The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Advent of Christ in the Ethereal World

[ 1 ] When a person has spent some time engaging with the spiritual scientific worldview and allows the various ideas, thoughts, and insights gained through this worldview to sink in, these insights naturally raise a wide variety of questions. And one actually becomes more and more of a spiritual scientist by linking such questions—which can essentially be called questions of feeling, of the soul, of character, in short, questions of life—to the ideas of spiritual science. These ideas are, after all, ones that do not merely satisfy our theoretical, our scientific curiosity, but enlighten us about the riddles of life, about the mysteries of existence. And these thoughts and ideas become all the more fruitful for us when we do not merely think, feel, and sense their content, value, and significance, but when we learn, so to speak, to view the world around us differently under their influence. These ideas should permeate us with warmth; they should become impulses, forces of the soul within us. They do so more and more when the answers we receive to certain questions present us, so to speak, with new questions, and when we are thus led from question to answer, and the answer itself becomes, in turn, a question for us, and then a new answer comes to us, and so on. In this way, one advances in spiritual knowledge and also in spiritual life.

[ 2 ] In public lectures, it will still be quite some time before it becomes possible to reveal the more intimate aspects of spiritual life to humanity as it currently exists; but in our branches, the time is surely drawing ever closer when we will be able to discuss even more intimate matters. In doing so, it will always turn out that new members, so to speak, may be surprised or even shocked by this or that. But we would not make progress in our work if we could not also move on to discussing more intimate questions of life based on spiritual scientific research and insight. Therefore, today—even if this might give rise to misunderstandings among those of you who have not yet been immersed in spiritual life for very long—some more intimate facts of spiritual insight shall once again come before our souls.

[ 3 ] An important question undoubtedly arises for our soul when we do not merely consider the idea, the concept of reincarnation—of repeated earthly lives—in the abstract, but when we reflect deeply on it, when we meaningfully immerse ourselves in this reality of spiritual life. New questions, so to speak, arise in connection with this answer given to us in reincarnation, in connection with this important fruit of life. We can, for example, raise the question: If human beings live repeatedly on Earth, if they return in ever new incarnations, what is the deeper meaning of our going through life in this way? — Generally speaking, people do say: Well, certainly, through this we ascend higher and higher; we experience the results, the fruits of previous earthly lives in later ones, and through this we perfect ourselves. — But that is still rather general and abstract. Only through a more precise understanding of the whole meaning of earthly life do we also penetrate the significance of repeated earthly lives. For if our Earth itself were not to change—if, so to speak, human beings were to return again and again to an Earth that remained essentially the same—then there would actually be little to learn through successive incarnations or embodied lives. It is only because we can actually learn new things and experience new things in every incarnation or embodied life on our Earth that these incarnations or embodied lives have a meaning. Over short periods of time, this isn’t so apparent, but when we look at long periods of time—as we can do through spiritual science—it becomes clear to us that the epochs of our Earth take on different forms and that we are constantly experiencing something new. But we must also realize something else. We must realize that we must also take these changes in earthly life itself into account. For if we, so to speak, fail to experience and learn in a particular epoch of our earthly existence what is to be learned in that epoch of Earth’s development, then we do indeed return in a new incarnation, but we have missed something; we have not allowed to flow into us what we should have allowed to flow in during the preceding period. And we are then unable to apply our powers and abilities in the right way throughout the next period.

[ 4 ] Speaking in very general terms, one can say: In our present era, something is possible on Earth—across nearly the entire globe—that was not possible, for example, for people living today in their previous incarnations. It may seem strange, but it is nevertheless true that this has a certain, indeed great, significance. In the present incarnation, it is possible for a certain number of people to come to spiritual science—that is, to take in those results of spiritual research that can be received in the field of spiritual science today. Certainly, it may be regarded as something highly insignificant that a few people come together to allow the insights of spiritual research to flow into them. But those who find this insignificant simply do not understand the significance of reincarnation, and that one can only take something in during a single incarnation. If one does not take it in, one has missed something that will then be lacking for the next incarnations.

[ 5 ] This is what we must take to heart above all else: what we learn in spiritual science today becomes part of our soul, and we bring it with us when we descend again in our next incarnation.

