The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Work of the “I” in the Child: A Contribution to the Understanding of the Christ Being

[ 1 ] When one gives a public lecture like yesterday’s on “Spiritual Science and the Future of Humanity” or a similar topic, one is compelled to take the receptivity of our present-day world very much into account—and to fully anticipate that this receptivity is limited. One must be clear about the fact that, in our time, insights are indeed flowing down from the spiritual worlds that are necessary for humanity as a whole, but that today they can be received with an open mind by very few. Most people who have not prepared themselves accordingly for such a reception would still experience the deeper aspects of our spiritual science as a shock, as something that seems fantastical or like a dream.

[ 2 ] All the more reason, then, to delve deeper into the most important questions by drawing upon what we have been able to internalize through our feelings and perceptions over the course of a long branch of life. And here I would like to point out that it is necessary to examine more closely the great truth of the implantation of the “I” into human nature, and to view this great truth in a somewhat more complex way than is usually done.

[ 3 ] We know that human beings first received the potential for the physical body during the ancient Saturnic era, the potential for the etheric body during the Solar era, and the potential for the astral body during the ancient Lunar era; and that the task of our Earth evolution is, in fact, to incorporate the “I” into the remaining members of the being. When we reach the end of Earth’s evolution, we will finally be completely permeated, as far as is possible, by the ego-nature. If we consider the human being on Earth as such, we can say that the actual center of his being, the core within him, is the ego-nature. But we must note that this ego is connected to us in different ways during the various periods of our present life, not always in the same manner. We must bear in mind that the various members of the being are not yet known to us if we merely know that the human being consists of a physical, etheric, and astral body and an ego. Let us now see in what different ways these members can be connected with one another, both in the various epochs of human development and in the individual life of the human being.

[ 4 ] Let us first consider the child. We know that it learns to refer to itself as “I” relatively late. This is very significant. Even if modern psychology, which claims to be a science, fails to grasp this, it is nonetheless deeply significant, because the child arrives at the concept of the “I”—at the inner experience of the “I”—relatively late. In the first years of life, indeed up to the age of three or three and a half, the child, even if it parrots the word “I” to us now and then, does not yet have a true sense of self. You can find a book, *The Soul of Your Child*, by Heinrich Lhotzky, which contains the curious statement that the child learns to think before it learns to speak. That is nonsense, because the child learns to think through speaking. Those pursuing the humanities must be cautious regarding what passes for science today. It is only after about the third year that a child truly begins to live in the “I” and to know the “I.”

[ 5 ] There is another factor at play here, namely that in our normal state of consciousness—that is, not in a higher, clairvoyant state of consciousness—we cannot recall anything beyond a certain point in our lives. Think about it: If you look back, you will realize that your memory breaks off at some point. It does not extend all the way back to birth. Sometimes one can confuse what one has been told with what one has experienced oneself, but the thread breaks off at roughly the same point where the sense of self emerges. As a small child, one does not have it; one acquires it only later, and that is when the darkest memories begin.

[ 6 ] Now let us ask ourselves: If the sense of self was not present during the first three years, was the self also absent in the child?—We must distinguish between whether we are aware of what is within us, or whether it is within us without our knowledge. The ego is present in the child, only the child is unaware of it, just as a person is connected to the ego while asleep but knows nothing of it. The fact that we are aware of something does not determine whether that something is present. We must say: The ego is there, but it is not conscious in the child.

[ 7 ] What about the ego? — Well, that’s a matter in itself. If you were to examine the human brain purely from a physical standpoint, you would see that, after birth, the brain looks quite imperfect compared to its later form. Some of the fine convolutions must first be developed later; they must first be sculpted into shape over the next few years. The ego does this in humans, and because it has to do this, it cannot come to consciousness. It has to shape the brain into something else, into a finer form, so that it can think later on. The ego is very hard at work in the early years.

