The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we attempted to describe the path that can still be taken today—and which, in earlier times, could be taken from human exoteric consciousness to Christ. We will now also touch briefly on the esoteric path—that is, the path that can lead to the Christ in such a way that the Christ is found within the supersensible worlds.

[ 2 ] First of all, it should be noted that this esoteric path to Christ Jesus was, in essence, also the path of the evangelists—those who wrote the Gospels. For although the writer of the Gospel of John saw for himself a large part of what is depicted in his Gospel—as you can see from the presentation of the Gospel of John in the corresponding cycle—we must nevertheless also say of him that it was not the main thing for him merely to depict what he remembered; for that actually provided only those small, precise details by which, as we have seen, we are particularly surprised in the Gospel of John. But the great, majestically towering features of the Saviour’s work, of the Mystery of Golgotha, this Gospel writer also drew from his clairvoyant consciousness. Therefore we can say: just as the Gospels are actually revitalized initiation rites—as is also evident from the book *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*—so, on the other hand, they have become what they are precisely because the Gospel writers, on their esoteric path, were able to form a picture from the supersensible world of what took place in Palestine and led to the Mystery of Golgotha. Anyone who, from the Mystery of Golgotha down to our own day, has wished to attain a supersensible experience of the Christ event has had to allow the following to take effect upon them: what you will find described in the corresponding lecture cycles—which now actually form an essential part of our spiritual scientific work—as the seven stages of our Christian initiation: the washing of the feet, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the mystical death, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension. Today we want to clarify what the student can achieve by allowing this Christian initiation to take effect within them.

[ 3 ] Let us clarify the process of Christian initiation; let us look right away at the very first thing it involves. It is not done—as you can see for yourselves if you go through the relevant cycles—as in that incorrect initiation mentioned in the first lecture of this cycle; but rather in such a way that the general human feelings are to take effect first, which then lead to the imagination of the foot-washing itself. Thus, the image from the Gospel of John is not first visualized; rather, the person seeking Christian initiation first attempts to live for a longer period of time with certain feelings and sensations. I have often characterized this by saying that the person concerned should look to the plant that rises from the mineral soil, that takes in the substances of the mineral kingdom and yet rises above this mineral kingdom as a higher being than the mineral is. If this plant could speak and feel, it would have to bow down to the mineral kingdom and say: Although I have been destined within the laws of the worlds to a higher level than you, mineral, you give me the possibility of existence. Although you are, in the order of beings, initially a lower being than I am, I owe my existence to you, lower being, and I bow before you in humility. — In the same way, the animal would have to bow down to the plant, even though the plant is a lower being than the animal, and say: “To you I owe my existence; I acknowledge this in humility and bow before you.” — And so every being that ascends must bow down to the others standing below it; and even those who have climbed a spiritual ladder to a higher level must bow down to the beings who alone made this possible for them. Now, whoever fully permeates themselves with the feeling of humility toward the lower, whoever completely incorporates this feeling into their being and allows it to live within their being for months, perhaps even years, will see that it spreads throughout their organism and permeates them to such an extent that they experience the transformation of this feeling into an imagination. And this imagination consists precisely in the scene described in the Gospel of John as the washing of the feet, when Christ Jesus, who is the head of the Twelve, bends down to those who stand below him in the order of the physical world here, and in humility acknowledges that he owes the possibility of ascent to those who are beneath him, and acknowledges before the Twelve: Just as the animal owes to the plant, so I owe to you what I have been able to become in the physical world. — Whoever allows this feeling to permeate them now arrives not only at that image of the washing of the feet, but also at a very specific sensation, the sensation of water washing over one’s feet. The person concerned may then feel this for weeks on end, and this would be an outward sign of how deeply such a world of feeling—universally human and yet elevating human beings beyond themselves—is imprinted upon our being.

