The Rudolf Steiner Archive

22. The Law of the Universe and Human Destiny

Christmas Lecture

[ 1 ] Join me for a moment in my thoughts as we travel to the ancient Egyptian temples for a ceremony that was celebrated at midnight on the day corresponding to our Christmas Day. On this day—or rather, at midnight—one of the images, which are displayed only four times a year, was unveiled in the temple and carried before a small group who had been prepared for this temple service. This image had been kept locked away in the innermost sanctuary of the temple throughout the entire year and was kept strictly secret. On this day, it was carried out by the eldest of the sacrificial priests, and a ceremony was performed before it, which I shall describe to you very briefly.

[ 2 ] After the eldest of the sacrificial priests had carried out the radiant image of Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, four priest-sages in white robes stepped before this image. The first of the priest-sages spoke before the image as follows: “Horus, you who are the sun in the spiritual realm and who bestow upon us the light of your wisdom, just as the sun bestows the light of the world upon us, guide us, so that in the end we may no longer be what we are today.” This temple priest had entered from the east. The second of the temple priests entered from the north and spoke roughly the following words: “Horus, you who are the sun in the spiritual realm, you who are the giver of love to us, just as the sun is the giver of the warming power that draws out the life-giving forces of plants and fruits throughout the year, lead us to a destination so that we may become what we are not yet today.” And the third of the temple priests came from the south and spoke: “Horus, you Sun in the spiritual realm, bestow your power upon us, just as the Sun of the physical world bestows its power, through which it will disperse the darkest cloud and spread light everywhere.” After this third sacrificial priest had spoken, a fourth stepped forward and said something to this effect: “The three wisest among us have spoken. They are my brothers, but they are beyond the sphere in which I myself still dwell. I am the representative of you”—and he meant: the representative of the multitude. And he said: “I will guide your voice. I will speak for you, who still stand here as the immature. I will tell my elder brothers that you long for the great goal of the world, where human destiny and the eternal law of the universe will be reconciled.” This was to be understood at that hour by those who were sufficiently prepared for it, just as once the immutable law of the universe and human destiny were one.

[ 3 ] If we understand the ceremonies that took place at Christmas in Asia, India, and even in China, then we understand what is actually resonating in the Christmas bells. The world has always been called a macrocosm, and human beings a microcosm. The intention was to suggest that human beings contain within themselves the forces that exist out there in the greater world. But it is not only the calculating mind that has called the world “in miniature” for humanity; it is also the soul that tells us we must look up to the stars. Here, a saying by the philosopher Kant applies: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe...: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

[ 4 ] How different the macrocosm and the microcosm appear when viewed from a different perspective. It is precisely the macrocosm, with its immutable, eternal laws, that fills those who are among the most profound scholars with the deepest admiration and awe. There has never been a scholar who has penetrated the wisdom of the world without simultaneously standing in awe before the creative spirit of the universe. And one of those men [of modern times] who first stood in intimate communion with this immutable order of laws, Kepler, spoke these words: Who could look into the wondrous structure of the universe as a whole and not admire the Creator who has implanted these laws of the world? — The wise admire the eternal laws of the starry heavens above all else.

[ 5 ] The situation seems to be different when it comes to human destiny. Goethe says that he likes to take refuge from human changeability in the fixed laws of eternal nature, and [Kant’s] moral law, with its categorical imperative, seemed to him to be caught up in errors. We perceive the difference between the human heart and the spirit of the world, the macrocosm, in yet another way; we perceive this difference when we consider the connection between human fate and human character. Who would attribute responsibility to a volcano? Probably no one. But we must certainly attribute responsibility to a human being who causes harm. Who would speak of justice and injustice in relation to nature? And why is it that the good suffer while the wicked can be happy?

[ 6 ] We see a harmony within the macrocosm. What stance should we take toward it? The ceremony I have described clearly foreshadows what will unfold before us in a few days during the festival that is so little understood today. The starry sky, with its immutable laws, was not always the cosmos that appears to us now. This cosmos emerged from chaos. What we have today developed from forces in constant interplay. The Copernican-Keplerian laws, which allow us to admire the wisdom of the world spirit, did not always apply. Today it seems to be poured out, transcending justice and injustice; we cannot ask there about good and evil. But we can certainly ask this of human beings. Today we pose the deeper question: Why do we ask human beings about good and evil, about justice and injustice? Why are we not allowed to raise this question regarding the macrocosm? Back then, when the world was still a surging sea, there existed—in the midst of what the eyes see, the ears hear, the senses perceive, in the midst of what appears to us today in the laws of harmony—a surging sea of feelings, desires, and passions that rippled through space, out in the universe. These cosmic passions, which lay right there between the laws and chaos, had to be overcome first. Anyone today who attempts to visualize this world of cosmic desires and passions from a primeval past can scarcely perceive the body of these passions anymore. Shining and transparent, star-bright, barely perceptible even with the seer’s finest tools, it glows within every atom now that chaos has been overcome.

