The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture One

[ 1 ] It has not been long since public lectures on occult truths began to be given. Once upon a time, these truths were only revealed in secret societies to those who had passed certain degrees of initiation and had promised to observe the laws of the brotherhood for the rest of their lives.

[ 2 ] Today, humanity is entering a decisive crisis. People have begun to reveal these truths to the public. Within twenty years, a certain number of them will already be common knowledge. Where does this come from? The reason is that humanity has entered a new phase. Explaining this phase in more detail will be the subject of this lecture.

[ 3 ] In the Middle Ages, the secret truths were mainly cultivated by the Rosicrucians. But every time these truths came to light, they were misunderstood or distorted. In the 18th century, they took on a dilettantish and sensationalist form. At the beginning of the 19th century, they were completely supplanted by the sciences based on sensory observation. Only now are they reappearing, and they will play an important role in the future development of humanity in the coming centuries. To understand this role correctly, one must go back to the centuries that preceded Christianity and consider the path that has been traveled.

[ 4 ] It is enough to have even a rough knowledge of the Middle Ages to appreciate the difference between the people of that era and the people of today. Far less developed in the field of science than today, people at that time were superior in the realm of feeling and intuition. They lived less in the visible world than in the otherworldly realm, which they were still able to perceive. Among the people of that time, there were still individuals who could truly connect directly with the astral and spiritual worlds. No matter how inadequately medieval humanity may have settled on Earth, their heads were still in heaven.

[ 5 ] Although the cities of that time were uncomfortable, they reflected people's inner worlds much better. Not only the cathedrals, but also the houses and gates reminded people of their beliefs, feelings, longings, and the world of their souls through their symbols.

[ 6 ] Today we know many things, and relationships between people have multiplied infinitely; but we live in our cities as if in noisy factories, in a terrible Babel where nothing reminds us of our inner world. The inner world no longer speaks to us through contemplation, but through books. From people of uninhibited inspiration, we have become intellectuals.

[ 7 ] We must go back beyond the Middle Ages to find the origin of this intellectual current. The age when this human intellect was still in its infancy, the age when the transformation took place, dates back to around the millennium before our era. It is the age of Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, and Buddha. At that time, philosophy and science appear for the first time, that is, truth is presented to reason in logical form. What existed before was truth, presented in the form of religion and revelation, perceived by its proclaimers and received by the masses. Now truth passes into individual intelligence; it wants to be clearly explained and understood.

[ 8 ] What was going on inside human beings at that time to justify this movement, which shifted their consciousness, so to speak, from one level of being to another, from the intuitive to the logical plane?

[ 9 ] Here we encounter one of the fundamental laws of history, a law that is not yet known to contemporary consciousness. It can be formulated as follows: The evolution of humanity takes place in such a way that the soul members of the human being emerge from it one after the other and allow themselves to develop. What are these members of the human being?

[ 10 ] First of all, human beings have a physical body. They share this with the mineral kingdom. The entire mineral kingdom is found in the chemistry of the body. They also have an etheric body, which is, so to speak, their life force and which they share with plants. This body continuously generates the processes of nutrition, growth, and reproduction. They also have an astral body. This is where feelings, passions, and the ability to enjoy and suffer are ignited. Humans share this body with animals. It was called the astral body by the Rosicrucians and some of their followers, such as Paracelsus, because it is actually related to the stars, based on a certain force of attraction.

[ 11 ] Finally, there is something in human beings that can no longer be called a body, but which represents their innermost being and distinguishes them from all other beings, from stones, plants, and animals, and that is what they call their ego. It is the divine spark within them. The Indians call it Manas. The Rosicrucians call it the Unspeakable. In fact, everything physical is only a fragment, a piece of another physicality. In contrast, the human ego belongs only to itself. I am I—it can say this about itself alone. It is what others call “you”; it is what cannot be confused with anything else in the world. Through this I, which cannot be expressed by anything else, cannot be exchanged for anything else, man rises above all other earthly beings, above the animal world and above the whole of creation. And it is also the only thing that connects him to the infinite I, to God.

