The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Christ Impulse in the Course of History II

My dear Theosophical friends!

[ 1 ] It is with deep satisfaction that I speak to you today—here in these peaceful mountains and with a view of the wonderful lake—about those things that interest us most deeply as the messages and realities of spiritual life. And when I take up, my dear Theosophical friends, the most striking fact that particularly confronts those who have gathered here today to visit our mountain friends, it is surely this: that a number of our friends have withdrawn, perhaps not into the solitude of the mountains, but certainly into the peace and loveliness of the mountains. And when one then asks oneself: What lies at the root of this in our hearts as an impulse, as a desire?, then we may find this impulse, this desire, perhaps quite akin to humanity’s present-day longing for spiritual life in general. And perhaps it is no delusion to assume that in the world out there there is an impulse similar to the one that has drawn some of us out here into the solitude of the mountains.

[ 2 ] Either a person knows or senses that in everything that surrounds us—nature, forests and peaks, weather and thunderstorms—there reigns a spirituality which, according to the words of a prominent Western figure, is already a spirituality that is more consistent than human action, feeling, and thought. We must surely be overcome by the sense that in all that surrounds us—forests and peaks, mountains and lakes—the Spirit speaks. And in Theosophy, we become increasingly aware that in everything that surrounds us in nature, in everything that supports us as solid ground, that which speaks from it is Spirit. We are transported back to times of ancient grayness and say to ourselves: We come from the spiritual past; we are the children of ancient times. Just as we create our works of art, just as we make use of what makes them suitable for our purposes, so did our ancestors create their tools. And what surrounds us as natural phenomena is the product of the work of our divine ancestors in past, ancient times. When we are imbued with such a feeling, then all of nature gradually becomes to us what it has always been to all spiritual science throughout the ages. It does indeed become a Maya to us, but a Maya that is great and beautiful for the very reason that it is the work of the Divine-Spiritual. And so, when we go out into nature, we enter the monuments of spiritual work from the ancient pre-earthly time. Then that great, that powerful feeling comes over us, which can certainly deepen our sense of nature and fill us with warmth.

[ 3 ] When we satisfy our sense of nature through spiritual science, something else must also come over us: the realization that, in a certain sense, it is a privilege to be able to dwell in the spirit of nature. And that is a privilege. For we may—indeed, we ought to—remember how many people lack this in their present incarnation: the ability to be close to the creations of the spirit of nature. How many souls live today, especially in the cultural cities, who can no longer feel anything of the uplifting, the divine-spiritual in nature! And when one observes nature with a gaze sharpened by spiritual science, then one knows how intimately connected is that which we call moral life—which, after spiritual life, is the highest aspiration we have in this life—then one knows how closely what we feel in nature is connected with what is called morality.

[ 4 ] It may sound paradoxical, but it is true that those people who, living in the city, have to unlearn what a grain of oats, rye, or barley looks like are, unfortunately, also cut off in their hearts from the deepest moral sources of our existence. When we consider this, we surely regard it as a privilege to be allowed to be close to the sources of the spirit of nature, for then one such feeling naturally connects with another—one that, strengthened by theosophy, is meant to go forth into the world: the truth of reincarnation. We first receive it as a truth of faith, this truth of the repeated earthly lives of human beings. But how could a soul sustain itself in the present day, when we see the vastly different paths by which people make their way through life, when all the inequality that must necessarily be poured out upon our earth is so glaringly evident? Then the person who has the privilege of being close to the sources of nature feels not only that they have every reason to be satisfied at being allowed to know the truths of Theosophy, but they also feel the full responsibility, indeed the duty, to understand spiritual life. For what will those souls, who today have the privilege of enjoying peace and health in nature, what will they bring as their best to the gates of death? What as their best?

