The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we arrived at the conclusion that, after working through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ impulse united itself with the evolution of the earth. And now it is such a powerful impulse within the earthly evolution of humanity that it acts upon human beings today just as that procedure, which was becoming increasingly dangerous for human life, once did: the withdrawal of the etheric body from the physical body for three and a half days during the initiation. The Christ impulse has an effect as strong as such an abnormality in relation to consciousness.

[ 2 ] Now you must imagine that such a change could only slowly and gradually take root in human development, that it could not appear with such strength and force right from the start. It was therefore necessary that a kind of transition be created in the resurrection of Lazarus. Lazarus was still in a death-like state for three and a half days. But nevertheless, you must be clear that this state was something different from that which the ancient initiates had undergone. Lazarus' state was not artificially brought about by the initiator, as in ancient times, when processes which I cannot describe here were used to remove the etheric body from the physical body. It happened, we may say, in a more natural way. You can see from the Gospel itself that Christ had already been in contact with Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary, for it says there (11:3): “The Lord loved him,” that is, Christ Jesus had already made a great and powerful impression on Lazarus for a long time, who was sufficiently prepared and mature for it. And the result was that it was not necessary to artificially induce Lazarus to be in a state of ecstasy for three and a half days during the initiation, but that this came about quite naturally under the powerful influence of the Christ impulse. Lazarus was, so to speak, dead to the outside world for three and a half days, even though during this time he had experienced the most important thing, so that only the last act, the resurrection, had to be performed by Christ. And anyone who knows what was going on there can still recognize the echo of the old initiation process in the words used by Christ Jesus:

“Lazarus, come forth!”

[ 3 ] And the resurrected Lazarus was, as we have seen, John, or rather the writer of the Gospel of John, the one who, as the first initiate in the Christian sense, was able to bring the gospel of the nature of Christ into the world.

[ 4 ] We may therefore assume from the outset that this Gospel of John, which is so maligned by today's purely historical-critical theological research and is presented only as a lyrical hymn, as a subjective expression of this writer, will allow us to glimpse into the deepest mysteries of the Christ impulse. Today, this Gospel of John is a stumbling block for materialists in Bible research when compared with the other three, the so-called synoptic Gospels. The image of Christ that they form according to the first three Gospels flatters the learned gentlemen of our time so much. The word has even been used—and even by theologians—that we are dealing with the “simple man from Nazareth.” And it is repeatedly emphasized that one can gain an image of Christ as perhaps the noblest who ever walked the earth, but still only the image of a human being. Yes, there is even a tendency to simplify this image as much as possible, and one hears it said that there were also a Plato, a Socrates, and other great men. One also admits that there are differences in degree between individuals.

[ 5 ] Of course, the image of Christ given to us in the Gospel of John is very different! Right at the beginning, it says that what dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years was the Logos, the eternal Word or—according to the word that is also used for it—the eternal creative wisdom. It cannot be understood in our time that a human being in the thirtieth year of his life is so mature that he is capable of sacrificing his own self and taking on another being, a being that is utterly superhuman in nature: the Christ whom Zarathustra addressed as Ahura Mazdao. Therefore, such critical theological researchers believe that the writer of the Gospel of John only wanted to describe in a kind of lyrical hymn how he felt about his Christ, and nothing else. On the one hand, there is the Gospel of John, and on the other, the three other Gospels, but if one wants to gain an average picture of Christ, one can still portray the “simple man,” albeit with historical greatness. The newer researchers do not like the idea that there should be a divine being in Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 6 ] The Akashic Records show that in his thirtieth year, the personality we refer to as Jesus of Nazareth had reached such a level of maturity through everything he had gone through in previous incarnations that he was able to sacrifice his own ego. For that is what happened when this Jesus of Nazareth, when he was baptized by John, was able to make the decision to step out of his physical body, etheric body, and astral body as an I, as the fourth member of the human being. And now there was a noble shell, a noble physical body, etheric body, and astral body, imbued with the purest, most highly developed ego. It was like a pure vessel, and at the baptism by John, it was able to receive Christ, the eternal Logos, the creative wisdom. This is what the Akashic Records tell us. And so we recognize it again, if we only want to, in the description of the Gospel of John.

