The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From Jesus to Christ

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The subject to be discussed here today has, of course, aroused the widest possible interest everywhere in our immediate present; therefore it seems entirely justified to speak on this subject from a theosophical standpoint, from which I myself have had the opportunity to speak on various topics on several occasions in this city. However, the manner in which this subject is discussed everywhere today and has become popular differs greatly from the theosophical standpoint. While on the one hand it must be said that Theosophy as such is still a little-understood and unpopular subject today, on the other hand it must perhaps be pointed out that the very Theosophical consideration of the subject that is to occupy us today is an extraordinarily difficult one. For if it is already foreign to the modern person to attune their mind and soul in such a way that theosophical truths can be fully grasped and appreciated regarding relatively obvious aspects of spiritual life, there is a veritable resistance that pervades this contemporary consciousness when a topic is to be considered from the standpoint of theosophy or spiritual science—a topic that truly requires us to apply this spiritual science or theosophy in the most intimate way to the most difficult and also the most sacred subjects of human reflection. But what we are to discuss today belongs to the latter category.

[ 2 ] It can certainly be assumed that the entity which is to be placed at the center of our considerations has been at the center of all human feeling and thought for many centuries; but not only that, but also that it has evoked the most diverse assessments, feelings, and views within the life of the human soul. For as firmly as that which is encompassed by the name of Christ or the name of Jesus has stood for countless people for centuries, so diverse is the image of Christ and also of Jesus, as it has moved souls and occupied thinkers throughout the centuries since the events in Palestine. And it has always been the case that the image of Christ has been shaped by the prevailing worldview, by what people felt, perceived, and regarded as true at any given time. Thus it came to pass that in the course of the nineteenth century—already prepared by various ideas and intellectual currents of the eighteenth century—what can be grasped in the spirit as the Christ receded into the background in relation to what is called the historical Jesus in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And it is precisely around the historical Jesus that a widespread controversy has arisen today, one that has its most significant representatives and its most intense advocates right here in this city, in Karlsruhe. It is therefore probably good to say a few words about the nature of this controversy before we turn to Christ Jesus.

[ 3 ] One might say: Under the influence of that intellectual current which views everything pertaining to spiritual life merely from an external perspective, based on what can be established through external documents—under the influence of this intellectual current, what the nineteenth century regarded as the historical Jesus came into being. What, then, was to be regarded as the historical Jesus? It was to be regarded as that which could be established as such through external historical documents: that the corresponding figure, of whom it is reported at the beginning of our era, walked in Palestine, then died and rose again for the believers. Entirely in keeping with the character and nature of our age, which is now drawing to a close, faith in theological research was always limited to what one believed could be established from historical documents, just as one establishes any event in world history from other historical documents. Which historical documents, then, were initially taken into consideration? I need not go into this here—for it was precisely here in Karlsruhe that historical Jesus research began—that all historical traditions, insofar as they do not appear in the New Testament, can, according to the judgment of one of the most eminent experts on the subject, be conveniently written down on a single page. And whatever else is written about the historical Jesus in any other documents—whether in Josephus or Tacitus—can easily be dismissed; for it is of no use whatsoever from the standpoint of historical science as it is recognized today. Thus, for research on Jesus, only the Gospel writings of the New Testament and what is found in the Pauline epistles remain.

[ 4 ] Now, nineteenth-century historical research has turned its attention to the Gospels. Viewed purely from the outside, what do these Gospels look like? If one treats them like other records—such as documents about a battle or the like—they turn out to be contradictory physical documents whose fourfold nature cannot be reconciled through external considerations. And these documents are shattered by what is called historical criticism. For it must be said that everything that diligent, painstaking research in the nineteenth century gathered from the Gospels themselves in order to obtain a true picture of Jesus of Nazareth has been dissolved by the representatives of that research, as presented by Professor Drews. With regard to everything that can be said against the historicism of the Gospels, the case could actually be declared closed, insofar as it is clear that it is precisely careful scholarship and careful criticism that show us that, with regard to the way in which historical facts are otherwise established, nothing at all can be ascertained about the person of Jesus of Nazareth; and it must be regarded as scientific dilettantism if this is not acknowledged today in the face of science.

[ 5 ] Now, this is a completely different matter. Namely, the first step is to raise the question of whether those who advocated the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in the nineteenth century and sought to arrive at a historical portrait of Jesus of Nazareth might not have misunderstood the Gospels entirely, and whether there is not a major misunderstanding at play here. What, then, was the actual purpose of the Gospels? Were they intended to be historical documents in the sense of the nineteenth century? Until this question—what the Gospels were intended to be—is answered, the other question—whether they can be regarded as historical documents at all—cannot be decided.

[ 6 ] I attempted to explain what applies in this regard many years ago in my work *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*. And in this context, the answer to the question that has now been posed—What did the Gospels actually intend to be?—should be provided not only by the content but also by the very title of this book. For the title of this book is not “The Mysticism of Christianity” or “The Mystical Content of Christianity”—that is not the point at all, but rather that the book was intended to show that Christianity itself, in its origin and and in its very essence is not an external fact like other external facts, but a fact of the spiritual world that can only be understood through insight into the events of spiritual life, through a gaze into a world that lies beyond the external sensory world and beyond what historical documents can establish. The aim was to show that the forces and causes that brought about the events in Palestine do not lie at all in the realm where external historical events unfold; that Christianity, therefore, cannot merely have a mystical content, but that mysticism and spiritual insight are necessary if one is to unravel the threads that—not in the external documents, but in the mysterious spiritual events—unfolded behind the scenes to make the events in Palestine possible.