[ 8 ] If this “I” were to become conscious, we might ask it in vain: How did you manage to develop this brain so artfully? — You will admit that throughout the entire life between birth and death, the “I” does not attain the level of consciousness that the brain brings to fruition. Nevertheless, we can ask ourselves this question. And we receive the answer that the “I,” in its activity, is guided by the beings of the higher hierarchies. When we have a child before us and observe them clairvoyantly, their ego is certainly present as an ego-aura, but from this ego-aura currents flow out to the higher hierarchies—to the angels, archangels, and so on—and the forces of the hierarchies flow in. Therefore, when it is said in naive consciousness that the child is protected by an angel, this is a very real truth. Later, this close connection ceases: the ego experiences itself more in the nerves and can become conscious of itself. It is a kind of severing. Thus, in the child, we have a kind of “telephone connection” through which the ego extends into the divine-spiritual hierarchies. We must take spiritual scientific statements seriously. I once said: The wisest person can learn much from a child. — He can also learn much from the child for the reason that he need not merely see the child itself; he also sees into the spiritual world through the child, for the child has the “telephone connection” to the spiritual world, which is later severed. So that in the first three years we have before us a very different being in the human being than later on. We have a childlike ego that works plastically under the guidance of the beings of the higher hierarchies to shape the human tools of thought. Then it enters into them, but can no longer work on them. The human tools of thought must already be shaped by then. They can certainly continue to develop, but the ego can no longer work on them.

[ 9 ] We can therefore simply divide the human being into the person who stands before us during the first three and a half years, and the rest of the person. In esotericism, the first person is called the divine human being because he is connected to the higher hierarchies, or the Son of God; the other is called the Son of Man. In the latter, the ego is present and moves the limbs and works, as far as work is still possible, from within. Thus, we must distinguish between the Son of God and the Son of Man.

[ 10 ] We must therefore conceive of a divide between the Son of God and the Son of Man. The Son of God, who is primarily active up to the age of three and a half, contains all the life-giving forces—that which spurs human beings to infuse ever more life forces into their organism. These forces also contain something constructive, healing, and vitalizing in relation to the later human being. If, in later life, we do not merely want to be people who rely on our senses and the tools of our physical body to connect with our environment, but if we also wish to reach up into the spiritual world in later life, then we must try to artificially awaken some of these forces within us; we must appeal to the forces that are within us in early childhood, with the only difference being that we now consciously awaken them, whereas the child awakens them unconsciously. Thus we see that the human being is a duality in this respect. What actually comes to light in this force of the first three and a half years? In these forces, which work there under the guidance of the higher hierarchies, what carries over from earlier incarnations comes to the fore. You can easily convince yourselves of this by feeling the human skull. There you will find individual elevations and depressions. No two skulls are alike, which is why there is no universally valid phrenology. It must be applied individually. The forces at work within the human skull carry over from previous incarnations, and they cease to exert their driving force once these three and a half years have passed. During these three and a half years, everything is still malleable; the spirit can still work its way into it. Later, everything has become fixed, and then it can no longer work its way in.