[ 7 ] But must we not grapple with what our materialistic age believes? Perhaps some of you will be surprised that I speak of theologians, that is, of people who speak of the spiritual, as if they were materialistic thinkers. But it is not a question of what someone believes or what they research, but how they research, regardless of the content. Anyone who wants to know nothing about what concerns us here, who wants to know nothing about a spiritual world and only sees what is available in the material world in documents and so on, and wants to form a picture of the world in this way, is a materialist. It depends on the means of research. But we must nevertheless deal with it.

[ 8 ] If you read the Gospels, you will see that there are certain contradictions in them. Admittedly, with regard to the main points, which we can describe as the essentials from the Akashic Chronicle, we can say that they agree in a striking way. First of all, they agree with regard to the baptism of John itself. And it is clear from all four Gospels that the writers of these Gospels attach the greatest possible value to the baptism of John for Jesus of Nazareth. They also agree on the fact of the death on the cross and the fact of the resurrection. These are precisely the facts that are most miraculous to today's materialistic thinkers. So there is no contradiction here. But how should we deal with the other apparent contradictions?

[ 9 ] First, we have two Gospel writers: Mark and John. They both begin with the baptism of John. They recount the last three years of the ministry of Christ Jesus, that is, only what happened after the Christ Spirit had already taken possession of the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth, of his physical body, etheric body, and astral body. Then we have the two Gospels according to Matthew and Luke. In a certain sense, they also trace the earlier history, which in our sense would be the history of Jesus of Nazareth in the Akashic Records before his sacrifice for Christ. And right at the beginning, those who want to find contradictions are confronted with the fact that Matthew gives an ancestral history going back to Abraham, while Luke gives a genealogy going back to Adam and from Adam to the father of Adam, to God himself. Another contradiction arises from the fact that, according to Matthew, three wise men or magi, guided by a star, come to greet the newborn Jesus, while Luke tells of the appearance to the shepherds, the adoration of the shepherds, and the presentation in the temple, whereas Matthew again reports the persecution by Herod, the flight to Egypt, and the return. This and much else could be considered contradictions in detail. We can deal with this if we go into a little more detail about the facts that are provided to us independently of the Gospels by reading the Akashic Records.

[ 10 ] The Akashic Records tell us that at the time approximately stated in the Bible—a few years' difference does not matter—Jesus of Nazareth was born, that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth there lived an individuality who had already experienced high stages of initiation in previous incarnations and had gained high insights into the spiritual world. Yes, the Akashic Records tell us even more, and I will first only touch on the outer outlines of what they say. The Akashic Records, which provide the only true history, tell us that the one who appeared in this Jesus of Nazareth had undergone the most diverse initiations in his previous incarnations in the most diverse regions. And it leads us back to the fact that this later bearer of the name Jesus of Nazareth had originally attained a high, significant level of initiation and a high, meaningful activity within the Persian world. Thus, the Akashic Records show us how this individuality, which was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, had already been active within the spiritual world of ancient Persia, how it had looked up to the sun and addressed the great sun spirit as Ahura Mazdao.