[ 4 ] Furthermore, we have seen that one can experience what leads to the vision of the scourging if we vividly imagine: Many sufferings and pains will still befall me in this world; indeed, sufferings and pains can come from all sides; ultimately, no one is spared them. But I will steel my will so that the sufferings and pains, the lashes of the scourge, that come from the world may strike me from all sides; I will stand upright and bear my fate as it unfolds; for if things had not turned out as I have lived through them so far, I would not have been able to develop to the height to which I have come. — When the person concerned makes this his own feeling and lives with it, he actually feels something like stabs and wounds, like lashes against his own skin, and the imagination arises: as if the person concerned were beside himself and saw himself being scourged after the example of Christ Jesus. Thus, following this example, one can experience the crowning with thorns, the mystical death, and so on. This has been described many times.

[ 5 ] What does one achieve who endeavors within oneself to experience, first the four stages and, if karma is favorable, the remaining ones as well—that is, all seven stages of Christian initiation? From the descriptions themselves, you can see that the entire ladder of sensations we go through is meant, on the one hand, to strengthen and invigorate us and to transform us into a completely different nature, so that we feel we stand strong, vigorous, and free in the world, yet are also capable of every act of selfless love. But this is meant, in a profound sense, to become our new nature in Christian initiation. For what is to happen there?

[ 6 ] Perhaps it has not yet dawned on all of you who have read the earlier elementary cycles and thereby encountered the Christian initiation with its seven stages that the intensity of the sensations one is to experience during this process truly affects the physical body. For through the strength and intensity with which we experience these sensations, we feel as if water were first washing over our feet, as if wounds were being inflicted upon us; we truly feel something akin to thorns being driven into our heads; we truly feel all the pains and sufferings of the crucifixion. We must feel this before we can feel the experiences of the mystical death, the burial, and the resurrection, as they have indeed been described. If one does not go through these sensations with sufficient intensity, they certainly have the effect of making us strong and loving in the true sense of the word, but what is incorporated into us there can only reach as far as the etheric body. But when we begin to feel it right down into our physical body—our feet as if washed by water, our body as if covered with wounds—then we have driven these sensations more deeply into our nature and have achieved that they have penetrated as far as the physical body. They do indeed penetrate as far as the physical body; for the stigmata emerge—the blood-soaked marks of the wounds of Christ Jesus; that is to say: we drive the sensations into the physical body and know that even within the physical body the sensations unfold their power; we thus know that we feel ourselves seized by our being more than, say, merely the astral body and the etheric body. It can thus essentially be characterized as follows: through such a process of mystical sensations, we work our way into our physical body. When we do this, we are doing nothing less than preparing ourselves in our physical body to gradually receive the phantom that emanates from the tomb on Golgotha. We therefore work into our physical body in order to make it so alive that it feels an affinity, a force of attraction, toward the phantom that has risen from the grave on Golgotha.

[ 7 ] I would like to make a brief aside here. In spiritual science, one must indeed get used to the fact that one is gradually introduced to the mysteries and truths of the universe. And anyone who is not willing to take their time in the sense described in the course of these lectures—that we must wait for the corresponding truths—will not make much progress. Of course, people would like to have everything related to spiritual science all at once, preferably in a single book or lecture series. But it doesn’t work that way. And here you have an example of why it doesn’t work that way. How long has it been since, in an earlier lecture series, the Christian initiation was described for the first time, showing how it proceeds, and how the human being actually works through the feelings that are active in his soul, right down into his physical body? Today, for the first time, it is possible—because everything that was said in the preceding cycles were elements for understanding the Mystery of Golgotha—that we can speak of how the human being, through the corresponding emotional experiences of Christian initiation, matures to receive the Phantom that has risen from the tomb of Golgotha. We had to wait until the union of the subjective with the objective could be found, for which many lectures had to precede. Thus, even today, some things can only be hinted at as half-truths. Whoever has the patience to walk with us, whether in this or another incarnation, depending on their karma; whoever has seen how it was possible to ascend from the description of the mystical path in the Christian sense to the description of the objective fact of what the true meaning of this Christian initiation actually is, will also see that even higher truths will be brought to light through spiritual science in the course of the coming years or the next world age.