[ 6 ] And today we want to gain an understanding of what this means for our soul. To do so, we will need to connect certain facts of spiritual life—some of which are more or less new to you or even entirely unknown—with things you already know from other lectures and your reading. First, we must go back to earlier periods in the development of humanity. We have often looked back at earlier periods of our Earth’s development. We have said: We now live in the fifth epoch following our great Atlantean catastrophe. This fifth epoch was preceded by the one in which the Greek and Latin peoples provided the main ideas and feelings for the Earth’s will: it was preceded by the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch. This was preceded by the third, the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian period; this by the Proto-Persian period; and this, finally, by the Proto-Indian period. And if we then go even further back into an even more distant primeval time, we encounter the great Atlantean catastrophe, which destroyed an ancient continent, an ancient mainland, ancient Atlantis, which stretched across the site where the Atlantic Ocean lies today—that Atlantic catastrophe which gradually swept this mainland away and, on the other hand, gave shape to our present-day solid globe upon which we live today. Then, going further back, we would return to even earlier periods that lie before the Atlantic catastrophe. We would come to those cultures and living conditions that developed on that Atlantic continent and which we call the Atlantic ones—the cultures of the Atlantic races. And these are preceded by even earlier conditions.

[ 7 ] If one surveys what history tells us—and it does not go back very far—one can easily fall into the belief, even though this is a completely unfounded belief even for shorter periods of time, that our Earth has always looked the way it does now. But that is not the case. Rather, conditions on our Earth have changed quite thoroughly, and the spiritual conditions of human beings have changed the most. The souls of those people sitting here today were, after all, incarnated in the corresponding bodies throughout all these ages of the Earth and absorbed within themselves whatever could be absorbed during those periods of Earth’s development. Each time, the soul developed different abilities from one incarnation to the next. Our souls were quite different from what they are today, though perhaps not to the same extent during the Greco-Roman period. But they differed greatly from today’s souls in the ancient Persian and even more so in the ancient Indian periods. Our souls were endowed with entirely different abilities back then, and they lived under entirely different conditions in those ancient times.

[ 8 ] So let us now, for the sake of a clear understanding of what follows, picture as clearly as possible in our mind’s eye what our souls were like—well, let us say, just to have something significant to start with—after the Atlantean catastrophe, when they were embodied in the physical forms that were possible on Earth at the time of the first Indian culture. We must not conceive of this first Indian culture as having been limited to ancient India. This Indian people was merely the most influential and important at that time, but the culture of the entire Earth was different and possessed characteristics that were, so to speak, shaped by what the leaders prescribed for the ancient Indians. If we now consider our souls as they were back then, we must first of all say to ourselves: A level of understanding such as people have today was still entirely impossible back then. Such a clear sense of self, such a clear sense of the “I” as we have today, did not exist back then. — People hardly thought, so to speak, that they were an “I.” This “I” was indeed already present as a force within people, but the awareness of the “I” is still something different from the power of the “I,” the activity of the “I.” So people were not yet endowed with such inner life as they are today. Instead, however, they possessed quite different abilities; they possessed what we have often called an ancient, twilight-like clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] If we consider the human soul during daily life in those days, we find that it does not yet truly feel itself to be an “I.” People felt themselves to be members of their tribe, of their people. As a limb of the whole, just as the hand is a limb of the body, so the individual “I” stood for the entire community of the tribe and the people. People did not yet perceive themselves as the individual “I” that they feel themselves to be today. The “I” of the people, the “I” of the tribe, was what they looked to. That is how they lived during the day. One did not yet really know, so to speak, that one was a human being. But when evening came and one fell asleep, consciousness did not darken completely, as is the case today; rather, during sleep the soul was able to perceive spiritual realities; for example, in their surroundings, facts of which today’s dream is but a shadow—spiritual events, spiritual facts of which today’s dream generally no longer represents a full reality. People had such perceptions, so that people back then knew: There is a spiritual world. For people, the spiritual world was a reality, but not through any kind of logic, through something that needed to be proven, but because every night, even if with a dull, dreamlike consciousness, they were in the spiritual world. But that was not yet the main point. In addition to sleep and the waking state, there were also intermediate states during which a person was neither fully asleep nor fully awake, where, although ego-consciousness ceased even more than it did during the day, the perception of spiritual events—that dreamlike clairvoyance—was significantly stronger than usual during the night. Thus there were intermediate states in which people were indeed without self-awareness, yet endowed with clairvoyance. In such states, people were then as if enraptured, so that they were, so to speak, unaware of themselves. They did not know: I am a human being—but they did know: I am a member of a spiritual world; within it I can perceive; I know that a spiritual world exists. — These were the experiences of the human soul in those days. And this consciousness and this life in the spiritual world were even much clearer, much, much clearer in the Atlantean era. So that when we survey this, we look back upon an age of dreamlike, twilight clairvoyance of our souls, which gradually diminished in the course of human development.

