The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Anyone who attentively reflects on the last lecture given here and remembers how the repetition of certain previously experienced states takes place at a later stage - for example, on our Earth, a Saturn, a Sun and a Moon condition gradually occur and only then does our Earth condition fully develop - could feel compelled to make the following comment.

[ 2 ] He might say: It has been asserted in various earlier lectures that on Saturn the first physical human disposition underwent something like a system of senses, as if this first Saturn disposition of the human physical body had consisted of primitive, elementary sense organs. On the Sun, a glandular system would then have developed, on the Moon the nervous system, and on our Earth a repetition of everything happened. But how does that fit with the statement that the first thing to emerge on Earth is the first rudiment of the circulatory system, a kind of warmth human; then, as the Earth state condenses into the air state and light is added, a kind of air system, which then later develops into the present-day respiratory system, while the warmth system develops into the later blood system; and on the other side, under the influence of light, a kind of inward-looking nervous system develops. It was further described how all this is still in a fine ethereal state, and how it is then, as it were, filled with a kind of protein substance, which, under the influence of the world sound, the world tone, is structured into the individual substances. If I now assume, the person concerned could say, that the glandular system only begins with the storage of this organic substance, then there would first be a kind of warmth system on earth, which forms the first basis for the blood system, and a kind of nervous system, which is indeed present in the fine ethereal lines of force; then the glandular system would come, which in a certain respect is already organic-material, and finally the mineral would be deposited, as described last time. When these successive conditions of Saturn, Sun and Moon have occurred and these conditions are then repeated on Earth, it is still remarkable that a sensory system, then a glandular system, a nervous system and finally a blood system do not also occur on Earth first. But the last time it was described exactly the other way around: first blood, then nerves, glands and finally the solid deposits, which, as has been emphasized, first open the senses to the outside. Someone might say that this principle of repetition has been treated very badly, in that just last time a kind of reverse order was told than the one that would have been expected if a truly literal repetition had taken place.

[ 3 ] It must be admitted that if someone were to describe the following relationships out of pure intellect as a mere repetition of the previous ones, he would probably have given a description that meant the opposite of what actually happened. For the intellect would conclude that what was experienced on Saturn is repeated on Earth in a stereotyped way, then what was experienced on the Sun, and then what was experienced on the Moon, and that only then would the blood system come about. I have often emphasized that in occultism one can go wrong and make terrible mistakes if one does not describe from the occult facts, but relies on the mere intellect, on some mere logical conclusions. For if one follows the development of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon in the Akasha Chronicle, it is indeed the case that one must say: on Saturn there is a predisposition for a kind of sensory system, on the Sun a glandular system, on the Moon a nervous system, and with the Earth the blood is added. If we then follow the occult facts further, we find that on Earth a kind of blood system first appears, then a glandular system, a nervous system, and only then does what appears to be the sensory system develop in a form useful for Earth conditions. If one wants to speak of repetitions, one would have to speak of a reverse repetition, according to the facts. What has been presented earlier, and what has been presented in the last lecture, does not arise from speculation, but corresponds to real facts, and here such a reversal turns out to be the case, and that makes the repetition much more complicated.

[ 4 ] We must not be satisfied with the assumption that we are dealing with a mere reversal. Rather, just as the blood system first emerges in the first predisposition on our earth as a kind of warmth human being, as I described it last time, so the blood system is really a kind of sense system at the same time. It is namely a warmth and knowledge system. Man is, so to speak, completely a blood or warmth human being. He is not permeated by blood substance, but etheric lines of warmth permeate him, and these etheric lines of warmth, from which the blood system later arises, are in the first disposition quite a kind of sensory system. It is only in the first disposition and is itself a sensory system, and the nervous and light system is on earth first a kind of glandular system; and the later glandular system can only integrate itself by the other systems, the blood system and the nervous system, which have now already integrated themselves, advancing in their development. This advance occurs in the following way: While the nervous system is forming as a kind of glandular system, something remains of the blood as the later formation of the blood. But at the same time, during the second stage, the blood system itself also transforms into a kind of nervous system; and when that is achieved and the glandular system integrates in the third stage, the two earlier systems are the first to integrate again, so that in fact the blood system advances by one degree and the nervous system also by one degree. So, transformations and re-formations are continually happening. Evolution is a very complicated process, and it is not the case that one can rest easy with the concept of reverse repetition. This reversal is only a partial one; the blood system is a sensory system that transforms later, and the same is true for the nervous system, and so on.