[ 8 ] This is how we see the purpose and goal of Christian initiation. Through what has been characterized as Rosicrucian initiation, and through whatever form of initiation a person can experience today, the same result is now achieved in a certain way, albeit by slightly different means: that a bond of attraction is created between the human being, insofar as he is embodied in a physical body, and that which, as the actual archetype of the physical body, has risen from the tomb of Golgotha. Now, however, we know from the beginning of this lecture series that we stand at the starting point of a world epoch in which an event must be expected that will not take place on the physical plane as the event of Golgotha did, but will take place in the higher world, in the supersensible world, yet which stands in a precise and correct connection with the event of Golgotha. While the latter was intended to restore to humanity the actual physical body of forces—the phantom that has degenerated since the beginning of Earth’s evolution—for which a series of events was necessary at the very beginning of our calendar, events that actually took place on the physical plane, what must now happen does not require an event on the physical plane. An incarnation of the Christ Being in a physical human body could only happen once in the course of Earth’s evolution. And it simply means not understanding the Christ Being if one can claim a repetition of the incarnation of this Being. But that which takes place and belongs to a supersensible world—which can only be observed in a supersensible world—has been characterized by the words: “Christ becomes the Lord of Karma for humanity.” This means: the order of karmic affairs will be brought about in the future through Christ; more and more, the people of the future will feel: “I pass through the gate of death with my karmic account.” On one side stand my good, wise, and beautiful “deeds,” my wise, beautiful, good, and sensible thoughts—on the other side stands all that is evil, bad, stupid, foolish, and ugly. But the one who, in the future, will hold the office of judge for the incarnations that are now to follow in human evolution, in order to bring order to this karmic account of humanity—that is the Christ! —And we must imagine this in the following way:

[ 9 ] After we have passed through the gate of death, we will be reincarnated at a later time. Opportunities must now arise for us through which our karma can be balanced; for every person must reap what they have sown. Karma remains a just law. But what the karmic law is meant to fulfill is not intended solely for the individual human being. Karma does not merely balance out egoism; rather, the balancing for each person should occur in such a way that karmic equilibrium fits into general world affairs in the best possible manner. We must balance our karma in such a way that we can promote the progress of the entire human race on Earth in the best possible way. For this, we need enlightenment; this requires not only the general knowledge that karmic fulfillment must occur for our deeds, because for a deed this or that karmic fulfillment could occur, which may be a balancing act, But since one might be more useful and the other less useful for the general progress of humanity, we must choose those thoughts, feelings, or sensations that will work off our karma and at the same time be useful to the overall progress of humanity. Aligning our karmic balancing with the general karma of the Earth, with the general progress of humanity—this will fall to the Christ in the future. And this essentially takes place during the time in which we live between death and a new birth; but it will also be prepared in the epoch toward which we are moving, at the very threshold of which we stand, so that indeed human beings will increasingly gain the ability to have a specific experience. Today, very few people have it. But more and more people will have the following experience from the present time, from the middle of this century onward through the coming millennia:

[ 10 ] A person will have done this or that. They will reflect on it, will have to look up from what they have done—and something like a dream image will arise before them. This will make a very strange impression on the person. He will say to himself: I cannot recall it as a memory of something I have done; yet it is as if it were my own experience. — It will stand before the person like a dream image, quite moving him, but he cannot remember having experienced or done it in the past. Then the person will either be an anthroposophist and understand the matter, or they will have to wait until they come into contact with anthroposophy and learn to understand it. The anthroposophist, however, will know: What you see there as a consequence of your actions is an image of what will unfold for you in the future; the balancing of your actions is appearing before you! — The epoch is beginning in which, the moment people have performed an action, they will have a premonition, perhaps even a clear image, a sensation of what the karmic compensation for this action will be.