[ 10 ] If our souls had remained stuck in that ancient, dreamlike state of clairvoyance, we would not have been able to acquire the individual self-awareness that we possess today. Then we would never have known that we are human beings. We had to lose, so to speak, that awareness of the spiritual world in order to exchange it for self-consciousness. In the future, we will have both together. In the future, we will all once again attain that which, despite the maintenance of ego-consciousness, results in full clairvoyance—something that today can only be found in those who have embarked on the path of initiation. In the future, it will be possible for all human beings to look into the spiritual world once again and yet feel themselves to be a human being, an “I.”

[ 11 ] Now try to visualize once more what happened there. The soul has passed from one incarnation to the next. In the past, it was clairvoyant; later, the awareness of becoming an “I” emerged more and more clearly, and with it, the ability to judge for oneself. For as long as one still looks into the spiritual world with clairvoyance and does not feel oneself as an “I,” one cannot judge or reason. The latter ability emerged more and more, but in each subsequent incarnation, the old clairvoyance diminished accordingly. Human beings lived less and less in states where they could look into the spiritual world. And they became increasingly immersed in the physical plane, developed logical thinking, and felt themselves as an “I.” In the process, clairvoyance diminishes more and more. Human beings now perceive the outer world and become increasingly entangled in it, but their connection to the spiritual world grows ever weaker. One can therefore say: In ancient times, human beings were a kind of spiritual being, for they lived as spiritual entities in immediate social connection as companions of other spiritual beings; they felt they belonged to other spiritual beings, to whom they can no longer look up with their normal senses today. As we know, there are today, apart from the world that immediately surrounds us, other spiritual worlds around us in which other spiritual beings live. But with normal consciousness, human beings today do not see into these worlds. In the past, however, he was their companion, both in the sleep-like state of consciousness and in that intermediate state of which we spoke. There he lived within it and associated with these other beings. Now he can no longer do so under normal circumstances. He was, so to speak, expelled from his homeland, the spiritual world, and with each new incarnation is increasingly transferred down into this earthly world.

[ 12 ] In the sanctuaries of spiritual life and in those fields of knowledge and science where such things were still understood, consideration was always given to the fact that our incarnations have passed through these various earthly ages. People looked back to a very ancient age, one that predates even the Atlantean catastrophe, in which human beings actually lived in direct communion with the gods or spirits and, naturally, felt and perceived themselves quite differently as a result. For you can well imagine that the human soul must have felt quite differently in an age when it knew with certainty that it could look up to the higher beings, and when it knew itself to be a member of that higher world. Thus it also learned to feel and perceive in a completely different way. When you consider these facts, you must imagine that even today we can only learn to speak and think if we grow up among people, for these are abilities that can only be acquired among people. If any child were to be placed on a desert island today and were to grow up there without contact with people, it would certainly not acquire the abilities of thinking and speaking. The development of a being therefore depends to some extent on whether it grows up among this or that other species of beings and lives together with these or those beings. Development depends on this to some extent. You can already observe this in animals. It is well known that dogs removed from environments where they are with humans—to places where they never encounter a human—forget how to bark. The offspring of such dogs usually can no longer bark. It depends to some extent on whether a being grows up and lives among such beings or others. You can thus form a picture of the fact that it is quite different whether you live only among present-day human beings on the physical plane, or whether you lived earlier—the same souls, so to speak—among spiritual beings in a spiritual world that the normal gaze cannot penetrate today. There, the soul also developed differently; the human being had different impulses within them when they lived among the gods. The human being has developed different impulses among humans, and different ones when they lived among the gods. Higher knowledge has always known this. Such knowledge looked back to those ancient ages in which human beings were, so to speak, in direct communion with divine-spiritual beings. And this direct contact with the divine-spiritual beings had the effect that the soul felt it belonged to the divine-spiritual world. But this also generated impulses, forces within the soul, which were divine-spiritual in a completely different sense than the forces of today are. Where the soul acted in such a way that it felt it belonged to the higher world, there, from this soul, a will also spoke that originated from the divine-spiritual world—a will of which one could say it was instilled, because the soul lived among the gods.

