig hat die Menschheit, herbeizuführen die Zeit des Ostersonntags, des Hinweghebens des Steines oder der Steine vom Grabe. Aber nicht früher wird das Christentum aus dem Grab auferstehen, bevor nicht die Menschen überwinden die Nationalismen und die falschen Sozialismen, bevor nicht die Menschen den Weg finden, das von sich aus zu suchen, was zum Verständnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha führen kann.
Wenn heute die Menschen sich aus der Stimmung der Gegenwart zu dem Glauben Christi hinbegeben, dann muß ihnen — dies wäre ganz gerechtfertigt — der Engel erscheinen und ihnen dasselbe sagen, was er geantwortet hat, als er gefragt worden ist unmittelbar in der Zeit des Mysteriums: «Der, den ihr suchet, ist nicht mehr hie.» Er war dazumal nicht mehr hie, weil die Menschen erst durch die Tradition sich durchfinden mußten und durch die Schrift, um zu einer Eigenerkenntnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha zu kommen. Heute ist diese Notwendigkeit vorhanden, denn die Schrift sagt nicht mehr das, was gewußt werden soll, die Tradition sagt nicht mehr, was gewußt werden soll. Nur die ursprüngliche menschliche Erkenntnis kann wiederum sagen, was gewußt werden muß. Und die Zeit muß herbeigeführt werden, wo der Engel antwortet: Der, den ihr suchet, ist hie. - Aber er wird nicht hie sein, bevor verschwinden die antichristlichen Impulse unserer Zeit. Paulus wollte die Menschen zusammenrufen zu einer Gemeinschaft mit dem Bewußtsein: die Unsterblichkeit ist dem Menschen sicher durch den Tod hindurch, «in Christo sterben wir». Bevor nicht wieder verstanden wird, daß nur Geist-Erkenntnis zu dem Verständnis des Paulus wirklich führen kann, kann auch keine soziale Besserung kommen, sondern nur weiterer sozialer Niedergang. Das ist das, was heute auch in bezug auf das Christentum verstanden werden muß: daß der Mensch erzogen werden muß zu der Geist-Erkenntnis, wie er in alten Zeiten geboren worden ist zu der Geist-Erkenntnis.
Auch wenn man die Sache so betrachtet, tritt einem der ganze Ernst der gegenwärtigen Zeit entgegen. Vor allen Dingen tritt einem entgegen die Notwendigkeit, daß man wirklich arbeiten muß an der Durchgeistigung unserer Kultur. Soll denn ganz abgebrochen werden die Brücke zu der geistigen Welt hin, in die der Mensch ja einzugehen hat, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht, in der der Mensch sich aufzuhalten hat zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt? Man bedenke, daß diese Brücke in die geistige Welt abgebrochen wird durch die Nationalismen und durch die falschen Sozialismen. Man bedenke, daß diese Dinge innig zusammenhängen mit den gründlichsten Notwendigkeiten unserer Zeit. Und wer sich mit diesen Dingen nicht bekanntmachen kann, wer also fortfahren will in dem Bewußtsein, daß nur das Ergebnis des materiellen Prozesses im Menschen ist, der arbeitet mit allen Kräften an dem Weitergehen der Dekadenz. Denn heute ist der Zeitpunkt da, in dem sich die Dinge entscheiden müssen. Sie müssen sich entscheiden. Aber sie können sich nur entscheiden durch der Menschen freien Willen. Freier Wille aber ist nur möglich auf Grundlage wirklicher Geist-Erkenntnis.
