The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. The Purification of the Blood from Egoism through the Mystery of Golgotha

[ 1 ] Today we want to talk about the Mystery of Golgotha and at the same time offer a spiritual scientific reflection on Easter. Eight days ago, I was able to point out here that the Mystery of Golgotha is not only significant in the historical development of humanity like any other historical event, but that it has a profound meaning for the entire development of the Earth, insofar as we naturally include human beings in this development of the Earth. At that time, I was able to draw your attention to how the transformation of our planet would have appeared to an observer of our globe who could gaze upon our planet from a distant planet through the millennia. In fact, such an eye looking down from a distant planet would see how the appearance of the Earth has changed over the millennia before our era. And if it were a clairvoyant eye, that is, an eye that could not only observe what is happening physically on our planet, but could also observe the spiritual transformation, it would see that with the appearance of Christ Jesus on Earth, the entire spiritual atmosphere of Earth changes, becomes different.

[ 2 ] Just as human beings have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body, so too does the Earth have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. We are all enveloped not only by the air, but also by the etheric body and the astral body of the Earth. We live with our physical body not only in the air, but also in the etheric body and astral body of the earth, and such an observer would see this etheric and astral body of the earth with his clairvoyant eye. This etheric and astral body of the earth would have a certain color and a certain movement until the appearance of Christ Jesus. But then it transforms and takes on new colors and new movement. This event is so profound for our Earth and the development of humanity that the entire spiritual content of our Earth becomes different.

[ 3 ] You must not understand this as if it happened suddenly with the birth, suffering, and death of Christ. It has been prepared over centuries in the spiritual content of our planet, and it is not yet complete today. One could still see with such an eye how what the earth received as a new spiritual impact at that time is still condensing and consolidating. It will be a long time before all the fruits of the earth that were brought forth at that time with the appearance of Christ Jesus are harvested.

[ 4 ] If we want to understand what this is all about, we must let the entire development of the earth pass before our minds once again. We must go back to that age of the earth's development in which, so to speak, man in his present form first developed and was first formed. We call it the Lemurian age. We arrive at this time when we go back through the various historical epochs of our present age.

[ 5 ] We are now living in the so-called fifth sub-age of the fifth main age of our Earth. If we go back to the time of the Greco-Latin peoples, that is, to the time when that wonderful art, which actually only emerged in the Greek era, developed, and when Roman legal concepts were formed, then we would be in the fourth sub-era of our calendar. Going back even further, we would come to an age that saw the high development of the Egyptian-Babylonian-Assyrian period. Going back even further, we would find the age in which the first seeds of spiritual life sprouted, when Zarathustra gave it its first spiritual culture. That would have been the second age. Going back even further, we would come to the ancient Indian people, not the ones described in the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, but the pre-Vedic people who were taught by the holy rishis themselves. Here we come to a wonderful ancient culture that clairvoyants can still see through. It is the first age of development, immediately preceded by the flooding of our earth, which washed away the Atlantic continent that lay between Europe and America.

[ 6 ] Our ancestors lived in Atlantis, the people of the fourth main epoch, who did not yet live in a social order as we do today, where there were no commandments, no laws. Nor was there logical thinking or arithmetic at that time. It was only in the last period of the Atlantean epoch that the elements of counting emerged. The highest soul power gradually became memory. Humans lived in wonderful interaction with nature. However, we can only imagine the age of Atlantean culture correctly if we know that the physical conditions on our earth were completely different then than they later became. In Central European legends, a memory of that ancient Atlantean age has been preserved in Niflheim or Nebelheim. That Nebelheim was truly permeated by heavy, dense fog, and because all beings lived in such heavy, dense fog, the spiritual conditions were also completely different.

[ 7 ] It would take us too far afield to continue describing the Atlantean age. I only wanted to hint at it, and I had to, if we are to reach the point in time when humans took on their present form. We would have to go back not to a flood, but to powerful revolutions brought about by fiery forces. These fiery revolutions destroyed the land known in theosophical literature as Lemuria. It was located deep in the south and stretched from northern Africa to southern Australia. It was the area that first saw humans in their present form.