[ 12 ] That is why, in the hidden sanctuary of the Hebrews, on certain days the altar boy would say to the high priest: Shem-Ham-Phorasch, which means: What is his name, the name of God? - And the high priest would answer: Yod-He-Vau-He, or in one word: Jehovah, which means: God, nature, and man, or: the inexpressible human-divine I.

[ 13 ] The elements of the human being that we have just characterized were all given to man in distant epochs of his tremendous development, but they developed only slowly and one after the other.

[ 14 ] The special task of the period that began about a thousand years before the Christian era and continued throughout the two thousand years following the birth of Christ was therefore to accelerate the development of the human I in the sense of intellectuality.

[ 15 ] But above the intellectual plane is the spiritual plane. This is the one that humanity will reach in the centuries to come. It is also the one toward which the present world hour is tending. And it is indeed Christ and Christianity through which the seeds of this future development have been sown.

[ 16 ] But before we speak of this spiritual plane, we must remember one of the means, one of the forces through which the vast majority of humanity has progressed from the sphere of astral vision to the sphere of intellectuality. This happened through a new kind of marriage. In the past, marriages took place within the same tribe or clan, which was merely an extension of the family. Sometimes they even took place between brother and sister. Towards more recent times, people felt the desire to seek their wives outside the clan, tribe, or civil community. The stranger, the unknown, became the beloved. Love, once a natural and social function, became a personal desire, and marriage became a free choice. This is already evident in certain Greek myths, such as the abduction of Helen, and even more so in Scandinavian and Germanic myths, such as the Siegfried saga and the Gudrun song. Love became an adventure and women became conquests in distant lands.

[ 17 ] This transition from patriarchal to free marriage now corresponds to the new development of intellectual abilities, of the human ego. It took place at the same time as the temporary darkening of the astral abilities of seeing and direct reading in the astral and spiritual world.

[ 18 ] This is where Christianity comes in. Human brotherhood and the worship of the One God are undoubtedly essential features of Christianity, but they form only its outer and social, not its inner and spiritual, form. The new achievement of Christianity in the realm of mysticism, inwardness, and the supersensible consists in its having created spiritualized love, the ferment that transforms human beings from within, the leaven that lifts up the world. Christ came to say: If you do not leave your mother, your wife, and all physical ties, you cannot be my disciple. This does not mean the abolition of all natural bonds, but the extension of love beyond the family to all people, the transformation of love into a living and creative force, into a force of transformation.

[ 19 ] This love, which the Rosicrucians made the principle of their occult brotherhood, but which was not understood in their time, is destined to change the fundamental content of religion, cult, and even science.

[ 20 ] The path of humanity leads from the unconscious spiritualism before Christianity, through intellectualism, the present, to conscious spiritualism, in which the astral and intellectual abilities are united, concentrated, and strengthened by the power of love for the spirit and spiritualized love. And in the same way, theology is destined to become theosophy.

[ 21 ] What is theology in reality? A message from God, imposed from outside in the form of dogmas as a kind of supernatural logic, but given to man from outside.

[ 22 ] And what is theosophy? The message of God, unfolding like a flower at the bottom of the human soul. God, distinct from the world, reborn at the bottom of the heart. Such Christianity, understood in the sense of the Rosicrucians, is equally the most powerful unfolding of individual freedom and universal religion through the brotherhood of free souls. The tyranny of dogmas is then replaced by the radiance of divine wisdom, which is intelligence, love, and action in one.

[ 23 ] The science that will spring from this will find its standards neither in abstract reason nor in external submission, but in its ability to awaken and blossom souls.

[ 24 ] Therein lies the difference between logic and Sophia, between science and divine wisdom, between theology and theosophy.

[ 25 ] Thus, Christ is always the center of esoteric evolution in the West. Certain modern theologians, especially in Germany, have attempted to portray Christ as a simple, naive human being. This is a great mistake. The highest consciousness, the deepest wisdom dwells in him, and at the same time the highest divine love. How could he be a central revelation within our entire planetary evolution without such consciousness? How could he have possessed such power and surpassed his entire age? And where could all this consciousness, superior to his time, have come from?