[ 13 ] Such teachings refer to this age, when human beings were still one with the divine-spiritual beings, as the Golden Age or Krita Yuga. This is, therefore, an ancient age whose essential course we must trace back even before the Atlantean catastrophe. Then comes the next age, when people no longer felt their connection to the divine-spiritual world as strongly as in the Krita Yuga, when they no longer felt their impulses so strongly determined by living together with the gods, and when their view of the spirit and the soul had already become somewhat clouded. But they still had a memory of living together with the spirits and gods. This was particularly evident in the ancient Indian world. There, one could very easily speak of spiritual things. One could point people to the outer world of physical perception and yet, let us say, see a Maya or illusion within it, because people had not had these physical perceptions for very long. That was the case in ancient India. The souls in ancient India no longer saw the gods themselves, but they still perceived spiritual realities and lower spiritual beings. The higher spiritual beings were seen only by a smaller number of people, but even for them, that very vivid coexistence with the gods had already been obscured. The impulses of will from the divine-spiritual world had already faded away. However, there was still the possibility of gaining insight into spiritual realities, at least in certain states of consciousness: in sleep and in the aforementioned intermediate states. But the most important realities of this spiritual world, which had previously been experienced as a shared experience, now existed only as a kind of recognition of truth, as something the soul still knew precisely, but which now functioned merely as a recognition, as a truth. Certainly, people were still in the spiritual world, but the certainty of this was no longer as strong in this later age as it had been before. It is called the Silver Age or Treta Yuga.

[ 14 ] But then came the ages of those incarnations or embodiments in which human beings increasingly closed themselves off from the spiritual world, in which they became more and more oriented toward the immediate external sensory world, and in turn became entrenched in that sensory world, while the inner sense of self—human consciousness—came more and more to the fore. This age is called the Iron Age or Dvapara Yuga. Although people no longer had such a high degree of direct knowledge of the spiritual world as before, at least something of the spiritual world had remained within humanity at large. One might describe it somewhat like how, in present-day people, once they have grown older, something of the joy of youth remains. It is over, but one has experienced it. One knows it, one is familiar with it, one can speak of it as something that is familiar. So back then, the souls still had something familiar to them that led toward the spiritual worlds. That is the essence of the Dvapara Yuga.

[ 15 ] But then came a different age, an age in which even this familiarity with the spiritual world came to an end, when, so to speak, the gates closed to the spiritual world. People’s perspective became increasingly limited to the external sensory world and the intellect, which processes sensory impressions, so that people could only think about the spiritual world. This is the lowest form of knowing anything about the spiritual world. What people still truly knew from their own experience was the sensory-physical world. If people wanted to know anything about the spiritual world, they had to achieve this through their thinking. This was the time when human beings became the least spiritual and therefore also became most fixed and bound in the sensory world. But this was necessary in order to gradually develop self-consciousness to its highest degree. For it was only through the coarse resistance of the external world that human beings could learn to distinguish themselves from the world and perceive themselves as individual beings. This latter age is also called Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age.

[ 16 ] I would like to point out explicitly that these terms can also be used to refer to longer periods; for example, the term Krita Yuga can already be applied to an even longer span of time. For before that Golden Age described above existed, human beings were involved in even higher worlds through their experiences, therefore all these even older times could be encompassed by this name. But if one, so to speak, moderates one’s expectations, if one is still content with that degree of spiritual experience that has been described, then one can classify them in this way, as has now been done. For all such ages, one can specify quite definite time periods. Now, although development proceeds slowly and gradually, there are boundaries of which one can say: Before this, this condition of life and consciousness was predominant, and after that, that one was. Thus we must calculate that, in the sense we first spoke of, the Kali Yuga begins around the year 3101 B.C. There we see that our souls have appeared on Earth in ever-new incarnations, in which people’s view of the spiritual world has become increasingly closed off and thus increasingly narrowed to the external sensory world. There we see that, in fact, with each new incarnation, our souls enter into ever-new circumstances in which ever-new things can be learned. What we can gain in the Kali Yuga is to strengthen our sense of self. This was not possible before, for one first had to take the self into oneself.

[ 17 ] If souls have failed to absorb, in a given incarnation, what this particular age has to offer, then it is very difficult to make up for that in other times. They must then wait a long time until it becomes possible, in a certain sense, to make up for what they have missed, but we must by no means rely on that. So let us keep this before our souls: that during the Kali Yuga epoch something very significant occurred, in that, so to speak, the gates to the spiritual world were closed. That was also the age in which John the Baptist worked, and in which Christ worked. For this time, which had already seen 3,100 years pass since that dark age, it was essential that all people had already been present several times, at least once or twice, in that dark age. Self-consciousness had become established, the memory of the spiritual world had faded, and people had to learn, if they did not want to lose all connection with the spiritual world, to experience this spiritual aspect within their own self. They had to develop their ego in such a way that this ego could at least be certain within itself that a spiritual world exists, that human beings belong to this spiritual world, and that higher spiritual beings exist. The ego had to make itself capable of having an inner capacity for feeling and believing in the spiritual world.