[ 8 ] If we go far back in this Lemurian period, we would see people walking around on Earth who were very different in appearance from today's humans, beings who cannot yet be called human because they did not yet have the seed of the human soul within them, which alone enabled them to ascend to higher degrees of development. We would find human forms that only had the shell for the human soul, humans who only had a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. And the astral bodies had a kind of indentation — to be understood figuratively — to receive the consciousness of the I. Basically, the four members of the human shell were already there, but what you now call “I,” what lives in you today, was still in the bosom of the Godhead at that time.

[ 9 ] So these figures walked on this earth. If I were to describe to you these human figures that were ready to receive the human core, I would have to say: they were very different from today's humans. They would seem extremely grotesque to you, standing at the extreme limits of ugliness. These human “shells” were enveloped on all sides, as today's humans are by air, by a spiritual atmosphere. They were enveloped by a spiritual circle of air; they lived and wove within a spiritual circle of air.

[ 10 ] If I wanted to give a schematic drawing of what people were like at that time, I would have to draw these people as vessels that were ready to receive higher spiritual content. The inner space should mean a hollowed-out astral body that is ready to receive higher spiritual content. This higher content was still in the atmosphere surrounding it, in the spiritual layer of air. So what is inside each of you today was not yet inside human beings at that time; it surrounded and enveloped them. Of course, you must realize that the spirit can take on different forms, that what was your spirit at that time did not need a physical body. Its further development consists precisely in the fact that it has taken on the physical body in order to develop further inwardly as a soul. What lives within you today lived outside of you at that time, in the spiritual atmosphere that surrounded you. But the individual souls that live separately in their bodies today did not yet live separately at that time.

[ 11 ] Let us imagine this as if there were thousands of drops of water in this glass of water, all connected to each other. In this way, all the souls that were then distributed among human beings were like drops of soul in this spiritual atmosphere, but dissolved in a uniformly flowing element. And you can imagine even further: if I took a thousand little sponges and let them soak up a thousand drops, then these thousand drops would now be distributed among the thousand sponges. This is how you must imagine the distribution of the spiritual in the Lemurian age. What was previously in the surroundings descended into the bodies; they became special beings. Just as the thousand drops of water individualize themselves in the thousand sponges, so the communal spiritual substance individualized itself in the Lemurian epoch in the individual shells. Not every such human shell took in the soul equally in the early days of the Lemurian epoch. If I were to schematically indicate how the soul content was taken in, I would have to indicate it to you as follows (see drawing on p. 277). But I would also have to indicate that much remained in the environment, outside the body, so that the body was simultaneously surrounded by spiritual content that was similar to the part that was already inside the shell.

[ 12 ] The development through the Lemurian and Atlantean ages up to the present day consisted in that which was outside the physical body being gradually drawn into the physical body throughout the Lemurian and the entire Atlantean ages. You must imagine that human beings were constantly in a state of half-sleep and half-wakefulness. This state was, however, connected with a kind of clairvoyance. If someone whose spiritual eye was open had been able to look at the people of the Atlantean epoch, they would have appeared to him as people do today when they are asleep. When a person is asleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed and the higher spiritual content spreads out around them. It is precisely because this is outside that the state of sleep is brought about. You would see the Atlantean people in such a permanent state of sleep, but one that is filled with vivid dreams.

[ 13 ] When a person in those days approached another person, they did not see them as we see them today, with boundaries, but a certain color form arose in their soul. And this color form meant, when he approached a being that was sympathetic to him, precisely this sympathy, and in the case of a being that was antipathetic to him, this was shown in antipathetic shades of color. So it was that people at that time perceived their entire environment more clairvoyantly, and that the more spiritual substance sank into them, the more their consciousness became what we recognize today as clear daytime consciousness.

[ 14 ] What I have described here as the sinking of the soul into the physical body also has its physical side, its physical corollary. This physical corollary is significantly hinted at in the Old Testament in the words: “And God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” In fact, at that time, not only was the stream of air breathed into man, but also that which lived through him as a spiritual being. You must realize that what lives around us as matter is by no means merely matter, merely substance. When you feel air, you must be aware that it is a spiritual element that completely surrounds the physical body, and that with every breath you take, you inhale not only physical air, but also spirit. It is entirely true that in former times, when people breathed in physical air in the way they do in their present form — for this is indicated in the Old Testament — everything that has been recorded here sank into the physical shell. And if you were to ask: What was the body of man at that time, when the soul descended from the bosom of the Godhead? — The body was the air, and today you still breathe what sank into the body of man at that time. For what is called spirit is in the air. The air is only the body, the substance of this spirit.

