The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] These lectures are intended to provide an understanding of the Christ event insofar as it is connected with his historical appearance: with the revelation of the Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. So many questions of spiritual life are connected with this issue that, precisely because this topic has been chosen this time, we will be able to gain broad insights into the field of spiritual science and its mission; and we will be able to discuss the significance of the anthroposophical movement in particular for contemporary spiritual life on the basis of this topic. On the other hand, we will have the opportunity to learn to recognize what constitutes the content of religion—and as such must be intended for the general human community—in its relationship to what the deeper sources of spiritual life, the occult sources, the sources of esoteric science, tell us about what must underlie all religious and worldview endeavors. Much of what we will discuss will seem quite far removed from the ‘theme’ itself; yet everything will lead us back to our main task.

[ 2 ] What has just been hinted at can, however, be examined in greater detail right from the start by taking a look at the origins of both religious and occult, spiritual life in recent centuries—on the one hand to understand our present religious life, and on the other hand to deepen our spiritual scientific understanding of the entire life of the soul. For in the past few centuries, we have seen two directions in European spiritual development that have developed in the most extreme ways: on the one hand, the overstretching of the Jesus principle, and on the other hand, no longer an overstretching, but the most careful, conscientious adherence to the Christ principle. When we set these two currents of the past centuries before our souls, we see in the overemphasis of the Jesus principle a great aberration, a dangerous aberration in the spiritual life of the past centuries—and on the other hand, a profoundly significant movement that seeks the right paths everywhere and carefully avoids wrong paths. Thus, even in regard to this assessment of two spiritual movements that are entirely different from one another, we must count one among the grave errors and the other among the most earnest endeavors toward the truth. The one movement, which must also interest us in the context of a Christian spiritual-scientific perspective, and of which we may speak as an in some ways extraordinarily dangerous aberration, is that which in the outer exoteric life is called Jesuitism; and in Jesuitism we have a dangerous exaggeration of the Jesus principle. And in what has existed for centuries within Europe as Rosicrucianism, we have an intimate Christ movement that carefully seeks the paths of truth everywhere. Much has been said about Jesuitism in exoteric life at all times, ever since a Jesuit current has existed within Europe, and therefore it should also be of interest to those who wish to study spiritual life from its deeper sources, to what extent Jesuitism constitutes a dangerous overstretching of the Jesus principle. However, if we wish to address a true characterization of Jesuitism, we must first familiarize ourselves from a certain perspective with how the three main principles of all world development—which are hinted at in the most varied ways in different worldviews—are already played out practically within our lives, even in an exoteric sense. Today, let us first set aside the deeper meaning and characterization of the three fundamental currents of all life and development, and simply bring them before our soul as they appear to the outer eye.

[ 3 ] First, there is that which we may call our inner life, insofar as it is a life of knowledge. Whatever else a person may say against the abstract nature of one-sided knowledge or a one-sided pursuit of truth, whatever they may say against the alienation from life found in certain scientific, philosophical, or theosophical endeavors — the person who truly becomes clear in their soul about what they want and are capable of wanting knows, nevertheless, that what can be encompassed by the word “knowledge” belongs to the most deeply rooted aspirations of our inner life. For whether we seek knowledge through thinking or more through sensation, through feeling—knowledge always signifies an orientation toward everything that surrounds us in the world, and also toward ourselves. So that we must ask ourselves whether we wish to be content with the simplest experiences of the soul, or whether we wish to engage in the most complex inquiries into the mysteries of existence: For us, knowledge does indeed signify, first and foremost, the most significant question of life. For through knowledge we essentially form the image of the content of the world from which we live, from which our entire soul is nourished. We must include even the very first sensory impression and indeed all sensory life within the realm of knowledge, as well as the highest abstractions of concepts and ideas. But we must also count among knowledge what drives us in our souls to distinguish, let us say, between the beautiful and the ugly. For even if it is true in a certain sense that there is no accounting for taste, it nevertheless constitutes knowledge when one has acquired a judgment of taste and can decide between the beautiful and the ugly. And we must also perceive our moral impulses—what drives us to do good and refrain from evil—as moral ideas, as knowledge, or as emotional drives to do one thing and refrain from the other. Indeed, even what we call our conscience, however vague the impulses it may trigger, also belongs to what is encompassed by the word “knowledge.” In short, what is initially conscious to us—the world, whether it is a world of Maya or of reality, the world in which we live consciously, everything that is conscious to us—we can encompass in the spiritual realm with the term “life of knowledge.”