In der Zeit, in der das Mysterium von Golgatha stattfand, hat man in Rom eigentlich eine merkwürdige Toleranz geübt gegen alle Bekenntnisse. Nach und nach hat man sich sogar aufgeschwungen, nachdem man das lange nicht getan hatte, zu einer gewissen Toleranz gegenüber dem Judentum. In Rom war man sehr tolerant zur Zeit, als das Mysterium von Golgatha allmählich in die Entwickelung der Menschheit, also in die Entwickelung der damaligen Zeit sich einlebte — nur just gegen die Christen wurde man immer intoleranter. Man wurde gegen die Christen allmählich so intolerant in Rom, wie man im Nachbilde bei den heutigen einzelnen Nationalitäten immer intoleranter gegen die anderen Nationalitäten geworden ist. Es ist eigentlich für das, wie sich die Nationalitäten heute verhalten, das Vorbild die Intoleranz der Römer gegen das Auftreten einer wirklichen GeistErkenntnis; denn gegen diese lehnt sich sozusagen alles auf. Es gibt heute ganz hübsche Bündnisse, wenn sie auch an der Oberfläche noch nicht bemerkt werden, zwischen Jesuitismus und den allerradikalsten Elementen da oder dort. Aber in der Ablehnung der Geist-Erkenntnis sind schließlich die allerradikalsten Kommunisten mit den Jesuiten vollständig einig. Auch das erinnert an die Intoleranz des Römertums gegen das Christentum, und damals und heute hängt es im Grunde genommen mit demselben zusammen. Damals und heute hängt es damit zusammen, daß die Menschen im Grunde genommen in ihrer unbewußten menschlichen Natur den Geist hassen, richtig den Geist hassen. Das Hassen des Geistes, es tritt einem sowohl auf seiten des Nationalismus wie des falschen Sozialismus stark entgegen, dieses Hassen des Geistes, dieses unbewußte Hassen des Geistes. Denn man soll sich nur einmal vorstellen, was heute bedeutet das Hassen des Geistes, und was heute bedeutet Nationalismus! In alten Zeiten hatte der Nationalismus einen Sinn, denn mit dem Blute war verbunden die Geist-Erkenntnis. Wenn heute die Menschen in dem Sinne, wie sie es sind, nationalistisch sind, so ist es völlig sinnlos, denn es hat der Blutszusammenhang keine reelle Bedeutung mehr. Es ist eine bloß phantasierte Bedeutung, dieser Blutszusammenhang, wie er im Nationalismus auftritt. Es ist eine bloße Illusion.
Deshalb haben die Menschen heute, wenn sie solchen Dingen anhängen, kein Recht, irgendwie noch von einem Osterfeste zu sprechen. Das Sprechen vom Osterfeste ist eine Unwahrheit, und die Wahrheit muß gerade darin bestehen, daß der Engel wiederum sagen kann, oder daß der Engel sagen kann jetzt erst: Der, den ihr suchet, der ist hie. — Aber der wird sicher nur mit etwas einverstanden sein, was für alle Menschen gilt. Es ist heute so, wie es bei den Römern war, die am intolerantesten gegen die Christen waren. Denn, was taten denn alle anderen, außer den Christen? Alle anderen außer den Christen verehrten den Kaiser von Rom noch mit den Lippen als einen Gott, opferten auch dem Kaiser von Rom. Die Christen konnten das nicht. Die Christen konnten als ihren einzigen König nur den allmenschlichen Christus Jesus anerkennen.
Hier liegt einer der Punkte, die linienhafte Fortsetzung in die Gegenwart herein bekommen haben. Hier liegt der Punkt. Ja, man braucht es nur so auszusprechen: Was hat denn schließlich der einzelne Mensch, sagen wir in England, noch gemeinschaftlich mit dem, was sich in die Formel kleidet, in der jede ministerielle Verfügung in England erfließt: «Im Namen seiner Majestät des Königs»? Wollte man die Wahrheit, wie sie der Geist fordert, an die Stelle setzen, so würde das eben nicht da sein können. Was hat denn schließlich das, was heute einen wirklichen Franzosen interessieren kann, zu tun mit dem Nationalismus Clemenceaus? Welche innere Verlogenheit steckt in dem Nationalismus Clemenceaus! Es würde heute christlich sein, solche Dinge sich zu gestehen. Aber man ist intolerant gegen solches Geständnis.
Sehen Sie, da kommen wir auf den Punkt, wo Unwahrheit tief in den Seelen der Menschen wuchert. Und diese Unwahrheit formt die anderen Steine des Nationalismus, des falschen Sozialismus zu einem Stein, der auf das Grab gewälzt wird, und mit dem zugedeckt wird dieses Grab. Es wird zugedeckt bleiben, bis die Menschen in der Wahrheit zum Geist-Erkennen, und durch das Geist-Erkennen zum Erfassen des allmenschlichen Christentums wiederum kommen. Vorher gibt es kein Osterfest. Vorher gibt es keine Möglichkeit, daß im Ernste ersetzt werde die schwarze Trauerfarbe durch die rote Osterfarbe; denn vorher ist dieser Ersatz eine menschliche Lüge. Es muß nach dem Geiste gestrebt werden. Das allein kann noch Sinn geben dem heutigen Existieren als Mensch.