[ 11 ] Thus, in the closest connection with human experiences, heightened abilities will emerge in the coming epoch of humanity. These will be powerful impulses toward human morality, and these impulses will signify something entirely different from what served as their precursor: the voice of conscience. Humanity will no longer believe: What you have done is something that can die with you—but will know with absolute certainty: The deed will not die with you; as a deed, it will have a consequence that will live on with you. —And humanity will know many other things. The time in which the gates to the spiritual world were closed to humanity is drawing to a close. People must ascend once more to the spiritual world. The abilities will awaken in such a way that people will become participants in the spiritual world. Clairvoyance will still be something different from this participation. But just as there was an ancient form of clairvoyance that was dreamlike, so there will be a future form of clairvoyance that is not dreamlike, and in which people will know what they have done and what it means.

[ 12 ] But something else will happen as well. People will know: I am not alone; spiritual beings live everywhere who are connected to me. — And people will learn to communicate with these beings, to live with them. And over the next three millennia, what we might call the Christ’s karmic judgment will appear as a truth to a sufficiently large number of people. People will experience the Christ himself as an ethereal figure. And they will experience him in such a way that they will then, like Paul on the road to Damascus, know with absolute certainty that the Christ lives and is the source of the reawakening of that physical archetype which we inherited at the beginning of our Earth’s development, and which we need if the I is to attain its full unfolding.

[ 13 ] While, on the one hand, the Mystery of Golgotha marked a turning point that gave the greatest impetus to human development on Earth, on the other hand, this Mystery of Golgotha occurred during a period of human development in which, so to speak, the human mind and soul were at their darkest. There have, however, been earlier periods in human development when people could know with certainty—because they had a recollection—that the human individuality passes through repeated earthly lives. In the Gospel, the teaching of repeated earthly lives appears to us only if we understand it, if we sense it, because people at that time were in an era when they were least capable of understanding this teaching. Then the times unfolded up to the present. In the times when people first sought the Christ on their path, as was indicated yesterday, everything had to take place as a kind of childlike preparation. Therefore, humanity could not be introduced to what could only have led them astray—to which they were not yet ready: the experiences of repeated earthly lives. Thus we see Christianity developing over nearly two millennia without any reference to the doctrine of reincarnation. And we have shown in these lectures how, unlike in Buddhism, the idea of repeated earthly lives arises quite naturally from Western consciousness. Admittedly, in such a way that many misunderstandings still prevail. But even if we take this idea from Lessing or the psychologist Droßbach, we still realize that for the European consciousness, the doctrine of repeated earthly lives is a matter of the whole of humanity, whereas in Buddhism, the individual regards it only as the inner matter of his own life, as he passes from life to life and can free himself from the thirst for existence. While the Oriental turns what is given to him as the doctrine of repeated earthly lives into a truth of individual salvation, for Lessing, for example, the essential question was: How can all of humanity move forward? And he said to himself: Within the temporal forward development of humanity, we must distinguish between successive periods. In every single epoch, something new is given to humanity. If we follow history, we see how ever-new cultural achievements enter the course of human development. How could one speak of a development of all humanity, says Lessing, if a soul could live only in one or only in another of these epochs? But where could the fruits of culture come from if people were not reborn and carried over what they had learned in one epoch into the next, then into the following one, and so on?

[ 14 ] Thus, for Lessing, the idea of repeated earthly lives becomes a matter for all of humanity. He makes it not merely a matter for the individual soul, but a matter for the entire cultural development of the Earth. And for this advanced culture to emerge, the soul living in the nineteenth century must carry over into its present existence what it has previously acquired. For the sake of the Earth and its culture, human beings must be reborn! That is Lessing’s thought.