[ 15 ] Now you must also realize how something else was connected with this kind of breathing of air, with this descent of the spirit into the human shell. It is intimately connected with what we call the warm blood of human beings, or rather, blood that is warmer than the environment. Before this point in our earth's development, there were no warm-blooded beings. Warm-blooded animals only came into being later. Warm-bloodedness was linked to this breathing, so that something else happened at that time: a certain quantum, a certain amount of warmth, entered into each such human shell, the warmth of the blood that you carry within you and which is a higher warmth than that of your surroundings. At that time, in the period preceding this actual human evolution, there was something else in the environment of the physical human ancestors on Earth, something quite different from the spirit embodied in the air. You can get an idea of what was still present in the Earth's atmosphere if you imagine the following — not exactly, but figuratively, but still real — if you think of the warmth that was present in the various human beings who lived on Earth, [if you think] of the warmth that lives in your blood, and then the warmth that flowed out into your surroundings, and all this warmth enveloping the Earth, that is, all the warmth of the blood, all the warmth that comes from the blood and flows within us: it is the warmth that used to surround us. You have absorbed the warmth that used to surround us. Just as the spirit that was outside you is now inside you, so too is the warmth that was outside you now inside you.

[ 16 ] We would thus come to the time when the whole earth was enveloped in a warm atmosphere. In this warm atmosphere, another spirituality was embodied, a spirituality that was the same as those spirits that were on the sun — which was one of the three planets that preceded the earth — and which had once, when the sun was still a planet, reached their perfection. The spirituality embodied in this warmth has a level of perfection that only those spirits have who reached the goal of their development on the sun planet at that time and who now inhabit the sun. In fact, at that time, when this warmth enveloped the Earth, it was the bearer of a single spirituality for all humanity. And for a long, long time, what surrounds the Earth in warmth was the bearer of a single spirituality for all people, that spirituality which is none other than the spirit of the Earth itself.

[ 17 ] Just as every human being has their own spirit, just as every human being is imbued with their own spirituality, so too, for those who see through these things, every planet and every material being is at the same time the expression of a spiritual being. Thus, our Earth is the body or the spiritual expression of the Earth spirit. The means by which the Earth spirit can penetrate into human beings is this blood warmth. In the warmth of the blood that lives in human beings, which lived outside of human beings in pre-Lemurian times, we have the means by which the spirit of the earth penetrates into human beings themselves.

[ 18 ] So you must imagine that at that time, when actual human evolution began in the Lemurian epoch, on the one hand the spirit belonging to the air descended upon human beings, and then that higher spirit contained in the warmth of the blood, the actual Earth spirit, began to descend. These two spirits relate to each other in such a way that one can say: It is the spirit that has its body in the air that has made it possible for human beings to speak. For the part of the human organism that makes the present process of breathing possible also makes speech possible. Speech developed in the Atlantean epoch, and the highest expression of speech was what learned to say “I” at the end of the Atlantean epoch.

[ 19 ] This is a process that begins in the Lemurian epoch and gradually reaches its perfection towards the end of the Atlantean epoch. The Bible says: “And God breathed into man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” This became more and more perfect until it became the word “I,” until the spirit began to speak from within the human being itself and began to call out from within the human being: “J-a-h-v-e.” This is at the same time the eternal core of being in every individual human being: “I am that I am, who was and who will be.” “I am” is the deepest inner core of being, which sank in at that time and will remain in all eternity as individuality.

[ 20 ] This was the first outpouring of the deity. It is called the outpouring of the Spirit, the outpouring of Yahweh. This outpouring of the Spirit or Yahweh is depicted in the myths of religious peoples, which are still more intelligent than scientific writings, in such a way that this god lives in the passing wind, in what whispers in the air, what moves in the air across the globe. From Germanic and also Jewish and Hebrew legends, in which Yahweh is depicted as a storm or wind god, it is clear that we are dealing with a deity whose outer body is in the air stream and who has poured himself into man.