[ 7 ] To understand what Christianity is and what it can and must be in the soul of modern man—if the soul truly understands itself—it is necessary to point out to some extent how deeply rooted in the spiritual realities of human development are the words of such a good Christian as Augustine when he says:

[ 8 ] What is currently called the Christian religion already existed among the ancients and was not absent in the early days of humankind; and when Christ appeared in the flesh, the true religion, which had already existed, came to be called Christian.

[ 9 ] Thus, such an authoritative figure points out to us that the events in Palestine did not bring something entirely new into humanity, but rather that what human souls have sought since ancient times—what people have strived to attain as knowledge—has, in a certain sense, undergone a transformation. What, then, does a statement such as that of Augustine mean? Essentially, it means that with the events in Palestine, something was given to humanity—a gift that could have been found in a certain way even before this event, but in a different way than through the Christian path. And if we wish to examine the other way in which humanity could have come to the truths and wisdom of Christianity in another era, the historical development of humanity points us to something that is encapsulated in a word which is still little understood today, but which will be understood more and more as the spiritual-scientific worldview takes hold of people. It is what is encompassed by the term “the mysteries of antiquity.” We must not look merely at the outward religions of the peoples of antiquity, but at what was practiced in pre-Christian times in those mysterious places designated by the name of the Mysteries.

[ 10 ] What were these mysteries in ancient times? If you refer to what is written in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*, you will find a spiritual-scientific explanation for them. But there are also numerous secular writers who publicly revealed what was a secret to the people of antiquity. We are told that only a small number of people were admitted to the places of instruction known as the Mysteries, which were also places of worship. It was always a small circle that was admitted to these Mysteries by the priest-sages; a small circle that then separated itself from the outer world to the extent that the members of this circle of the Mysteries said to themselves: “In order to attain what is to be achieved in the Mysteries, we must begin a different way of life than is otherwise practiced in public—above all, we must accustom ourselves to thinking in a different way.” There was indeed a certain separation from the public among those who were students of the Mysteries. Mysteries existed everywhere. You can find them among the Greeks and Romans and other peoples. Today there is already a vast body of literature on the subject, so that what is stated here can also be substantiated by external research. If such students of the Mysteries were admitted to what was taught there, one could say: What they absorbed could be compared to what is today called science or knowledge—but it was not absorbed in the same way that knowledge is absorbed today. The mystery student experienced something, and through what he went through, he became a completely different person. He felt, to the highest degree, something that can be described with the words: Within every human being lives, deeply hidden and slumbering within, so that ordinary consciousness is unaware of it, a higher human being. And just as the ordinary person looks out upon the world through their eyes, just as they can reflect on their experiences through their thinking, so too can this human being—initially unknown to external knowledge but capable of being awakened from the depths of human nature—perceive a different world that is inaccessible to external eyes and external thinking. This was called the birth of the inner human being. It is a term that is still used today. But the way it is used today has a sober, abstract character, and people accept it so easily. When the student of the mysteries applied it to himself, however, it was the term for something great that could only be compared, for example, to the birth of a human being in the physical sense. Just as what a human being is in the physical world is born out of a dark underworld — be it a natural underworld according to the materialistic view or a spiritual underworld according to the spiritual-scientific view — and thus becomes a physical human being in the outer sense, so that which previously existed no more than the physical human being existed before birth or conception is truly born as a higher human being through the processes of the Mysteries. The student of the mysteries became a newborn, a reborn human being.

[ 11 ] What is currently regarded as the prevailing view on knowledge—what is universally accepted as the answer to a profound philosophical question—is precisely the opposite of what constituted the very essence of the entire mindset and worldview within the Mysteries. Today, people ask, in the Kantian or Schopenhauerian sense: Where do the limits of knowledge lie? What can human beings know? We need only pick up a newspaper and we will always come across the answer: Here and there lie the limits of knowledge, and human beings cannot go beyond them. This is exactly the opposite of what was intended in the Mysteries. Certainly, it was said that human beings cannot solve this or that problem, cannot look into this or that. But one would never have said, in the sense of a Kantian or Schopenhauerian theory of knowledge, that this or that cannot be known; rather, one would have said that one must appeal to the fact that human beings are capable of development, that there are powers within them that lie dormant and must be brought forth; and when they are brought forth, then human beings rise to a higher capacity for knowledge. The Kantian question: “Where are the limits of knowledge?” would have made no sense to the ancient mystery view; rather, the only question would have been: “How does one go about transcending what are the limits of knowledge in ordinary life? How does one seek to develop deeper powers from within human nature in order to perceive what cannot be perceived with ordinary powers?”