[ 15 ] This is where the idea of reincarnation emerges as something that concerns all of humanity. But the Christ impulse was already at work there. It has been cast into it. For the Christ impulse made everything that human beings do or can do a matter of humanity; not a matter that affects us only individually. For only he can be His disciple who says: I do this to the least of my brothers, because I know that You feel it Yourself as if I had done it to You! — Just as all of humanity is connected to Christ, so does the one who professes faith in Christ feel that he belongs to all of humanity. This thought has permeated the thinking, feeling, and sensibility of all humanity. And when the idea of reincarnation reappears in the eighteenth century, it appears as a Christian thought. And when we see, for example, how Widenmann treats reincarnation—even though he treats it in an embryonic, amateurish way—we must still say that in his award-winning treatise from 1851, his concept of reincarnation is permeated by the Christian impulse; and there is a special chapter in this treatise where the debate takes place between Christianity and the doctrine of reincarnation. But this was necessary in the development of humanity: that the other Christian impulses first be taken up by the souls, so that the idea of reincarnation might enter our consciousness in a mature form. And this idea of reincarnation will indeed become so connected with Christianity that one will perceive it as something that runs through the individual incarnations; that one will understand how individuality, which is completely lost in the Buddhist view—as we have seen from King Milinda’s conversation with the sage Nagasena—only acquires its true content by becoming Christianized. And now we can understand: why does the Buddhist view, half a millennium before the appearance of the Christ, lose the human ego while retaining the successive incarnations? Because the Christ impulse has not yet taken place, which alone fills what can pass ever more consciously from one incarnation to the next! But now the time has come when it becomes necessary for the human organism to take up the idea of reincarnation, to understand it, and to be permeated by it. For the progress of human development does not depend on which teachings are disseminated or which teachings take hold anew; rather, other laws come into play that do not depend on us at all.

[ 16 ] Certain forces will develop within human nature as we look toward the future; these forces will work in such a way that, as soon as a person reaches a certain age and becomes truly self-aware, they will have the inner feeling: There is something within me that I must understand. — This will increasingly take hold of people. In times past, no matter how self-aware people became, this consciousness that is now to come did not exist. It will manifest itself something like this: I feel something within me that is connected to my true self. Strange, but it does not seem to fit into everything I have been able to know since my present birth! — Then one will either be able to understand what is at work there, or one will not. One will be able to understand it if one has made the teachings of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science the purpose of one’s life. One will then know: What I feel, I feel as foreign now because it is the self that has come over from previous lives—this sensation will be oppressive, generating fear and anxiety for those people who cannot explain it to themselves in terms of repeated earthly lives. In contrast, these feelings—which are now not theoretical doubts but rather a constriction of life, a tightening of the soul—will dissolve through those insights that can be given to us through spiritual knowledge and that tell us: You must think of your life in an expanded way, extending beyond past earthly lives. — Then people will see what it will mean for them to feel the connection with the Christ impulse. For it will be the Christ impulse that will enliven the entire backward gaze, the entire backward perspective. One will feel: there was this incarnation, there was that one. Then a time will come that one will not be able to pass over without realizing: There was the Christ impulse on Earth! And further incarnations will follow, where the Christ event had not yet taken place. People will need this brightening of the backward gaze through the Christ impulse for confidence in the future, as a necessity and a help that can flow into the following incarnations.

[ 17 ] This transformation of the human soul will come to pass. And it will stem from the event that begins in the twentieth century, which we might call a kind of second Christ event, so that those people in whom the higher faculties have awakened will behold the Lord of Karma. But the people who will experience this will not experience it merely in the physical world. Some of you might say that when the main event of the Christ event of the twentieth century is taking place, many of those now living will be among the departed and will be in the time between death and a new birth. But whether a soul lives in a physical body or in the time between death and a new birth: if it has prepared itself for the Christ Event, it will experience the Christ Event. It is not the witnessing of the Christ Event that depends on whether we are embodied in a physical body, but rather the preparation for it. Just as it was necessary for the first Christ Event to take place on the physical plane so that it might serve as salvation for humanity, so too must the preparation to witness the Christ Event of the twentieth century—to witness it with understanding and in the light—be made here in the physical world. For the person who beholds it unprepared, once their powers have awakened, will not be able to understand it. To such a person, the Lord of Karma will appear as a terrible punishment. To understand this event in a luminous way, humanity must be better prepared. To this end, the spread of the anthroposophical worldview in our time is taking place so that humanity may be prepared on the physical plane to perceive the Christ event either on the physical plane or on higher planes. Those who are not sufficiently prepared on the physical plane and who then pass through the life between death and rebirth unprepared must wait until they can be further prepared for an understanding of Christ through the anthroposophical worldview in a future incarnation. But the next three millennia will give people the opportunity to undergo this preparation. And all anthroposophical development will aim to make people increasingly capable of living into what is to come.