[ 11 ] Now we must be clear that Christ entered into the bodies of this same individuality that had passed through such incarnations. What does this mean: Christ entered into the bodies of this individuality? It means nothing other than that Christ used these three bodies for his activity, the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Everything we think, everything we say in words, and everything we feel and sense is connected to our astral body. It is the carrier of everything. For thirty years, Jesus of Nazareth lived as an I in this astral body, communicating to it everything he had experienced and absorbed in previous incarnations. In what sense did this astral body have to form his thoughts? It had to form them in such a way that they clung to and became attached to the individuality that had lived in it for thirty years. When Zarathustra looked up at the sun in ancient Persia and spoke of Ahura Mazdao, this was imprinted on the astral body. Christ entered this astral body. Was it not therefore quite natural that when Christ needed thought images, when he needed expressions of feeling, he could only clothe them in what his astral body offered him, whatever they might be? For if you wear a gray coat, you appear to the outside world in a gray coat! Christ appeared to the outside world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in his physical body, etheric body, and astral body, so that his thoughts and feelings were colored by the thought and feeling images that were in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. No wonder, then, that in his sayings we hear echoes of ancient Persian expressions, and that in the Gospel of John we hear echoes of expressions that were already used in ancient Persian initiation! For the impulse that was in Christ passed over to the disciple, to the resurrected Lazarus. Thus, the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth speaks to us through John in his Gospel. And what wonder is it that we hear many Persian expressions there, that expressions are used which echo the ancient Persian initiation and its thought forms? Now, in Persia, not only were the spirits united in the sun addressed as Ahura Mazdao, but in a certain sense the expression “Vohumanu” was used for the sun spirits, meaning the creative word or the creative spirit. The Logos in the sense of creative power is first used in the Persian initiation. And this appears again in the very first verse of the Gospel of John. We will understand many other things in the Gospel of John when we know that Christ himself spoke through an astral body that had served Jesus of Nazareth for thirty years, and that this individuality was the reincarnation of an ancient Persian initiate. And so I could show you many things in the Gospel of John, and you would see how it becomes understandable that precisely the most intimate Gospel, where it uses words that belong to the mysteries of initiation, echoes the Persian mode of expression as it was transplanted into later times.

[ 12 ] What about the other evangelists? If we want to understand this, we must remember some of what we have already discussed.

[ 13 ] We have already heard that there were high spiritual beings who, when the earth was separated from the sun, transferred their sphere of activity to the sun. We have pointed out that the outer astral form of these high beings who lifted themselves up to the sun was, in a sense, the counter-image of certain animal forms here on earth. First there was the form of the spirit of the bull, the spiritual counterpart of those animal natures whose essential development consists of what might be called the organization of nutrition and digestion. The spiritual counterpart is, of course, something spiritually high; the earthly image may appear as something still very low. So we have high spiritual beings who have moved their sphere of activity to the sun and from there influence the sphere of the earth, appearing there as the spirit of the bull. Others appear as lion spirits, whose counterpart is found in those animal natures that have developed primarily the heart and blood circulation organs. Then we have spiritual beings that are counterimages of what we encounter in the eagle nature in the animal kingdom, the eagle spirits. And finally, we have spiritual beings that harmoniously unite the other natures as in a great synthesis, the human spirits. These were the most advanced in a certain sense.

[ 14 ] Now let us move on to the ancient initiation. It gave human beings the opportunity to see face to face the high spiritual beings who had preceded them. But depending on how far the ancient people had descended from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus in accordance with the ancient times, they had to be initiated in different ways. That is why there were also various oracle sites in Atlantis. There were oracles who had attuned their spiritual vision primarily to seeing those spirits whom we have characterized as eagle spirits, while others saw lion spirits, others bull spirits, and still others human spirits. This depended on the specific nature of the people to be initiated. This diversity was one of the peculiarities of the Atlantean era, and its echoes can still be heard in our post-Atlantean era. In the Near East and Egypt, for example, you can find mystery centers where initiates were initiated in such a way that they saw the high spiritual beings as bull spirits or eagle spirits.

[ 15 ] The outer culture then flowed out of the mysteries. Those who were able to see the high spiritual beings in the form of lions also created a kind of image of what they saw in the lion's body. Only they said: These spirits are involved in the becoming of the human being, and therefore they gave the lion's body a human head. This later became the sphinx. Those who saw the spiritual counter-images as bull spirits expressed this by proclaiming their testimony of the spiritual world by introducing bull worship, which then led to the worship of the Apis bull in Egypt and, on the other hand, to the worship of the Persian Mithras bull. For what we find in the external cult practices of different peoples has flowed out of the initiation rites.

[ 16 ] Thus, there were initiates everywhere who were more attuned in their spiritual vision to the bull spirits, others who were more attuned to the eagle spirits, and so on. In a certain sense, we can also indicate the difference between the various types of initiation. For example, people who were so initiated that spiritual beings appeared to them in the form of bull spirits were particularly well informed about those aspects of human nature which contained, so to speak, the secrets connected with the glandular system and the etheric. And they were initiated into yet another area of human nature: that which is, so to speak, firmly attached to the earth, which is forged to the earth. All those who were initiated into the secrets of the bull understood this.