[ 12 ] And something else is necessary to sense the full magical aura of the Mysteries, which is also evident in the accounts of the external writers—Plato, Aristides, Plutarch, Cicero. We must be clear that a completely different state of mind existed among the students of the Mysteries than the state of mind of modern people toward scientific truths. What we call scientific truths today can be received by any person in any mood or state of mind. Today, we see the very hallmark of truth in the fact that it is independent of whatever mood we carry within our souls. But for the mystery student, the most important thing before being introduced to the great truths was that he underwent a process through which the soul was transformed in terms of feeling and perception. And what appears to us today as the simplest of scientific knowledge—it would not have been presented to the mystery student in such a way that he could have perceived it externally with his intellect; rather, his mind had to be prepared so that he approached what could come to him with timid reverence. Therefore, the preparation for receiving what the Mysteries could impart was not a matter of learning, but a radical re-education of the soul. What mattered was how the soul stood before the great truths and wisdom, and what it felt in the face of these great truths and wisdom. And from this sprang the conviction for the soul: We are connected, through what is given to us in the Mysteries, with the very foundations of the worlds, with that which flows at the sources of all world origins.

[ 13 ] This is how the mystery student was prepared to experience what Aristides also tells us. And anyone who, as described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, relives what the students of the ancient mysteries experienced, and thereby verifies such experiences, knows how true it is when Aristides says:

[ 14 ] I believed I was touching God, feeling His presence, and I was hovering between wakefulness and sleep; my spirit was so light that no one who is not initiated can describe or comprehend it.

[ 15 ] Thus there was a path to the divine foundations of the world that was neither science nor one-sided religion, but was based on the soul preparing itself to perceive the thoughts of the world’s development as the thoughts of the gods who interweave the world, and to be close to God in the spiritual foundations of the world. And just as we take in the outer air through breathing and make it a part of our body, so the mystery student felt that he took into his own soul that which pulses spiritually through the world and united it with his soul, so that he became a new human being, interwoven with divinity.

[ 16 ] But theosophy, or spiritual science, shows us that what was possible in those ancient times was merely a historical phenomenon within the development of humanity. And when we ask ourselves: Are the mysteries that were possible in pre-Christian times still possible today in the same way?—then we must say: As true as all historical spiritual research shows that what has now been described did indeed exist—in the same form as it existed in pre-Christian times—it is no longer present today. The same kind of initiation that was possible in pre-Christian times is no longer possible today. Only those who are so short-sighted as to believe that the human soul is the same in all ages can believe that the spiritual path of ancient times still applies today. The path to the divine sources of the world has now become a different one! And spiritual-historical research shows us that it essentially became a different one at the very moment in which tradition places the events of Palestine. These events in Palestine mark a profound turning point in human development. Something entirely different has entered human nature in the post-Christian era than what was present in human nature in the pre-Christian era. Such a way of thinking—let us say, approaching the world through scientific thought, as is possible today—did not exist in pre-Christian antiquity. The Mysteries had not led people to the highest wisdom in the manner described merely because one wished to act in secret or to have something special for a small circle of people, but because this path was necessary for the ancient times, and because our way of thinking about the world, through the form of logic and thought, was not yet possible back then. Anyone who examines human history even a little knows that over the course of a few centuries—during the era of Greek philosophy—our thinking only slowly and gradually prepared itself and has only now been able to encompass external nature with human thought in such an admirable way. Thus, the entire form of consciousness through which we construct our worldviews today is different from that of the pre-Christian era. We should see nothing more in this fact than that human nature has changed in the post-Christian era. A meaningful consideration of human development—you will find the relevant research results in my *Secret Science*—shows us that the entire human consciousness has transformed in the course of human development. Unlike how we view things today with our senses and think about them with our intellect, the ancient people viewed and thought about things differently. Not the kind of clairvoyance described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, but a different kind of clairvoyance—dull and dreamlike—is what ancient people possessed instead of the intellectual and sensory perception of things. This is precisely the point of evolution: that an ancient clairvoyance, which in primeval times was widespread among all humanity, has given way to the way of perceiving things that we have today. The general population of all countries possessed such clairvoyant power; and the elevation of this clairvoyant power to higher levels was provided in the Mysteries. Through this, what constituted general human soul capacities was developed. Now, in the course of human development, this clairvoyant capacity has given way to what we today call the intellectual contemplation of the world. The old clairvoyance is no longer a natural way of perceiving things. But the period in which the old way of perceiving was lost lasted a long time, throughout the course of history, and reached its peak in the era we identify as the Greek or Roman cultural epoch, into which we place the event of Christ Jesus. By then, all of humanity had advanced so far in its development that the old clairvoyance had come to an end and the ancient mysteries were no longer possible. If we now ask: What took the place of the ancient mysteries?, we must first familiarize ourselves with what humanity gained through the mysteries.

[ 17 ] There were two kinds of mysteries. One kind originated, for example, in the cultural region that was later occupied by the ancient Persian people; the other kind was experienced in its purest form in Egypt and Greece. These two kinds of mysteries were quite distinct in ancient times. All mysteries aimed to lead people to an expansion of their soul powers. However, this was achieved differently in the Greek and Egyptian mysteries, and yet differently again in the Persian mysteries. What, then, was the nature of that initiation into the mysteries that was sought in Greece? — And this form essentially corresponded to what was sought in Egypt.