[ 11 ] So what does it matter that we can no longer work with these forces later on? Where does this come from? It stems from our specific earthly evolution. Once the “I” has become conscious of itself within the body, this presupposes that the body is firmly established and can no longer be shaped by the forces just described. We are dealing with forces that are inherent to human beings as a species, that build them up into human architecture. If we were to work with the forces of childhood in the physical body for longer than the three and a half years that constitute the appropriate time, this physical body would not be able to withstand it. It would tear apart, would break, for the forces that anchor it through the physical line of inheritance are now becoming active. If the other force did not cease, it would break apart, fall apart; it could not endure it. We sink down into our human self; the divine self can no longer rise up against our human self after three years. Yet we still carry this divine self within us; these forces work within the physical body throughout the whole life, only they can no longer participate directly in its formation. When we look within ourselves, we do find the continuation of the I that had the “telephone connection.” Only the physical body is too coarse, too rough, too ossified for the Son of God to continue shaping it plastically. The best forces are contained in these first three to three and a half years; we draw upon them throughout our entire lives. They are obscured, but they are still present in the most varied ways in later years. It is as if we were permeated by these forces but simply could not live them out directly. If we wish to take in concepts of the higher worlds through spiritual science, we can do so all the better the more we possess within us of what was in us during the first three years, when the ego was selflessly present within us. The fresher and more flexible these forces are, the less they have become senile with advancing age, the more suited we are to transforming ourselves through these spiritual forces. What we have around us during these three years is humanity’s greatest treasure. Unfortunately, only the dense physical body prevents us from making full use of these forces. If someone can develop them particularly well in later years, they can no longer transform their physical body through them; it is no longer as malleable as wax. But if they can make full use of them through esoteric wisdom, then this power flows out through the fingertips, and they receive the special gift of healing, of restoration through the laying on of hands—provided those spiritual powers are still effective, powers that no longer transform one’s own body but which, when they flow out, have a beneficial effect.

[ 12 ] The goal of Earth’s evolution is to gradually bring these best qualities within us to the fore. When Earth’s evolution comes to an end and we have passed through many incarnations, we will have to be fully and consciously imbued with what we possessed unconsciously in our earliest childhood years. There is a difference between having these forces unconsciously and consciously. People will then have to be completely imbued with such a childlike consciousness. And because it will expand its body only slowly, it will not shatter it either.

[ 13 ] In the course of world development, a model had to be provided for this entry of the power of childhood into humanity. It goes without saying that this model could not be found in a child. A person who had already reached a certain age had to be permeated in a conscious manner with the same forces that unconsciously permeate human beings in early childhood. If we were to have a person before us from whom we were to take away, remove, or empty out the ego, and if we were to pour into them what a child possesses in the first years of life, they would bring this to consciousness through their developed brain. What was within them in the first years of childhood would be conscious within them. How long can a human life on earth endure these elements? Three years, no longer; then they must break down under them. If it cannot be transformed—in humans it is transformed in the course of normal development—then the human body cannot endure it for longer than three years. If it were at all possible for a being to consciously carry the forces of childhood within itself, then this person’s karma must be such that after three years the physical body in which this being is immersed breaks down.

[ 14 ] It is therefore conceivable that what humanity attains through all incarnations up to the goal of Earth’s evolution is brought into the world through a model, by placing a human being in the world whose physical nature makes it possible for his ego to be removed and another being implanted within him—a being whose incarnations have opened the path to this. Then the human body would not tolerate this being within itself for more than three years. The human body would then break down according to its karma. This is what happened. We see in the baptism of John in the Jordan this human body that was suitable for its I, the Zarathustra I, to step out. Then a being descended into this body. The Christ-being filled it, but could remain in it for only three years. After three years, it broke this body in the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 15 ] What was able to live for three years in the human body at that time, humanity must nurture and care for, and gradually bring to life in its soul through incarnations, so that by the end of the incarnations it may be fully present in the human being. We see here a remarkable connection between the Son of God in the human being and the Christ event. For all the things we find in the occult realm can be illuminated from various angles. The kind of evidence demanded by conventional science cannot satisfy occultism. It must become convincing through the gathering of truths from all sides that mutually support and sustain one another. We can come to know the Christ event from a new perspective by deriving it today from human nature itself. We have made it clear to ourselves how we can best understand the Christ by developing the attitude of mind that arises from such truth. We must realize that, in a fully developed human body, through the baptism in the Jordan, there was a being within the body of Jesus of Nazareth that dwells in every human body, but only unconsciously, during the first three years of life. And we must look to those three years when this child is brought into consciousness. Then we come to know the Christ-being best.

[ 16 ] Ancient sayings have various meanings. One such meaning is also revealed to us in the saying: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” —Here we glimpse the deeper meaning that is sometimes hidden in individual sentences of religious texts.