[ 17 ] Let us try to put ourselves in the mind of such an initiate. These initiates had received the following teaching from their great teachers: Man has descended from divine heights. The first humans were the descendants of divine-spiritual beings. Therefore, they led the first humans back to their Father God. Thus, humans came down to earth and passed from one earthly form to another. These people were particularly interested in what was bound to the earth, and they were interested in everything that humans had experienced when they counted the divine-spiritual beings among their fathers. — This was the case with the Taurus initiates.

[ 18 ] It was different with the eagle initiates. They saw those spiritual beings who behave in a very peculiar way toward what is human. But in order to understand this, we must say at least a few words about the spiritual nature of birds.

[ 19 ] In animals, which are below humans because of their lower functions, we see beings that have, so to speak, hardened too early, that have not kept their bodily substance soft and flexible until the moment when they could have been taken into human form. But in the nature of birds we have beings who, although they have not taken on the lowest functions, have skipped the upward point. They have not descended deeply enough, so to speak; they have remained in substances that are too soft, while the others have lived in substances that are too hard. And as development went on and on, they had to be condensed by external circumstances. So they were condensed in a way that corresponds to a nature that is too soft, that has descended too little onto the earth. This is expressed in crude and popular terms, but it corresponds to the facts. Corresponding to these bird natures as archetypes are those spiritual beings who have also passed the point upward, who have remained in a spiritual substance that is too soft and who, in their progress, have thus flown beyond what they could have become at a certain point in time. They deviate upward, while the rest deviate downward. In a sense, the lion spirits and the harmonious spirits, the human spirits, who have kept to the right time, stand in the middle.

[ 20 ] Now we have already made clear how those who had received something of the old initiation received the Christ event. They had already been able to look into the spiritual world, in accordance with their specific initiation. Those who had received the Taurus initiation — let us say the initiates of a large part of Egypt — knew: We can look up into the spiritual world; therefore, the high spiritual beings also appear to us in the counter-images to the Taurus nature in human beings. But now, those who had come close to the Christ impulse said to themselves, now what has appeared to us in its true form is what the ruler of the spiritual realm is. What we had always seen before, what we had risen to through the stages of our initiation, had presented us with a precursor to Christ. It is Christ whom we must place in what we saw before. If we remember everything we saw, everything that gradually opened up the spiritual worlds to us, where would it have led us if we had already been at the appropriate level at that time? It would have led us to Christ! — Such an initiate described the passage into the spiritual world in terms of the Taurus initiation. But then he said: The truth that is in it is Christ. — And a Leo initiate, an eagle initiate, spoke in the same way.

[ 21 ] All these initiation mysteries had their own specific rules as to how the person concerned was to be led up into the spiritual world. The rituals differed depending on how one was to enter the spiritual world. And especially in the Near East and in Egypt, there were the most varied shades of the mysteries, where it was particularly customary to lead the initiates in such a way that they finally came to the bull nature, and initiations that led to the contemplation of the lion spirits, and so on.

[ 22 ] Now, from this point of view, let us consider those who, after earlier initiations of various kinds, had matured to the point of feeling the Christ impulse and grasping Christ in the right way. Let us consider an initiate who has passed through those stages that have led him to the vision of the human spirit. Such an initiate could say to himself: The real ruler of the spiritual world has appeared to me; it is Christ who lived in Jesus of Nazareth! What led me to this? My old initiation! He knew the path that leads to the vision of the human spirit. He describes what a person experiences in order to attain initiation and to be able to recognize the nature of Christ at all. He knew the initiation as it was prescribed in the mysteries that led to human initiation. Therefore, the high initiate who was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth appeared to him in the image of the mysteries he had undergone and recognized; and he described him as he saw the matter himself. This is the case in Matthew's account. Therefore, an older tradition is quite correct in connecting the writer of the Gospel of Matthew with the author of the four symbols that appear here on the capitals of the columns on the right and left, which we call the symbol of man. An older tradition connects the writer of the Gospel according to Matthew with the human spirit. This stems from the fact that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew knew, so to speak, the initiation into the mystery of man as his own starting point. For in the time when the Gospels were written, it was not yet customary to write biographies as we do today. At that time, it seemed most important to people that there was a highly initiated person who had taken Christ into himself. How one becomes an initiate, what one has to go through as an initiate, that was the most important thing for them. Therefore, they skip over the external events of each day, which seem so important to biographers today.