[ 21 ] This deity, in its essence, in which it descended into human beings, probably had an effect on the individualization of human beings, in that what was a uniformly flowing element, which in pre-Flood times surrounded human beings in a magnificent form, spread out among individual human beings like water when individual drops are absorbed by sponges. But it was not able to individualize human beings completely. Humans first had to find the transition to complete individualization. Humans were not immediately called upon to become completely individual. First, they formed groups. It has already been mentioned that humans formed small tribal groups. At that time, humans did not yet feel themselves to be separate individuals. Human individuality felt like part of such a tribal group or a family, completely belonging, just as the hand belongs to the body. Humans today, who are endowed with a completely different consciousness, can no longer really imagine belonging to a tribe, feeling themselves inside the body of an entire tribe. But that is how it is, and the more the small tribes spread, the more the family became a tribe, the more individualized man became.

[ 22 ] What we recognize here as a process of becoming isolated, what we recognize as a continuous process of becoming individual, you must imagine as being bound to human blood. You will understand this bondage to his blood when I tell you something that I ask you to remember: this outpouring of the spirit that took place in the Lemurian period was not a uniform outpouring. You could have seen there that many spirits descended from the spiritual environment of the earth onto the earth. There were many individualities involved. When we speak of Yahweh, we are not dealing with a single deity, but with many folk deities. The Jews are aware that it was one among many, among many deities. Because many such folk souls — which I ask you to take as reality — descended, the peoples were divided into tribes. And the further they progressed in their development, the more they formed families, tribes, where they then joined together to form larger tribes. However, it was not possible in this way to unite into a large, unified brotherhood. Only in this way did this union of all humanity on earth become possible, and it will gradually be realized that, in addition to this sending forth of the spirit and the inspiration of human beings with this spirit, which flowed down into many folk souls, something else also flowed, something that lived in the warmth of the earth, not in the air, and that this more general element flowed into human beings. What first flowed in is also called the Holy Spirit in Christian esotericism. When speaking of the ancient spirits that flowed in, one should actually speak of many holy spirits, of many Yahves. But when speaking of the spirit that has all the warmth within itself, one can only speak of a single one. Within Christian esotericism, it is called the Logos, Christos himself, the unified spirit of the human race on Earth.

[ 23 ] If you now consider that everything that lives in the spirit itself, everything that we call Manas, descended in multiplicity, and that everything that is called Budhi poured out over humanity as a spiritual unity, then you have the contrast. And you will understand that humanity first had to be prepared by the outpouring of the Spirit for the outpouring of Christos or Budhi, the Spirit of Life. Until the moment when Christ Jesus appeared on Earth, everything that was present of the Christ Spirit was a unity. It was a unified shell that surrounded the entire earth, which had its skeletal system, as it were, in the solid earth. If you take the solid earth with all that it contains, and then add to it the warmth that surrounds the earth, you have approximately what is called the body of the Christ Spirit. Hence the beautiful words in the Gospel of John, where Christ Jesus himself describes himself as the Spirit of the Earth: “He who eats my bread tramples me underfoot.” What does man eat when he eats? Bread. He eats the bread that is the body of Christ. And as he walks on the earth, man does the other thing: he tramples him underfoot. This is to be taken quite literally.

[ 24 ] Just as in the Lemurian epoch the element of the spirit of Yahweh poured into individual personalities, so too, in the epochs that preceded Christ Jesus and in those that now follow him, the Christ spirit, which has its body in the warmth of the blood, gradually poured in. And when the whole Christ Spirit has been poured out into human individualities, then Christianity, the great brotherhood of humanity, will have conquered the earth. Then there will be no more consciousness of cliques and small groups, but only the consciousness that humanity is a brotherhood. Even with the greatest individualization, everyone will still be drawn to one another. The small tribal and ethnic communities will have given way to the community of the spirit of life, the Budhi, the community of Christ.

[ 25 ] This will be seen by a soul's eye that looks down on our planet as a clairvoyant eye. It could follow how, at that time, the Christ spirit was fully contained in what surrounds the earth and how it pours into individual human beings. The earth would see itself changing more and more. Different colors and moods would appear. What was in the environment of the earth would now have to be sought within individual human beings. This is the meaning of the appearance of Christ Jesus, and this is his cosmic significance.

[ 26 ] Everything else you can find in the spiritual development of our Earth is preparation. The appearance of Christ was prepared over centuries. This significant event for the entire cosmic development of the Earth was prepared by His showing how the narrow tribal boundaries can be overcome. You know Mercury, Hermes Trismegistos, the Persian Zarathustra, the Indians Krishna, Buddha, the Greek Pythagoras. The Christos spirit, which used to be in the vicinity of the Earth, begins to enter into human beings. Then begins a zone of religious founders, in which we see more and more the process of transformation being promoted and learn to understand the spirit of Christianity.

