The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] From our recent discussions, you will have gathered that describing those earlier stages of our evolution—which predate the very formation of our Earth—is an extraordinarily difficult task. For we have seen that we must first develop the concepts and ideas that will enable us to grasp such strange, distant states of our world’s evolution. I have already pointed out that a description such as the one given in my Outline of Esoteric Science of the ancient Saturn era and also of the subsequent planetary incarnations of our Earth is not only not exhaustive, but must, in a certain sense, be content — so that the general public, to whom this book is also intended, is not too deeply shocked — to clothe what is actually essential in images drawn from the familiar and the everyday. This does not, of course, provide an incorrect description, but in a certain sense it is one that is deeply immersed in Maya, in illusion, and one must first work through the illusion in order to penetrate ever more deeply into the truth of the matter. For example, the ancient Saturn era is described—as is, within certain limits, quite correct—by saying that ancient Saturn was a celestial body that essentially did not consist of the elements we know as earth, water, or air, but only of heat. And when we speak of “space,” this is merely a figurative description, for we saw last time that there was not even “time” on ancient Saturn. So when we speak of space, this too is figurative. Space did not exist on ancient Saturn in our sense either; and time only arises on Saturn. When we transport ourselves back to ancient Saturn, we are entirely within the realm of spaceless eternity. So if something is said that can give us a picture, we must be clear that it is a picture.

[ 2 ] If we had entered the space of ancient Saturn, we would not even have found a substance fine enough to be called “gas,” but only heat and cold. In reality, one cannot speak of moving from one part of space to another, but rather only the sensation of the succession of warmer and colder states prevailed, so that even the clairvoyant, when transported back to the ancient Saturn era, receives the impression of space-less states of heat ebbing and flowing. But this is only the outer veil of the Saturn state. For this warmth or this fire, as one says in occultism, has indeed revealed itself to us in its spiritual depths; and we have seen that spiritual deeds, spiritual acts, were in truth what actually existed on the ancient Saturn. And we have formed a picture of what existed there in terms of spiritual deeds on Saturn. We have said that the spirits of the will, or the Thrones, performed acts of sacrifice, so that when we look back at what actually happened on Saturn, we have the Cherubim and the sacrifices flowing from the Thrones. Sacrifices flow from the Thrones to the Cherubim, and it is these acts of sacrifice that, viewed from the outside, so to speak, appear as warmth. States of warmth are the outer physical expression, indeed the outer sensory expression, of sacrifice. And throughout the world, wherever we perceive warmth, warmth is the outer expression of what lies behind the warmth. Warmth is an illusion; behind it lie the acts of sacrifice performed by beings. If we therefore wish to characterize warmth in truth, we must say: The warmth of the world is the revelation of the world sacrifice or of the world’s acts of sacrifice.

[ 3 ] Then we saw that from this act of sacrifice offered by the Thrones to the Cherubim is, as it were, born—though I have already pointed out that this is another modern term that does not quite fit—what we call “time.” But time back then was not yet the “sooner or later,” not that abstraction as which humanity perceives it today, but a sum of spiritual beings: these are the spirits of personality, whom we then also came to know as the spirits of the age. The spirits of the age are the true ancient time, and they are the children of the Thrones with the Cherubim. But the conditions through which the beings of the temporal realm arise on ancient Saturn are sacrifices. When it is said: “Ancient Saturn consists of warmth”—in order to gain a true understanding of what lies behind this, we must not merely appropriate external physical concepts—for “warmth” is a physical concept—but concepts that we can only derive from the life of the soul itself, from the moral, wisdom-filled life of the soul. No one can know what warmth is who is not able to form a conception of what it means to be capable of sacrificing what one possesses, what one has—indeed, not only to be capable of sacrificing what one has, but what one is oneself. The sacrifice of one’s own being, the self-renunciation of one’s own being grasped in the soul, so that one simultaneously conceives of it in such a way that one is ready to give one’s best for the good of the world; not to keep one’s best for oneself, but to willingly sacrifice it on the altar of the universe: grasping this as a living concept and allowing it to permeate our soul with feeling gradually leads to an understanding of what lies behind the phenomenon of warmth. Let us consider for a moment what, even today in modern life, is associated with the concept of sacrifice: one cannot quite imagine that the one who sacrifices with understanding ever does so against his will. If someone sacrifices against his will, he must be compelled to do so for some reason; there must be a compulsion at work. But then we would certainly not be dealing with what is meant here. Here, however, what is meant is that which flows naturally as a sacrifice from the being who sacrifices. And when someone sacrifices something, not because they are compelled to do so by some external reason, nor because they hope to gain something, but because they feel compelled from within to sacrifice, then it is inconceivable that they should feel anything other than inner warmth and bliss. If we feel thoroughly permeated with inner warmth and bliss, then we have already expressed what we can describe in no other way than: the one who sacrifices feels warmed through, thoroughly permeated with bliss. There we have the opportunity to feel for ourselves how the sacrificial fervor can meet us in the maya of the outer world’s warmth. Only the one who can grasp the thought truly understands what warmth is: When warmth appears in the world, there lies underlying it in some way a soul-spiritual element that is behind the warmth and that brings about the warmth through the bliss of the sacrifice. Whoever can perceive warmth in this way gradually comes to the reality that lies hidden behind the phenomenon of warmth, behind the illusion of warmth.