[ 5 ] So you see, what has happened for man to reach his present height is by no means a comfortable matter for the mind, and it is a matter of patiently and persistently finding one's way into this complicated process of development. But this is only a kind of introduction that I wanted to give for those who have once again diligently considered what was said last time.

[ 6 ] Today, however, we have a very different task: to observe the development of man on earth from a completely different point of view, so that this human being comes more and more fully to life before our eyes. If, for this purpose, we look back once more to the preceding embodiment of our Earth, the old Moon, then, when we bring this human being on the old Moon before our soul, this human being presents himself in such a way that he has his physical body, his etheric body, his astral body, but not yet his personal I, as he only has it on Earth now. If we now examine the state of consciousness of such a moon man, it is in fact quite radically different from the state of consciousness of the earth man. The state of the earth man is truly expressed in what one might call the personality. Much is said about the characteristics of the earth man with this word; because a personality did not yet exist on the old moon. We have seen that it was only on Earth that this personality gradually developed fully and that in ancient times, people felt much more like a member of a whole community. Even if we do not go back very far in the areas where we ourselves live, even if we go back to the first centuries AD, we still find echoes of an ancient consciousness. The old Cheruscan, the old Sugambran, Herulian, and Bructerian did not yet feel to the same extent as a personal human being as today's human being, but rather as a member of his tribe. And when he said “I”, this “I” meant something quite different from what it means today. Today, when a person says “I”, he means the essence of his personality, as it were, enclosed in his skin. In those days, a person felt towards his tribe in the same way that a limb feels towards our organism. He felt himself primarily as a Sugambrian, Herulian, Brukterer, Cheruscan, and only secondarily as a personal ego. You will better understand many conditions in these ancient times if you consider this radical change of personality, if you realize that, for example, certain forms of blood revenge, family revenge, tribal revenge find their complete explanation in the common consciousness of the tribe, in the consciousness of a kind of group soul. People felt themselves to be groups of common blood, as a result of which a killing was avenged on the whole tribe of the murderer as if it were on himself. And if we go back even further to the classical Old Testament times, to the time of the Jewish people, we know that the individual Jew felt he was a member of the whole Jewish people, that when he said “I” did not feel as a representative of his personal ego, but that he felt the blood of the entire Jewish people, as it has flowed down through the generations since the father Abraham: “I and the father Abraham are one!” In this awareness, the member of the people felt secure and honored. He felt this group soul in the blood far up to the father Abraham. And if we go back even further into the distant past of the earth, we find the group soul even more clearly pronounced. Then the individual remembers by memory what the ancestors did, right up to the great-grandfather. The memory of the descendant reaches back centuries.

[ 7 ] In our time, under ordinary circumstances, a person no longer remembers what his father did if he did not see it. He no longer remembers what his ancestors experienced. His memory encompasses only his own life. In ancient times, man remembered not only what he himself had experienced, but also what his ancestors had experienced, with whom he shared blood, not because he knew it, but because memory transmitted beyond birth. And we know that the age of the ancient patriarchs, of Adam and the subsequent ancestors of the Jewish people, originally meant nothing other than the length of memory, how far back one could remember in the ancestral line. Why did Adam and the other patriarchs live so long? It was not that they were special individuals, but rather that they were remembered as clearly through the generations as one remembers one's own youth today. This was expressed with a collective term. The personality was not considered at all. They not only remembered what they had experienced in their childhood, but they also remembered what their father had experienced in his childhood, what their grandfather had experienced, and so on through the centuries; and the content of this memory was summarized as one unit and called “Adam” or “Noah” and the like for my sake. In primeval times, the completed personality did not yet have the value it has today; but the memory extended beyond father, mother, grandfather and so on; and as far as it extended, a common name was used. This may seem strange and fantastic to our present materialistic world view, but it is something that a thorough study of the soul, which is based on fact, must establish from the depths of the facts.