[ 27 ] The outpouring of the Spirit — what could it achieve? It could achieve that love was bound to the blood. People loved each other no less in ancient times than they do today, when they still formed small tribal communities. They loved each other even more, but they loved each other in the manner of mother and child. This love was therefore more conditioned by nature. Blood was attracted to blood, and this attraction between blood expressed the togetherness of human beings. But as those who were drawn into this blood community developed further, people began to sympathize with each other individually. This led to the development of smaller groups, families and communities, which in turn were united into larger communities. But individuals became more selfish and self-centered. So we have, on the one hand, humanity becoming increasingly self-centered and, on the other hand, the unifying influence of Christ. On the one hand, we have individualization, the independence of individuality, and on the other, the unifying spirit of Christianity. Only when these two currents are fully realized will it be possible to bring about a state on earth in which everyone is independent and, on the other hand, connected with everyone else, because everyone is imbued with the so-called Christ spirit.

[ 28 ] We must be clear that all this is connected with blood and that human blood originally expressed something that brought forth feelings and sensations which, although they worked within blood relations, brought about blood love, and that then feelings became more selfish. Egoism became more and more ingrained in the blood. This is the secret of human development, that blood increasingly took on the character of egoism. This blood, which had become selfish, had to be overcome.

[ 29 ] That which was the excess of egoism in human blood flowed mystically and realistically from the wounds of Christ Jesus on the cross; it was sacrificed. If this blood had not flowed, then in the course of evolution, egoism in human blood would have become greater and greater. The purification of blood from egoism is brought about by the mystery of Golgotha. Through this act of love, human blood was saved from its egoism.

[ 30 ] No one understands the cosmic significance of what took place on Golgotha who only sees that a human being hangs on the cross and bleeds because he has been pierced with a lance. The deep mystical meaning of this event lies in the fact that it is the blood that humanity had to lose for its redemption. No one who understands these things only in a materialistic way, who knows only the material process and not the spiritual behind it, can ever understand Christianity. But this spiritual aspect is the regenerating effect of the Redeemer's blood that flowed on the cross. We can only understand the further development of humanity if we grasp how decisive this fact is, if we understand that the most powerful upheaval in the spiritual evolution of humanity on earth is connected with this fact.

[ 31 ] If we follow the development on earth, we find that in ancient times, before the Christ principle entered the human soul, the mysteries of the spirit were the deep places of teaching and worship. The more Christ entered the world, the more the mysteries of the Son unfolded, and in the future the mysteries of the Father will be cultivated. These are already announced to us in the Apocalypse.

[ 32 ] Let us return to the mysteries of the Spirit. They were first established in a place that would lie between Europe and America and that has long since disappeared. There the seedbed of the great adepts was founded, there the mysteries of the Spirit were inaugurated, which have continued to propagate themselves down to our time. Those who had passed the tests of maturity could be initiated into the mysteries of the spirit. Those who were sufficiently educated and purified were admitted. They then took up the teachings that underlie all religions as ‘theosophy’ and which we take up today with spiritual science. They had purified their instincts, trained themselves to think in an orderly manner, and then accustomed themselves to loving not only their blood relatives, but all of humanity. They had become what we call “homeless people.” What is happening today in the highest stages of human development is a hint of the future.

[ 33 ] During the initiations in the ancient mystery temples, which continued until the last centuries before Christ and which we can see when we look inside the Egyptian pyramids, the disciple who had progressed so far that he was able to love all of humanity was immersed in a three-day sleep. His physical body was as if dead, in complete lethargy. The initiator was now able to draw his spirit out of him, just as your spirit is drawn out of your body every night when you sleep. As true as it is that this spirit is unconscious in ordinary sleep, it is also true that it became conscious in these sufficiently prepared disciples. Only the disturbing qualities of the physical body were no longer there. But during this three-day sleep, the disciples could remember exactly what they had learned earlier; they could bring this into their bodies.