[ 17 ] Let us consider this childlike life, especially at this stage when it is now truly coming into its own. Science today still knows very little about what can help us study human beings in their true essence. We must first realize that from the very beginning, the human being differs radically from all other beings. If you consider a creature closely related to us, such as a primate: from the very beginning, its gait is determined by a unique balance; by the unique balance of how its limbs are arranged. At first, a human being cannot walk at all; they must first achieve this state of equilibrium in the body. Through the work of their ego, they must bring their limbs into the position in which they can maintain their upright posture and walk. Thus, in the early years of childhood, this ego must not only work to shape the brain plastically; it must also achieve the state of equilibrium that is not given to humans from the outset as it is to animals. Humans must first align their bones in the angular direction required by their center of gravity in order to walk, to find their way. In animals, this is innate from the very beginning, right up to the highest forms of animal. In humans, this must first be achieved gradually through the work of the ego. Before that, they crawl or fall over. Thus, humans would be chained to the ground, to the same spot, if their ego did not work during the first years of their lives.

[ 18 ] We have already seen: the ego works on the brain, shaping it in such a way that we later become beings capable of cognition. So that we can say: We acquire the ability to recognize truth in life by the ego shaping its instrument. — We must realize that there can be no life beyond this one unless we work to achieve it.

[ 19 ] What further distinguishes humans so radically from all other beings is their language. Language, too, must first be acquired by the self. Humans are not naturally predisposed to speak. Language does not belong to the things for which humans are naturally predisposed from the outset. Certainly, a cow says “moo”; but that is not yet language. The acquisition of language depends on the ego dwelling among other human egos. If a human being is transplanted to a remote island, he does not learn to speak. That we get our permanent teeth is something we inherit; that we grow is something we inherit. We would also get teeth if we were on a desert island. But we acquire language through the ego within the circle of human life. These distinctions are important. Thus, in what we call human life, language is the third thing that our ego acquires.

[ 20 ] Through the activity of these forces, the developing human being finds their way on Earth, recognizes the truth, and participates in human life alongside their environment. If the child could express what it gains in this way, it might say: The I within me transforms me so that I am the way, the truth, and the life. — Imagine this transposed into the higher spiritual realm: how must a being who lives for three years in a human body with fully conscious childhood forces speak to human beings? It must say: I am the way, the truth, and the life. - Indeed, as the powers of childhood rise to a higher, fully conscious level, we find in this once again the great model of what manifests in the child at a lower level. This runs through Christ Jesus as a fundamental truth. Not only the saying, “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven”—which cannot be grasped unless one knows what spiritual science has to say about the actual connection with the animating powers of childhood—but also what sounds like a radical statement: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”—we understand this best when we see the model in what the I develops within the child’s body.

[ 21 ] From such things we acquire what enables us to bring back—at least for the soul, if not for the body—some of the life-giving forces that we need again on Earth. Modern people, insofar as they do not acknowledge the spiritual world, have no real sense of such realities. Go to many people who are out there in the outer world and say to them something like what has been said here today: ‘Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven’—and you will see that people out there will say: ‘Well, those are quite witty comparisons, but what are we supposed to do with them?’ — People will find it more useful to watch some sensational drama, if not something worse. Anyone who doesn’t really have a sense that these truths have meaning will find them of little value, because it is precisely in the feeling for such things that the power lies to bring childlike receptivity into our lives. If we cannot bring ourselves to feel sympathy and enthusiasm for something like the comparison of Christ with the activity of the human ego in the first years of life, if we are capable of regarding such a thing as childish, then we have no aptitude for awakening the forces of early childhood. All those dried-up scholars have so little power to awaken the forces of early childhood and thereby enter the spiritual world! If we have enthusiasm for engaging with such things, then this works in our soul in such a way that we become imbued with these forces of early childhood. This, however, provides something that makes it possible for a person to maintain their Christianity with a broad-mindedness. Have I not often said that we are only at the beginning of an understanding of Christ? For centuries, up into the 12th and 13th centuries, there was a Christianity that did not have the opportunity to read the Bible; it had to rely on sermons and on what the spiritually inspired ones said. Then came the Christianity that adhered to the Bible, deriving its knowledge from what is written in the Bible. And we are not mindful of the power of Christ if we do not hold fast to the fact that He truly fulfilled His promise: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” We are Christians when we are clear that in every age, Christ, having once manifested Himself, will manifest Himself again to everyone who wishes to see Him. Christ is not so limited that He has nothing more to say than what is recorded in the Gospels. We must not always rely on the words: “You cannot bear it now,” but rather let humanity become ready to recognize Christ.