[ 4 ] But every person must also admit that, as it were, beneath the surface of this spiritual life that we encompass with our understanding, there lies something else; that our inner life reveals to us, even in our everyday existence, a multitude of things that do not belong to our conscious life. We can first point out how we allow our soul life to be reborn anew each morning when we wake up, strengthened and refreshed from sleep, and how we must acknowledge that during sleep, that is, in the unconscious, we have gained something for our soul life that cannot fall within the realm of our cognition or our conscious life, where our soul operates rather under the guidance of the conscious. But even with regard to our waking daily life, we must admit that we are driven by drives, instincts, and forces that, while they do send their ripples into the realm of the conscious, operate beneath the conscious and have their essence there. We become aware that they operate beneath the conscious realm when they rise to the surface that separates our conscious life from the subconscious. And fundamentally, moral life also reveals to us the existence of such a subconscious soul life, for we see this or that ideal being born within us in this moral life. One need only have a little self-knowledge to realize that such ideals do indeed arise in our soul life, but that we by no means always know how our great moral ideals are connected with the deepest questions of existence—that is to say, how they are present in the will of God, in which they must ultimately be rooted. It is as if our entire inner life could truly be compared to what takes place in the depths of the sea. These depths of the sea of the soul cast their waves up to the surface, and what is cast up into the airspace—to which we can compare our normal conscious inner life—is then brought to consciousness, to knowledge. But all conscious life is rooted in a subconscious soul life.

[ 5 ] Fundamentally, the entire development of humanity can only be understood if one acknowledges the existence of such a subconscious inner life. For what do all the advances in spiritual life mean other than that what has long been living beneath the surface is brought up from the subconscious of the soul life, but only takes shape once it is brought up. For example, when an inventive idea takes the form of the impulse for a discovery. We must acknowledge the subconscious life of the soul, which exists within us just as much as the conscious, as a second element of our soul life.

[ 6 ] If we, in a certain sense, place this subconscious life of the soul within what is initially unknown—not unknowable—we must set a third element against it. This third element becomes readily apparent even through external, exoteric observation, when one considers: If one directs the gaze of the senses, or of the intellect, or even of the rest of the spiritual life outward, one learns to recognize various things. But upon closer reflection on all cognition, one must nevertheless admit that behind what one recognizes about the entire world, something else lies hidden—not something unknowable, but something that, in every period of time, must be called the not-yet-known. And this not-yet-known, which lies beneath the surface of the known—as in the mineral kingdom, as in the plant and animal kingdoms—belongs both to nature outside and to ourselves. It belongs to us insofar as we take in and process the substances and forces of the external world within our physical organization; and insofar as we have a part of nature within us, we also have a part of nature’s unknown within us. Thus, in the world in which we live, we must distinguish a threefold division: our conscious spiritual life, that is, what enters into consciousness; then that which lies beneath the threshold of consciousness as our subconscious soul life; and that which lives within us as an unrecognized natural life and, at the same time, as an unrecognized human life itself—as a part of the great, unrecognized nature.