[ 18 ] If someone in the time of Christ Jesus had spoken the truth as it actually was back then, he could have said: In the past, people were able to experience the Kingdom of Heaven outside of their ego, in those spiritual realms they reached when they stepped outside of themselves. Far from the ego, human beings had to experience the realms of heaven, the realms of the spiritual world. Now they cannot experience these realms of heaven in that way; now human beings have become so different that the ego must experience these realms within itself. These realms of heaven have come so close to human beings that they work their way into the ego. — And this is what John the Baptist told the people: “The realms of heaven have drawn near,” that is, they have drawn near to the ego. In the past they were outside of human beings; now they had to grasp the kingdom of heaven that had drawn near within their innermost being, within the I. And because human beings could no longer step out of the sensory world into the spiritual world in this dark age, the Kali Yuga, the divine being, the Christ, had to descend all the way into the physical-sensory world. That is the reason why Christ had to descend into a physical human being, into Jesus of Nazareth, so that through the contemplation of the life and deeds of Christ on the physical earth, human beings in their physical bodies might gain a connection with the realms of heaven, the spiritual world. So that during the time when Christ walked the earth, we had an era right in the midst of the Kali Yuga, the dark age, where people who did not live in darkness and dullness, but who understood their time, could say to themselves: It is a necessity that God descend to humanity so that a connection with the spiritual world, which had been lost, might be regained.

[ 19 ] If there had been no people at that time who could have understood this, who could have found a living spiritual connection with Christ, then humanity would have gradually lost its connection with the spiritual worlds; they would not have incorporated the connection with the realms of heaven into their I. It is quite possible that if all people had remained in darkness at such a crucial moment, such an important event would have passed them by. Human souls would then have withered, become desolate, and degenerated. They would likely have continued to incarnate for some time even without the Christ, but they would not have been able to implant within their I that which would have allowed them to establish a connection with the realms of heaven. It is possible that the event of the Christ’s appearance on earth could have passed unnoticed everywhere, just as, for example, the people in Rome did not notice it. For it was said there that somewhere there was a remote, filthy street where a peculiar sect lived; they were said to be hideous people, and among them lived a hideous spirit who called himself Jesus of Nazareth and preached all sorts of things to the people, inciting them to all manner of evil deeds. — That was all that was known in Rome about Christ at certain times! And you may also know that it was the eminent Roman historian Tacitus who described it in similar terms about a hundred years after the events in Palestine.

[ 20 ] So not everyone actually realized that something of the utmost importance had taken place—something that could carry humanity through the Kali Yuga, something that shone like divine light into the darkness of the earth. The possibility for humanity’s further development was made possible by the fact that certain souls came together who grasped the significance of that moment in time, who knew what it meant that Christ had walked the earth.

[ 21 ] If you try to imagine what life was like back then, you will easily be able to say: Yes, it was possible to live in those days without knowing anything about the appearance of Christ Jesus on the physical plane! It was possible to live on Earth without taking this most important event into one’s consciousness.

[ 22 ] Isn't it possible that even today, something infinitely important is happening, yet people simply fail to register it in their consciousness? Could it be that our contemporaries have no idea about the most important things happening in the world right now? That is exactly the case! For the most important things are happening, but they are perceptible only to the spiritual eye. There is so much talk of times of transition; we are living in one such time, and indeed a very important one. And what is important is that we are living precisely at the time when the dark age has come to an end, and that an age is now beginning in which people are slowly and gradually developing new abilities, in which people’s souls are gradually changing.

[ 23 ] But you need not be surprised that most people do not notice this, for most did not notice it either when the Christ event took place at the beginning of our calendar. The Kali Yuga ended in 1899; now we are entering a new age. And what is beginning there is slowly preparing people for new spiritual abilities.

[ 24 ] The first signs of these new spiritual abilities will become apparent in a few individuals relatively soon. And they will become more evident in the mid-1930s, roughly between 1930 and 1940. The years 1933, 1935, and 1937 will be particularly significant. During this time, very special abilities will manifest in people as natural gifts. Great changes will take place during this period, and prophecies from the biblical texts will be fulfilled. Everything will change for the souls dwelling on Earth, as well as for those who are no longer in physical bodies. No matter where these souls are, they are moving toward entirely new abilities. Everything is changing. The most important event of our time, however, is a profound and decisive change in the soul abilities of human beings.