[ 34 ] Because the initiate had learned, because he had absorbed the relevant concepts and feelings, the initiator was now able to let him experience as spiritual reality what he had previously worked out as a student and absorbed in his feelings. During the three days when the soul was outside the body, it wandered through the astral and devachanic worlds. In this way, it experienced in reality what it had learned earlier, and thus the person became a knower. Theosophical teachings were now no longer mere teachings to him; they were what he had experienced as an element of life itself. When he then awoke again within his body and looked at his physical surroundings, a sound came to his lips that escaped from his soul of its own accord, that had to escape when this soul, after three and a half days of wandering through the spiritual world, found itself back in the physical world. The soul felt that the I had become a citizen of higher worlds, that the I had dwelled in higher worlds and could now stand before people and speak of its experiences. By speaking of the spiritual world in this way, the human being had become a herald of the spirit in the physical world, a missionary of the spirit. And this is expressed in the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” That is: My God, my God, how you have glorified me! - That was what could be heard from everyone who was initiated in this way.

[ 35 ] If you had examined such a person in their entirety, you would have found that such an initiate of the mysteries of the spirit was a foretaste of what was available to all humanity in Christ Jesus. However, only inwardly, in the so-called etheric body, had the budhi awakened in such an initiate. Thus, throughout the ancient pre-Christian era, there were initiates of the spirit in whom the Son, the Christos, had awakened inwardly. This Christos had not penetrated into the physical body, but had awakened within the etheric body. As etheric beings, these initiates had become immortal.

[ 36 ] Now the great progress of humanity consists in the fact that what applies to the great initiates of the spirit also applies to the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth. But for the one who died on the cross, this applies even into the physical body. Everything that could be experienced outside the body in the ancient mysteries could be seen in this one case on the physical world stage through the event of Golgotha. It was also visible to those gifted with only physical eyes. In ancient times, those who had reached that point could see it. They became blessed because, as the chosen ones, they experienced inwardly how life must triumph over death. From then on, this was no longer necessary. Through the event of Golgotha, it had taken place before physical human beings. There it had happened that life had overcome death. And through the connection with this One, through the bond that connects each individual to him like a family bond, a substitute was created for what had been in the mysteries of the spirit.

[ 37 ] I must describe one of the great, significant images within the mysteries of the spirit if you want to understand the mysteries of the Son. I must describe how he who lay asleep for three and a half days was surrounded by twelve human figures with whom he sat as if at a table. And how must they appear to anyone who, as an initiate, had experienced the higher world? Before such a person, twelve of his incarnations had appeared, twelve of his different bodies through which he himself had passed. These twelve bodies were nothing other than what he carried within himself as the members of his body. In occult terms, the human body is divided into twelve members, and these are said to be nothing other than the reproduction of twelve incarnations through which man is gradually purified and led to a higher level of perfection. Thus, man felt surrounded by the forms through which he himself had once passed, and he said to himself: The form you once wore lives in one of your limbs; in another lives the second form, in another the third, in another the fourth, and so on. Thus they surround you, as guests surround the host at a meal.

[ 38 ] This was an image that could be seen by every soul in the mysteries of the spirit. The one who completed the cycle was the Son of Man, who is no longer the son of a family, a tribe, or a people, but the son of all humanity. The highest perfection among the Twelve was actually possessed by the Thirteenth. And because he was outside his earthly self, he saw himself as the thirteenth.

[ 39 ] Let us now follow how what was experienced in this way in the higher world by each initiate was repeated in Christ Jesus. It is clothed as in a veil, just as everything that is given exoterically is veiled. The Passover meal that Christ celebrates with the Twelve is not meant to be an ordinary meal. It is meant to be something else: it is meant to be the repetition on the physical plane of what the initiates of the Spirit have experienced so often on the higher plane.

[ 40 ] In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, verses 7-12, it says: "Now the day of the sweet breads came, and the disciples said to Jesus, 'Where do you want us to prepare the Passover lamb? He said, 'Behold, when you enter the city, you will meet a man carrying a water jug. Follow him into the house where he enters and say to the householder, 'The Master says to you, Where is the place where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room, where you may prepare it."

[ 41 ] During the Passover meal, He explained once again that the bread is His body, and that the blood that flows in His body is like the sap in the body of a plant. He may say in reference to the sap of the plant, in reference to the wine: “This is my blood,” and He may say it because He is the Spirit of the Earth. He may say of all substances: “This is my body,” and of all juices: “This is my blood.”