[ 7 ] What has brought the astral body of the cosmos to rest has not yet reached the same goal in human beings. In human beings, the astral body is still in a state of flux. What has already been accomplished in the cosmos over the course of millions of years—what has reached its goal—is still in the process of becoming in human beings. And when we trace the human being from one return to the next, from one incarnation to the next, when we see him in his various bodies and then trace him through his astral bodies, we see that from one incarnation to the next the astral body becomes brighter and purer. In the beginning, we see it permeated by dull passions. These are reminiscent of the passions of that time when the world was still a chaos. But little by little, that brightness and clarity developed, as the astral body of the great universe now possesses.

[ 8 ] Because the sages of ancient times understood the connection between the becoming of humanity and the being of the world, they called the world the macrocosm and humanity the microcosm. Humanity must look toward the goal it can set for itself: to become like the macrocosm, to imbue itself with the same bliss and tranquility that today, as a universal law, permeates the cosmos. Just as we cannot today question the laws of the cosmos regarding justice and injustice, so too will humanity one day be unable to ask whether its destiny aligns with its law. The law of the cosmos is pure law, and pure human law, the pure human spirit, shall one day become the destiny of humankind. This is the path of destiny that the human spirit traverses in its various incarnations. We shall become ever more radiant as the stars and ever more akin to the destiny of the cosmos.

[ 9 ] Karma is a law under which we all suffer. What we have done in one incarnation bears fruit in later incarnations. What befalls us today is the result of our actions in past incarnations. But karma is a law that not only distributes guilt and atonement, disharmony and harmony in the right way, but a law that leads us up to the highest summit of the human spirit. The great world book of karma will have found its balance on both the left and the right. Everything we have owed to life, we will have transformed back into the bright, glowing light of the astral body. Everything we have perceived as shortcomings will be balanced out. Karma is burned away. When the points of guilt in existence are no longer present, when we ourselves walk our path like the sun, which cannot stray even slightly from its course, then we too will follow the laws implanted within us like the sun in the starry sky. That is our path; that is our goal. That will one day be the harmony between human destiny and the laws of the universe.

[ 10 ] Not everyone’s journey through life’s pilgrimage unfolds in the same way. Just as in the external world the perfect exists alongside the imperfect—just as the higher animal already exists alongside the worm—so too in the spiritual world the imperfect human spirit exists alongside that which has already attained a higher level.

[ 11 ] Anyone who believes honestly and sincerely in human evolution must also have faith in spiritual science and its teachings about the “first humans.” These are individuals who, on the path we must all traverse, have already traveled further than we have today. Some have rushed ahead. They have surpassed us from the times of which history tells us; they have reached a higher stage of human development. Through this, they have become leaders, guides of humanity. Just as the more highly developed animal towers above the worm, so do the Rishis, the Masters, tower above humanity. They achieved this in earlier times because they took a different path of knowledge—a steeper, more dangerous path fraught with infinite peril. No one must tread it for its own sake. Whoever does so may stumble and fall into deep abysses, or lose their existence for a time, or become a tormentor of humanity. In short, no one must seek this path of swifter realization out of self-interest or selfishness. Only the one who has vowed—vowed to powers of which the ordinary person has no inkling, with an oath that must never be broken—only the one who has taken this vow may tread the path to become a leader of humanity, a pioneer of humanity. Such leaders of humanity have never used their knowledge for themselves.

[ 12 ] What is so highly valued in the West—knowledge for knowledge’s sake—is not what the adepts, the great masters of knowledge, strive for. They seek knowledge in order to help humanity, to lift it up to a place where human destiny and world harmony are in harmony with one another. It is these first fruits of humanity who live among us and have lived throughout all ages, who have acquired an astral body purified of desires and passions. Buddha, too, possessed such a body—the astral body shining like the stars. Once, when he went out with his disciple Ananda, Buddha dissolved into a cloud of light, into a radiant light. That was the astral body at rest.

[ 13 ] The Crown of Rays is nothing other than the symbol of the radiant astral body of the founder of Christianity. The First Men, as walking human brothers, are a direct reflection of the macrocosm. It was to be shown that they had burned away their karma, that there is nothing left to atone for, that the eternal wisdom can no longer stray, that they guide humanity with certainty, as surely as the sun follows its course across the vault of heaven and cannot stray from this path marked out in the firmament. This is the symbol of the First Men. It expresses that they cannot stray from the path that is laid out for humanity. As surely as the sun traverses the vault of heaven, so they walk their path. And just as the sun sends its light and warmth over the earth, so they send the love of their hearts into the hearts of people, awakening love in the hearts of their fellow human beings. These first fruits are, by virtue of their own strength, steadfast against all temptations. One may show them, one may offer them all the realms of glory in this world—they do not accept them; they desire only to be one with the Primordial Spirit from which they originated. Thus, these people wish to be a macrocosm themselves in this life. That was their consciousness. This is also present in all religions. Those who know the sources of religions know that it is inherent in all these religions to look up to the founders of religions as to the stars of the macrocosm, as to the eternal law of the universe that governs the starry sky. To the initiates and the more advanced, these first fruits of humanity were like suns.