[ 18 ] What was to be achieved for the initiate of the Mysteries in Greece and Egypt was a transformation of his soul forces. But this transformation took place under a certain condition, and this condition must be understood above all else. It was said: In the depths of the human soul lies another, a divine human being. From the same sources from which we see rock forming into crystal, from which plants spring forth in spring, from these same sources the hidden, inner human being has also come into being. Except that the plant truly utilizes everything it has within itself, whereas the human being, as he understands himself and works with his own powers, has remained an unfinished being, and what is within him has only risen to the surface with great effort. In the Mysteries, one appealed to a spiritual, divinely inner human being, and by pointing to this inner divine human being, one also pointed to the forces within the Earth. For in the view of the Mysteries, the Earth was not merely conceived as a lifeless celestial body, as modern astronomy does, but was regarded as a spiritual planetary being. In Egypt, reference was made to the wondrous spiritual and natural forces designated by the names Isis and Osiris when one sought to contemplate the origins and sources of that which can be experienced as a revelation within the inner human being. And in Greece, one referred to the name Dionysus when one wished to point to the origin from which the inner human being arose. Therefore, the secular writers recounted that the nature and essence of things were sought, and what was found in the Greek Mysteries regarding the forces of human nature was also called the subterranean part of the human being, not the superterrestrial. One also spoke of the nature of the great demons and imagined under this term all that acts upon the earth in terms of spiritual forces. The nature of these demons was sought through what the human being was to bring forth from within himself. Then the human being was to undergo, in terms of feelings and sensations, everything he could undergo in the course of development. They were to experience what it means to descend into the depths of their own soul, to experience how a fundamental feeling dominates the entire soul being—so completely that one has no concept of it in ordinary life—the feeling of deep egoism, of the almost insurmountable self-interest within the human being. The student of the mysteries should, by fighting and overcoming everything that can be called self-interest and egoism, go through something for which we today have only an abstract word: the feeling of all-encompassing love, of compassion for all human beings and all beings. Compassion, to the extent that the human soul is capable of compassion, should take the place of self-interest. And it was clear to them: When one brings up this compassion—which initially belongs to the hidden forces of the emotional world—it draws up from the depths of the soul the divine forces that slumber there, just as a sea wave can sweep objects from the depths. And people went on to say to themselves: When a person looks out into the world through ordinary knowledge, they soon realize how powerless this person is in the face of the world; the further they seek to extend their concepts and ideas, the more powerless they find themselves—and they may ultimately despair of what can be called “knowledge.” But then something must come over him in his soul, like a feeling of emptiness, and the sensation of losing the living ground beneath his feet when he tries to encompass the world with his ideas. But with the feeling of emptiness comes fear and anxiety. That is why the Greek mystery student should, above all, unload the fear of everything unknown in the world onto his soul; so that the feeling of fear, when he develops that compassion, draws the divine powers up from his soul and he thereby learns to transform fear into awe. It was clear that this awe, this highest reverence and reverent devotion to all worldly phenomena, then penetrates all substances and concepts; and what ordinary knowledge cannot grasp, the deeper powers developed through the transformation of fear into awe can encompass.

[ 19 ] In this way, through the Greek mysteries, human beings were able to draw forth from the depths of their souls that which they knew very well lay at the bottom of their souls: the divine human being. The Greek mysteries, as well as the Isis and Osiris mysteries, worked from within the human being, thereby seeking to lead people into the spiritual world. It was a living grasp of what the “God within man” is, a true acquaintance of man with God. And immortality was regarded not merely as an abstract doctrine and philosophy, but as an experience as certain as the experience of external colors and as something experienced as surely as one experiences one’s connection with external things.

[ 20 ] But this was experienced just as certainly in the Persian or Mithraic Mysteries. Whereas in the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries the individual was led to the god through the unleashing of the powers of the soul, in the Mithraic Mysteries the individual was confronted with the world itself. So that the world did not merely act through the great, mighty nature that people usually overlook when they look out into the ordinary world, but the students of the Mithraic Mysteries saw in the most intimate nature precisely that which human cognition does not touch: The most awe-inspiring and the most magnificent forces in the natural world were presented to the initiate from the realms of the cosmos through methods that could be developed at that time. And just as the Greek mystery initiate became acquainted with a sense of awe before the great world, so the Mithraic initiate was first introduced to the terrifying and grandiose forces of nature, so that he felt infinitely small in the face of the great natural world; he stood there, and the world in its splendor and majesty made such an impression on him that, as a result of his distance from the primordial sources of existence, he had to expect: I stand here—and the world in its vastness can destroy me at any moment!