[ 7 ] This triad arises directly from a meaningful observation of the world. And if one sets aside all dogmatic assertions, sets aside all philosophical or theosophical traditions—insofar as these are clothed in conceptual definitions or expressed in schemes—and asks: How has the human spirit always expressed the fact that the triad just described is present not merely in its surroundings, but in the entire world to which it itself belongs? Then one must say: humanity expressed it by calling that which reveals itself on the horizon of consciousness the “spirit”; but that which acts in the subconscious life of the soul and only casts up its waves from this subconscious life of the soul, he designated as the Son or the Logos. And that which belongs both to nature, insofar as it is initially unrecognized, and to that part of our own being which is of the same nature as nature, the human spirit has always designated—because it sensed that this constitutes the third in relation to the other two—as the Father-principle. Alongside what has now been said regarding the Spirit, Son, and Father principles, the other distinctions we have always made naturally apply as well, and likewise, the distinctions made in this or that worldview have their justification. But one could say that the most popular concept of this distinction arises when we set before us what has now been characterized.

[ 8 ] Now let us ask ourselves: How can we best characterize the transition between that which belongs to the spirit—that is, what directly influences conscious soul life—and the subconscious soul life, which belongs to the Son-principle? We can best grasp this transition when we realize that it is precisely into the ordinary spiritual life of the human being—into consciousness—that those elements rise clearly and distinctly from the subconscious which we must designate as the elements of the will, in contrast to the elements of imagination and feeling. One need only interpret the biblical saying correctly: “The spirit is willing,” because this implies that everything grasped by consciousness belongs to the spiritual realm— “but the flesh is weak,” by which is meant everything that lies more in the subconscious. With regard to the nature of the will, a person need only reflect on what rises up from the subconscious and what enters our conscious soul life only when we—after the waves have risen from the lower sea of soul life—form conscious concepts about it. Only when we transform what is rooted in the elements of soul life as dark, driving soul forces into concepts and ideas does it become the content of the spirit; otherwise, it remains within the realm of the principle of the Son. And as the will surges up into the life of imagination through feeling, we see quite clearly before us the breaking of the waves from the sea of the subconscious into the conscious. Therefore, we can say to ourselves: In the triad of soul life, we have in the two elements of imagination and feeling something that belongs to conscious soul life; but feeling already descends into the realm of the will; and the closer we come to the impulses of the will, to the life of the will, the further we descend into the subconscious, into those dark realms into which we descend completely when consciousness is entirely extinguished in the deep, dreamless life of sleep.

[ 9 ] The genius of language is often far more advanced than the conscious human mind and therefore describes things in a way that would likely be described quite incorrectly if humans could fully master language through consciousness. For example, certain feelings are expressed in language in such a way that the relationship between the feeling and the will is already expressed in the word itself, so that we do not mean an impulse of the will at all, but only an emotional content, and yet we use the word “will” in language; precisely because the genius of language applies the word “will” to certain deeper feelings of which one is no longer fully aware. This is the case, for example, when we speak of “reluctance.” There is no need to have the impulse to do this or that; it is not at all necessary for the transition to the will to be made. It is then expressed in the connection between deeper feelings, of which one is no longer fully aware, and the realm of the will in the subconscious life of the soul. Because the element of the will descends into the realm of the subconscious life of the soul, we must recognize that this realm of the will must stand in a completely different relationship to the human being and his individual personal being than the realm of cognition, than the realm of the spirit. And when we then use our distinguishing terms “Spirit” and “Son,” we can say: We can awaken within ourselves the intuition that the human being must relate to the Spirit differently than to the Son. How is this to be understood?