[ 14 ] When humanity was to be shown how karma works, they were shown the image of the sun in the temple. To humans, this symbolizes destiny, just as the sun’s course symbolizes the cycle of the world. [A-mi-t’o] was the same for the Chinese when they worshipped the Buddha as the “Son” among their heavenly gods. And it was the same for the Hindus when they depicted Krishna resting in the arms of the Deva Mother. The Christmas festival runs through all religions. It is the festival that was meant to make people aware that their destiny is to one day be a reflection of the destiny of the macrocosm.

[ 15 ] The spiritual sun lives on in Christianity just as it did in the ancient religions. In the life of Christ, too, a direct image of the sun breaking through the firmament was to be revealed. His feast of birth was therefore moved to Christmas. Let us ask ourselves why. What happens to the sun at the time of the winter solstice, at the time of Christmas? The days grow longer again after the shortest day has passed. Light struggles its way out of the darkness once more. The sun, which has been in darkness for most of the day, is reborn, and as this newly born sun, it now sends forth its light. The birth of the light was celebrated at midnight because the light was born out of darkness. Thus, symbolically, the light of wisdom is to be born, represented by the firstborn of humanity. The sun appears anew—she who traverses the firmament. With her birth, she is a symbol of the firstborn human being, who walks his path just as surely as the universe carries harmony within itself.

[ 16 ] Various Christian sects existed in the early days, and each celebrated the feast of the Savior on different dates. There were 135 such days in the early Christian era. It was not until the beginning of the 5th century that a single date was established, namely what we now call Christmas. It was deliberately set on this day in order to establish for this Christian festival the same symbolism that permeated the entire ancient world. A Church Father himself, who was canonized by the Church, considered it justified and in keeping with the spirit of Christianity. He tells us that the Christians did right to celebrate the Christian festival—that is, the birth of Christ—at a time when the Romans celebrated the birth of Mithras and the Greeks the birth of Dionysus. The festival was to be imbued with the same meaning as the Mithras festival and the Dionysus festival, for in them, too, the birth of the firstborn was celebrated. Thus, Christianity has established in the Christmas festival a symbol intended to repeatedly remind people that karma must be burned away so that harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm—which does not yet exist today—may one day exist, and so that humanity may one day follow the immutable laws from which it must not stray.

[ 17 ] Just as Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, the symbol of human existence and the human goal, was shown to the assembled crowd at midnight, and just as the priests pointed out that he was the sun in the spiritual realm, that he was equal to the power of the sun’s warmth and light, just as the three wise sacrificial priests joyfully bowed down, so too does Christian legend depict the three wise men bowing before the Christ Child. They follow the star, the light. There is a deeper meaning in the visit of the three wise men from the East. These are the same three wise men who served in the Horus cult and who now say: One has been born to us who will follow his path as unwaveringly as the star that now guides us. The star is still far from us. But when this law becomes our own, then we will be like the one who carries the unchanging law within himself. Just as the star is our ideal, so is the one born of it our model. — What the Egyptians had celebrated there became a world fact, a world event. That is why the one who founded Christianity was able to summon his disciples to the Sermon on the Mount. That is why it is said: He led them away from the people, up the mountain. “Mountain” signifies the secret place where the inner circle was taught. The German Bible translation contains a tremendous error at this point: [“Blessed are those who are spiritually poor”]. In truth, it says: “Blessed are those who are beggars for the Spirit, for they find within themselves the kingdoms of heaven.” What did Jesus want to make of them? He wanted to make them blessed, those beggars for the Spirit. Only those who were initiated into the temple mysteries had become partakers of wisdom. The founder of Christianity wanted to carry this wisdom out into the whole world; not only the rich in spirit were to receive the grace of wisdom—no, all who stand outside and are also beggars for the spirit are to find within themselves the kingdoms of heaven. People used to find this in the temple mysteries. They were now to find bliss not only within the temple precincts, but they were to find within themselves the realms of heaven, which were presented to them as the harmonious model of human destiny; they were to ascend to the summit where a balance can be achieved between the changeable, erring human heart and the unchanging laws of the macrocosm. This is what the Christmas bells, according to the original intention of the initiates, are meant to bring to people’s consciousness; they are a pointer to what shows us how karma leads to the goal, how the laws of the universe and human destiny are connected.

[ 18 ] And to hear this once again—that is what theosophical study is meant to bring us. Some festivals that we celebrate thoughtlessly today, whose deeper meaning we do not know, owe their origin to a deeper wisdom. Because the ancient human being was connected to the macrocosmic world, the festival events were signs to him. The mystery of the heart and of the immutable law resounds to us from the sounds of Christmas bells. Theosophy will restore the deeper wisdom, the core of religious creeds, to our immediate lives; it will show to what extent these creeds contain this truth. And when we recognize this truth, then, in the highest sense, what is expressed as harmony between the law of the worlds and human destiny through the beautiful words: “Peace be with all beings!” will gradually come to fulfillment.