Gerade wer den Gang der Entwickelung der Menschheit in unsere Zeit herein versteht, der muß das Wort für die heutige Zeit in der richtigen Weise prägen: «Mein Reich ist nicht von dieser Welt.» Nein, dasjenige, was angestrebt werden muß, damit wieder zu einer Hoffnung für die Zukunft gekommen werden kann, das darf auch nicht von dieser Welt sein. Aber es spricht allerdings sehr gegen die menschliche Bequemlichkeit! Es ist schon bequemer, sich die alten Gewohnheiten als Ideale zu zimmern und sich dann innere seelische Wollust zu bereiten dadurch, daß man sich diese alten Gewohnheiten als Ideale zimmert. Es ist schon bequemer dies, als sich zu sagen: Es muß hingeschaut werden auf die große Verantwortlichkeit gegenüber der Menschenzukunft, der man allein gerecht werden kann dadurch, daß man das Streben nach dem geistigen Erkennen in die menschlichen Impulse aufnimmt.
So wird aus dem, was in der heutigen Zeit der Mensch erkennen sollte, das Osterfest bleiben müssen ein Fest der Mahnung statt eines Festes der Freude. Und eigentlich müssen diejenigen, die es ernst und ehrlich meinen mit der Menschheit, heute die Osterworte nicht sagen: Der Christus ist erstanden -, sondern sie müßten sagen: Der Christus soll und muß erstehen.
Fifth Lecture
Yesterday I tried to say something about the special nature of the early Christian beginnings, how they were shaped by the personality of Paul. It is certainly the Easter season that prompts such reflections at this time of year. However, precisely because we have seen how unjustified the celebration of Easter is for many people today, who are afflicted by materialism, it will have dawned on us that such an Easter reflection could also be a reflection on the times, if we become aware of how a kind of Easter season must be brought about in Europe, which is currently descending so rapidly into decadence, and indeed in the entire civilized world. Remembering the way in which Christianity entered the world is a legitimate Easter reflection today, for today we need to understand how human beings have distanced themselves more and more from an essential understanding of Christianity, and how this distancing from an essential understanding of Christianity conditions everything else which we have often spoken about and which is very closely connected with the signs of decline in our time. These signs of decline are particularly evident when we listen to individual people who sometimes mean well.
Yesterday, you could read a strange article in the Basler Nachrichten that can make one feel extremely sad. It reproduces a letter from northwestern Germany. The letter's author, who seems to be agreed with in a certain way in the article, points out how impulses are asserting themselves everywhere today that simply prepare for the destruction of the old without replacing it with anything new, how all people on the left and right indulge in illusions and actually always like to indulge in illusions. And the author of the article himself says: Now it will be the case that Bolshevism must break out in Europe, that we must calmly await it; then that will be the right development, then, once people have got to know Bolshevism, something right will be able to develop out of it. — But the author of the article also adds a few lines that should be noted, and which the ordinary reader skims over, as with so much else. He adds: Today we must look at something other than the illusions that people on the left and right are entertaining. But we should not listen to what individual dreamers say, but rather to the general impulses.
These individual well-meaning people are actually the difficult people of the present day, who basically realize how things are going downhill more and more, and who always admonish, albeit with strong pessimism, that one should not listen to those who are trying to get out of the mess. For these individuals are really only the representatives of a very, very broad mass of people who, time and again, when a little calm has returned after some acute chaos, are immediately satisfied because they do not see that there is nothing really significant in this return to calm, but rather that the path must continue downhill until a sufficiently large number of people realize that a wave of spiritual renewal must sweep over this unhappy Europe. Otherwise, things cannot get better. It is not possible to make any progress by continuing with the old ways, and it is least of all possible to make progress with compromises; for compromises, by compromising what they compromise, also corrupt that which wants to assert itself as something new.