[ 5 ] If we take a brief look at what can be taught by the spiritual forces that are closer to us now than they were in the nineteenth century, what can we learn from this? We can learn, in particular, that in our deepest soul, in our deepest feelings, we can carry something different into our next incarnations if we immerse ourselves in spiritual science than if we keep our distance from it. After all, we are certainly not dependent today on absorbing what spiritual science can offer us as an abstract doctrine or theory. What your souls take in, what sinks into them like a theory, is there so that everything may become life. And what thus becomes life is already at work in some people today, already in this incarnation, or else in the next. It becomes real, immediate life—a life of which we can have only an inkling if we surrender to that prophetic gaze which asks: Where is this development heading? It passes over into immediate outer existence with all its fruits. And that which we can only say today, can only express today, can only incorporate into our words, becomes a vision—a vision in the younger ones, a vision in the older ones, a vision that has a blissful effect.

[ 6 ] All those who have not yet been able to draw near to the warmth and light of spiritual science, so as to reap the fruits of this spiritual science for themselves, will then experience the bliss of such a vision! Everything that can constitute the outer personality will in the future possess within itself that fire for which what is today merely theory provides the fuel. It is only a small handful of people who wish to be the true bearers of all that is to flow in the future to all those who need it: the true, genuine fruits of human love and human compassion. We do not study spiritual science to find satisfaction for ourselves, not for the sake of our own satisfaction, but so that we may gain gentle, blessing hands, the gentle gaze that works simply by radiating from the eyes, so that we may spread that of which the eye is the spring, the spring of all that we call spiritual vision. People who, with such a disposition, are able to live so close to nature should already be paying attention to how everything is changing in the present time, how everything is becoming different! It is becoming different; indeed, it is becoming different in the great cosmos.

[ 7 ] It is not true to say that nature does not make leaps. In nature, there are leaps all the time. From leaf to flower, from flower to fruit. When the egg becomes a chick, there is a leap. There is no untruer statement than this: that nature makes no leaps. Everywhere there are leaps, everywhere sudden transitions. And so we live in a time of such a transition. And we have moved into a year of great significance: the year 1899. The turn of the twentieth century is significant for the entire course of cultural development through the process by which the Eastern flows into the Western, mingling with it, so that what can be drawn directly from the life of nature may blossom as something that enlivens our deepest soul life.

[ 8 ] Those whose spirits have been awakened will be able to perceive new entities within the processes of nature. While the person who has not yet become clairvoyant will, despite all melancholy over the inexorable process of decay, increasingly experience something refreshing in nature, the one whose clairvoyant powers are awakening will see new elemental beings emerging from the decaying natural world. While in the gross physical world relatively little will be visible of the great upheaval at the turn of the twentieth century, the spiritually open soul will sense: Times are changing, and we humans have a duty to prepare for spiritual science. More and more, my dear Theosophical friends, it will be important to observe such things and keep them in mind. For it is up to the will of human beings whether they wish to take such things in for the good of humanity or let them pass them by; the latter then leading to disaster.

[ 9 ] This suggests one thing: around the turn of the twentieth century, a new realm of natural beings will, as it were, come into being—a realm that emerges from nature as a spiritual source and becomes visible and tangible to human beings. And yet another. Certainly, a human soul would be dull if it could not recognize the sprouting of spring, but there is more to it than that. Those who will be able to experience what has just been described as a fact of nature will preserve such impressions in a way entirely different from ordinary memory. They will carry over—just as the seeds do through the winter into spring—what flows toward them in the form of new elemental spirits. What was experienced in spring and what was experienced in autumn were, in the past, independent of one another: this radiance of nature in spring and this melancholy in autumn. What the cosmos imparts from its own memory is what enables us to carry some of what we experience in autumn over into spring. If we allow the elemental forces of autumn to work within us, then we can perceive in a new way what is given to us in the future. Everything will experience something new in the future, and it is our duty to prepare ourselves to understand this through spiritual insight. For spiritual science did not come into the world through human caprice, but because new things are happening in the heavens that can only be perceived when the results of spiritual research are taken up by human beings. That is why the Theosophical Movement came into being.