[ 4 ] If we now wish to proceed from the old Saturn existence to the old Sun existence, we must first establish a concept through which we can form an idea of the substance of the old Sun—not the present Sun. For, as we read in Occult Science: The ancient Sun generated heat by adding air and light to the heat; this, too, is merely a representation of an external phenomenon. Just as we must seek the sacrificial fervor of the spirits of will behind the heat, so must we seek something moral behind the air and light if we wish to understand the air and light that are added to the heat on the Sun. Now we can only gain an idea, a conception, a sense of what air and light were on the ancient Sun if we hold fast to something we can experience spiritually and soulfully within ourselves.

[ 5 ] There is an experience that we can describe as a soul experience in the following way. Let us imagine that a person were to witness a true, genuine act of sacrifice, or that they were to envision, as we described last time when considering the ancient Saturn existence, the Thrones sending their sacrifices up to the Cherubim—so that the person would be inspired by the image of the blissful sacrifice they behold, which would bring the soul to life. What would our soul feel, either through the sight of the sacrificing being itself or through the image that we bring to life quite fervently within our soul? Such a person, if he has living feelings, if he were not more or less insensitive to the bliss of sacrifice, would have to feel a profound stirring at the sight of the image of sacrifice; he would have to feel in his soul: this is the most beautiful deed, the most beautiful experience that can be evoked from our soul at all—to behold the bliss of sacrifice! But this is also such a feeling: one would have to be a piece of wood if the impulse did not arise in the soul to gaze with the highest reverence upon what self-sacrifice is, if one could not learn from it the mood of complete devotion. Devotion! — An act of sacrifice is active devotion, devotion that is translated into action. The contemplation of active, practical self-surrender can evoke in the soul the mood of being surrendered, of losing oneself, of forgetting oneself. If we imagine this mood of selfless losing oneself in contemplation poured out entirely into the soul, then with this mood we have that which should come closer to our understanding insofar as, without such a mood—or at least without a hint or a resonance of such a mood—we could in truth never arrive at what higher knowledge provides.

[ 6 ] Anyone who is incapable of ever experiencing such a mood of devotion cannot attain higher insights. For what would be the opposite of this mood? It would be self-will, the assertion of self-will. These are, in fact, like two poles of the soul’s life: a devoted absorption in what one beholds, and the self-willed assertion of what is within oneself. These are two great opposites. For true insight, for a permeation with wisdom, self-will is fatal. In ordinary life, one knows self-will only as prejudice, and prejudices always destroy higher insight.

[ 7 ] What is meant here by “devotion,” however, must be understood in an intensified sense, for it is only through this heightened devotion that a person can work their way up to higher worlds. To do so, they must at least be able to experience that “losing oneself” as a mood. Therefore, it must be emphasized again and again that we will never attain higher knowledge if we work in the same way as conventional science or everyday thinking. Let us be clear: the way ordinary science and everyday thinking operate is based on the ordinary human will, through everything that has shaped the ego-will: through inherited or acquired sensations, feelings, and ideas. One can be very easily deceived by this; such deceptions are commonplace. For example, people come and say: One is supposed to take in some kind of science, as it is offered in spiritual science, but I want to take in nothing other than what corresponds to what I can already think of myself; I want to take in nothing unchecked! — Certainly, one should take in nothing unchecked. But if one brings only oneself to everything, taking in only what one already knows—that gets one no further at all! And the one who wants to become a clairvoyant will never say that he wants to accept only what he has previously examined; rather, he must become completely free from all selfishness and must expect everything from what approaches him from the world—and which can be described by no other word than “grace.” He expects everything from the grace that enlightens. For how does one acquire clairvoyant insights? Only by being able to set aside everything one has ever learned. Usually, people think: I have my own judgment. But they should say to themselves: This consists only of you repeating what your ancestors thought, or what your instincts prompt, and so on. For there is never any question of these being people’s own judgments; and those who assert their own judgments the most have no idea how they are led by the nose, slavishly led by the nose of their prejudices. All of this must be cast aside if one wishes to attain higher insights. The soul must become empty and be able to wait calmly for what may approach the soul from the hidden, secret world—a world free of space and time, free of things and facts. And we must never believe that we can draw to ourselves what is clairvoyant knowledge, but only that we can allow a mood to mature within us through which we receive what presents itself to us as revelation or enlightenment. Thus we can never expect anything other than from the grace that approaches us and gives us something that is meant to approach us.

