The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Essence of Christ as the Inverted Macrocosmic Human Being

[ 1 ] One must mentally image the “essence” of Christ as the inverted macrocosmic human being, who is, however, identical to the second aspect of the Godhead, or the Logos. — Imagine the moment before the so-called “monad” (the totality of monads) descends to incarnate in the animal-human bodies that have been prepared up to that point. The animal kingdom up to that point, insofar as it had developed, with the exception of mammals, had physically spread out everything that had to be condensed into one being for the lower human. In these Lemurian animal-humans, the monad world descends by first separating Manas from Budhi. Manas is thus incarnated in the Lemurian human, uniting with Kama to form Kama-Manas, and Budhi-Atma remains linked to Manas only as a predisposition. Christ is now the entity that first awakens the “Budhi” as the first spark. For this to happen, it is necessary for the Christ being to take possession of a chela in the third degree (Jesus). Thus, we must view the Christ event on earth as the reversal of the process within the monadic world that took place with “Adam.” Paul expresses this very clearly when he calls ‘Christ’ the “reversed Adam.” The external historical process is only the actual symbol for the inner spiritual process.

[ 2 ] One can therefore visualize the matter according to the following scheme: