The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth lecture

[ 1 ] Today's lecture is intended to provide a kind of summary of what we have heard in the various winter lectures, what we have been able to add to the reflections on the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew, and what has been communicated here in connection with the lectures on the Gospel of John, as they were last given in Stockholm. As these lectures have been given, it will have become clear to you that everything in them has been arranged in such a way that we do not have an explanation of the Gospels in a limited sense, but that from the truths, which are, first of all, truths and, secondly, can be found in the Gospels when the Christian documents are correctly understood, it always emerges that the other mysteries of life can also be interpreted and illuminated in the most diverse ways.

[ 2 ] If we go back to the origins of Christianity, we find two types, two forms of initiation: the initiation of the North, which has been characterized in more detail in the lectures given in Stockholm, and the initiation of the South, which is particularly characterized by its connection to the initiation processes of ancient Egyptian culture. From two sides, opportunities arose for the people of the ancient world to enter the spiritual world. If the initiate in ancient Egypt wanted to reach the spiritual world, he descended into the depths of his own soul, descended behind everything that exists in ordinary soul life as thought, feeling, will, and so on. There he found that from which the soul itself had emerged: the divine-spiritual existence of the world. Thus, descending below those regions of the soul that are illuminated and permeated by the ego was the essence of Egyptian or southern initiation in general. In contrast, the northern initiation, especially in the Germanic Druid and Trotten mysteries, was all about stepping out of yourself and merging with the world in an ecstatic way. It has already been characterized how these two types of initiation have merged in what we call Christian initiation, and how Christian initiation represents, as it were, the higher unity of the ecstatic initiation of the North and the mystical contemplation of the initiation of the South. This points to a deep foundation of the mysteries of the world that runs through all existence. Basically, any discussion, even of such a great and powerful fact as the merging of the two forms of initiation of antiquity into Christian initiation, is an example of an even more comprehensive law that permeates all human existence and at the same time interweaves all the phenomena of the external world, as far as human beings can recognize them. For we find everywhere that the members of a duality confront us as opposites. We see these members of a duality confronting each other as opposites in the northern and southern initiations. This is only one example of how opposites, or polarities, confront us in worldly existence. And the other, how these two forms of initiation flow together and enter into a spiritual marriage, as it were, in Christian initiation, is an example of how opposites, dualities in the world in general, unite. This happens incessantly, that units divide into dualities in order to further development, and that dualities in turn unite into unity. Outwardly, we could first point to a great, powerful fact that extends, as it were, beyond human evolution, which represents this division of a unity into duality and the reunification of duality into unity.

[ 3 ] We have often looked into the Lemurian epoch, which among other things also saw the great fact of world evolution, when the moon split off from our earth. But this age also saw the first beginnings of what we now call the opposition between man and woman in the sense of human evolution, whereas in the world ages preceding the Lemurian epoch we would find a unity of the sexes. Thus, we have an original unity that has split into male and female. However, we have also already pointed out that in the future, this duality will reunite into unity, that unity will arise again from this duality. Outwardly, this is an indication of a comprehensive series of facts that lie in this relationship of two to fin or one to two.

[ 4 ] What we encounter in human evolution is, however, basically the expression, the reflection of an even greater cosmic opposition that is rooted in unity, which we encounter as two in today's world and which will dissolve into unity again in the distant future. It is necessary that we take every thought given to us today through spiritual science in its full depth, that we do not get into the habit of accepting anthroposophical thoughts in the same superficial way as other thoughts and concepts that are buzzing around the world today and are accepted by the hasty and superficial banality of our present culture. Anthroposophical ideas must be taken as deeply as possible. Therefore, a thought such as this, which is often expressed and lies hidden in all our teachings, must not be taken lightly as an abstract idea: that the human being is born as a small world, as a microcosm, out of the macrocosm, out of the great world. This thought has an infinite, hundredfold content. Above all, one must be clear that the world is deeper than one usually believes, and that once one has understood a contradiction or a truth in one direction, one has by no means understood the ultimate truth about this relationship or this contradiction, but must patiently look around everywhere in order to get to know the other side of the coin.

[ 5 ] Human beings are born out of the whole cosmos and must look up to the cosmos as to their mother-father being, of which they themselves are an image. Yes, human beings are an image of the whole world that can be known to them; and there is nothing in the human being that does not in some way express a relationship that is not also found in some way in the great cosmos. If we could compare the human being as he appears to us today — from a spiritual scientific point of view — with human forms in a relatively early period, we would find in the human being of today a characteristic of tremendous significance, among others of course, for enlightening us about the nature of the human being. This characteristic can teach each of us that what we know about the world is not only important in terms of whether things are true, but also in terms of something else entirely. The fact that someone has proven to us that something is true does not reveal to us the most important aspect of this truth. For example, much of what trivial natural science says about the comparison of humans with higher mammals is true. It is true, indisputably true, that humans have the same number of bones and muscles and other such things. But once you have proven that something is true, you have not done everything. It is precisely the human being who, through spiritual scientific deepening and internalization, must realize that what matters is to acquire a feeling for every truth, for how heavy the truth weighs, whether it is important or unimportant, essential or insignificant for the explanation of a thing. That is why there are people today who come and prove to us again and again, out of their trivial consciousness, that what they say is true. That is not to be disputed. But what matters is whether something is recognized in its proper weight for explaining the world!

[ 6 ] Now there is a certain fact that is undoubtedly true and that everyone knows because they encounter it countless times every day, and which we, if we want to grasp its meaning and importance for human beings, its weight, only have to feel in the right way, namely the fact that human beings are upright beings who can look up into the world with their faces. Only human beings can do that! For even of the ape we must say that he looks as if he had tried to achieve this, but he has botched the job. He cannot do it. Man is the only being who has come to the end of this intention of being able to lift his face freely up into the world space. This fact is infinitely more important than anything that trivial natural science can tell us about the position of man in the animal kingdom. Everything else is true, but this is infinitely more important. Anyone who wants to feel something of this fact must familiarize themselves with the reason why human beings are upright beings, beings who are bound to the earth but who, through their perception, through their sensory perception, rise up into the universe in spirit.

[ 7 ] This reason lies in the fact that there is a certain opposition, a duality, which behaves in the cosmos like another duality in man. We can point to a duality in the universe and a duality in man as two opposites that correspond to each other in the microcosm and the macrocosm. The contrast meant in the macrocosm, in the great world, is the contrast between the sun and the earth; and the same contrast that exists between the sun and the earth in the universe also exists in the human being: it is the contrast between the head and the hands and feet, between the head and the limbs. These things will be explained more and more as time goes on, but for now you must familiarize yourself with them in a general way and learn to feel that, in a certain sense, the head and the limbs behave as a duality in human beings, just as the sun and the earth behave in our solar system. For indeed, the forces that have developed over time rest in our earth, mysterious forces which anchor human beings to the earth and have brought about the present configuration and mobility of our hands and feet, while the forces that have lifted his face out into the world space, that have made him from a being who looks at the earth into one who can look out into the infinite distances of the worlds, have their seat in the sun. And those who can feel and sense, when they look at the contrast between the head and the limbs in humans, feel and sense the same thing as when they allow the contrast between the sun and the earth to affect their senses. This is a contrast that will one day be united in human life, just as it will be united in the cosmos. Just as the sun and the earth were once one being and separated to become two, so will they unite again. Likewise, what is a contrast in humans between the head and the limbs will once again become a unity, however difficult this may be to imagine for people today, who are unaccustomed to such concepts.

[ 8 ] Thus, we have pointed to a contrast in humans and cited the corresponding contrast in the universe. But there are other opposites in human beings that also have their corresponding opposites in the universe. In relation to the opposition between head and limbs, all human beings on our earth are, so to speak, the same. Men and women have this opposition in the same way. There is no difference between men and women in this respect, for everything else that appears as opposition, for example in the configuration of the soul, is not brought about by this opposition. If this contrast existed only in the microcosm and macrocosm, men and women would be completely the same. But men and women are a different contrast in human beings. And now we can ask ourselves: Can we also find a contrast in the universe that corresponds to the contrast between men and women in human life? Is this contrast, which appears in earthly existence as man and woman, also born out of the universe? — Yes, there is. And in order to find this contrast, we must now familiarize ourselves a little, in an occult sense, with the contrast between man and woman. In doing so, we will not fall into the error of our materialistic age, which seeks to apply the contrast between male and female, as it simply appears as a sexual contrast in the physical world, to the entire universe. This is not only trivial, but also an impertinence on the part of our scholarship when it extends what we encounter in one area to all other areas.

[ 9 ] What manifests itself on our earth as the contrast between man and woman corresponds to another contrast in the universe, which we cannot call male and female. That would be absurd. But we must nevertheless consider this opposition in relation to its occult basis. This opposition between male and female in our earthly evolution has, of course, nothing to do with “human beings”; human beings are the same in men and women. So when we speak of man and woman, we are referring to the configuration of the physical body and the etheric body; this has nothing to do with the inner being of the human being, so that we cannot speak in the occult sense as we do today in our materialistic age. For man and woman also have an astral body and an ego, while the ordinary view knows nothing at all of what makes a human being a human being, and can therefore only speak of man and woman. So we are not now speaking of human beings as such in terms of man and woman, but of what makes a human being a man or a woman, and that is only the outer shell. This must be well understood. If what is said in the following sentences is applied from one human being to another, then everything is wrong. The contrast between man and woman, within these limits, lies in the following.

[ 10 ] The outer human form was completely different in the early days of humanity. The present human form, including the present male and female forms, only developed from an earlier unified form that had not yet split into the contrast between man and woman. So we have an earlier unity and the present contrast between man and woman. Now we also know that the earlier unity was a finer, more spiritual one. Man only developed his dense material form in the course of time. So we are not merely going back to a unity of form, but also to a unity that was more spiritual than the present form. We therefore have a primordial human being who is neither male nor female, but rather the not-yet-manifest separation of this opposition, as fineness, and who is more refined, more ethereal, more spiritual than the later, more material human being who lives out the opposition between man and woman. What is the basis for the fact that man and woman later emerged from the original unity? This is because when woman, as unity, entered into duality, she developed a physical body that did not completely transition from her earlier form into what we might call a normal material form. The female body remained at a more spiritual level and did not descend to the full extent of the material. It did become material and dense, but in this materiality it retained an earlier, more spiritual form. Thus, a spiritual level became material. The female body retained, as it were, an earlier spiritual form and did not descend completely into matter. This is true in relation to the material, but not in relation to the form. It has retained the form that humans had earlier. We can therefore say that women represent the revelation of an earlier form that was actually spiritual and, as it appears today, is actually false, a maya, an illusion. If we assume a certain turning point in development at which the material crystallizes, we can say that woman has not advanced to this turning point; she has crystallized an earlier form. Therefore, for those who truly feel the facts of life or can recognize them imaginatively, the human female body is only in relation to the head and limbs a true form, an expression of its underlying spirit; that is, only in the head and limbs is something expressed that is similar to the spirit behind it as a material appearance. Therefore, the spiritual behind it is unlike the rest of the material form, for this is a false form.

[ 11 ] Thus, the statement that the world is Maya applies to all regions. One must take it seriously. It is convenient to think in the abstract that the world is Maya. Only those who take this statement seriously and ask, “In what sense are these forms illusions?” have truly understood it. Some are more so, others less so. There are forms that at least approximately, in their external likeness, express the spiritual reality behind them: these are the head and the limbs; but there are forms that are directly false, that are distorted, and these include the rest of the human body. They are directly distorted. And once the world understands this, people will no longer talk as foolishly as they do today, but will see that there is a certain deeper, finer artistic sensibility that tells us that the female figure is distorted if we disregard the head and limbs, and that it must be corrected if we want to reproduce it artistically. In better artistic times, this was actually done, because no one who can really look at forms can fail to see that, to a certain extent, the forms are corrected in the Venus de Milo. It's just that people don't usually see it.

[ 12 ] So here we have divided the human being into limbs that are truer, less illusory, and those that are more illusory, that are completely distorted. But this does not only apply to women. For men, the opposite is true. It is the opposite. Just as the female form has not descended to the normal point in order to express the corresponding spirit in matter, but has crystallized at an earlier stage, so the male body has skipped the normal point and gone just as far beyond it as the female form has stopped before it. Therefore, the male body has descended deeper into materiality than would have been the normal relationship, and this is already evident in its external form. It would look completely different if it had not skipped the middle point. The human body is only approximately true in relation to the head and limbs. But in relation to the rest of the form, we must say that the female body stopped at a certain point, solidified before plunging into the waves of material existence, and therefore shows us a completely different form than it would have if it had crystallized before the waves of material existence touched it; the male body, however, has submerged even further and presents a false, distorted form to the same extent as the female body. Thus, the female body represents a form distorted toward the spiritual, while the male body represents a form distorted toward the material. The true form would lie in the middle, would be an average form of the two.

[ 13 ] This naturally influences the whole human being in his earthly existence, insofar as he has a physical shell. This has nothing to do with the contrast between the head and the limbs, but what has now been said is transferred to the whole human being in the individual incarnation between birth and death. One incarnates as a man or as a woman. As a result, one has to reckon with what is recorded as being lived out in men or women. But this extends to the whole human being, and the consequence of this is that if one has a female body in an incarnation, this entire female body is influenced by this more backward state in a more original, softer form. And in a male incarnation, the entire male body is filtered through an excessive immersion in coarse, solid matter. If you have even the slightest idea of what it means to think in the spirit, to live in the spirit, and to use the physical body as a mere tool, if you do not feel so stuck in it that you identify with it, then you can sing a song about the misery of having to use a male body, which of course also infiltrates the brain, in an incarnation. For one realizes that the forms of the brain, because they have entered more coarsely into matter, are more difficult to handle than the softer forms of the female brain, which have not entered so strongly into matter. It is indeed more difficult to train a male brain to translate truths into thoughts when one has to ascend to the higher worlds than it is to train a female brain. It is therefore not surprising for people who are capable of thinking that a worldview that is new to the world, such as spiritual science, can be more easily understood with the female brain, which is easier to train, than with the male brain, which finds it more difficult to break away from certain thoughts that it has absorbed today, because the male brain is more difficult to work with and more difficult to handle. This is why spiritual science will find it so difficult to gain acceptance among men who are the cultural leaders of today's world and who are steeped in the conventional cultural ideas of our present-day life. We must understand what an awkward thing the brain of a scholar is, not only for taking in spiritual science, but also for thinking with what it can take in from spiritual science. However, we must not turn the matter on its head and draw any conclusions from it, or at most conclude that we must now regard it as something all the more significant if quite a few men use their brains in such a way that they come quite close to the humanities. These things can only be hinted at for now, but if you let them sink in and think about them, you will find tremendous perspectives for human life in them.

[ 14 ] When we consider human life in its contrast between man and woman, we have something that we can call something that has remained at an earlier stage, and something that has actually progressed beyond a certain stage of the present, which in a certain caricatured state brings a future form into the present, which therefore appears caricatured. An earlier form of the body has preserved the feminine, and a later form has taken in the masculine and developed it in a way that it must not be in the future. Therefore, the male body has become false because it has placed later conditions of life into an earlier period of life.

[ 15 ] Is there also a counterpart in the cosmos for this contrast between male and female? Is there something in the cosmos that shows us, on the one hand, an existence, a stage of development that has, as it were, retained earlier forms and carried them over into a later existence? And are there, on the other hand, forms that have passed a certain stage, i.e., that represent a future state in caricatured form? If we consider the concrete development as we know it from the Akashic Records, we might ask: Is there something in the cosmos outside, something like an old lunar existence that did not want to enter into earthly existence, but has retained something from the old lunar existence, like a feminine element in the cosmos? Is there something that, like an old lunar existence, carries an earlier stage into the present? And is there something in the cosmos that has passed a certain stage, thickened and condensed, so that it represents a later state, a Jupiter state?

[ 16 ] There is. The same contrast that exists between male and female in the sense characterized in humans also exists out there in the cosmos: it is the contrast between the cometary and the lunar, between the comet and the moon. If we want to understand the comet in terms of its essence, as it wanders through space today, breaking through the other laws of the solar system, so to speak, then we must realize that it is actually the laws of the old lunar existence that the comet brings into our existence. It has preserved this and thus entered into our existence. It has taken on the present matter of the sun-earth system, but has remained at the stage of natural law that our solar system had when the earth was still a moon in terms of its movement and nature. It has brought a former state into a later one, into the present, just as the female body brings a former state into the present existence. The cometary is one part of such a contrast, and the moon existence as its opposite represents the other side. When the moon developed out of the earth in the Lemurian epoch, it took with it certain parts that had to be removed from the earth so that human beings could develop as human beings at all. The earth was not allowed to become as dense as it would have become if it had retained the moon within itself. The moon actually represents a caricatured state of Jupiter. Just as a fresh, ripe fruit contrasts with one that is completely wrinkled and has petrified into matter, so the moon in its configuration has gone beyond a certain middle form, just as the male in the human being has gone beyond this middle in its form during its development. The very same contrast that we have in human life as the contrast between the masculine and the feminine, we have in the cosmos between the lunar and the cometary.

[ 17 ] This is how things belong together: like the sun and the earth, like the head and the limbs, like the moon and the comet, like man and woman in human beings. But we must not go home and say: Well, there we have something again that we can nicely remember as a contrast! — We must take things deeply seriously and be clear that at other times something else has been said. We must take into account that man is masculine only in relation to his physical body, but feminine in relation to his etheric body, and that, conversely, woman is feminine only in relation to her physical body. What applies to the physical body of the female also applies to the etheric body of the male, so that the etheric body of the male is to the etheric body of the female as a comet is to the moon. If you like, you can say: This blurs everything again! — But that is how things are. In every culture that has created its concepts with a thickened brain, the concepts tend to create contours that are as thick as possible and cannot be shaken, so that when one has such concepts, one must hold fast to them. But the spirit will not tolerate this. The spirit is something mobile, and once we have formed concepts, we must keep them mobile. Therefore, we must also apply to the masculine in women and the feminine in men what has just been said about the moon and the comet in relation to men and women. What has been said applies to the masculine and feminine as they appear to us in human life, and not to men and women as they appear to us externally.

[ 18 ] In this way, we have found interesting connections between human development and world development in an eminent sense. Certainly, as I have already pointed out, those who sit on the curule chair of true scientific worldview today will find such things about comets and the moon highly crazy and foolish. They may do so. They simply do not have the will to really engage with the truth. We, on the ground of spiritual science, can build a bridge between what comes from the spiritual and what presents itself to us on the physical plane. The others do not want to.

[ 19 ] In 1906, during the congress in Paris, I pointed out that spiritual research, based on its knowledge of the cometary nature, can say: Because on Earth, compounds of carbon and oxygen play the same role that compounds of carbon and nitrogen played during the ancient Moon existence, that is, cyan compounds, the cometary existence must contain cyanide compounds, cyan compounds composed of carbon and nitrogen. Those who have followed these things closely will have remembered this. Thus, spiritual science has long since stated that our comets contain some kind of cyanide compounds. In recent weeks, this fact has been reported in the newspapers as an external spectral analysis fact. This is just one case; hundreds of others could be cited to show how spiritual research can build bridges to the facts of external research. In this case, spectral analysis has confirmed after years what spiritual science said years ago. Nowhere do the facts of external materialistic research contradict the facts of spiritual research! We can refer to something like what has just been said when those who sit on the curule chair of true science keep coming back and pointing to external facts. We must not confuse the external facts with the narrowly defined concepts that people create for themselves. If everything that is natural science today were fact, then natural science would contradict spiritual science greatly; but these are not facts at all, only corrupt concepts of those who, due to our present circumstances, are called upon to deal with these things.

[ 20 ] Now that we have brought this contrast to light, which is found in human life as well as in the cosmos, we can ask ourselves the following question: What is actually born out of the universe when we consider this whole contrast between the cometary and the lunar?

[ 21 ] It is somewhat difficult to characterize in a relatively short time the tremendous power that underlies this fact. Therefore, allow me to characterize human life comparatively, as it flows when we consider its outer course. First, there is something that one could say proceeds in a good, bourgeois sense from day to day. You get up in the morning, have your first breakfast, then go on with whatever each day brings according to the usual laws of the day. But there are also events in human life that strike with a blow and bring about changes in the course of everyday life. Let us assume that a man and a woman live a fairly middle-class life for a while with a routine that varies little from day to day. But then something else comes along that actually causes a kind of jolt in the ordinary outer life of people living under such circumstances. Such an outer jolt occurs when a new human being incarnates and enters into existence as a citizen of the earth. This differs enormously from the ordinary course of everyday life. But when a new citizen of the world enters the horizon of a man and a woman, something actually falls into place that gives the whole family relationship a new character. I wanted to use this as a comparison because it helps us to understand a little of the deep occult background of the existence of comets. In the cosmos, too, life proceeds, so to speak, from day to day, from year to year, in a “bourgeois” manner. Every day the same thing happens: the sun rises and sets, the plants bloom in spring and wither in autumn; and when there is rain or sunshine, or hail or the like, this corresponds to events that also happen in ordinary life, for example when a festive coffee party is held instead of the usual tea. We see such things happening in the ordinary course of life. All this is connected with the laws that underlie the movements of the sun, the earth, and so on, and how they take place year after year, day after day. But the rarer, yet in a certain sense recurring, phenomena of comets intrude into this course in a remarkable way. They intrude into the course of cosmic events just as a new citizen of the earth intrudes into the horizon of man and woman. Through the appearance of comets in the cosmos, something is actually introduced into human existence that could not be given in the ordinary course of life. If development is to continue, there must not only be what repeats itself from day to day, but something new must be added to this context. Just as something very special enters into the life of an individual family with the arrival of a new citizen of the earth, so something completely different enters into the progress of the human race on earth through the appearance of the comet, which breaks through the ordinary course of world existence. Something new is actually born, as it were, when the comet enters the world.

[ 22 ] For those who can investigate these things spiritually, it is possible to point out very precisely how the individual comets have their functions of introducing this or that spiritual new element into the world. Halley's Comet, for example, is one of those comets which, as it appears periodically, always gives birth to something very specific and new in human life. While things otherwise repeat themselves in the usual way, the comet brings about a spiritual and cultural rebirth. I can characterize what this means by citing the last three appearances of Halley's Comet in 1759, 1835, and the one we are currently witnessing. What task—other comets have other tasks—is assigned to these last three appearances?

[ 23 ] Rebirths in the universe are not merely those that we welcome with the same joy as a young citizen of Earth entering a family. In the universe, everything is born that brings humanity forward or backward. Now, the appearance of Halley's Comet, that is, its spiritual significance for the further development of humanity, is connected with what humanity had to take in from the cosmos at various times of the Kali Yuga in order to descend further and further into materiality in terms of thinking. With each new appearance, a new impulse was born for humanity to drive the ego down from a spiritual worldview in order to perceive the world in a more materialistic way. This does not mean a descent into matter, but rather that which the human ego must absorb from the universe in spiritual substance in order to descend from a spiritual existence into the sphere of materialistic views. All those views from the second half of the 18th century that are called the “shallow Enlightenment” and that Goethe so mocked in “Poetry and Truth” as those views that found their representatives, for example, in Holbach's “Systeme de la Nature” , can be understood cosmically through the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1759. The banal maternalistic literature of the second third of the 19th century was preceded by the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835. The things that happen on Earth microcosmically are macrocosmically connected to things in the greater world. With the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835, a new impulse was born in materialism. And Büchner, Vogt, and Moleschott are those who live out on earth what appeared from the cosmos like a powerful sign with Halley's Comet. And now we stand before it—because humanity must be tested, must struggle out of itself, feel the resistance of spirituality in order to then develop all the more strength for its ascent — now we stand before the fact that with the new appearance of Halley's Comet sent to us from outer space, we will receive the forces that can lead humanity into an even flatter, even more abominable materialism. Something may be born that even the most shallow of Büchnerianists cannot imagine. This possibility must exist. For only when human beings overcome the forces that oppose them can they acquire the powerful forces from the universe that will lead them upward.

[ 24 ] If we take this into account, we will face what we call signs from heaven in the right way. This is certainly the case, provided it is not interpreted superstitiously, but in the sense of the great laws of the universe: God is once again sticking out his rod from heaven to show people what they have to do. And the current appearance of Halley's Comet is one that must be heeded. For a powerful impulse toward ascension must occur in order to emerge from our immersion in a materialistic worldview and attain spirituality. Just as we have been given the opportunity to sink into materialism, so too have we been given the opportunity to ascend to brighter, more spiritual heights.

[ 25 ] In the last lectures, it was clearly stated that in the first half of the 20th century, etheric clairvoyance can develop as a natural ability in some people. So that human beings do not need to sink further into materialism, as is now indicated by a sign in 1910, those who have an understanding of spiritual science can already see today that forces are developing in the womb of the human soul that can carry human beings over all materialism. When human beings understand these forces, they will be able to teach them to see the etheric nature of Christ for themselves. We are living at an important crossroads where even signs from heaven are teaching human beings that the path on one side can lead further into the materialistic morass, but on the other side to where the forces must develop in human beings that will lead to etheric clairvoyance after the end of the Kali Yuga. It is truly the case with us that John the Baptist's call, “Change your soul's disposition!” also applies to our time. This can be emphasized quite strongly. Just as we are given the opportunity to degenerate in the materialistic morass, we are also given the opportunity to gain a certain etheric clairvoyance through the fact that the sun reaches a certain point in the constellation of Pisces at the vernal equinox. The signs in the cosmos are also there for spiritual ascent, showing us how the forces come from the cosmos. By finding their way into spiritual science, human beings must acquire an understanding of this decision. And only those who acquire this understanding can truly understand spiritual science. We must pass through the test imposed on us by the signs of the heavens, which we have now recognized, for example, in the appearance of Halley's Comet.

[ 26 ] Let us now imagine the appearance of Christ as it will appear to the first pioneers in the next 2,500 years, as it did to Paul before Damascus. Human beings will ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual world and will see the physical world permeated by a new land, a new kingdom. Over the next 2,500 years, the physical environment will change for human beings, as they will enter an etheric realm that is already there but which they will first have to learn to see. This etheric realm is already spread out before those who have brought their esoteric training to enlightenment, including the initiates of the Kali Yuga. Thus, what human beings will see more and more in the future is already there for the initiates, up to great heights. And the initiate draws strength from this realm again and again after a certain time, when he needs it. He draws his strength when he has something to accomplish from that realm of the earth's sphere that is visible to the initiate, but only to those who can look into it. This can give us an understanding that we know that a part of that land from which the initiated have repeatedly drawn their strength during the Kali Yuga will be spread out for a large part of humanity during the next 2,500 years.

[ 27 ] In ancient times, when clairvoyance was common, people could look into the spiritual world without a strong sense of self, so that they could already see in a certain way what they will see again now, but now they will enter it with their new self-awareness. At that time, they saw it in dreamlike, ecstatic states or when looking into their own souls. At that time, this world existed before the gaze, which during the Kali Yuga has become only a physical gaze. That is why the traditions that have preserved a memory of ancient clairvoyance tell us of an unknown fairy-tale land that has disappeared from the view of modern humans. And there are wonderful writings in Eastern literature with a peculiar tragic magic in their content, which say something like: Once upon a time, there was a possibility in the human realm to make a pilgrimage to a land where everything spiritual flowed out into the physical senses. It is the land from which, in appropriate times, the initiates and the Bodhisattvas draw their strength again and again. The Oriental writings speak of this land with deep melancholy, saying in some places: Where is it? We are told the names of the places, the paths are named, but even the most respected lamas of the Tibetan region have been unable to find it. Only the initiates have access to it! But it is said that this land will return to Earth. And that is true: it will come to Earth! And the guide to it will be the one whom people will see when they enter the land of “Shamballa” through the event of Damascus. Shamballa, as the land is called, has withdrawn from human view. Today it can only be entered by those who, as initiates, have to draw their strength from there at certain times. The old forces no longer lead to the land of Shamballa. That is why the Oriental scriptures speak with such tragic melancholy of the lost land of Shamballa. But the Christ event, which will be bestowed upon humanity in this century through the awakened new abilities, will bring back the fairy-tale land of Shamballa, which during the Kali Yuga could basically only be known to the initiated.

[ 28 ] So humanity stands before a decision: Either to be led down by what comes with Halley's Comet into a darkness that still lies beneath the Kali Yuga, or, through anthroposophical understanding, not to overlook what is inherent in new abilities to find the paths to the land that, according to Eastern literature, has disappeared today, but which Christ will show humanity again: to the land of Shamballa. That is the great point at the crossroads: either down or up; either into something that lies beneath the Kali Yuga as a world Kamaloka, or into that which enables human beings to enter the realm that is truly meant by the name Shamballa.