[ 8 ] How, then, does such insight reveal itself? How does that which approaches us reveal itself once we have prepared ourselves sufficiently? It reveals itself as a sense of being blessed by the gift coming toward us from the spiritual world. If we were to describe what approaches us—be it a being or whatever—to meet us graciously and pour this insight into us, we could only use the expression: it is that which meets us, a grace-bestowing, a gift-giving, a giving presence. Let us grasp the nature of a being whose main characteristic would consist in what I have just described with these words: it is a bestower, a giver, a presenter; such a being, whose principal characteristic is the scattering of grace, the pouring out of grace—let us conceive of it in such a way that, in order to attain this capacity for bestowing grace, it required the sight of the Throne’s sacrifice to the Cherubim! Let us imagine for a moment that a being were to approach what is happening there, when the Thrones sacrifice to the Cherubim, a being which, through this sight, would be moved to become a bestower, one who pours out his gifts in grace. Let us picture this very clearly. Let us imagine we were looking at a rose and becoming enchanted by it, thus experiencing a feeling of bliss over what we call “beautiful.” Let us imagine that another being, through the sight of what is described as the sacrifice of the Thrones to the Cherubim, would be moved to bestow all that it has around itself, pouring it out into the world: then we would have described those beings of whom “Esoteric Science” speaks as the “Spirits of Wisdom,” who, on the Sun, join the beings we have already encountered on Saturn. If we were to ask: What is the character of the Spirits of Wisdom who appeared on the Sun and joined the Saturn spirits? — we would have to answer: The chief characteristic of these spirits is the virtue of bestowing, of working grace, of giving. — And if we were to choose an epithet, we would have to say: They are the spirits of wisdom, the great bestowers, the great givers of the universe! - Just as we have said of the Thrones: “The great sacrificers”—so we must say of the Spirits of Wisdom: “The great givers, who bestow their gift so selflessly that it weaves through and permeates the universe, flowing into it and thereby creating order within it.”

[ 9 ] This is the activity on the Sun, the effect of the spirits of wisdom on the Sun. This is what they do: they bestow their own essence upon their surroundings. And what is it that presents itself to the outer eye when one looks upon it in this way and seeks to perceive, as a higher sensory experience, what is happening there on the Sun?

[ 10 ] When you look at it, it is just as described in Occult Science: The sun consists not only of heat, but also of air and light. But when you say, “The sun consists not only of heat, but also of air and light,” it is as if someone were to say: “In the distance I see a gray cloud”—and if, as a painter, he were to paint the impression he has, he would paint such a gray cloud; but if he were to go closer, he might find a swarm of mosquitoes before him instead of the gray cloud. In reality, then, what he took for a gray cloud is a multitude of living beings. In a similar way, we face the ancient solar existence from a distance: when we look at it from afar, it appears as the illusion of a body of air and light; but when we look at it more closely, we no longer have a body of air and light, but it appears as the great bestowing virtue of the spirits of wisdom. And no one truly comes to know the air who describes it only according to its external, physical properties. That is merely Maya or illusion; that is merely the outer manifestation. For wherever there is air in the world, the deeds of the bestowing spirits of wisdom lie behind it. Air that weaves and acts is the manifestation of the bestowing virtue of the spirits of the macrocosm. And only he perceives the air correctly who says to himself: I perceive air here, but in truth, the spirits of wisdom are bestowing upon the surroundings; something is being radiated out into the surroundings.

[ 11 ] Now we know what it actually is that we described about the ancient Sun when we said it consists of air. We now know that it is giving: that the spirits of wisdom let their own being flow out, and that it appears outwardly as air. But a strange thing now occurred on the ancient Sun, which presents itself to the clairvoyant. We must make it clear to ourselves how we can gain an even more precise conception of this bestowing virtue from within our own soul life. To this end, let us recall that feeling we ourselves can have when we succeed, from the mood of devotion just described, in permeating ourselves with a realization, with an idea. We always have a certain sensation regarding such an idea that then comes to us. Such an idea is not a scientific one; one has the best sense of it when one considers the artistic realm, where the idea has the urge, for example, to master color or form in some way—that is, to flow out into the world—so that it has bestowed an independent existence upon the world. The essence of such a bestowing capacity can thus be characterized by saying: productivity, for creativity is connected to it, since this bestowing is itself creative. Whoever has an idea that they feel can benefit the world and that manifests itself in works of art and so on has a true grasp of this productivity of the bestowing virtue. This is what weaves through the sun like air. When we imagine the creative idea in the artist’s mind, as it takes shape in the material—setting everything else aside—this is the spiritual essence of air. Where there is air, we are dealing with something of this nature. But because this living productivity was present in the sun, the following fact emerged.