Even emotionally, one could prepare oneself for the mood that is necessary if one were to look back on the energetic way in which, around the time of the great earth change, personalities such as Paul brought something completely new into the development of the earth, something that continues to glow but is temporarily covered by a lot of ashes. That was precisely the moment that separated the old from the new, even if the transition is not noticeable because it happened gradually — the old, through which people, as I indicated yesterday, saw a divine spirit everywhere when they looked out into nature. But this seeing of the divine-spiritual also continued into the views of humanity, into the views of the human social order, the configuration of human beings as they lived as a mass, how individuals distinguished themselves as rulers, as priestly leaders. We do not want to look now at how this configuration was regulated by the mystery cults; but this configuration was regarded, and it was also regulated, as something given without human intervention, as something given by the spirit of nature, so to speak.
The person who was the leader through the special institutions and facts that existed in a particular place was recognized because it was said that the divine itself spoke through him with such and such great power. Just as the divine-spiritual was pursued in stone, in mountains, in water, in trees, so too in individual human beings. And I have already explained here that in those ancient times it was simply taken for granted that the ruler was regarded as God himself, that is, as the one in whom the deity truly manifested itself. If people today were only a little more modest and did not actually bring their own opinions into what is handed down to them from ancient times, they would see these things much more clearly. Certainly, today we do not have such a real concept: a human being is a god. But in those ancient times, this was a real concept. Just as one did not merely see the flowing stream, but the divine moving there, so too in what was happening in social human life, one saw the divine working itself in the immediate presence. This perception of the divine-spiritual in the immediate presence gradually faded away.
But let us consider how human beings were able to find themselves as human beings in this view. Human beings were able to find themselves in this view because they knew they were embedded in the world of the divine-spiritual. He knew that the divine-spiritual lives where the things of the senses are and where human beings are here on the physical earth. Human beings knew this. They knew that they were born out of the divine-spiritual. The statement, “I am born out of God, we are all born out of God,” became something completely self-evident to human beings, because they saw it. For him, it was the result of his sensory perception.
Human beings could no longer arrive at such a conclusion directly, or at least they could do so less and less during the time when the mystery of Golgotha was to bring the message of the divine-spiritual in a new way. In those ancient times, people could say to themselves: Everything I see in the world shows me that things and beings come from the gods, that their existence is not limited to earthly existence. People were aware of the eternal nature of their own being because they understood their origin from the gods. This insight into a pre-birth spiritual existence is what actually permeates the ancient pagan beliefs. Everything that is regarded today by conventional science as characteristic of paganism is actually more or less empty talk.
The essence of ancient paganism, before it had fallen into decadence, was that people knew they were spiritual soul beings before they were born; their existence was not limited to their earthly existence. We humans can be sure that we are eternal, because we come from God, and God will take us back to Himself. This was ultimately the insight of ancient times, derived from primordial wisdom. And one can say that this insight of ancient times, derived from primordial wisdom, was given more or less to every people in its own way, for it was bound to an elementary spiritual view, to a seeing of the divine-spiritual in the things of the senses. This seeing of the divine-spiritual in the things of the senses was dependent on blood in those ancient times. And depending on which blood relationship a person belonged to, that is, which tribe or which people, they had to be given a special form of primordial wisdom about the world.
Thus we see manifold individual types of primordial wisdom spread out among the individual peoples of ancient times. The only exception was the Jewish people, who also bound their special form of primordial wisdom to the blood of their people, but who considered themselves to be the “chosen people,” the people who had a national creed or national knowledge, but a national knowledge that was the actual knowledge of the human god. While the pagan peoples around them essentially worshipped their national god, the Jewish people believed they had the God of the whole earth.
Now, that was a transitional relationship. The way Paul appeared with his interpretation of Christianity was a complete break with everything that determined human knowledge from the blood, everything that had to determine human knowledge in ancient times from the blood. For Paul first asserted that it was not blood, not the community of the people, not all that what had been decisive for knowledge in pre-Christian times could continue to be so, but that man himself must establish his relationship to knowledge through inner initiative, that there must be a community of those whom Paul called Christians, a community to which one professes oneself spiritually and soulfully, into which one is not placed by blood, into which one, so to speak, chooses oneself.