[ 21 ] These ideas were instilled in the student’s soul. The initial impulse arose from the way in which a comprehensive astronomy and a comprehensive science of external phenomena pointed to the grandeur of worldly phenomena. And what humanity further developed in the Mithraic Mysteries was then more a consequence of truthfulness, when nature, with all its details—which was scientific inquiry in the ancient sense—acted upon the soul. Just as the students of the Greek mysteries became fearless through the unleashing of the soul’s powers, so the students of the Mithraic mysteries were led to absorb the grandeur of cosmic thought into their souls; thereby they made the soul strong and courageous, and they gained an awareness of human worth and human dignity, but also of a sense of truth and fidelity, and learned to recognize that human beings must always keep themselves in check in existence. These were the achievements that emerged in particular from the Mithraic Mysteries. While we find the Greek and Egyptian mysteries widespread in the lands already indicated by their names, we see the Mithraic Mysteries spreading from the regions of Persia up to the Caspian Sea, along the Danube into our own regions, indeed as far as southern France, Spain, and England: Europe is strewn with the Mithraic Mysteries everywhere! And everywhere the Mithraic disciples were clear: When we come to know the world, something from the great world flows into us, just as the air from the atmosphere flows into us; we take in Mithra, the God, the God who permeates the world! The Mithraic disciple felt permeated by the God who lives in all worlds. And because this stirred up their energy and courage, the warriors—the soldiers in the Roman army—in particular were imbued with the service of Mithra. Both army commanders and soldiers were initiated into the Mithraic Mysteries, as they spread throughout the then-known world.

[ 22 ] On the one hand, people sought God by unleashing the powers of their own souls, fully aware that this caused something to well up from the depths of the soul; but on the other hand, they were also aware that something flowed into the soul as the essence, as the finest sap that flows through the world, when a person seeks God by surrendering to the great processes of the world. It was clear that what was found there were the primal forces of the world, that God, as it were, entered human dwellings, entered human souls through this development of the Mysteries. A real process was seen in the development of the Mysteries. Every soul was a gateway for the deity to enter into human earthly development. — But let us consider the meaning of the whole, as it has come before our eyes today: it was only a few individuals who could undergo such a development, and special preparation was necessary for this. What was given to those who underwent such preparation? They were given the knowledge that what is hidden in nature outside as well as in human nature itself flows through the world as a divine stream of consecration. That is why the development of the mysteries was also called initiation. But we have been able to point out that the development of humanity changed and that the entire initiation had to become something different. What made this change necessary? Here we come to what we must call: the mystical fact of the Christ event. And a deep examination of history shows that a more or less dim awareness of this fact existed among the early, the first Christians: that the very same thing which otherwise flowed into the human soul only through devotion to the Mysteries, to the divine foundation of the world—that which flowed in from the world as Mithras or welled up from the depths of the soul as Dionysus—also took place as a process of a unified world deity within our earthly evolution. What was otherwise sought in the Mysteries, what could not be found without the human being alienating themselves from outer life in the Mysteries, was incorporated into the Earth at a specific point in time by the deity permeating the world in such a way that no human effort was a prerequisite, but rather that the deity once poured itself into earthly existence. And this pouring forth of the deity into earthly existence meant that—even after human beings had lost the ability to penetrate the divine foundation of the world—they could approach this divine foundation in a different way. And the God who could now—not in the manner of Mithra nor in the manner of Dionysus—penetrate the human soul, who was a confluence of Mithra and Dionysus and who is at the same time deeply related to human nature, is the God who is encompassed by the name of Christ. Mithra and Dionysus were both the being who entered humanity through the event in Palestine, and Christianity was a confluence of the Mithraic and Dionysian cults! And the Hebrew people were chosen to provide the necessary vessel so that this event could take place. This people had become acquainted with both the Mithraic and the Dionysian cults, yet stood aloof from both. For the member of the Hebrew people did not feel as the Greek did, who said: As I stand here, I am a weak human being who must develop deeper powers if he wishes to penetrate the depths of his own soul. Nor did they feel as the Mithraic adherent did, who said to himself: I must allow the entire sphere of the air to act upon me, so that the deepest divine qualities of the world may unite with me! Rather, the Hebrew said to himself: What constitutes the deeper human nature, what is hidden within it, was once present in the primordial human. The ancient Hebrew people called this primordial human Adam. According to ancient Hebrew belief, what humanity can seek to connect itself with the divine was originally present in this Adam. But in the course of evolution, as humanity developed through generation after generation, people have, through the inheritance of blood, moved ever further away from the sources of existence. The fact that humanity has thereby become different, that it has not remained as it was, cast out from the sphere of divinity—this is what the ancient Hebrew people called being burdened with “original sin.” The members of the ancient Hebrew people thus perceived themselves as standing lower than the primordial human Adam, and they sought the cause of this in original sin. This is what makes humanity less than what lives in the depths of human nature. And when they can unite with the deeper forces of human nature, they are thereby connected to the forces through which they are drawn back up. Thus the member of the ancient Hebrew people felt that he had once stood higher and had lost something through the qualities bound to the blood, and therefore now stood lower. In this way, the adherent of ancient Hebrew tradition stood on a historical standpoint. What the adherent of the Mithraic Mysteries saw in all of humanity, the adherent of ancient Hebrew tradition saw in his entire people, of whom he was aware: they had lost the origin from which they had come. While, then, a kind of training of consciousness existed among the Persians, we find among the ancient Hebrew people an awareness of historical development: Adam had originally fallen into sin, had descended from the heights upon which he had stood. Therefore, this people was also best prepared for the idea: What happened at the starting point of human development and brought about a deterioration of humanity can only be undone by a historical event—what truly happens takes place in the spiritual depths of earthly existence! Thus, the adherent of Hebrew antiquity, if he truly understood the meaning of world development, was prepared to say to himself: The God—both the Mithraic God and the God who is brought forth from the depths of the human soul—can descend without humanity undergoing a process of mystery development.