[ 18 ] This is how we understand how the past flows into the future. And when we recall how the Buddha worked into the astral body of the Nathanic Jesus child after he was unable to incarnate on Earth again, we see in this way that the Buddha’s powers continue to work. And when we recall how that which is not directly connected with the Buddha has been at work, particularly in the West, we see in this the influence of the spiritual world upon the physical world. But everything that is to take place in preparation is, in a certain sense, connected once again with the fact that human beings are drawing ever closer to an ideal that, in essence, was already dawning in ancient Greece—that ideal which Socrates set forth: that when a person grasps the idea of the good, the moral, the ethical, they perceive it as such a magical impulse that they become capable of living according to this idea. Today we are not yet at the point where this ideal could be realized; today we have only reached the point where a person can, under certain circumstances, very well conceive of the good, can be a very intelligent and wise person—and yet need not be a morally good one. But this will be the purpose of inner development: that the ideas we form of the good will also be direct moral impulses. This will be part of the development we will experience in the coming times. And the teachings on Earth will increasingly take such a form that, as we enter the coming centuries and millennia, human language will have an unimaginably greater impact than it had in times past or has in the present. Today, someone in the higher worlds could clearly see the connection between intellect and morality; but there is still no human language today that works so magically that, when a moral principle is spoken, it sinks so deeply into another person that they immediately feel it morally and cannot help but act upon it as a moral impulse. After the next three millennia have passed, it will be possible to speak to people in a language that cannot even be conceived of by our minds today; so that everything intellectual will simultaneously be morality, and the moral will penetrate into the hearts of people. How deeply imbued with magical morality must the human race become over the next three millennia; otherwise it could not endure such a development, otherwise it would only abuse it. To prepare specifically for such a development, there is that individual who was much slandered about a century before our era, and who appears in Hebrew literature—albeit in a distorted form—as Jeshu ben Pandira; Jesus, the son of Pandira. From lectures once given in Bern, some of you know how this Jeshu ben Pandira already worked in preparation for the Christ event by training disciples, among whom was, for example, the teacher of the writer of the Gospel of Matthew. A century preceded Jesus of Nazareth: Jeshu ben Pandira, a noble Essene figure. While Jesus of Nazareth himself only came close to the Essenes, in Jeshu ben Pandira we have an Essene figure before us.

[ 19 ] Who was Jeshu ben Pandira?

[ 20 ] The successor to that Bodhisattva—who, in his final earthly incarnation, ascended to become Gotama Buddha at the age of twenty-nine—was embodied in the physical body of this Jeshu ben Pandira. Every Bodhisattva who ascends to become a Buddha has a successor. This Eastern tradition is entirely consistent with occult research. And that Bodhisattva, who worked at that time to prepare for the Christ event, has been incarnated time and again. One of these incarnations is also to be expected in the twentieth century. It is not possible at this time to say anything more precise about the reincarnation of this Bodhisattva; however, something can be said about the way in which one can recognize such a Bodhisattva in his reincarnation.

[ 21 ] According to a law that will be demonstrated and explained in future lectures, it is a distinctive feature of this Bodhisattva that when he appears in a new incarnation—and he does appear in new incarnations time and again over the centuries—his later activities bear little resemblance to those of his youth, and that at a very specific point in the life of this reincarnated Bodhisattva, something like a great upheaval, a great transformation, always takes place. Or to put it more concretely: people will observe that here or there lives a more or less gifted child in whom one cannot discern that he has a special task to perform in preparation for the future development of humanity. No one reveals so little of what they actually are in their youth, in their early childhood years—so says occult research—as precisely the one who is to incarnate as a Bodhisattva. For a Bodhisattva who is incarnating, a great upheaval occurs at a very specific point in their life.