This special way of establishing spiritual community across the earth was necessary for Paul because the time was approaching when human beings would have to fall into materialism in order to gain external knowledge of the earth. For the sake of outer earthly knowledge, human beings had to gain consciousness of their spiritual and soul nature from something other than the perception of the sensory earthly human being. In ancient times, it was enough to look at the sensory earthly human being with the eyes; through everything that he carried within himself, the spiritual-soul nature of the human being was manifested at the same time. This now came to an end. People sought other ways of gaining knowledge of the spiritual-soul nature. In other words, it was necessary to learn to understand the problem of death. It was necessary to learn to understand that what can be seen of human beings here on earth through sensory perception alone may collapse and fall into numerous parts, but that there is an entity within human beings that is not immediately visible in these sensory human beings and that belongs to the spiritual world.
Furthermore, that which held people together in this Christian community could not be dependent on blood, for the objection would always have arisen against dependence on blood: Yes, if people are to recognize their immortality in what is determined by blood, then this immortality would not be assured. For the ancients, blood may have appeared to reveal the spiritual-soul nature of the human being, but now blood appears as the animator and carrier of that which ends with death. It is necessary to point to the spiritual-soul nature in its purity if one does not want to abandon the understanding of the problem of death in a non-materialistic sense altogether. Paul could only gain the strong impetus to speak to people about a spiritual-soul being that is not bound to sensory matter because the reality of this supersensible being had dawned on him through the event on the road to Damascus.
In ancient times, the recognition of the supersensible, the spiritual-soul nature, was bound to the blood; so that when human beings were permeated by their blood, this blood brought the revelation of the spiritual-soul nature into the sensory world. This ceased, and it was necessary for human beings to turn to something that is not given through the blood. But this was connected with a great danger. It was connected with the danger that in the age that was coming, people would still want to reflect back on themselves in some way when recognizing the spiritual-soul realm. In ancient times, people could reflect back on themselves because the blood they carried within them was the carrier of supersensible knowledge. They had become accustomed to seeing the carrier of supersensible knowledge within themselves. The fact that people no longer needed this was made possible for those of good will by the event at Golgotha. But the general course of development continued for a while, so that people continued this habit, which they had previously been justified in having in relation to blood, without carrying the God-sanctified blood within themselves; they also wanted to recognize the divine-spiritual through that which was just as much within themselves as blood.
The danger that arose from this was as follows, and it is important today that this danger be clarified. Blood is obtained through one's ancestry; blood is obtained through birth, and when one is twenty-five, thirty, or thirty-five years old, one carries within oneself the blood that one has inherited. By being carried into the world by the forces of the world, one receives this blood. If the guarantee for the human soul-spiritual being lives in the blood, then one can rely on this blood. But this blood gradually lost its ability to sustain the divine-spiritual being. However, people still wanted to find the way to this divine-spiritual being within themselves in the same way, simply by being born. But people found it increasingly difficult to find the way to the divine-spiritual simply by being born. For if the blood does not bring the conviction of the supersensible into our sensory existence, then our organism has no relationship to the supersensible. And so it came about that people only wanted to ask themselves about the supersensible by relying first on themselves, that is, on everything they bring with them at birth into earthly existence. But Christianity calls upon us not to rely on what we bring with us into earthly existence at birth, but to undergo a transformation within this earthly existence, to allow the soul to develop, to be reborn in Christ, to receive through education what we did not receive through birth, to receive it through earthly life itself. This could not be understood so quickly. That is why the echoes of the old blood wisdom remained until the 15th century, and why the habit remained of seeing the divine-spiritual through descent, but why, finally, in the 19th century, with this habit, people no longer saw the divine-spiritual, but only the material. Because people only wanted to see the divine-spiritual through the untransformed organism, they finally ceased to see the divine-spiritual at all, and thus the 19th century brought the great catastrophe of people's abandonment of God, of their becoming unchristian, because now what had previously been concealed by tradition finally came to light.
Until the emergence of Protestantism, there was a Christian tradition. What the apostles and disciples of the apostles and the Church Fathers told each other, which preserved a living tradition, was linked to the revelation of Golgotha. But the viability of this tradition became thinner and thinner. People could not come to an understanding of the events of Golgotha on their own. Then came the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries; people lost touch with tradition. In the end, they only believed in the Scriptures. The age of Protestantism dawned, in which only the Scriptures were believed. Tradition had been abandoned. But in the 19th century, the correct understanding of Scripture also fell into disrepute, and basically, the vast majority of those who still claim to be Christians today are no longer professing Christianity at all. Therefore, it was only in the course of the 19th century, when the need arose to rediscover the event of Golgotha, that the last flare-up of the anti-Christian element, which had of course already been there beneath the surface of appearances but had been covered up for a time by tradition and scriptural writings, came to the fore and became strongest at the beginning of the 20th century. Scripture and tradition no longer had any meaning for most people. But they themselves had not yet kindled the light that would lead them to a new understanding of the event of Golgotha.