[ 42 ] Then comes the scene where Christ Jesus develops the mysteries of the Spirit further into the mysteries of the Son, in order to then pass them on to the mysteries of the Father. Again, you must imagine that the twelve apostles sitting around him are an embodiment of his own twelve body members. If you bring this correctly before your soul, if you try with tenderness and inner soul rhythm to grasp a passage that reveals — or rather veils — the very depths of Christianity, then you will be able to grasp spiritually the transition from the mysteries of the Spirit to the mysteries of the Son.

[ 43 ] Think again of what had to happen when the mysteries of the Son approached: it had to be pointed out that blood must lose its bond with blood ties. Blood ties would one day mean less to people than selfishness. Looking ahead to the future mission of Christianity, Christ Jesus felt that this could only be achieved through his sacrifice. It had to be so. For times would come when people would become more and more selfish in order to attain freedom. Therefore, the excess selfish blood had to be sacrificed through a cosmic act so that people, despite their independence, could one day be united in the great brotherhood. What is there, precisely through humanity, and what is to be spiritualized and ennobled through Christianity, the selfish element, has become greater and greater. This makes people more and more independent. But let us take a look at what has since enveloped the globe, let us take a look at the external means of transportation: what are they other than events designed to satisfy selfishness? Everything that intellect and reason have devised is only devised to satisfy selfishness, even if indirectly. Humanity was less selfish when grain was still ground with two stones. But because humanity had to become independent, it also had to go through selfishness, and our entire material culture is the foundation for this.

[ 44 ] Just as the one who has been initiated into the mysteries of the spirit sees his own incarnations and at their head himself, that which is now the most perfect, just as the Son of Man saw the circle of his disciples as expressions of himself, so the one who looks into the future sees the forms that humanity must pass through. Those who live through the mysteries of the Son see into the future until the end of the Earth's development, when the Earth's condition will transition into a new stellar condition. Christ Jesus could therefore say of the first condition at that time: You who sit around me represent different degrees of perfection, and when I look into the future, you, as you sit here, are the twelve stations. But these must be overcome. I must lead them through myself to the Father. Just as through myself, I must lead you to the Father so that the earth can ascend to a higher degree of perfection. — Everything that is sensual, everything that is bound to human drives, passions, and emotions must be overcome. This is symbolically represented by what happens to the Twelve.

[ 45 ] The age that follows is represented by Judas Iscariot. The representative of the highest morality is linked to the representative of base sensuality. It is Judas Iscariot who actually betrays Christianity in the immediate aftermath. Oh, there will come a time when it will seem as if what happened on Golgotha is happening all over the earth! It will seem as if egoism is bringing death to Christ, to Budhi. That will be the time of the Antichrist. It is the law that everything that happened around the cross must also happen on the physical plane. What happened on Golgotha also has a deep symbolic meaning. Judas' betrayal signifies the prevalence of the lower instincts. But everything sensual must become spiritualized.

[ 46 ] This points to the future development of humanity within the earth. I have mentioned this often. Everything that is base in human beings will fall away from them. What human beings will later become is already being prepared within them. They will not be creative in the same way as they are today. They will not create out of their base passions. Just as they today produce the word, the word that can embody the highest, so they will become ever more creative through the word. Just as he has become more selfish through sexuality, he will become selfless again through the elimination of sexuality. What today is produced only by the flow of air from the larynx, the word, will become creative in the future of humanity. The mutation, the change in voice, is related to sexual maturity. The voice will become the productive force. And as the word becomes creative, this word will at the same time – in the future, because the whole relationship will be reversed – be the expression of man's dominion over the air. So that which originally breathed through him will have a transformative effect on something that is even more deeply connected with his essence. The word will become creative for the preparation of blood. Even human blood will be transformed. It will only be able to produce pure, selfless feelings. There will be a human race that will be creative through the word. Selflessness will be transformed into a property of the blood, and the thinking organ will be transformed into the heart. Here we have one of the two evolutions that follow Christianity. The age in which egoism reigns is represented by Judas Iscariot. Anyone who looks impartially at world events can see how sexuality in human beings is capable of betraying them as spirits, of killing them. But human beings, just as they today create their higher self, the word, will one day work creatively through the word when the heart becomes their spiritual organ.