[ 23 ] Thus we see how, within the ancient Hebrew people, an awareness arose—first in John the Baptist—that the very same thing handed down by the mysteries as Dionysus and Mithra is simultaneously being born in a human being. And those who now grasped this event in a deeper sense said to themselves: Just as through Adam the descent of humanity into the world came about, just as human beings are descended from an ancestor who bequeathed to them all the deeper forces that lead to sin and error, so must the starting point be created through One who descends from the spiritual worlds as the union of Mithras and Dionysus—a point toward which human beings can look when they are to rise again! While the mysteries—through the unleashing of the deeper soul forces or through the gaze toward the cosmos—developed human nature, the people of the Hebrew nation now saw in the God who had descended—who had now descended onto the historical stage as a historical being— that which the soul must look toward, toward which the soul must develop the deepest love, in which it must believe, and which the soul, when it looks toward this great model, can lead back to that from which it originated.

[ 24 ] Paul became the deepest expert on this Christianity by recognizing that, through the Christ impulse, human beings—just as they point to Adam as their physical origin—can point to Christ as their great model, through whose vision what was sought in the Mysteries can be attained, and what must be born if human beings wish to recognize their original nature. What was enclosed in the depths of the temples in the Mysteries, and what human beings could attain only through ascetic efforts, was set before them—not through external documents, but also for those who overlook the spiritual foundations and can recognize what has occurred not merely as an external but as a mystical fact: that the divinity permeating the world has appeared in a single form! This is how one had to conceive of it. What the disciples of the Mithraic Mysteries attained through the vision of the greatest exemplar was now to be attained through Christ. The Mithraic disciples attained courage, self-control, and energy—these were to be attained henceforth by those who could no longer be initiated in the sense of the ancient Mithraic Mysteries; through the sight and example of the historical Christ, what leads to this courage was now to be imprinted upon the soul.

[ 25 ] Just as in the Mithraic Mysteries the entire universe was, in a certain sense, born within the soul of the initiate, and the soul was courageously inflamed with all the inner forces of active energy, so too did something pour down at the Baptism of John that human nature can become the bearer of. And when one is imbued with the thought that human nature is capable of absorbing the deepest laws of the universe, then one has grasped, in the sight of the Baptism of John: Mithra can be born in human nature! But now it was the case that the mystery students, who understood the original meaning of Christianity, admitted: The end of the ancient mysteries has come. The God who otherwise flowed into the sacred mysteries, for whom the individual souls of the mystery students formed the gates, has flowed into earthly existence once and for all through the personality who stands at the starting point of our calendar! This is also the meaning of Paul’s view that this being can no longer be reached in the old sense as Mithra. The God has vanished in the old sense and lived within the nature of a single human being. He descended through a natural event. Thus, those who understood the rise of Christianity had to acknowledge at the same time the end of the Mithraic cult, the disappearance of the external deity of the Mithraic mysteries within human nature.

[ 26 ] And what about the Greek Dionysian Mysteries? By directing human attention to Jesus of Nazareth, in whom Mithras lived and who then passed through death, it was pointed out that Mithras—who, when souls united with him, gave those souls courage, energy, and self-control—died with the death of Jesus of Nazareth himself! The death of Mithra had to be seen as a definition within what is regarded as the death of Jesus, the Christ. But now attention was turned to the other fact: Because the god Mithra has disappeared into Jesus of Nazareth, and precisely because he has disappeared, that which humanity finds in the deepest core of nature—what it had previously attained through the Dionysian Mysteries—has become, in Jesus of Nazareth, an immortal victor over death! This is the meaning of the Resurrection in the true Christian sense, when we grasp it from a spiritual-scientific perspective. By looking to the baptism of John in the Jordan, it became clear that the old Mithra had entered into humanity once and for all. And because this human nature had won the victory over death, it had created an afterimage with which the soul could unite in the deepest love, in order to come to what truly lives in the depths of the soul—what the Greeks sought in Dionysus. In the risen Christ, one was to see the fact that when a person lives in accordance with this unique historical event, they transcend ordinary humanity.