[ 23 ] What doesn't a biographer do today to get enough material! Once, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the “Swabian Vischer,” used a very good image about a learned gentleman to ironize the way biographies are written today. He said that a young scholar once set out to write a doctoral dissertation on Goethe. First, he did the preliminary work and collected everything he could possibly need. But since he was not satisfied with this, he went to all the attics in all the cities where Goethe had lived, rummaged around there, and searched all the other rooms. He dusted every corner, knocked over foul-smelling trash cans, and searched for anything he could find to write a dissertation on “The connection between Mrs. Christiane von Goethe's frostbite and the mythological allegorical-symbolic figures in the second part of Faust”! This is, of course, greatly exaggerated, but in spirit it fits the biographers of the present day. Writers who want to write about Goethe rummage through all kinds of rubbish to write their biographies. They no longer know the meaning of the word discretion.

[ 24 ] Those who described Jesus of Nazareth in their Gospels, however, portrayed things differently. They disregarded all external events in favor of the stages that Jesus of Nazareth had to go through as an initiate. They described these stages, but each in his own way, according to his own knowledge.

[ 25 ] Matthew describes it in the manner of the initiates who were initiated into the human spirit. This initiation was close to Egyptian wisdom. And now we can also understand how the author of the Gospel according to Luke arrived at his unique presentation. He was someone who, in his previous incarnations, had attained initiations that led to the spirit of Taurus. He was able to describe what corresponded to such an initiation; he could say: A great initiate must have gone through these stages! And he described it in his own color. He was one of those who had previously lived mainly within the Egyptian mysteries. Therefore, we are not surprised that he presents us with precisely the trait that, so to speak, represents the more Egyptian character of the initiation. Let us consider the writer of the Gospel of Luke from the perspective we have now gained. He said to himself: In the individuality that was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth lived a high initiate. I have learned how to penetrate the Taurus initiation through the Egyptian mysteries. I know that. This type of initiation was particularly present to him. And now he said to himself: “He who has become such a highly initiated being as Jesus of Nazareth must, in his earlier incarnations, have undergone an Egyptian initiation in addition to all the other initiations. So we have in Jesus of Nazareth an initiate who has passed through the Egyptian initiation. Of course, the other evangelists knew this too. However, it did not seem particularly important to them because they did not know the initiation from this perspective very well. Therefore, they did not notice any special characteristics in Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 26 ] I already said in the first few lessons: When a person has undergone an initiation in the past, something special happens to them when they reappear. Very specific events occur that appear to be a repetition in the outer world of what they experienced in the past. Let us assume that a person underwent an initiation in ancient Ireland. Then he would now have to be reminded of this ancient Irish initiation through an external life event. This would be evident, for example, if an external event caused him to take a trip to Ireland. Those who are more familiar with the Irish initiation will notice that the person in question is traveling to Ireland. Those who are not familiar with it will not consider it a special trait.

[ 27 ] The individuality that lived in Jesus of Nazareth was also initiated into the Egyptian mysteries. Hence the move to Egypt. So who would have been particularly struck by this “flight into Egypt”? Those who knew it from their own lives, and one such person therefore described this special feature because he knew what it meant. It is described in the Gospel of Matthew because the writer knew from his own initiation what a journey to Egypt meant for many initiates in ancient times. And now that you know that the writer of the Gospel of Luke was someone who was particularly familiar with the initiation into the Egyptian mysteries that led to the service of Taurus, you will not find it unjustified that an older tradition associates the writer of the Gospel of Luke with the symbol of Taurus. For good reasons, which there is not time to explain here, he does not describe a journey to Egypt. But he does mention typical events whose significance was familiar to someone close to the Egyptian initiation. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew describes the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and Egypt in a more external way through the journey to Egypt. The writer of the Gospel of Luke sees all the events he describes in the spirit of an Egyptian initiation.

[ 28 ] Now let us consider the writer of the Gospel according to Mark. He omits all the previous history and describes in particular the work of Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth over a period of three years. In this respect, the Gospel of Mark is completely consistent with the Gospel of John. The writer of the Gospel of Mark underwent an initiation very similar to those of the Near East, even to the Greek initiations, if we may say so, the European-Asian-pagan initiations, which were the most modern at that time. They are all reflected in the outer world in such a way that a person who is a high personality, who is initiated in a certain way, owes his origin not merely to natural events, but to supernatural events. Remember that the admirers of Plato, who wanted to imagine Plato in the right way, had no particular interest in who Plato's physical father was. The spirituality of Plato outshone everything else for them. Therefore, they said: That which lived as the soul of Plato in the body of Plato, this Plato is born for us as a high spiritual being who fertilizes lower humanity. And so they attributed the birth of the Plato who was precious to them, the awakened Plato, to the god Apollo. Plato was a son of Apollo to them. In these mysteries, it was common not to pay much attention to the previous life of the person in question, but to focus on the moment when they became what is so often mentioned in the Gospels: a son of God, a son of God. Plato, a son of God! That's how those who were his noblest admirers and his noblest connoisseurs described him.

[ 29 ] We must be clear about the significance of such a description for the human life of such sons of gods on earth. It was precisely in the fourth period that human beings became most attuned to the physical-sensory world and grew to love this earth. They loved the ancient gods because they were able to represent how the leading sons of the earth were sons of God. That which walked on earth was to be represented in this way.

[ 30 ] Such a person was the writer of the Gospel of Mark. He therefore first describes what happened after the baptism of John. An initiation such as that undergone by the writer of the Gospel of Mark led to the recognition of the higher world under the image of the lion spirit. That is why an ancient tradition associates the writer of the Gospel of Mark with the symbol of the lion. And now let us look back once more at what we have already touched upon today—the Gospel of John.

[ 31 ] We have said that the writer of the Gospel of John was initiated by Christ Jesus himself. This enabled him to give something that contains, so to speak, the seed not only for the present activity of the Christ impulse, but also for the activity of the Christ impulse into the most distant future. He proclaims something that will still be valid in the most distant future. He is one of the eagle initiates who had skipped the normal stage. The normal for that time is given by the writer of Mark. What goes beyond that time, what shows us how Christ will work in the distant future, what transcends everything that clings to the earth, we find in John. That is why tradition associates John with the symbol of the eagle.

[ 32 ] So you see that such an ancient tradition, which brings together what constituted, so to speak, the essence of the evangelists' own initiation, is by no means based on mere fantasy, but has its origins in the deepest foundations of Christian development. One must look so deeply into the events. Then you will understand that the greatest, the most outstanding events in the life of Christ are described in the same way, but that each of the evangelists describes Christ Jesus as he understands him according to the nature of his initiation. I have already hinted at this in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, but only in a way that could be understood by an unprepared audience, since it was written at the beginning of our spiritual scientific development. Consideration was given there to the lack of understanding in our time of the actual occult facts.

[ 33 ] Thus we understand that Christ is illuminated to us from four sides: by each of the Gospel writers from the side he knew best. That Christ has many sides, you will readily believe after the powerful impulse he has given. But I said this: One thing is found in all the Gospels: the descent of the Christ Being itself from divine-spiritual heights at the baptism of John, and that this Christ Being dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, passed through death on the cross, and conquered this death. We will have to go into this mystery in more detail. Let us understand this death on the cross today by first asking: What characterizes the death on the cross for this Christ-being? We must say that it is characterized by the fact that it is an event that makes no difference between life before and life after. That is the essence of Christ's death, that Christ did not become someone else through death, that he remains the same, that he was One who represented death in its meaninglessness. So that those who were able to know the essence of Christ's death always held fast to the living Christ.