[ 10 ] Just as in nature, so it is in moral life: there, the inner life of the soul undergoes a transformation. Many things will come to pass of which people today have no inkling. I would like to mention just one example: There will be more and more people—and this will be particularly evident in children—for whom it will be the case that, when a person wants to do this or that in the future, wants to accomplish this or that deed in the world, a voice will speak within their soul, compelling them to pause and listen to what is being said to them from the spiritual world. A fact that stands before their eyes like a vision will confront them. At first, they will be strangely moved by this vision. Then—once he has drawn a little closer to spiritual science—he will recognize that within it lies the karmic counterpart of the actions he has just performed. Thus the soul is made aware: You must strive to rouse yourself to enter into the evolution of the future. And it is shown that no deed occurs without an effect. And this becomes a driving force that orders our moral life. Thus, the moral impulses will gradually be instilled in our soul like karma, if we prepare ourselves to open our spiritual eyes and ears to what can speak to us from the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] We know that it will take a long time for people to learn to see in the spirit. But this will begin in the twentieth century, and over the course of three thousand years, more and more people will join in. The next three millennia will be devoted by humanity to such matters. But in order for such things to happen, my dear Theosophical friends, the main currents of development—again at the behest of humanity’s spiritual guidance—are flowing in such a way that people will increasingly be able to penetrate to an understanding of the occult life, as it has been described today.

[ 12 ] There are two main currents here. The first is characterized by the existence of what is known as Western philosophy, and by the fact that the most fundamental concepts of the spiritual world originate from the purest foundations of philosophy. And it is remarkable what emerges when we survey what has gradually taken place within the science of Western culture. There we see how some people become purely intellectual, while others stand on the ground of religious life, yet are at the same time filled with what can only be given by the vision of the spiritual world that lies behind everything. Everywhere we see a spiritual life springing forth from Western philosophy. I will mention only Vladimir Soloviev, the Russian philosopher and thinker, a true clairvoyant, even if he was able to glimpse into the pure spiritual world only three times in his life: The first time as a nine-year-old boy, the second time in the British Museum, and the third time when he was in the Egyptian desert with the Egyptian starry sky above him. Then what can only be seen with a clairvoyant gaze came upon him. From this blossomed within him that which expressed itself as a vision of the future of human evolution. What emerges is what Schelling and Hegel achieved through the pure exertion of the spirit. Since they stood alone on the heights of thought, we may also place them here on the summit, where all educated people will stand in the future. All of this has indeed been spoken of over the course of the last few centuries, and especially in the last four centuries. When we survey this and work through it using the methods of practical occultism—and this has been done in recent times—precisely to investigate what the purely intellectual minds from Hegel to Haeckel have devised, we also see the occult forces at work here. And a very remarkable result emerges from this: we can speak of pure inspiration precisely in those who seem least like it to us. Who inspired them, all those minds standing on purely intellectual ground? Who has kindled this spiritual life that speaks from every book, reaching down even to the humblest huts? Where does all this come from—this abstract spiritual life in Europe that presents such a remarkable result?

[ 13 ] We all know how the great event described here took place. Once upon a time, a great individuality in the development of humanity—one of the individualities we refer to as a Bodhisattva—was incarnated into the royal house of Suddhodana. We all know that this individual was destined to ascend to the next rank following that of the Bodhisattva. Every human being who ascends higher and reaches the rank of a Bodhisattva must, in their final incarnation, become a Buddha. What does this Buddha-hood mean? What does it mean, in particular, for the one Bodhisattva who attained the Buddha-hood as Gautama Buddha? It means that the Buddha—and this is the case with every Buddha—no longer needs to incarnate in a physical body on Earth. And so, like every Buddha, Gautama Buddha was destined to work from the spiritual world thereafter. He was never to walk the earth physically again; but what he had achieved from incarnation to incarnation enabled him to continue working down into our earthly culture from then on.