[ 27 ] Thus, a historical event was placed at the center of world history, taking the place of what had otherwise been sought countless times in the mysteries. That human nature had become something different—that was Paul’s great surprise, and this is what lies at the heart of what is called the Damascus event. What did Paul experience before Damascus, if we look at the words of the Apostle himself? Not through external events, not through external documents, but through a purely spiritual, clairvoyant experience had he come to know that the moment had already come when what had previously only appeared within the circle of mystery students as the divine nature of the human being within the human being had now been embodied in a historical human being! That the Christ was present in a real human being was something he could never experience through an external fact. What he could experience in Palestine made no impression on him; it could not convince him that in Jesus of Nazareth the Christ—the confluence of Mithras and Dionysus—had lived. But when his spiritual vision opened before Damascus, it became clear to him that a God who could be designated by the name of Christ does not merely act in the world as a supersensible being, but that this God was once present in a human being and had triumphed over death. Therefore, he preaches that history—flowing history on earth—has been found for what was formerly only a flowing substance for the initiates. This underlies the words of Paul:

[ 28 ] But if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

[ 29 ] This was the path by which Paul—taking a detour through the Christ—came to Jesus, because he realized that something had taken place in Palestine that had previously only been experienced within the Mysteries. And, fundamentally speaking, this is still the case today; it has not changed. Because the Christ is the center of all human development and the highest model for the soul’s innermost powers, the bond established with the Christ must also be the most intimate. And just as it is required that a person must regard their own life as of little value in order to be a disciple of the Christ, so too must it seem of little value to us today that we must set aside all documents and historical records in order to come to the Christ. One ought to be grateful that there are no documents by which it can be established that there was a historical Jesus Christ; for never could documents establish that Christ is the most significant thing that has flowed into humanity.

[ 30 ] Here it becomes clear to us just how closely related Christ is to the ancient mysteries. When we look at the ancient mysteries, we have the opportunity to examine what the mystery students had to do in order to reach God in one way or another. What they experienced was something that can be called intimate soul processes. The soul had to experience certain things. For example, once it had taken the first step, once it had delved into itself, it had to experience its inner feelings and sensations in such a way that they became more vivid and intense than they normally are in human beings. Through this, the human being then became aware of how he is entrenched in a lower nature that prevents him from reaching the sources of existence. In short: through this, the human being first became aware of how the lower nature is a temptation for the upward-striving human being, and that that which has brought the human being down from the depths of existence has also become his own lower nature. This was the temptation that confronted every student of the mysteries. The moment the God awoke, the student became aware of what the lower, desire-driven nature in human beings is—a nature that spoke to him like a foreign entity, saying: “Do not follow the ethereal, airy heights of the spiritual world, but follow the coarse, material things that are close at hand!” Everyone had to go through this, so that it became clear to them how, from the ordinary point of view, everything spiritual is unreal, and how tempting everything sensual is in comparison to spiritual striving. At another stage in the development of the Mysteries, we then see how the initiate overcame these tempting forces and how, through the development of strengthened powers—courage, fearlessness, and so on—he ascended another step. All of this was clothed in specific regulations for the mystery student, and it can be sensed anew in what the external writers provided, as well as in the methods of initiation as spiritual science can present them and as they are described in the book *Secret Science*. Thus there were various methods: different ones for the Greek mysteries, different ones for the Mithraic mysteries. Ultimately, the student experienced union with what the divine human being was. But the methods for this were varied, and one can see that the most diverse initiation regulations existed in the most diverse regions.

[ 31 ] This is precisely what I sought to demonstrate in my work *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*: that what we encounter in the Gospels is nothing other than a renewal of the ancient initiation rites—the steps the disciples had to take to achieve union with the Deity. What took place outwardly unfolded in a manner similar to the course of the Mysteries. Thus, for example, the divine being who was in Jesus of Nazareth had to undergo the temptation after the Mithraic being had entered. Just as the tempter had approached the mystery school student on a small scale, so we find the tempter confronting the God who becomes human. What was true in the mysteries, we find reflected in the Gospel writings.

[ 32 ] Thus, the Gospels are a renewal of the ancient initiation accounts and the ancient initiation regulations, and the writers of the Gospels said to themselves: Since what otherwise took place only in the depths of the mysteries has now unfolded on the grand stage of world history, it may be described in the same words as those used in the initiation regulations. That is why, however, the Gospels were never intended as external biographies of the Christ-bearer. This is precisely the misunderstanding of modern Gospel research: that one seeks such an external biography of Jesus of Nazareth within them. At the time the Gospels were written, there was no thought whatsoever of providing an external biography of Jesus of Nazareth; the intention in the Gospels was to present something that could lead the human soul to truly love the great soul as the source of worldly existence. That was the purpose of the Gospels: to be paths, writings through which the soul could find Christ. And curiously enough: We find, almost up to the end of the eighteenth century, a clear awareness that the Gospels belong to such paths. In individual writings that are extraordinarily interesting, we find it stated that the Gospels, when a person allows them to take effect upon themselves, transform the soul so that the person can find the Christ. In fact, people experienced something like this by allowing the Gospels to work upon them and did not even raise the question: Are they meant to be a biography of Jesus of Nazareth? Meister Eckhart hints at this when he says: “/p”

[ 33 ] Some people want to look at God with their eyes just as they look at a cow, and they want to love God just as they love a cow. Thus they love God for outward riches and for inward comfort; but these people do not truly love God... Simple-minded people imagine they should look upon God as if He were standing there and they were here. It is not so. God and I are one in knowledge.