[ 10 ] It is easy to understand even in exoteric life. Certainly, the realm of knowledge is discussed in the most varied ways, but one must say that if people can only agree on the concepts and ideas they formulate in the realm of knowledge, disputes regarding questions of knowledge will cease more and more. I have often emphasized that we no longer argue about matters of mathematics because we have fully brought them into consciousness, and that in the matters about which we do argue, we have not yet brought them into consciousness, but still allow our subconscious drives, instincts, and passions to come into play. This already suggests that the realm of knowledge involves something more generally human than the subconscious. When we encounter another person, facing them in the most varied circumstances, we must say: the realm of conscious spiritual life is something through which understanding between human beings must be possible. And a healthy soul life expresses itself in the longing and hope of being able to communicate with the other person about the matters of spiritual life, of conscious soul life. It would be a sign of unhealthiness in the soul life if one were to lose hope of being able to communicate with the other person about the matters of knowledge, of conscious spiritual life. In contrast, the element of will and everything in the subconscious reveals itself as something into which, when it confronts us in another person, we should not, in essence, interfere at all, but rather regard it as the innermost sanctuary of the other human being. One need only consider how uncomfortable it is for a healthy soul life to witness the will of another being suppressed. One must realize that it is not merely an unaesthetic but a morally uncomfortable sight when another person’s conscious soul life is shut down through hypnosis or other violent means; when one sees the will of one personality directly exerting an effect on the will of another. The only healthy approach is to exert any influence on another person’s will solely through understanding. Understanding should be the means by which one soul communicates with another. What one person wills should first be translated into understanding, then work its way into the other’s understanding, and only then, through the circuitous path of understanding, touch the other’s will. Only this can appear satisfying in the highest, most ideal sense of a healthy spiritual life, and any kind of forceful influence of will upon will must evoke an uncomfortable impression.

[ 11 ] In other words: human nature, insofar as it is healthy, to develop community life in the realm of the spirit and to value and respect the realm of the subconscious—insofar as it expresses itself in the human organism—as an inviolable sanctuary that is to rest within the personality, within the individuality of each person, and which is to be approached only through the gateway of conscious knowledge. At least this is how a modern consciousness, one belonging to our age, must feel if it knows itself to be healthy. We shall see in later lectures whether this has been the case throughout all periods of human development. But what has now been said can enable us to clearly recognize, at least for our present time, what lies outside us and what lies within us. This is connected to the fact that, fundamentally, the realm of the Son—all that we designate as the Son or Logos—must be awakened in each and every one of us as an individual matter, as a wholly personal matter; and that the common realm in which work can be done from person to person is the realm of the Spirit.

[ 12 ] We see what has just been said expressed in the most significant and magnificent way in all the accounts that the New Testament offers us concerning the figure of Christ Jesus and his first disciples and followers. We see—and we can certainly infer this from everything we can demonstrate about the Christ event—how, in essence, the followers who had flocked to Christ Jesus during his lifetime were led astray when he met his end on the cross; with that death which, in the land where the Christ event took place, was regarded as the only possible atonement for the gravest crimes within human life. And even if the death on the cross did not affect everyone in the same way as it did Saul, who later became Paul—who, as Saul, had initially concluded: he cannot be the Messiah or the Christ who dies such a death! — even if the death on the cross made, one might say, a milder impression on the other disciples: it is nevertheless plain to see that the Gospel writers even intended to evoke this impression, that Jesus Christ had, in a certain sense, lost all the effect he had had on the hearts of those around him by having to suffer a shameful death on the cross.

[ 13 ] But we see something else connected with this news: that the influence which Christ Jesus had lost—something we will need to characterize in greater detail in these lectures—returned after the Resurrection. Whatever we may think of the Resurrection today, we will have to discuss it in the context of occult science in the coming days, and then one thing will become clear if we simply allow the Gospel accounts to take effect upon us: that for those of whom it is said that he appeared to them after the Resurrection, the Christ became present in a very special, entirely different way than had previously been the case. I have already indicated, in my discussion of the Gospel of John, how it would be impossible for an acquaintance of Jesus of Nazareth not to have recognized him after three days, and to have mistaken him for another person, if he had not appeared in a transformed form. The Gospels certainly intend to evoke this impression: that Christ appeared in a different form. But the Gospels also wish to suggest something else: that something was necessary within the human soul to allow the transformed Christ to take effect upon the human soul, namely, a certain receptivity. To act upon this receptivity, it was not enough for something belonging merely to the realm of the spirit to act; rather, the direct sight of the presence of the Christ Being had to act. If we ask ourselves what is involved here, we must say: when a human being stands before us, what acts upon us is far more than what we take into our consciousness. At every moment when a human being or another being influences us, subconscious elements act upon our soul life; such subconscious elements that the other being generates indirectly through consciousness, but which it can generate only by standing before us in its reality as a being. What Christ initially brought about from being to being after the so-called Resurrection was something that arose from the disciples’ unconscious soul forces into their inner life: an acquaintance with the Son. Hence also the difference in the descriptions of the risen Christ; hence also the variety of characteristics regarding how Christ worked upon one person or another, how he appeared to this or that individual, depending on the nature of one or the other. They are effects of the Christ-being upon the subconscious of his disciples’ souls; hence, too, they are entirely individual, and we must not take offense at the fact that these apparitions are described to us not uniformly, but in manifold ways.