[ 22 ] When an individuality from time immemorial incarnates—for example, Moses—it is not the same as it was with the Christ individuality, where the other individuality of Jesus of Nazareth had shed its physical form. In the case of the Bodhisattva, although something like a replacement does occur, the individuality remains in a certain sense; and the individuality that then emerges from ancient times—as a patriarch and so on—and is meant to bring new forces for the development of humanity, sinks into the background; and such a person thereby undergoes a tremendous transformation. This transformation occurs particularly between the ages of thirty and thirty-three. And it is always the case that one can never know, before this transformation takes place, that this very body will be taken over by the Bodhisattva. It never manifests itself in the years of youth; rather, the fact that the later years are so unlike the years of youth—that is the hallmark.

[ 23 ] The one who was incarnated in Jeshu ben Pandira, and who has been incarnated time and again—the Bodhisattva who succeeded the Gotama Buddha— has prepared himself for his Bodhisattva incarnation so that he may appear—and here, too, occult research agrees with the Eastern traditions—and ascend to Buddhahood exactly five thousand years after the enlightenment of Gotama Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Then, three thousand years after our time, that Bodhisattva, looking back on everything that has happened in the new epoch, and looking back on the Christ impulse and everything connected with it, will speak in such a way that a language will come from his lips which will realize what has just been characterized: that intellectuality is immediately a moral matter. A bringer of good through the word, through the Logos, will be the future Bodhisattva, who will place all that he has in the service of the Christ impulse, and who will speak in a language that is not yet possessed by any human being today, but which is so sacred that he may be called a bringer of good. This will not manifest in him during his youth either; rather, around the time of his thirty-third year, he will appear as a new man and present himself as the one who can be filled with a higher individuality. The event of a single incarnation in the flesh applies only to the Christ-Jesus. All Bodhisattvas undergo various successive incarnations on the physical plane. Thus, three thousand years from now, this Bodhisattva will be ready to become a bringer of good, a Maitreya Buddha, who will place his words of goodness in the service of the Christ impulse, into which a sufficient number of people will have become attuned by then. This is what the perspective for the future development of humanity tells us today.

[ 24 ] What was necessary for people to gradually reach this stage of development? We can understand this in the following way.

[ 25 ] If we wish to form a visual picture of what happened in the ancient Lemurian era regarding the development of humankind on Earth, we can say: Humanity descended from divine heights at that time; it was destined, in a certain sense, to continue developing; but through the Luciferic influence, humanity was cast deeper into matter than would have been the case without it. As a result, its course of development took a different turn.

[ 26 ] Once humanity had descended to the lowest level, a powerful upward impulse was needed. This could only happen because that Being from the higher hierarchies, whom we call the Christ Being, made a decision in the higher worlds that it did not need to make for its own development. For the Christ Being would have attained its development even if it had taken a path that lay far, far above where humanity was on its journey. And the Christ-Being could, so to speak, have passed by, passed by from above the development of humanity. But then the development of humanity would have unfolded in such a way that, had the upward impulse not been given, the path downward would have had to continue. Then the Christ-Being would have experienced an ascent, and humanity only a descent. Only because the Christ Being resolved, at the time of the events in Palestine, to unite with a human being, to incarnate in a human being, and to make the path upward possible for humanity, only through this was that development of humanity brought about which we can now call a redemption of humanity from that impulse that came from the Luciferic forces, and which is figuratively described in the Bible as original sin, as the temptation by the serpent and the bringing about of original sin. Christ accomplished something that was not necessary for Christ himself.

[ 27 ] What was that deed?