[ 34 ] And he said elsewhere:

[ 35 ] A master says: God became man; by this, the entire human race is exalted and honored. We may rejoice that Christ, our brother, has ascended by his own power above all the choirs of angels and sits at the right hand of the Father. This master has spoken well; but truly, I do not care much for it. What good would it do me if I had a brother who were a rich man, and I were a poor man? What good would it do me if I had a brother who were a wise man, and I were a fool? ... The heavenly Father begets his only-begotten Son in himself and in me. Why within Himself and within me? I am one with Him; and He cannot exclude Himself. In the same act, the Holy Spirit receives His being and comes from me, just as from God. Why? I am in God, and if the Holy Spirit does not receive His being from me, He does not receive it from God either. I am in no way excluded.

[ 36 ] This is what matters: that through mystical development—without external mysteries, through a pure development of the soul—human beings may, in the future, experience what was experienced in the ancient mysteries. But this is only possible because the Christ event took place, because Christ was present in a physical body. And if there were no Gospels, if there were no documents or traditions: for the one who experiences the Christ within themselves, the penetration of the inner Christ—just as it was for Paul—brings with it the certainty that at the beginning of our era, the Christ was incarnated in a physical body. Thus, Jesus can be found solely through the Christ! And a historical biography of Jesus of Nazareth can never be extracted from the Gospels; rather, the human being must rise through the proper unfolding of his soul powers to the Christ—and through the Christ to Jesus. Only then do we understand what the Gospels intended, and what was lacking in all nineteenth-century Jesus research. The image of Christ was pushed into the background in order to portray a tangible Jesus based purely on external historical documents. The Gospels were misunderstood—and thus the methods of Jesus research had to negate themselves. Thus the method of Gospel research crumbled, and precisely those methods that sought to carve out the historical image of Jesus led to its destruction.

[ 37 ] This has simultaneously cleared the way for what spiritual science seeks to achieve. It aims to reveal the deeper powers that have lain within every human being since the coming of Christ—powers that human beings can develop. Through this, the human being attains—not in the depths of externally organized mysteries, but in the quiet privacy of one’s innermost being, through the vision of what happened in Palestine and through devotion to this event—what the mystery students attained in the mysteries, what the followers of the Mithraic cult attained. By experiencing the Christ within themselves, human beings experience that which increases their courage and their energy for action, that which increases their awareness of their human dignity, so that they know how to place themselves within humanity in the right sense. And at the same time, they experience what the followers of the Greek mysteries were able to experience: universal love. For what lives in Christianity as universal love encompasses all external beings. And at the same time, they experience fearlessness and thereby know that they never need to fear, never need to despair in the face of the world, and recognize—with a sense of freedom and at the same time in humility—their devotion to the mysteries of the universe.

[ 38 ] This is what a person can come to realize when they immerse themselves in what has taken the place of the ancient mysteries: Christianity as a mystical reality. And simply through a conceptual elaboration of this fundamental idea, the historical Jesus becomes a reality for anyone who knows Christ. — It has been said in Western philosophy that a person could never see colors if they had no eyes, nor hear sounds if they had no ears; the world would then be dark and silent for them. But just as it is true that without eyes no colors and without ears no sounds can be perceived, so too is the other statement true: that without light, no eye would have come into being. Just as a human being could have no light-like perceptions without eyes, so too is it true, on the other hand, what Goethe says:

[ 39 ] Were the eye not sun-like,
It could never behold the sun,

[ 40 ] or when he says elsewhere:

[ 41 ] The eye is a creature of light!

[ 42 ] Thus, the mystical Christ within us—the Christ of whom the clairvoyant also speaks, as Paul saw him through clairvoyant power—has not always been present in human beings. In pre-Christian times, he could not be reached through any development of the mysteries, as he can be reached after the Mystery of Golgotha. For there to be an inner Christ, for the higher human being to be born, a historical Christ was necessary—the embodiment of the Christ in Jesus. And even if no documents whatsoever attested to a biography of Jesus of Nazareth, one would have to say: Just as an eye can only come into being through the action of light, so it is necessary for a mystical Christ that the real, historical Christ was there. The figure of Jesus cannot be recognized through external documents. This has long been recognized in Western development and will be recognized again. Spiritual science will shape what it can draw from its own circles in such a way that it can lead to a true knowledge of the Christ—and thus also of Jesus. And while it has become apparent that Jesus has in fact been alienated from the world, that the methods of Jesus research have dissolved into themselves, a deepening into the Christ essence will lead to a renewed recognition of the greatness of Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 43 ] The path that proceeds in such a way that Christ is first recognized through inner soul experiences truly leads, through what develops from the human soul, to an understanding of the mystical reality of Christianity and to a conception of human evolution in which the Christ event must be seen as the most significant event in human development. Thus the path leads us through Christ to Jesus. And the Christ idea will carry within itself the fruitful seeds not merely to lead humanity to the conception of a general, pantheistic world spirit, but to lead the human being to perceive his own history in this way: just as he feels his earthly existence connected with all world existence, so will he feel his history connected with a supersensible, supra-historical event. And this event is that the Christ being stands as a supersensory, mystical fact at the center of human becoming and will be recognized by the humanity of the future, independent of all external historical research and all documents. Christ will remain the strong cornerstone of human development, even if it is acknowledged that all documents fail to provide a biography of Jesus; and humanity will draw from within itself the strength to give new birth to its history—and thus also to the history of world development.