[ 14 ] But if what Christ was to become for the world was to bring something in common to all people, then not only did this individual effect—this effect of the Son—have to emanate from Christ, but the element of the Spirit that can form the commonality in human life also had to be renewed by Christ. This is characterized by the fact that Christ, after having worked upon the Logos nature of human beings, sends the Spirit in the form of the renewed or ‘Holy’ Spirit. This creates the element of commonality, which is characterized by the statement: the disciples began to speak in various languages when they had received the Spirit. This points to the commonality that lies in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And another aspect indicates how this differs from the mere imparting of the Son’s power; for the Acts of the Apostles recounts how certain people, to whom the apostles had come, had already received John’s baptism—and yet—as symbolically indicated in the Acts of the Apostles by the reference to the laying on of hands—they first had to receive the Spirit. Therefore, we must say: It is precisely in the characterization of the Christ event that attention is sharply drawn to the difference between that effect which we must designate as the actual Christ effect—which acts upon the subconscious aspects of the soul and must therefore have a personal, inner character—and the spiritual elements that represent something communal.

[ 15 ] Those who have adopted the name of the Rosicrucians have sought to observe this phase of Christian development with the utmost care, as far as human frailty allows. They have sought to observe everywhere, with the utmost care, that even in the highest regions of initiation, nothing should be worked upon other than what is available to all human beings in the course of human evolution; that only the spirit was to be worked upon. The initiation of the Rosicrucians was a spiritual initiation. It therefore never became a will-initiation; for the human will was something regarded as a sanctuary in the innermost depths of the soul. The human being was therefore led up to those initiations that were to guide him through the stages of imagination, inspiration, and intuition—but only to the extent that he might recognize within himself that which was to be brought about through the development of the spiritual element. There was to be no direct influence on the element of will. Let us not confuse this with indifference toward the will. The point was precisely that, by excluding the direct influence on the will, the purest spiritual influence was imparted indirectly, through the spirit. As we communicate with another human being about entering the path of spiritual knowledge, light and warmth are sent forth from the spiritual path, which can then also kindle the will; but always indirectly through the spirit, never otherwise. Thus, we find that aspect of Christian essence observed in Rosicrucianism in the most eminent sense, which is expressed in twofold terms: on the one hand, in the Son-element, in the Christ-effect that penetrates deeply into the human subconscious; and then in the spiritual influence that extends to everything that is to fall within the horizon of our consciousness. We must, of course, carry the Christ within our will; but the way in which people are to understand the Christ in life can, in the Rosicrucian sense, lie only in the ever-expanding, ever-deepening manner of conscious soul life that penetrates into the occult.

[ 16 ] Those commonly referred to as Jesuits took the opposite path in response to certain other intellectual currents within Europe. This is the radical, fundamental difference between the spiritual path that can rightly be called Christian and the Jesuit spiritual path, which one-sidedly overstretches the Jesus principle: that the Jesuit path intends to act directly upon the will everywhere, seeking to grasp the will directly and immediately everywhere. This is already significantly expressed in the way in which the disciple of Jesuitism is trained. Jesuitism is therefore not to be taken lightly; it is not merely exoteric but also esoteric, because it is rooted in the esoteric. But it is not rooted in the spiritual life poured out through the symbol of the Pentecost celebration; rather, it seeks to take root directly in the Jesus-element of the Son—that is, in the will—and thereby it overstretches the Jesus-element of the will. This will become clear when we examine what must be called the esoteric aspect of Jesuitism: the various spiritual exercises. How are these structured? The significant point is that every single student of Jesuitism undergoes exercises that lead into the occult life, but into the will, and subject the will within the occult realm to strict discipline—one might say training. And this is the significant point: that this discipline of the will springs not merely from the surface of life, but from a deeper level, because the initiate is led into the occult—but precisely in the direction indicated.