[ 22 ] Part of this involves being able to relate in the right way to what is poured out through the baptism of John—to the healthy, life-giving forces of childhood. That would be a deeply enriching idea. Even if no one knew anything about the name of Christ or the Gospels—we are by no means intent on clinging to the name—what matters is the essence. We leave it to others to say: Whoever does not swear by Buddha is not a true believer. — We do not cling to the name, but to the thing itself. We do this, for example, by recognizing how, in the first years of life, there are forces within the human being that once settled upon the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 23 ] Imagine you were on a desert island where no record of the mystery of Golgotha had ever reached you: if people there lived in such a way that, through their spiritual life, they fully and consciously absorbed the power of early childhood all the way into old age, they would be Christians in the true sense of the word. Then they would not need to search the Gospels, for Christianity is a living thing, and it will continue to develop further and further. This is something we must strictly hold fast to as a point of distinction. Then we will be able to see ever more clearly how intimately the Christ mission is actually connected with the entire earthly being. We will then be able to say to ourselves that this mission of Christ is something we can recognize in people today. The necessity of becoming permeated by Christ, of living out the Pauline saying “Christ in me,” arises from the fact that we say: We must allow the transformation of what lives within us from early childhood to permeate our entire lives; then Christ is within us.

[ 24 ] This certainly offers the possibility of understanding Christianity in the broadest sense, and the prospect that Christianity will take on entirely different forms. There will come a time when Christ will be called by a completely different name, when entirely different records will exist, when people will no longer refer to external history to prove that such a being once existed, but will instead recognize this fact from within the consciousness of humanity.

[ 25 ] We present all this because it is precisely through such matters that we can repeatedly demonstrate how spiritual science can have a profoundly deep impact on the entire structure of human feeling and must become a way of life. Only then will we truly understand what we find in the ancient texts. For many people, these documents remain a complete mystery. A modern human stands before us: at the end of the Earth period, he will have reached the point where he has fully permeated his soul with Christ; today, he is only at the beginning of this work. But Christ lives within him, and through all subsequent incarnations, He will live within him more and more fully and in an ever-wider sense.

[ 26 ] What was it like, then, before Christ revealed himself on Earth? At that time, the “I” was still in the process of development. Christ is what gives the “I” its meaning, so that previously the “I” was only in the process of development. Whenever a being is still in the process of development, the beings who have gone before must help it. Humanity was in preparation to give its I a meaning until the event at Golgotha. Until then, other beings who had previously reached the human stage—namely on the ancient Moon—had to help humanity. We know that these are the beings of the higher hierarchy of the next stage, the angels. They stand one step higher than humanity. These beings were primarily tasked with guiding humanity as long as human beings were not yet able to look to Christ and say: Christ gives meaning to my I. — Therefore, human beings could not lead themselves to Christ, but had to be led there by the beings who are their elder brothers.