[ 25 ] The Kali Yuga has come to an end, and human souls are now beginning to develop new abilities—abilities that, precisely because the age is ripe for them, will emerge of their own accord from the souls as certain clairvoyant powers, those very powers that had to sink into the unconscious during the Kali Yuga. There will be a number of souls who will experience the remarkable phenomenon of possessing ego-consciousness, yet alongside this, it will be as if they were living in a world that is actually quite different from that of their ordinary consciousness: it will be like a shadow, like a premonition, as if a person born blind were undergoing an operation. Through what we call esoteric training, these clairvoyant abilities will be acquired even more effectively. However, because humanity is progressing, this will occur in the very earliest stages, in the most elementary levels, through the spontaneous natural development within humanity.

[ 26 ] However, it could very easily be—and it could be much easier now than ever before—that people in our age are simply incapable of grasping such a thing, this event of the utmost importance for humanity. It could be that people would be completely incapable of grasping that this is a genuine glimpse into a spiritual world, even if it is now only shadowy and faint. It could be, for example, that wickedness and materialism would be so great on Earth that the majority of people would show not the slightest understanding, and would regard those people who will have this clairvoyance as fools and lock them up in asylums among the others who are developing their souls in a confused manner. So this age could, so to speak, pass people by without a trace, even though we too are sounding the call today, just as John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and Christ himself sounded it back then: A new age has arrived, in which human souls must take a step upward into the realms of heaven!

[ 27 ] It could very easily be that, without people’s understanding, the great events would pass them by. If, then, in the years 1930 to 1940, the materialists were to triumph and say: Well, there have indeed been a number of fools, but none of the great events we expected—that would not be any proof against what has been said. If they were to triumph and humanity were to pass these events by, that would be a misfortune for humanity. Even if humanity were unable to perceive the great things that may occur, they will happen nonetheless.

[ 28 ] What may come to pass is that people will be able to acquire a new capacity for perception in the etheric realm—at least a certain number of people at first—and the others will gradually follow suit, for humanity will have 2,500 years to develop these abilities more and more. During this time, people must not miss this opportunity. To miss it, however, would be a great misfortune, and humanity would then have to wait until later to make up for what was missed, to develop this new ability retroactively. It will be the ability for people to see something of the etheric in their surroundings that they have not normally been able to perceive until now. Now people see only the physical body of a human being, but then they will be able to see the etheric body at least as a shadowy image and also experience the connection of all deeper events in the etheric realm. They will have images and premonitions of events in the spiritual world and experience that such events then come to pass on the physical plane within three to four days. They will see certain things in etheric images and then know: tomorrow or in a few days, this or that will happen.

[ 29 ] Such changes in the faculties of the human soul will come. Something that might be called “etheric vision” will come. And what is connected with this? Well, the Being we call Christ was once incarnated on Earth at the beginning of our era. It will not come again in such a physical body, for that was a unique event. But in its etheric form, the Christ will return in the times mentioned. Then people will learn to perceive the Christ as they grow upward through this etheric vision to him, who will no longer descend into a physical body, but only into an etheric body. People will therefore have to grow upward to a perception of the Christ. For true is the saying that the Christ spoke: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” He is there; he is in our spiritual world, and those who are especially gifted can always perceive him in this spiritual-etheric world.

[ 30 ] The person who was particularly convinced by such a vision was Paul, during the Damascus experience. However, this ability to see the etheric will develop as a natural capacity in some individuals. Experiencing a Damascus moment—a Paul-like experience—will become increasingly possible for people in the time to come.

[ 31 ] Thus we now understand spiritual science in an entirely different sense. We learn that it is something that imposes an immense responsibility upon us, for it is a preparation for the very concrete event of Christ’s reappearance. Christ will reappear because human beings will raise themselves up to him through etheric vision. When we grasp this, spiritual science appears to us as the preparation of human beings for the return of Christ, so that the misfortune does not occur that they overlook this great event, but rather become mature enough to grasp the great moment that can be described as the return of Christ. Humanity will become capable of seeing etheric bodies, and will be able to see among these etheric bodies the etheric body of Christ as well—that is, to grow into a world in which Christ will appear to them through their newly awakened abilities.

[ 32 ] It will then no longer be necessary to prove the existence of the Christ through various documents, but there will be eyewitnesses to the presence of the living Christ—those who will experience him in his etheric body. And through this experience they will learn that this being is the same one who accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha at the beginning of our era, that it is the Christ. Just as Paul was convinced at Damascus long ago: “This is the Christ”—so there will be people who, through their experience in the etheric realm, will be convinced that the Christ truly lives.