[ 14 ] The first great deed he accomplished—which, as I indicated in Basel, the Buddha, as a purely spiritual being, had to accomplish—was to send into the astral body of that boy Jesus, whom the Gospel of Luke describes to us, the forces expressed in the sense of that saying we always recite as a Christmas message: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

[ 15 ] When our soul is moved by that image in which angelic beings hover in a halo above the infant Jesus, we should know that the powers of the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya are at work within that aura of Jesus. Since then, the spiritual powers of the Buddha have been incorporated into the highest individualities within the unfolding events of which the Mystery of Golgotha speaks. Thus his powers continue to work even within that philosophical current of Western thought. From the spiritual world, he himself is the driving force behind the life that has penetrated as far as the intellect and then gone astray.

[ 16 ] When we read Leibniz, Schelling, and Soloviev today and ask ourselves, “What inspired them?”, the answer lies in the being who was born in Suddhodana’s palace, who ascended from Bodhisattva to Buddha, and who then continued to work selflessly. He continued his work so selflessly that today we can go back to times when in the West not even the name of the Buddha was mentioned. You will not find the name of the Bodhisattva who became the Buddha, not even in Goethe! But he lives in everything, as you know. He has found such understanding that he lives on namelessly in Western literature. The Middle Ages knew this too; they just didn’t tell us about it that way back then. They told us something else.

[ 17 ] It was in the eighth century that John of Damascus lived; he wrote a book in the form of a novel. About what? He tells of an eminent teacher who once lived and became the teacher of Josaphat, instructing Josaphat in what the esoteric teachings are and what the great Christian truths are. And if one traces all of this, one finds truths relating to it throughout the entire narrative. One also finds stories from Buddhist literature. We follow the same thread and come upon a legend: that legend which tells that the Buddha lived on, though not in earthly human form, but in animal form, in the form of a hare. And once, when a Brahmin was walking and found a hare—which was the mask of the Buddha—the Brahmin lamented to him the misery of the people outside, and then the Buddha roasted himself in a fire he had prepared himself, in order to help humanity. The Brahmin took him and placed him in the moon. When one knows that the moon is the symbol of the everlasting wisdom that lives in the hearts of people, then one sees that in the ancient legends a consciousness of the Buddha’s self-sacrifice has been formed and presented.

[ 18 ] What is the Buddha’s task out there in the world of the spirit? It is his task to continually kindle within our hearts those forces from which high wisdom can be drawn. As such, we must understand the one current that flows through our world, my dear Theosophical friends: it is the Buddha Current. It is also represented in the single form that flows through our century, albeit in an abstracted form. But we must seek to recognize the occult meaning of every spiritual form. To this current is added another, which took its origin in the Mystery of Golgotha, which has united with the Buddha Current to form a necessary whole, and which we must likewise take up in our earthly life. This current, which emanates from Golgotha and in which all human beings must participate, not only approaches human beings inwardly, but is such a current that it permeates our entire earthly existence.

[ 19 ] While in the Buddha stream, as in any other, we have an aspect that concerns us all as human beings, in the Christ Being we have a cosmic influence. All Bodhisattvas belong to the individualities that pass through life here on Earth; they belong to the Earth. The Christ Individuality comes from the Sun and enters the Earth only with the baptism of John; it remains in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth for only three years. The characteristic of this Christ Individuality is that it is destined to work in the earthly world for only three years. It is the same being to whom Zarathustra referred by calling him Ahura Mazdao, who stands behind the visible sun; the same being of whom the holy Rishis spoke and whom the Greeks described as the being underlying the Pieroma. It is the being that has gradually become the spirit of our Earth, the aura of our Earth, ever since its blood flowed on Golgotha. The first to be permitted to see it in this way, without being directly prompted by the physical event, was Paul.