It was only because this happened that the most unchristian manifestations were able to take hold of humanity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Two of the most unchristian phenomena are precisely those that came into play in the 19th century. There is the first phenomenon, which we see gradually emerging in the 19th century, increasingly gripping people's minds: it is the emergence of the principle of nationality. The shadow of the principle of blood is rising. The Christian universal human principle is being completely suppressed by the principle of nationality, because the new way of finding this Christian universal human principle did not yet exist. The anti-Christian principle first appears in the form of the principle of nationality. The old Luciferian principle of blood is revived in national consciousness. And we see the rebellion against Christianity in the nationalisms of the 19th century, which ultimately culminated in Woodrow Wilson's phrase about the right of nationalities to self-determination, whereas the only reality in the present could be the overcoming of nationalisms, the eradication of nationalisms, and the seizure of humanity by universal humanity.
The second is that people do not want to derive their knowledge of the world from their awakened soul, but from the mere image, from the material image of this soul. The sight of the soul itself has died, but man, as a natural being, is an image of this divine spirit. This image cannot produce spiritual knowledge, but it can produce intellectual knowledge. This is the secret I have often spoken to you about here: that human beings must indeed recognize the spiritual by rising to the spirit, but that for what is grasped intellectually today, the brain is the real tool.
One should think of intellectualism in materialistic terms, for everything that is thought, as thought is thought today by science, by theology, by the Christian consciousness that surrounds us, is thought solely by the human brain and is therefore materialism. On the one hand, there are verbal professions of faith; on the other, there is Bolshevism. Bolshevism is so destructive to humanity because it is the confession of the mere brain, the material brain. And I have often described to you how this material brain is actually a process of decadence. We can only develop our materialism through the constant processes of destruction and death in our brains. If we apply what is thought in this way in Leninism and Trotskyism to the social order, then a process of destruction must emerge, because the social order is thought from that which is itself the ground of destruction: the Ahrimanic. That is the other side.
These two things have emerged for all the Christian elements of the 19th and 20th centuries: nationalism, the Luciferic form of anti-Christianity, and that which culminates in Leninism and Trotskyism, the Ahrimanic form of anti-Christianity. These are the shovels with which the grave of Christianity is to be dug today, nationalism and Leninism. And wherever nationalism and Trotskyism are worshipped, even in a weakened form, there the grave of Christianity is being dug today, there, for those who can see, there is a mood that is, in the true sense, a Holy Saturday mood.
The bearer of Christianity rests in the grave, and people place a stone on top of it. People placed two stones on the representative of Christianity: nationalism and external socialism. And humanity must bring about the time of Easter Sunday, when the stone or stones are lifted from the grave. But Christianity will not rise from the grave until people overcome nationalism and false socialism, until people find the way to seek for themselves what can lead to an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha.
If people today turn from the mood of the present to the faith of Christ, then it would be entirely justified for the angel to appear to them and say the same thing he said when he was asked immediately at the time of the mystery: “He whom you seek is not here.” He was no longer here at that time because people first had to find their way through tradition and through Scripture in order to come to their own understanding of the mystery of Golgotha. Today this necessity still exists, for Scripture no longer says what is to be known, tradition no longer says what is to be known. Only original human knowledge can again say what must be known. And the time must be brought about when the angel answers: He whom you seek is here. But he will not be here until the anti-Christian impulses of our time have disappeared. Paul wanted to call people together into a community with the awareness that immortality is assured for human beings through death, “in Christ we die.” Until it is understood once again that only spiritual knowledge can truly lead to an understanding of Paul, no social improvement can come about, only further social decline. This is what must be understood today in relation to Christianity: that human beings must be educated to spiritual knowledge, just as in ancient times they were born to spiritual knowledge.