[ 33 ] This is the greatest mystery of our age: the mystery of the Second Coming of Christ, and this is what it truly looks like. But the materialistic mind will, in a certain way, take control of this event. Although what has now been said—that all true spiritual insights point to this age—will be proclaimed many times in the coming years, the materialistic mind spoils everything today; and so it will come to pass that this materialistic mind will be unable to conceive that human souls must grow upward to etheric vision and thereby to Christ in the etheric body.

[ 34 ] The materialistic mind will imagine this event in such a way that it thinks Christ will descend in the flesh and incarnate in the flesh. There will be a number of people who, in their boundless arrogance, will take advantage of this and present themselves among humanity as the reincarnated Christ. The coming age may therefore bring us false Christs. Anthroposophists, however, should be people who are so mature in their spiritual life that they do not confuse the return of the Christ in a spiritual body—perceptible only to higher vision—with a return in physical flesh. This will be one of the most terrible temptations to befall humanity. To lead humanity beyond this temptation—that will be the task of those who, through spiritual science, learn to truly rise to the apprehension of the Spirit; who do not wish to bring the Spirit down into matter, but rather to ascend themselves into the spiritual world. Thus we may speak of the return of the Christ and of our ascending to the Christ in the spiritual world through the acquisition of etheric vision.

[ 35 ] Christ is always present, but He is in the spiritual world. And we can reach him when we rise into that world. And all anthroposophical teaching should be transformed within us into a strong desire not to let this event pass humanity by without a trace, but rather, in the time available to us, to gradually nurture a humanity that may be ripe to develop these new capacities within itself and thereby reconnect with the Christ. For otherwise, humanity would then have to wait a long, long time until such an opportunity could be given to it again. It would have to wait a long time: until the Earth’s next incarnation. If humanity were to pass by this event of the Christ’s return, then the vision of the Christ in the etheric body would be limited to those who, through esoteric training, prove themselves willing to rise to such an experience. But the great thing—that these abilities might be attained by humanity at large, by all people, that this great event might be understood through the naturally developed abilities of all people—that would remain impossible for a very, very long time.

[ 36 ] Thus we see that there is already something in our age that justifies the existence and work of spiritual science in the world. It is not merely a matter of satisfying theoretical needs or scientific curiosity. The fact that spiritual science prepares people for this event—preparing them to position themselves correctly within the times and to see, with clear intellect and insight, what is truly there but might pass people by without their being able to bear fruit from it—that is what it is all about!

[ 37 ] It will be of the utmost importance to grasp this event of the Christ’s appearance. For other events will follow this one, just as other events preceded the Palestinian Christ event. Thus, those who prophesied of him beforehand will also, after the described age—once he himself has become visible to humanity again in his etheric body—become his successors: those who foretold him earlier. All those who prepared the way for him will become recognizable in a new form to those who have passed through the new Christ event. Once again, what lived on Earth as Moses, Abraham, and the prophets will become recognizable to people. And one will know that, just as Abraham preceded Christ, preparing him, he also takes on the mission of helping with the Christ work afterward. Thus, if humanity does not miss the most important event of the near future, it will gradually grow into a communion with all those who, as patriarchs, preceded the Christ event. It will unite with them. And once again the entire chorus of those to whom we will be able to ascend will appear. The one who led humanity down into the physical plane then appears again after Christ and leads humanity back up once more, reconnecting humanity with the spiritual worlds.

[ 38 ] When we look far back in human evolution, we look back to that point in time of which we say: From that point on, humanity has been descending more and more from communion with the spiritual world into the material world. — Even though the image has its material side, it can still be used here: Human beings used to be companions of spiritual beings; their spirit was in the spiritual world; by living in the spiritual world, they were sons of the gods. But that which was this increasingly incarnating soul took more and more part in the outer world. There was the son of God within the human being, who took pleasure in the daughters of the earth—that is, in those souls who felt sympathy for the physical world. This in turn means: The human spirit, formerly imbued with divine spirituality, descended into physical sensuality; it became the spouse of the intellect, which is bound to the brain and entangled it in the sensory world. And now it must find the path and ascend again the way it descended, and become a son of God once more. The Son of Man that he has become would perish down there in this physical world if, as the Son of Man, he did not ascend again to the divine beings, to the light of the spiritual world, if he did not find favor in the future with the daughters of the gods. It was necessary for the development of humanity that the Sons of God unite with the daughters of men, with the souls chained to the physical world, so that as the Son of Man, humanity might learn to master the physical plane. It is, however, necessary for the human being of the future that, as a son of man, he find favor with the daughters of the gods, with the divine-spiritual light of wisdom, which he is to unite with himself, in order to then grow upward again into the world of the gods.