[ 47 ] Now I ask you to apply this to the Gospel and note a passage which, in a wonderful way, with magnificent symbolism, expresses what I have just said. See what will follow when Christianity becomes selfless and brotherly; how that which makes people selfish is embodied in Judas Iscariot, and see also where humanity will develop through the twelve stages: to the form that Christ Jesus himself has taken. Everything rises up to the heart.

[ 48 ] The transformation takes place in such a way that the creative power rises from the womb to the heart. In the one who is closest to the expression of the highest form and to Jesus, this must be expressed. And now read: "One of the disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus' side. Simon Peter motioned to him to find out who it was. So he leaned on Jesus' breast and said to him, ‘Lord, who is it?’" This is a passage that expresses how the lowest productive power of man rises up into the breast, represented by the most intimate disciple of Christ Jesus. With a tenderness that could not be more grandiose, the mystery of the Son, the mystery of Jesus, is hinted at. That it is to be a mystery can be read in the words of the initiated disciple himself at the end of this whole scene, after he had experienced how he would be transformed and come to the Father through the Son. What can he say? On a higher level, he himself can say what the initiates said: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.” That is what he says. Read it for yourself in John: “Then Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him.’”

[ 49 ] This Easter meal was the preparation for what then took place on the physical plane. Therefore, we learn from Christ's death the overcoming of death on the physical plane, the overcoming of selfish blood through the flowing of blood from the wounds. And we also learn about that great perspective when these words resound from the cross, resounding from the consciousness of the future: The earth has reached the goal of great brotherhood, of spiritualization, of overcoming everything that could drag down the spirit of man.

[ 50 ] Those people who have participated in this at the side of Christ will, when they leave earthly development and ascend to a higher development, be able to gather around Christ, and Christ Jesus will once again be able to call out, seeing the end of earthly perfection, the words He called out on the cross at that time: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” “My God, my God, how you have glorified and spiritualized the I in humanity.” That is what these words mean. There is also a later, incorrect translation that was based on the words of the psalm, but the true translation of the words is the one you now know. These are the words that express the mystery of Golgotha: My God, my God, how strongly, how greatly you have glorified me, spiritualized me.

[ 51 ] This word reveals to us the spirit's struggle to detach itself from the body. The mystery of the Son reveals to us that at that time the inner, clairvoyant gaze of the world redeemer looked to the end of the perfection of the earth and expressed the great goal of humanity in these words of overcoming all differences and establishing great love for humanity. This goal can only be achieved if people learn to enter more and more spiritually into the spiritual world. For it is in the spirit that the unification of humanity lies. Just as human beings were one when they stepped out of the spirit, out of the unified, all-pervading Godhead, just as they then became individualized by descending into individual human bodies — just as water becomes individualized when water droplets are absorbed by small sponges — so the individual human beings who have become individual will become unified again when they enter into the great brotherhood, maintaining their individuality, and thereby prepare themselves to be deified creators, as they were gods, creators, before they appeared on earth as human beings.

[ 52 ] Human development emanates from a divine being and returns to a divine being. The various egos will be individual, but at the same time, by being united in the brotherhood, they will form a unity that will give birth to a new star, that new star which is called “the new Jerusalem” in the Apocalypse. Human egos will be commanded in their egoity, and then the harmonies of the spheres will echo the words in which the mystery of Golgotha was sealed, the words: “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!”

[ 53 ] These words were spoken then, and they will be repeated when human beings ascend to the highest levels, to ever higher heights, where they will have passed through the Son to the Father. The Son leads human beings to the end of Earth's development; then they are taken back into the cosmos with their ego intact. Then the Earth returns to the Father. “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

[ 54 ] The spiritual gaze sees far, far into the distance when human beings allow themselves to comprehend this profound mystery of Golgotha. But festivals, such as the great festivals of the year, are there as the great stages at which people should pause from their ordinary daily activities and let their gaze wander to the great milestones of development, at which they should look not only over centuries but over millennia. With a vision dawning in our consciousness, we should pass through humanity. When we allow the broad, future goal, as taught to us by the great leaders of humanity, to work on our souls, when we allow this distant goal, which is so far away from us, which can be so close to us, to work when it becomes a force in our hearts — then alone will we achieve it.

[ 55 ] Let us never allow celebrations such as this to pass us by without inscribing such great future prospects for humanity in our souls! People have time for everyday things in their everyday lives. But when the holiday bells ring, then people may remember that they are not merely children of time, but also children of eternity as spirits.