[ 27 ] This is reflected in the biblical account with remarkable accuracy. Let us take John, the forerunner of Christ Jesus. If he is truly to be the forerunner, he cannot be the being depicted in external history, for he does not yet possess the “I” in the sense in which it has now been described. Therefore, one cannot say that his forerunner, John the Baptist, went before him. Curiously, the Gospel of Mark begins immediately with the words of the prophet: “I will send my angel before you, who shall prepare the way for you.” This means that something must be taken into account which is seen quite abstractly in theological circles, but when one moves into the concrete, people overlook it. The outer world is, at first, a maya. We must first learn to view it in the right way; then it is no longer maya. When the outer events on the physical plane are recounted by John, that is maya. We do not understand them. The Bible regards the person of John as maya. Living within John, taking possession of his soul, is an angelic being who leads people to Christ. He is a vessel for the revelation of the angelic being. The angel was able to enter him because the reborn Elijah was ready to receive the angel. Then the angel spoke through him; he was sent, and he uses John merely as an instrument. This is exactly what the Bible says.

[ 28 ] So that we can say: Humanity could only be led to the “I” because those who had completed the human stage on the ancient Moon became the guides of the people of Earth in pre-Christian times. All the ancient leaders of humanity became such because angels worked through them. What would happen to modern humanity? In pre-Christian times, the angelic beings worked into human nature because humanity did not yet possess the “I” as its own model within itself. Since humanity has received the light of the Christ-Sun, it can turn its face toward Christ, and through this, a power similar to that of the angels draws into it once more. Just as he once received the angels, so must humanity today receive Christ through devotion to the Christ-being. Whereas John could still say, “Not I, but the angel within me has been sent and uses me as an instrument to prepare,” so must humanity today say, like Paul, “Not I, but Christ within me.”—They must learn to understand Christ as spiritual science teaches him.

[ 29 ] One can articulate what has been said, for example, about the first three years of life. The need to emphasize that childhood spreads its sunny radiance over one’s entire life—that is what it means to become Christian. Whereas modern science brings about senility, a failure to be permeated by the solar forces of childhood, the withering of parts of the brain, and many other things.

[ 30 ] So we take from such truths the idea that it is possible to recognize the essence of Christianity if one sets aside all documents and focuses solely on the observation of human beings. If one does not approach spiritual science by saying, “Now I know that the human being consists of four members—the physical, etheric, astral, and ego, but rather in a way that emphasizes the importance of knowing how these individual members are connected within human nature, then one can see that the first childhood ego is related to another being, that this ego is, as it were, like a shell, and how, after three years, its relationship to the other members—to the rest of human nature—changes completely.

[ 31 ] This realization takes on true value when it becomes a source of strength within us, and when we tell ourselves: We have many future incarnations on Earth to go through; we know that we can, so to speak, continue to develop what is within us further and further, bringing it to ever greater and greater consciousness; we know that we can fully pour out the higher human being, the Son of God within us, through the Son of Man, and thereby ascend further and further from incarnation to incarnation until the Earth has reached its goal. - Then the Earth will become a corpse, just as the individual human being physically becomes a corpse; and just as in the individual human being the corpse falls down to the Earth and the soul ascends into the spiritual world, so it will be with the whole Earth.

[ 32 ] If we regard the entire Earth as the body of all humanity, we can say: The Earth dies as a corpse, dissolves into the matter of outer space, and is scattered to be reused in a material form. Human beings, however, ascend into spiritual worlds to pass over into the next planetary state. And we must bear in mind that these are not abstract words.

[ 33 ] It is strange, after all, that there are people who believe that our Earth, along with the Sun and the other planets, was once a great misty nebula and nothing else, and that the Sun, the Earth, and—through the collision of matter—humanity emerged from it, and that humanity will continue to develop in this way until it is one day buried in the Earth: the whole thing a meaningless episode! Future cultural history will have great difficulty comprehending this morbid figment of the imagination; comprehending how human imagination could once have become so diseased as to accept this as a serious notion. To put forward a Kant-Laplacean theory amounts to exactly the same thing as trying to explain to people that they are made of the dust into which they disintegrate upon burning. Such science is deadly; it does not enliven the living force in our soul. Spiritual science is meant to enliven the force to develop us into ever higher forms, and to enable us not to bind ourselves to the dust of the earth, but to evolve beyond it toward a new planetary existence.