[ 39 ] Divine wisdom will kindle the will, and the most powerful impulse for this will come when the sublime etheric form of Christ Jesus becomes perceptible to those who have prepared themselves for it. It will be like a reappearance of Christ Jesus for those naturally gifted with clairvoyance, in the same way that this etheric Christ appeared to Paul as a spiritual being. He will reappear to humanity when they come to understand that they should use these abilities, which will come with the development of the human soul.

[ 40 ] Let us therefore not use spiritual science merely to satisfy our curiosity, but in such a way that it becomes for us a preparation for the great tasks, for the great missions of the human race, into which we are to grow more and more.

Questions and Answers

[ 41 ] When things like this are said today, when we shed light on such intimate secrets, we should not regard them as thoughtlessly as people often listen to certain things today, but rather be clear that anthroposophy is truly meant to become for us something quite different from a theory. The teaching must, of course, be there; how could one possibly rise to such thoughts as have been expressed today if one could not take them in in the form of teaching? The essential point, however, is that it does not remain mere teaching, but is transformed within our soul into qualities of mood and character, into an entirely different mindset, and makes us into entirely different human beings. It is meant to guide us in using our incarnations in the entirely appropriate and correct way, so that in the course of our incarnations we may become something entirely different.

[ 42 ] I tried not to say a word too many or a word too few; I therefore also tried to hint only briefly at important matters. However, what has been said is important not only for the souls who will be incarnated on the physical plane during the period from 1930 to 1940, but also for those who will be in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. For it is essential that the souls from the spiritual world continue to influence the world of the living even when the latter are unaware of it. Through the new Christ event, this coexistence between those who are incarnated here on the physical plane and the souls who are already in the spiritual world will also become increasingly conscious. A collaboration between physically incarnated human beings and spiritual beings will then be possible. This was already intended to be shown by the mention of the image that the prophets will appear again for the people on Earth. So you must imagine that when these great times come in humanity’s future, people will also interact more consciously with one another in both the physical and spiritual worlds. Today this is not possible because a common language is lacking. People here in the physical world speak only words in their languages that designate physical things and physical conditions. People between death and new birth live in a world that looks quite different from the world that surrounds us, and they speak a different language. Of all that is spoken in our world, the dead can only take in what is spoken in spiritual science. Thus, in anthroposophy, we are cultivating something here that becomes increasingly comprehensible to the dead, and in this field we also speak on behalf of those who are between death and new birth. Humanity is thus growing into an era in which the influences from the spiritual world are becoming ever greater. The great events of the coming age will make themselves felt in all worlds. People between death and new birth will also have new experiences in the other world as a result of the new Christ event in the etheric world. But they would be just as unable to understand them if they had not prepared themselves for them on Earth, just as the people who are incarnated here on Earth will have had to prepare themselves in order to properly receive the events at this important juncture. It is important for all souls who are incarnated today—regardless of whether they will still be physically incarnated or whether they are no longer so—that they have prepared themselves for these important coming events by taking in the anthroposophical truths. If they did not do so, they would have to wait. If they have not taken in with their earthly consciousness what anthroposophy or spiritual science has to offer, then they would have to wait until they are incarnated again in order to have the opportunity to take in the corresponding teachings here on Earth. For there are simply things that can only be experienced and learned here on Earth. That is why it is said: For example, in the spiritual world there is no way at all to experience death, and a God had to descend into the physical world in order to be able to die. And what the Mystery of Golgotha specifically is—that cannot be experienced in any other world as it is here in the physical world. We have been led down into the physical world so that we may acquire here something that can only be acquired here. And Christ descended to humanity because only here in the physical world could he show humanity, and through the Mystery of Golgotha allow them to experience something that then bears fruit and carries on into the spiritual world. But the seeds must be planted and sown here in the physical world.

[ 43 ] Summary of the Ages:

Golden Age = Krita Yuga = approximately 20,000 years
Silver Age = Treta Yuga = approximately 15,000 years
Iron Age = Dvapara Yuga = approximately 10,000 years
Dark Age = Kali Yuga = approximately 5,000 years
Our age spans the next 2,500 years