[ 17 ] If we now set aside the prayer exercises that serve as preparation for all Jesuit esoteric practices and turn our attention to these occult exercises themselves—at least in their main aspects—we must say: First, the initiate had to evoke a vivid image of Christ Jesus as the King of the World—note well: an image! And no one was admitted to the actual degrees of Jesuitism who had not undergone such exercises and who had not experienced in his soul the transformation that such spiritual exercises signify for the whole human being. But these imaginative visions of Christ Jesus as the King of the World had to be preceded by something else. There the person must imagine—and indeed in deep solitude and seclusion—the image of humanity as it is created into the world and falls into sin, and thus into the possibility of the most terrible punishments. And it is strictly prescribed how the image of such a human being, when left to himself, must fall prey to the torments of every possible punishment. The prescriptions are extraordinarily strict; and without other concepts and ideas entering his soul, the image of the human being forsaken by God and exposed to the most terrible punishments must live continually in the soul of the future Jesuit, along with the feeling: That is me, in that I have entered the world and forsaken God and exposed myself to the possibility of the most terrible punishments! — This must evoke fear of being forsaken by God, revulsion toward humanity as it is by its very nature. Then, in a further act of imagination, the image of the rejected, God-forsaken human being is to be confronted by the image of the merciful God, who then becomes Christ, and through his deeds on earth atones for what humanity has wrought by abandoning the divine path. The imagination of the God-forsaken human being is to be countered by all that is merciful and loving in the essence of Christ Jesus, to whom alone it is attributable that humanity is not exposed to all the possibilities of punishment that affect the soul. And just as vividly as the feeling of contempt for straying from the divine path must first take root in the soul of the Jesuit student, so must the feeling of humility and contrition toward Christ now take hold within him. Once these two emotional states have been evoked in the pupil, the soul must then live for several weeks in strict spiritual exercises, picturing in the imagination all the details of the scenes from the life of Jesus—from birth to death on the cross and on to the Resurrection. And everything that can arise in the soul will then arise when the student lives in such strict seclusion—with the exception of necessary mealtimes—and allows nothing to affect the soul except the images that the Gospel depicts of the merciful life of Jesus. But this is not merely presented in thoughts and concepts; rather, it must act upon the soul through vivid, rich imaginings.

[ 18 ] Only those who understand how the human soul is transformed by the imaginations that are at work with such vitality also know that, under such conditions, the soul is indeed transformed into something else. And indeed, because such imaginations are one-sided in the most intense way—extending first to sinful human beings, second to the solely merciful God, and then only to the images of the New Testament—they, through the law of polarity, actually give rise to a strengthened will. Thus, these images have an immediate effect; for any reflection and so on regarding these images must necessarily be excluded. There is only a holding fast to the imaginations as they have just been characterized.