[ 34 ] From this point of view, what is the event at Damascus, where the one who was previously Saul became Paul? Paul knew from what he had learned earlier that the spirit that was first sought by Zarathustra as Ahura Mazdao on the sun, and then seen by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Mount Sinai, was gradually approaching the earth. And he also knew that this Spirit had to come into a human body. But Paul, when he was still Saul, could not understand that this man, who was to carry Christ within himself, would have to suffer the shameful death on the cross! He could only imagine that when Christ came, he would have to triumph, that he would have to remain in everything that the earth has, once he had come to earth. He could not imagine the one who hung on the cross as the bearer of Christ. This is the essence of Paul's view before Saul became Paul. And the death on the cross, the shameful death on the cross with all that it entails, is what initially prevented Paul from recognizing that Christ had truly already been on earth. So what had to happen? Something had to happen to Paul so that at a certain moment he could be convinced: the individuality that hung on the cross in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ; the Christ had been on earth! Paul became clairvoyant through the event at Damascus. Then he could be convinced.

[ 35 ] If one looked into the spiritual world as a clairvoyant, it appeared changed after the event of Golgotha. Previously, one found Christ in the spiritual worlds. Since the event of Golgotha, one could find Christ in the aura of the Earth. Before the event of Golgotha, Christ could not be seen there, but afterwards he could be seen in the Earth's aura. That is the difference. And Saul said to himself: If I am clairvoyant, I can convince myself that the one who hung on the cross and lived as Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ who is now in the earth's aura. And he saw in the earth's aura what Zarathustra first saw as Ahura Mazdao on the sun. Now he knew: He who was on the cross has risen. Therefore, he could now say: Christ is risen, he has appeared to me as he appeared to Cephas, to the other brothers, and to the five hundred at once! And now he became the herald of the living Christ, for whom death does not have the same meaning as for other people.

[ 36 ] Anyone who knows about this event will, when the crucifixion, when the death of Christ in this form is doubted, agree with another Swabian who, in his “Urchristentum” (Original Christianity), has compiled with all possible historical accuracy what belongs to the most certain part of what we know about it. Gfrörer—it is he—has rightly emphasized the crucifixion. And one can agree with him in a certain way when he expresses himself in his somewhat sarcastic manner, saying that he would look critically into the face of anyone who contradicted him on this point and ask them whether they were quite right in their thinking!

[ 37 ] This is one of the most certain elements of Christianity: the crucifixion and what we will describe tomorrow as the resurrection and the effect of the words: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!” And that is what constituted Paul's proclamation. He could therefore say: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain!” Paul links Christianity to the resurrection of Christ. It is only in our time, so to speak, that people are beginning to think a little about these things again, where they are not making this a theological dispute, but a question of life for Christianity. The great philosopher S0Jowjow therefore stands completely on Paul's point of view when he emphasizes: Everything in Christianity depends on the idea of the resurrection, and a Christianity of the future is impossible if the idea of the resurrection is not believed and understood. And he repeats in his own way the words of Paul: If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain. Then the Christ impulse is impossible. There would be no Christianity without the risen, living Christ!

[ 38 ] It is characteristic, and therefore it must be emphasized, that individual profound minds, solely on the basis of their philosophy, without any occultism, come to recognize how true this Pauline statement is. If one deals with such minds a little, one sees that in our time there are already people who are forming ideas about what a future human conviction and worldview must be, what spiritual science must bring. But those who do not have spiritual science achieve nothing more than an empty conceptual vessel. This is also the case with the profound thinker Soloviev. The systems of his philosophy are like conceptual vessels, and what must be poured into them is what they already demand, what they already shape, but what they do not have, and what can come only from the anthroposophical stream. This will pour into these vessels the living water, the communications about the facts of the spiritual world, the occult. This spiritual scientific worldview will bring it to the best spirits who already show today that they need it, and whose tragedy lies in the fact that they have not been able to obtain it. We can use the word “thirst” for these spirits. They have not been able to find it. Through the anthroposophical movement, what can form clear, distinct, true ideas about the most important events, such as the Christ event and the mystery of Golgotha, should flow into the vessels prepared by them. Only anthroposophy or spiritual research can enlighten us about this with its revelations about the realms of the spiritual worlds. Yes, the mystery of Golgotha can be understood in our time only through anthroposophy, through spiritual research!