[ 8 ] We come to the point on our earth that man had a kind of group consciousness that was attached to his group soul. If we go back to the old moon, where man did not have such a limited ego embedded in the group consciousness, but where he had no ego at all, where he still consisted of a physical body, etheric body and astral , we would find that the consciousness on this old moon was not smaller, but comprised mighty, great groups, that indeed comprehensive group souls underlay the human race of the moon. These group souls of the moon, which, so to speak, only placed the individual moon people on the moon like their limbs, were wise souls. We have also described the animal group souls on earth, and in doing so we have also found wisdom to be a prominent feature. These group souls of the moon implanted in our planet in its previous embodiment the wisdom that we know and admire today. And when we admire today how every piece of bone, how heart and brain, how every leaf of a plant is permeated and imbued with wisdom, then we know that that wisdom trickled down from the group souls that were in the atmosphere of the old moon — as clouds today let down the rain — and incorporated itself into all beings, who took it up as a predisposition and brought it out again when they arose on Earth after pralaya. Thus, group souls full of wisdom were present on the moon.

[ 9 ] If we were to look for a quality on the old moon that we find today on our earth to an ever-increasing extent as the earth's evolution progresses, we would not find that quality in the moon beings. This quality is love, the urge that leads beings to each other of their own free will. Love is the mission of our Earth planet. This is why in occultism we also call the Moon the “Cosmos of Wisdom” and the Earth the “Cosmos of Love”. And just as we, standing on Earth today, admire the wisdom incorporated into it, so the beings on Jupiter will one day be confronted with beings from whom love will waft towards them. They will taste and smell love, so to speak, in the beings around them. Just as wisdom shines out to us on earth, so on Jupiter the Jupiter beings will smell what develops as love from pure sex love to Spinozian love of God here on earth. It will smell, like the plants today smell of different aromas. Thus the degrees of love will stream forth as that fragrance which will arise from the cosmos that we, as successors on earth, have called Jupiter. Thus conditions change in the course of evolution, and whenever there is any progress in evolution, beings partake of it. Then the beings connected with the planetary stage of development in question ascend to ever higher levels of development. Today, the people living on Earth are, so to speak, the instruments of the development of love; previously, the animal kingdom developed these various forms of love as backward forms, and to the extent that love emerges in animals, a simple observation would show that all of this is a preliminary stage of human love, which is becoming more and more spiritualized. Just as man on earth is the instrument for the development of love, so will he, when he has developed as far as Jupiter, be able to assimilate an even higher quality. Thus, when the Moon became Earth, the beings who had poured out wisdom from the sphere of the Moon were able to develop to a higher stage, and they ascended higher. These beings, who at that time had the power to instill wisdom into the lunar beings, were exactly the same ones who, at that point in the evolution of the earth when the sun emerged from the earth, were ready to go out with the sun and make the sun their sphere of activity. The entities that were the spirits of wisdom on the moon, the spirits of wisdom that trickled down – these are different spirits of wisdom than those that have been mentioned in connection with Saturn – these spirits, or at least a large number of them, chose the sun as their arena. Only the entity which is called Jahve or Jehovah, which last attained full maturity on the moon, became the lord of the form on earth, the ruler of the lunar forces.

[ 10 ] Now, however, we have already spoken of other entities that had not gone through the full development of the moon to the end, that had, so to speak, stopped in the middle between human and divine existence. We have characterized them in the most diverse ways. We have pointed out that the Sun, at a certain stage of its development, split Venus and Mercury out of itself in order to give these beings a suitable environment. We have also already discussed how, in the course of human evolution, entities such as the Venus and Mercury entities have become the great teachers of humanity in the mysteries. Today we want to supplement this picture from a different point of view.

[ 11 ] We have already hinted that if the forces and beings that emerged with the sun had remained connected to the earth in their original way, man would have had to develop at a rapid pace that he could not have withstood. He would not have been able to develop at all if the Spirits of Wisdom had remained connected to the Earth as they were connected to the Moon. They had to withdraw and influence from the outside if man was to have the right pace in his development. Otherwise man would be old again as soon as he was born; he would go through his development too quickly. I can also make this clear to you in another way.