[ 20 ] Thus, the events at Golgotha brought about a completely new sequence of events in the development of our Earth. Previously, everything was in place to absorb the most diverse concepts through the manifold religions. What radiated from the Buddha religion, as the Buddha-being shone into the astral aura of Jesus, and what I have described—that the soul comes to recognize and feel something new through nature—means nothing other than that just as the Christ Individuality descended into the physical body through baptism, remained within it until the event of Golgotha, and was thus present as a physical event on the physical plane, so now it will likewise begin a new activity in the etheric world. We can therefore speak of a physical incarnation from the event of John’s baptism up to Golgotha, and now of an etheric reappearance.

[ 21 ] As the etheric body develops—in part through the impressions of autumn that a person weaves into their being—the etheric Christ is perceived. What was the purpose of the physical Christ? It was so that human beings could evolve to a higher level, thereby enabling themselves to perceive the Christ more and more in the etheric realm.

[ 22 ] So that we can say: In this lecture, we began with those elemental spirits that make themselves felt in nature; we ascended from those peculiar visions that move us to pause in our activities and listen to the inner word, and we see in all of this, in these events spread out before us and clustered around a central point, that those who find their way to the spiritual world in the right way—and here I do not mean the spiritually trained clairvoyant who has always been able to find the Christ, but rather people in their natural development—that these people will behold the Christ as an etheric manifestation: he who will intervene in world events only from the ether. We see how all these events cluster around the future Christ event. And when we consider the entire spiritual development in its progressive course, we see: The Buddha, who sacrifices himself in the fire of love, is the inspirer of our science.

[ 23 ] Those who read works such as *The Trial of the Soul*—which I had the privilege of staging in Munich—with attention, and who perceive where all those mysterious forces lie that point to what is in nature around us, pay heed to the wisdom of the future, even if the wisdom of the future is often the folly of the present, just as the wisdom of the present is often the folly of the future—they will come to realize that there will be a chemistry permeated by the Christ impulse, a botany permeated by the Christ impulse, and so on. It is not insubstantial molecules that underlie this. Everything that spreads out in nature comes from the spirit. Thus, the flower is an ethereal being, and on the other hand, through this flower, the spirit has penetrated from the outside into the earth. In what sprouts forth from the earth in forms, the highest meaning reveals itself to us. One will not only recognize through faith, but one will become knowledgeable.

[ 24 ] We have thus placed the second current before our souls, which is to unite with the first. The coming years will bring many surprises to the Earth. In all things that will occur in this way, we can perceive the Christ principle, while we become more inwardly aware of the Buddha impulse. Therefore, it is only through an understanding of those sublime measures taken by the spiritual leadership of the world that we can gain clarity on how to follow the Christ impulse, for it is this impulse that, in the course of history, leads one individuality into another. What does a phenomenon such as that which manifests in the West—where all thinking expresses itself more in the manner of, say, Galileo—or, conversely, in the East in the manner of Vladimir Soloviev, offer to the thinking person’s thirst for knowledge? When we see this, we recognize how objectively the Christ impulse works. In a similar way, we can see the Christ impulse everywhere in what is happening out in the world.

[ 25 ] The greatest events will unfold in the coming cultural epochs. What in the fourth epoch emerged merely as a dream of the great martyr Socrates will become a reality. What, then, was this great impulse of Socrates? He wanted that whoever experiences a moral law and comprehends it so deeply that they are moved by it should also act accordingly as a moral person. Let us consider how far we still are from this, how many can say, “This must happen”—but how few possess the inner strength, the moral fortitude, to do so! That moral teachings may be so clearly understood and moral feelings so surely developed that there can be nothing we recognize without the impulse to carry it out with fervor; that this may truly mature within human souls—not merely be recognized, but such that it cannot be otherwise than that a moral impulse also becomes action: this depends on people becoming attuned to the two distinct spiritual currents described. Then, under the influence of these two currents, more and more people will mature who are capable of progressing from feeling, from moral insight, and from moral impulse to action.