[ 19 ] What follows is this: In the subsequent exercises, Christ Jesus—and now one can say, no longer the Christ, but exclusively Jesus—is presented as the universal King of the worlds, and in this way the Jesus element is overshadowed. Jesus is merely an element of this world. For in that the Christ had to be incarnated in a human body, the purely spiritual did indeed take part in the physical world; but this participation in the physical world is counterbalanced by the monumental and significant words: “My kingdom is not of this world!” One can overstep the Jesus element by making Jesus a king of this world, by making him what he would have become had he not resisted the tempter who wanted to give him “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendors.” Then Jesus of Nazareth would have had to become a king who, unlike the other kings, who all possess only a part of the earth, would have had the whole earth as his domain. So imagine this king portrayed in such a way, his kingly power so exalted that the whole earth belongs to his kingdom: then one would indeed have presented him in that image which must now follow the other spiritual exercises, which have already sufficiently strengthened the will of the Jesuit student’s own personality. And to prepare this image of ‘King Jesus,’ this ruler over all the kingdoms of the earth, one must visualize in one’s imagination: Babylon and the plain surrounding Babylon, as a living image, and enthroned on the Babylonian field, Lucifer, with the banner of Lucifer. This image must be visualized with great precision, for it is a powerful vision: King Lucifer with his banner and his hosts of Luciferian angels, seated amid fire and billowing smoke, as he sends out his angels to conquer the kingdoms of the earth. And the entire danger emanating from the “banner of Lucifer” must first be visualized on its own, without casting a glance toward Christ Jesus. The soul must be completely absorbed in the visualization of the danger emanating from the banner of Lucifer. The soul must learn to perceive as the greatest danger of earthly existence that which would be conjured up if the banner of Lucifer were to triumph. And once this image has taken effect, the other image, the “Banner of Christ,” must take its place. To this end, the student must imagine: Jerusalem and the plain around Jerusalem, King Jesus, his hosts around him, and the image of how he sends out his hosts, how he overcomes and drives away the hosts of Lucifer and makes himself King of the whole earth—the victory of the banner of Christ over the banner of Lucifer!

[ 20 ] These are the strengthening imaginations for the will that are presented to the soul of the Jesuit pupil. This is what completely transforms his will, making him such that, in fact, within this will—because he has been raised in an occult manner—there is a renunciation of all else, and a devotion to the idea: King Jesus must become the ruler of the earth! And we, who belong to his army, must employ everything that makes him the ruler on earth. This we vow, we who belong to the army gathered on the plain of Jerusalem, facing the army of Lucifer on the plain of Babylon. And the greatest shame for a soldier of King Jesus is to desert the flag!

[ 21 ] When condensed into a single act of will, this is something that can indeed give the will tremendous strength. If we wish to characterize it, we must ask: What, exactly, has been directly affected in the life of the soul? The element that is to be regarded as the directly sacred, into which one must not interfere: the element of the will! To the extent that this training in Jesuitism intervenes in the element of the will—by Jesus intervening fully in the element of the will—to that extent the concept of “Jesuitism” is stretched to the most dangerous degree—dangerous because it makes the will so strong that it can also act directly upon the will of another. For where the will becomes so strong through imaginations—that is, through occult means—it also acquires the ability to act directly upon others. Hence, too, all the other occult paths to which such a will may resort.

[ 22 ] Thus we see two currents, among many others, emerging in recent centuries: one that has overshadowed the Jesus element and sees only in King Jesus the sole ideal of Christianity—and the other that focuses solely on the Christ element and carefully distinguishes what might go beyond it; which has therefore been slandered in many ways because it holds fast to the belief that Christ sent the Spirit so that Christ might, through the Spirit, make his way into the hearts and minds of human beings. There is scarcely a greater contrast in the cultural development of the past centuries than that between Jesuitism and Rosicrucianism, because Jesuitism contains nothing of what Rosicrucianism regards as the highest ideal for judging human worth and human dignity; and because Rosicrucianism has always sought to guard itself against any influx of what can even in the weakest sense be described as a Jesuit element.

[ 23 ] By this I wanted to show how even such a lofty element as the Jesus principle can be overstretched and thus become dangerous; and how it is necessary to immerse oneself in the depths of the Christ essence if one wishes to understand how the strength of Christianity must lie precisely in the fact that human dignity and human worth are held in the highest esteem; that nowhere is one allowed to stumble in with clumsy steps into what the human being must regard as his innermost sanctuary. That is why Christian mysticism is so challenged by the Jesuit element—and Rosicrucianism to the highest degree—because it is felt that true Christianity is sought elsewhere than where merely the King Jesus plays a role. But through the imaginations hinted at, the will has become so strong that even the opposing objections of the spirit can be overcome by this will, which is attained through the spiritual exercises described.