[ 12 ] These spirits, who have evolved themselves up to the sun existence, have no interest in man going through the various ages of life, through childhood, adolescence, mature age, old age, and slowly and gradually gaining earthly experiences in physicality. They are only interested in the complete development of spirituality. If they had remained connected to the earth, the bodies would have withered away and been consumed in a certain way. Without bearing the fruits of the conquest of earthly existence, the spirit would have undergone rapid development and man would have been deprived of everything he can learn on the stage of the earth. Above all, the impressing of love into cosmic evolution would have remained hidden. In order for love to develop on earth, the body first had to be developed to a primitive stage. Love had to be created in its lowest form as sexual love, in order to develop through the various stages, and finally, when the Earth has reached its perfection in its last epoch, love will be uplifted in a refined way, developing into pure spiritual love in man. All lower love is schooling for higher love. The earthly human being should develop love within himself so that at the end of his evolution he can give it back to Earth, for everything that is developed in the microcosm is ultimately poured into the macrocosm. The progress of the human being becomes an evolution of the macrocosm. The wisdom that has flowed into the moon people shines towards the earth people as wisdom that permeates their structure. The love that is gradually implanted in people during their time on earth will attract the Jupiter beings from the entire realm of Jupiter. The individual cosmic forces must take this path.

[ 13 ] Thus was the starting point of our Earth mission – the imprinting of love – to some extent faced with two directions: The Spirits of Wisdom, the Creators of Wisdom, who infused the wisdom into the earthly realms on the moon, were uninterested in the physical body of man on earth for themselves, as Spirits of Wisdom. In so far as they were interested only in wisdom, they handed over the special mission on earth to the spirits of love, who are a different class and who, as spirits of love, were also initially able to develop with the sun for a time. In this way, we have two developments on Earth: an influx of love, which is, so to speak, making a new appearance, and an influx of wisdom, which works from the outside, because the spirits who are primarily interested in wisdom have withdrawn to the arena of the Sun. It is very important that we understand this interaction of the Spirits of Wisdom and the Spirits of Love correctly, because an infinitely important contrast is expressed in this interaction of the Spirits of Wisdom and the Spirits of Love. If I now try to express in human language what happened there, this contrast is expressed by the fact that the spirits of wisdom, between birth and death, as the individual develops, completely surrender themselves to the spirits of love and take over the rule of individuality for themselves, which passes through the various personalities in the course of reincarnations. If you imagine the human being in his entirety, you have laid out the two regimes under which the human being stands in the cosmic government. What the human being is between birth and death, what he develops within himself because he lives in a physical body, what, so to speak, truly makes him a being that stands here on the ground of the earth with his two legs, that is under the regime of the spirits of love. What runs through the personalities as the permanent individuality, what is born with the human being, dies, is born again, dies again, and so on, is to a certain extent under the rule of the spirits of wisdom. But now you must not generalize and say: So you claim that human individuality is under the influence of the spirits of wisdom, and human personality is under the influence of the spirits of love. If you were to generalize, then again mere nonsense would come out. For concepts are only valid if you grasp them in their relativity, if you know that each concept has its two sides. Only if you were of the opinion that this one life between birth and death would be meaningless for all subsequent lives, then you might generalize in that way. But if you bear in mind what I have always emphasized, namely that the fruits of every single life on earth, that is, the fruits of everything gained under the influence of the spirits of love, flow into all development, into that which is guided by the spirits of wisdom, and if, on the other hand, you are clear about the fact that everything of the spirits of wisdom, what is in the human body up to the astral body - we have already described how the experiences made on earth must be transformed and reshaped -, so the spirits of wisdom have an effect on the human being, because he has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. And because what the human being develops as a personality under the element of love becomes permanent for his individuality once it has been developed, the spirits of love in turn work through the detour of wisdom into what is developed in the individual human life. So they work together. Then the rule of these spirits is again separated in such a way that everything that is personality is directly and immediately subject to the rule of love, and everything that happens between birth and death is indirectly subject to the element of wisdom.