Even when viewed in this light, the whole seriousness of the present time confronts us. Above all, we are confronted with the necessity of really working on the spiritualization of our culture. Are we to completely break off the bridge to the spiritual world, into which man must enter when he passes through the gate of death, where man must remain between death and a new birth? Consider that this bridge to the spiritual world is being broken by nationalism and false socialism. Consider that these things are intimately connected with the most fundamental necessities of our time. And those who cannot familiarize themselves with these things, who want to continue in the belief that only the result of the material process is within man, are working with all their might to further decadence. For today is the moment when things must be decided. They must be decided. But they can only be decided through the free will of human beings. But free will is only possible on the basis of real spiritual knowledge.
At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, there was actually a remarkable tolerance in Rome toward all creeds. Little by little, after a long period of indifference, a certain tolerance toward Judaism even developed. In Rome, people were very tolerant at the time when the mystery of Golgotha gradually became established in the development of humanity, that is, in the development of that time — only towards Christians did they become increasingly intolerant. Gradually, people in Rome became as intolerant towards Christians as today's individual nationalities have become increasingly intolerant towards other nationalities. The intolerance of the Romans toward the emergence of true spiritual knowledge is actually the model for how nationalities behave today, for everything rebels against it, so to speak. Today there are quite attractive alliances, even if they are not yet noticeable on the surface, between Jesuitism and the most radical elements here and there. But in their rejection of spiritual knowledge, the most radical communists are ultimately in complete agreement with the Jesuits. This, too, is reminiscent of the intolerance of Romanism toward Christianity, and then as now, it is fundamentally connected with the same thing. Then and now, it is connected with the fact that human beings, in their unconscious human nature, fundamentally hate the spirit, truly hate the spirit. The hatred of the spirit is strongly opposed to both nationalism and false socialism, this hatred of the spirit, this unconscious hatred of the spirit. For one need only imagine what hatred of the spirit means today, and what nationalism means today! In ancient times, nationalism had a meaning, because the knowledge of the spirit was connected with blood. If people today are nationalistic in the sense that they are, it is completely meaningless, because the blood connection no longer has any real significance. This blood connection, as it appears in nationalism, is merely a fantasized meaning. It is a mere illusion.
That is why people today, if they adhere to such things, have no right to speak of an Easter celebration in any way. To speak of an Easter celebration is untrue, and the truth must lie precisely in the fact that the angel can say again, or that the angel can say now for the first time: He whom you seek is here. — But he will surely only agree to something that applies to all people. It is the same today as it was with the Romans, who were most intolerant of Christians. For what did all the others do, except the Christians? All the others except the Christians still worshipped the Emperor of Rome with their lips as a god and also made sacrifices to the Emperor of Rome. The Christians could not do that. The Christians could only recognize the all-human Christ Jesus as their only king.
Here lies one of the points that has been carried over into the present day. Here lies the point. Yes, one only needs to say it out loud: What does the individual person, say in England, still have in common with what is expressed in the formula that every ministerial decree in England begins with: “In the name of His Majesty the King”? If one wanted to put the truth, as demanded by the spirit, in its place, it would simply not be there. After all, what does what interests a real Frenchman today have to do with Clemenceau's nationalism? What inner hypocrisy lies in Clemenceau's nationalism! Today, it would be Christian to admit such things. But people are intolerant of such admissions.
You see, this is where we come to the point where untruth proliferates deep in people's souls. And this untruth forms the other stones of nationalism and false socialism into a stone that is rolled onto the grave and used to cover it. It will remain covered until people come to the truth through spiritual recognition, and through spiritual recognition come to understand universal Christianity. Before that, there is no Easter. Before that, there is no possibility that the black color of mourning will be replaced by the red color of Easter; for before that, this replacement is a human lie. We must strive for the spirit. That alone can still give meaning to our present existence as human beings.
Precisely those who understand the course of human development in our time must coin the words for the present age in the right way: “My kingdom is not of this world.” No, what must be strived for in order to regain hope for the future must not be of this world. But this certainly goes against human comfort! It is more comfortable to construct old habits as ideals and then indulge in inner spiritual pleasure by constructing these old habits as ideals. It is more comfortable than saying: We must look at the great responsibility we have toward the future of humanity, which we can only fulfill by incorporating the striving for spiritual knowledge into human impulses.
Thus, what human beings should recognize in the present age means that Easter must remain a festival of warning rather than a festival of joy. And actually, those who are serious and honest about humanity should not say today, “Christ is risen,” but rather, “Christ must rise.”