[ 28 ] That was an act of divine love! We must be clear about this: no human emotion is initially capable of perceiving the intensity of love that was necessary to make the decision for a God who had no need to work on Earth in a human body. Through this—as through an act of love—the event was brought about that is the most important in human development. And when people grasp God’s act of love, when they try to perceive this act of love as a great ideal in comparison to which every human act of love can only be small, then through this sense of the inadequacy of human love in the face of that divine love which was necessary for the Mystery of Golgotha, people also draw closer to the formation, the coming into being, of those images that present this most important event of Golgotha before our spiritual gaze. Yes, truly, it is possible to arrive at the image of the mountain upon which the cross was raised, that cross upon which a God in human form hung, a God who accomplished the deed of His own free will—that is, out of love—so that the Earth and humanity might reach their destination. Had the God designated by the name of the Father God not once permitted the Luciferic influences to approach humanity, humanity would not have developed the capacity for a free ego. With the Luciferic influence, the capacity for a free ego was developed. This had to be permitted by the Father God. But since the ego—for the sake of freedom—had to become entangled in matter, the Son’s entire love had to lead to the deed of Golgotha in order to be freed from this entanglement in matter. Only through this has human freedom and complete human dignity become possible. That we can be free beings, we owe to a divine act of love. Thus, as human beings, we may feel ourselves to be free beings, but we must never forget that we owe this freedom to God’s act of love. If we think in this way, the thought will already move into the center of our feeling: You can attain human dignity; but there is one thing you must not forget—that you owe what you are to the One who has restored to you your original human image through the redemption on Golgotha! — People should not be able to grasp the idea of freedom without the idea of Christ’s redemption. Only then is the idea of freedom a legitimate one. If we want to be free, we must make the sacrifice of attributing our freedom to Christ! Only then can we truly realize it. And those who believe their human dignity is diminished when they owe it to Christ should recognize that human opinions mean nothing in the face of cosmic realities, and that one day they will gladly acknowledge their freedom as having been acquired through Christ.

[ 29 ] After all, there is not much that could be done in this series of lectures to foster a more precise understanding of the Christ impulse and the entire course of human development on Earth from the perspective of spiritual science. We can only ever contribute individual building blocks. But if these building blocks work their way into our souls in such a way that we feel something like an incentive to strive further, to continue developing along the path of knowledge, then these building blocks have fulfilled their purpose in the great spiritual temple of humanity. And the best thing we can take away from such a spiritual-scientific consideration is that we have learned something new toward a certain goal; that we have once again enriched our knowledge. Toward what kind of lofty goal? Toward the goal that we know all the more precisely how much we still need to know more; so that we may be ever more thoroughly imbued with the truth of the old Socratic saying: The more one learns, the more one knows how little one knows! But only when this is not a confession of a resignation devoid of action and striving, but a confession of a living will and striving for ever-expanding knowledge, only then is it good. We should not confess how little we know by saying: We cannot know everything after all; so let us rather learn nothing at all, let us sit back and do nothing! That would be a false conclusion drawn from spiritual scientific reflections. The correct one can only be that we become ever more and more inspired to strive onward and regard every new thing learned as a step; but we must keep taking steps to reach ever higher levels.

[ 30 ] In this series of lectures in particular, we may have had to speak at length about the idea of salvation without actually using that word very often. This idea of redemption should be perceived by the seeker of truth in the same way that a great forerunner of our Western spiritual science perceived it: that, fundamentally, it becomes familiar and intimate to us in our soul as a consequence of our striving toward the highest goals of cognition, feeling, and will. And just as the great forerunner of our Western anthroposophy expressed the idea that links the word “salvation” with the word “striving” in the form: “Whoever strives with all their might, we can redeem!” so should the anthroposophist always feel: Only those who strive with all their might can comprehend and feel true redemption and will within its sphere!

[ 31 ] May this series of lectures—which is particularly close to my heart because so much of the idea of salvation has been discussed in it—serve as an incentive for our continued striving: that in our striving we may come together more and more in this and in future incarnations. May these be the fruits that spring from such reflections. With this, let us conclude the series and take with us the inspiration to strive ceaselessly, a striving that may lead us, on the one hand, to see what Christ is, and then also to draw nearer to what the other side is: salvation, which is not merely to be liberation from the lower earthly path and earthly destiny, but which is also to be liberation from all that hinders human beings from attaining their human dignity. But these are things that are recorded in their truth only in the annals of the spiritual. For only the Scripture that can be read in the spirit world is the true one. Let us therefore strive to read the chapter on human dignity and the human mission in the Scripture in which these things are written in the spiritual worlds!