[ 14 ] Thus we see how the human personality and the human individuality are involved in different directions and currents. This is important for the following reason: if the Spirits of Wisdom, who are now meant, had, so to speak, assumed the rule, that effervescent, vehement development would have occurred, which could also be characterized by saying that man would have experienced in a single incarnation all possible perfection of all incarnations compressed together. But what the Spirits of Wisdom were to give was spread over the entire succession of incarnations on earth. In occultism, this is expressed in very definite terms. If the Spirits of Wisdom had remained in the process of development, the human being would have quickly developed spiritually through all stages of development, burning himself out physically. But the Spirits of Wisdom renounced to bring man to such a vehement development. They left the earth to circle it, to moderate the times that would otherwise have run vehemently, to make them moderate. Therefore, in occultism, it is said that these Spirits of Wisdom became “Spirits of the times of circulation”. In successive periods of circulation, regulated by the course of the stars, man's successive incarnations were regulated. The Spirits of Wisdom became Spirits of the Times of Circulation. They would have been able to lift man up from the earth through their powerful wisdom, but then men would have had to renounce bearing the fruits that can only ripen within time. The fruits of love, of earthly experience, could not have been gained. The secrets which beings must have and take to heart in order to bear the fruits of love, of earthly experience, were hidden from these spirits of the periods of revolution. That is why it says in the writing: “They veiled their faces from the mystic Lamb!” For the “Mystical Lamb” is the Spirit of the Sun, who holds the secret not only of removing the spirits from the earth, but of redeeming the bodies from the earth, spiritualizing them after they have passed through the many incarnations. The possessor of the secret of love is the Sun Spirit whom we call the Christ; and because He is interested not only in the individuality but in each single personality on earth, we call Him the “Great Sacrifice of the Earth” or the “Mystic Lamb”.

[ 15 ] Thus the Spirits of the Times of Revolution became the Spirits of the Periods of Revolution, and regulated the successive incarnations. The Christ became the center, inasmuch as the individual personalities of men were to be sanctified and purified. Everything that a person can bring from the individual personality into the individuality as fruit, he acquires through having a connection with the Christ-being. The looking, the feeling of connection with the Christ-being purifies and ennobles the personality. If the evolution of the earth had taken place without the appearance of the Christ, man's body, if we use the expression comprehensively, would have remained evil; it would have had to connect with the earth and would have fallen into materiality forever. And if, in spite of this, the Spirits of Wisdom had not renounced spiritualizing man right at the beginning of the actual evolution of the earth, the following could have occurred: Either the Spirits of Wisdom would have immediately, at the beginning of the evolution of the earth - that is, in the Lemurian period - wrenched the human being out of the body, led him towards rapid spiritual evolution and quickly burned his body; then the earth would never have been able to fulfill its mission. Or the Spirits of Wisdom would have said: We do not want that; we want the body of man to develop fully; but we ourselves have no interest in this, so we leave it to the Late-Born, to Jehovah, He is Lord of Form! Then the human being would have been mummified, would have dried up. But the human body would have remained connected to the earth; it would never have approached spiritualization.

[ 16 ] Neither path was chosen; but in order for a balance to occur between the Spirits of Wisdom and the Last-born of the Moon, the Lord of Form, who is the starting point for the Moon's creation, a middle position was created; and this middle position prepared the way for the appearance of the Christ, who is exalted above wisdom, before whom the Spirits of Wisdom humble their faces, and who will redeem mankind by permeating them more and more with His spirit. And when the Earth itself reaches the point where man has become fully spiritualized, then not a dry ball will fall out of evolution, but man will, through what he has been able to extract from evolution, lead his ever more ennobled human form towards complete spiritualization. And we see how human beings spiritualize themselves. If we were to look at the original human bodies of the Lemurian period – I would never describe these Lemurian human bodies in a public lecture! – we would find that they present themselves to us at the very limits of ugliness. Only gradually is the human body taking shape in the form we know today. And ever more ennobled and ennobled do men appear, as they become ever more and more purified by love. But man will also develop beyond the present human countenance. Just as the human body has become ever more spiritualized since the Lemurian race, so also will the human countenance become ever more spiritualized. We are now in the fifth race. Just as the good and noble that lives in the soul is already expressed in the human face, so in the sixth race the human face will shine with inner goodness. Man will then have a completely different physiognomy, so that one will recognize by the outer form how good and how noble he is, and one will recognize by the countenance what kind of inner soul qualities the person has; and more and more will the nobility and kindness contained in the human soul will be imprinted on the human physiognomy, until at the end of earthly time the physical part of the human being will be completely permeated by the spiritual and will stand out completely from those who have remained attached to materiality, who will represent the image of evil, who will remain at the mineral level. That is what will come, and what is called the “Last Judgment,” the separation of the good from the evil. It is the spiritualization of the human body or, as it is popularly called, the “resurrection of the flesh.” One must understand these things only with the healthy sense from the occult; then no attack can be made against them. The Enlightenment will certainly not be able to understand that what is matter could one day become something other than matter. What could be called, in the best sense of the word, the “madness of materiality” will never be able to imagine that the material could one day spiritualize, that is, that something will one day occur that is called spiritualization, the resurrection of the flesh. But such are things, and such is the course of the evolution of the earth, and thus the meaning of the evolution of the earth and the position of Christ within the evolution of the earth is established.