[ 26 ] What is it that brings about, within humanity, the merging of these two currents so that, from within, the Buddha can take hold of the Christ? It is brought about by the fact that the office of the Bodhisattva has never remained unfilled. The moment the Bodhisattva became a Buddha, another attained the dignity of a Bodhisattva. And there came that individual whom we know to have lived as an Essene about a hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth. A personality who, unfortunately, has been slandered and misunderstood, for example by the writer Celsus, and particularly through Haeckel’s *The Riddle of the Universe*. That personality, who thus worked a full century before the Mystery of Golgotha, who is known as Jeshu ben Pandira, who is one of the incarnations of that Bodhisattva who became the successor to Gautama, the Bodhisattva who became the Buddha. He will continue to work as a Bodhisattva until three thousand years have passed, and then, when five thousand years have elapsed since the Buddha received his enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he too will become a Buddha. Every serious occultist knows that five thousand years after the enlightenment of Gautama Buddha under the Bodhi tree, that individuality, which lives on as a Bodhisattva, will then have become the Maitreya Buddha. Until then, he will incarnate many more times. And then, when the five thousand years are over, a teaching will emerge: the teaching of the Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of Goodness, where what is said has a moral effect at the same time. Words to describe this effect do not yet possess the necessary power. This can only be perceived in the spiritual world, and humanity will first have to become ripe to receive it. What is special about this Maitreya Buddha is that, in a certain sense, he will have to emulate what took place in the event of Golgotha.

[ 27 ] We know how the Buddha-individuality entered into Jesus of Nazareth and now influences earthly development only from the outside. All who live as Bodhisattvas and will one day become Buddhas have a destiny on Earth that every serious occultist can see: in a certain sense, they are unknown people in their youth. Those who know something of them may see them as gifted individuals, but they do not see that the Bodhisattva essence permeates them. It has always been so, and it will be so in the twentieth century as well. Only during the period between the ages of thirty and thirty-three—the same span of time as between the baptism in the Jordan and Golgotha—will this become apparent. During this time, a transformation takes place within the human being, who then sacrifices his individuality to a certain degree and becomes a vessel for another individuality, just as the Jesus individuality allowed the Christ to take up residence within him.

[ 28 ] The Bodhisattva incarnations, who are those of the future Maitreya Buddha, appear in the form of unknown people. They act as individuals and through their own power. The Maitreya Buddha will also act through his own power and contrary to the opinion of influential people. He remains unknown in his youth. And when, in his thirtieth year, he sacrifices his individuality, he will appear in such a way that his words will have a moral impact. Five thousand years after the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, his successor will also ascend to Buddhahood and become the bearer of the morally impactful word. Now we say: “In the beginning was the Word.” Then we shall be able to say: In the Maitreya Buddha, the greatest Teacher has been given to us, who has appeared to make the Christ event clear to humanity in its full scope. — What is peculiar about him will be that, as the greatest Teacher, he will bring the most sublime Word, the highest Word.

[ 29 ] Since what is truly great—and which ought to be brought into the world in the right way—is so often misunderstood, we must try to prepare ourselves for what is to come. And if we wish to draw closer to the spirit, where the spirit of nature also speaks to us morally, then we may say to ourselves: In a certain sense, all spiritual science is preparation, so that we may learn to understand a word such as that which was spoken in relation to the past event, when we spoke of the turning of the ages.

[ 30 ] A new era was dawning when John the Baptist proclaimed the coming of the Christ. We can still speak of such a new era today, in a certain sense—an era that requires a change in our outlook. Notwithstanding the great cultural resources that will emerge in the outer world, the human spirit must change in such a way that the soul retains the capacity to look into the spiritual world, which will reveal itself in a new way precisely in the time in which we live. Whether something of this will be visible here in this life, whether at the threshold of death or at the time of a new birth—we will not only see this new world, but we will also work from within this new world. And the best that is often within us comes to fruition through the fact that, from the thresholds of death, from the other world, beings send these forces into us. And we, too, will be able to send these forces when we pass through the gate of death in such a way that we acquire here what we recognize as a necessary change for our time—and about which I have taken the liberty of speaking to you today.