[ 17 ] If we were to consider everything we have so far taken into account in our present exposition, a peculiar picture of our Earth's evolution would emerge. This picture would be such that the balance would indeed be maintained between the spirits of form and the spirits that have become the spirits of the periods of revolution, the actual spirits of light. The fact that from the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has to lead the future evolution of the earth would mean that the latter would be in a state of equilibrium, and a successive ascent would indeed be what would come. But the matter is not that simple either. We know that there are spirits who have remained behind, spirits who had not attained full maturity in the development of wisdom and who therefore have no interest in relinquishing their rule to the current of love. These spirits wanted to continue working and to allow wisdom to flow in. They worked on people and did not work unfruitfully on earth. They brought freedom to people. Just as the Christ principle brought love, so these spirits, whom we call the Lucifer spirits, brought people freedom, the freedom of personality. They gave people the opportunity to choose between good and evil. Even the backwardness of certain spirits has a very good side, and everything, whether it is progressive or backward, is of divine nature. So there were spirits of the times of circulation, which guided the progressing incarnations, that which passes as individuality through all incarnations; so there were spirits of love under the guidance of the Christ principle, which prepared this individuality so that the personality can gradually pass over into a realm of love. If we wish to characterize the great ideal that we have in mind as a kingdom of love, we can do so in the following way.

[ 18 ] Today, the fundamental error is still widespread in the broadest circles that the well-being and salvation of the individual personality is possible without the well-being and salvation of all other personalities on earth. Even if people do not admit this directly, practically everything is based on the fact that, as we live today, the individual lives at the expense of others, and the belief is widespread that the well-being of the individual is independent of the well-being of others. The future development will develop the full community of the spirit, that is, on Jupiter, the belief will begin to prevail that there is no well-being and salvation of the individual without the well-being and salvation of all the others, and that this well-being and salvation of all the others is precisely the same. Christianity prepares this view, and it is there to prepare it. A sense of community has initially arisen on earth through the love that is tied to blood. This has overcome pure selfishness. It is now the task of Christianity to ignite in people the kind of love that is no longer tied to blood, that is, they should learn to find pure love where the well-being and salvation of the individual is not even considered without the well-being and salvation of the other. The kingdom of love will present itself in such a way that, just as blood ties first bound people together, so now man will see the relative in every human being, regardless of the common blood. This is indicated in the words: “Whoever does not leave father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister, cannot be my disciple.” Anything else is not true Christianity. This is how we can characterize the development of man to a higher state. But the development to such a state happens in cycles, not successively. You can see this for yourself by simply observing these cycles.

[ 19 ] See how in the first epoch of the post-Atlantic period, a culture, the Brahmanic culture, rises, reaches its peak and then declines again , how it reaches its zenith in the realm of flight from materiality, in which it seeks its salvation, but how it must decline again because it has sought its culture in the realm of non-recognition of matter. They then see how a new cycle begins in the ancient Persian culture, how the ancient Persian culture conquers the globe by recognizing matter, albeit as a power that is opposed to man, which man conquers through his work; and again this culture reaches its peak and sinks into decadence. But a new culture is emerging, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian culture, which no longer merely recognizes matter, but permeates matter with human intelligence , where the paths of the stars are explored, where buildings are constructed according to what has been gained from the wisdom of the stars, in that human buildings on earth are laid out according to the laws of geometry. Matter is no longer a mere resisting power, but is recast and reshaped to the spiritual. The pyramids are a reflection of what man saw in the stars. And we move on, after the Egyptian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian culture has fallen into decadence, to the Greek-Latin culture, where man in Greek art has so transformed matter that he has formed his own image in it, where man has overcome matter through beauty. This was not the case in the past, that, as in Greek sculpture, Greek architecture and Greek drama, man imprinted his own image on matter. The human personality is glorified as the highest expression of beauty in Greek art. And with Roman culture we see the legal concept of personality being added. It is also only a completely false scholarship - a single glance of an understanding person can recognize this - that says that the legal concept would have existed in the past. The Code of Hammurabi is something quite different from what was created in Rome as jurisprudence. This is a specifically Roman product, for jurisprudence emerged where the individual personality also creates its image in law; here the human being is entirely dependent on his or her own personality. Compare the will in Roman law with what can be found in the Code of Hammurabi, where the personality of the human being was entirely embedded in a theocracy. The “Roman citizen” is a new element in the cycle of human development. Man must go still deeper into matter in the fifth, in the Germanic culture; the conquest of the forces of nature, the triumphs of technology, are the result of this. Yet we are somewhat above the lowest point of this development. And the new cycle will be the one that will come when people will have fully grasped what is now known as Theosophy. We see how every cycle in civilization reaches its peak and then declines again, and how every new cycle has the task of advancing civilization... [gap in text.]

[ 20 ] ...The fixed state of equilibrium gives man the assurance that he can be released from the earth; and the upward and downward striving is what we call the striving for actual freedom, which the Luciferic spirits have impressed upon humanity. Thus, in the course of the world's development, the Christ Principle and the spirits of Lucifer work together and determine culture. It does not matter that in the early days of Christianity the Luciferic principle was excluded and that people were only pointed to the Christ Principle. Humanity will again come to the point of conquering freedom in full devotion to the Christ principle; for the Christ principle is so comprehensive that only he can grasp it who tries to embrace it at the level of the highest wisdom.

[ 21 ] If we look back to pre-Christian times, we find how religions are there as a preparation for Christianity. We see religions among the Indians and Persians, but religions that are suitable for the people from whom they originated. They are national, tribal, racial religions that arise with the people from whom they originated, limited in their inner essence because they still arise in a certain way from the group souls and are connected to them. With the Christ-religion an element enters into the evolution of mankind that is truly the element of earthly evolution. In the early days, Christianity is such that it immediately breaks with all earlier religious principles. It stands in stark contrast to the saying: “I and my Father Abraham are one.” At first it opposes the idea that one can feel at one with something that is only a human group; rather, the soul that dwells in every personality must be able to feel at one with the eternal ground of the world, which is called the “Father” and which dwells in every soul. And in contrast to the Old Testament, which begins with the words, “In the beginning was the Light,” Christianity, as the New Testament, presents the words, “In the beginning was the Word!” This was one of the greatest advances in the development of humanity. For with the light that emerges, one speaks, as far as one can speak of light, of something outwardly visible. Therefore, the ancient documents contain a Genesis that presents the physical as a revelation of the light. But the “word” is that which emerges from the inner being. And before all revelation of the Light came, that which was, that which is, and that which will be of man was — that is to say, that which is meant by the innermost nature of man. In the beginning was not the Light, but the Word. The Gospel of John is a document that must not be placed beside the others; but that expands the other documents from the temporal to the eternal.

[ 22 ] Thus, Christianity is not a tribal religion, but a religion of humanity, if it is understood correctly. By feeling at one with the “Father”, the soul stands face to face with the soul, regardless of which tribe it belongs to. Thus, all barriers must fall under the influence of Christianity, and the Jupiter state must be prepared under the influence of this principle. That is why Christianity began as a religion, because humanity was built on religion. But religion is something that must be replaced by wisdom, by knowledge, in the course of human development. In so far as religion is built on faith and is not glowing with full knowledge, it is something that must be replaced in the course of human progress. And whereas man in the past had to believe in order to attain knowledge, in the future full realization will shine, and man will know and from there ascend to the recognition of the highest spiritual worlds. From religion, mankind develops to wisdom that is again aglow with love. First wisdom, then love, then wisdom aglow with love.

[ 23 ] Now we may ask: But when religion will be absorbed in knowledge, when man will no longer be given the old form of religion, when he will merely be pointed by faith to the wisdom that guides evolution, will Christianity then no longer be either? There will be no other religion that is built on mere faith. Christianity will remain, because Christianity was indeed a religion in its beginning, but Christianity is greater than all religions! That is the Rosicrucian wisdom. The religious principle of Christianity was more comprehensive in its beginning than the religious principle of all other religions. But Christianity is even greater than the religious principle itself. When the shells of belief fall away, it will be a form of wisdom. It can completely discard the shells of belief and become a religion of wisdom, and spiritual science will help to prepare people for this. People will be able to live without the old forms of religion and belief, but they will not be able to live without Christianity; for Christianity is greater than all religion. Christianity exists to break down all forms of religion, and that which fulfills people as Christianity will still be there when human souls have outgrown all mere religious life.