[ 12 ] Let us note that the spirits of time were already born on ancient Saturn, so that “time” could already exist on the Sun, for it has come over from Saturn. Time is there. So there is that possibility on the ancient Sun—which would not yet have existed on ancient Saturn—that such a gifting could take place. For just imagine what gifting would be like if there were no time: one could not give; for gifting consists of giving and receiving. Without the latter, gifting is inconceivable. So giving must consist of two acts: giving and receiving; otherwise, giving serves no purpose. On the Sun, however, giving and receiving stand in a very peculiar relationship to one another, namely in such a way that, since time now exists, the gift offered on the old Sun to its surroundings is preserved in time, so to speak, so that when the spirits of wisdom pour out their gifts, they remain in time. But now something must occur that takes it. This works in relation to the spirits of wisdom at a later moment. So that the spirits of wisdom give in the earlier moment, and what must necessarily be connected with this as taking occurs in the later moment.

[ 13 ] We can only truly grasp this if we once again take our own inner experience as our starting point. Imagine that you are trying to understand something or form a thought. Now you have formed that thought. Tomorrow you reflect, clearing your mind so that everything you formed in thought yesterday can return to your mind. Then what was formed yesterday is received by you today. So it is on the ancient Sun, in that what is given earlier is preserved for a later moment and received later. What, then, is this receiving? On the ancient Sun, too, it is an act, an event, which differs from other events only in that it occurs later. Giving belongs to the spirits of wisdom. Who, then, receives? For someone to receive, someone must first be there. In the same way that, as it were, through an act of birth—namely, from the sacrifices of the Thrones to the Cherubim—the spirits of time arise on Saturn, so too do those spirits whom we call the Archangels—Archangeloi—arise through the giving to the world by the spirits of wisdom on the Sun. And they are the receivers on the old Sun. But they receive in a very special way, namely, that what they receive as a gift from the spirits of wisdom, they do not keep for themselves, but reflect it back, just as a mirror reflects your image. Thus, the archangels on the Sun have the task of receiving what was given at an earlier time at a later time, so that it is still there at a later time and is reflected back by the archangels. So on the Sun we have an earlier giving and a later receiving, but this receiving is a reflection of what was in an earlier time.

[ 14 ] Imagine for a moment that the Earth were not as it is now, but that the following were to occur: that what happened at an earlier point in time could be reflected back at the present moment. Yet we know that such a thing actually happens. We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch; the events of the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean period, are now being reflected back. What was there in the past is being received and now radiates back. This is a kind of repetition of the giving and receiving that took place on the ancient Sun. Thus, we must conceive of the spirits of wisdom—who were the givers and bestowers in the earlier solar epochs—as the givers, and the archangels as the receivers. This brings about something very special, which you can only truly imagine if you picture an inwardly closed sphere, where something is radiated from the center—a gift; this radiates out to the periphery and from there back to the center. On the surface, inside the sphere, the archangels are positioned, radiating it back. You need not imagine anything on the outside. — We must therefore conceive, starting from a center, that which comes from the Spirits of Wisdom: this is radiated in all directions, is received by the archangels, and radiated back. What is it that radiates back into space, this returned gift of the Spirits of Wisdom? What is the radiated wisdom when it is directed back into itself? — That is the light. And thus the archangels are at the same time the creators of light. Light is just as little what it appears to us to be in the outer illusion; rather, where light appears, we have the reflected gifts of the spirits of wisdom. And the beings we must assume are everywhere behind the light—these are the archangels. Therefore, we must say: Behind the flooding beam of light that strikes us lie the Archangeloi; but that they can shower us with light comes only from the fact that they reflect back what shines toward them, namely, the bestowing virtue of the spirits of wisdom.

[ 15 ] This gives us a picture of the ancient Sun. We can imagine, as it were, a central seat where all that has come over from ancient Saturn is united: the sacrificial acts of the Thrones in relation to the Cherubim, and the Spirits of Wisdom absorbed in the sight of these sacrificial acts. Through the sight of these sacrificial acts, they are moved to radiate from themselves what their own essence is: flowing, surging wisdom as a bestowing virtue. But because it is permeated by time, this is sent out and sent back again, so that we have a globe, a globe internally illuminated by the virtue that radiates back. For we must imagine the ancient Sun not shining outward, but inward. Thus something new is created, which we can describe as follows. Let us imagine these spirits of wisdom, seated at the center of the sun, absorbed in the sight of the sacrificing thrones and radiating what their own essence is, because of the sight of the sacrificing thrones, and in return they receive their radiating essence as it reflects back to them from the surface, so that they receive it back as light. Everything is illuminated. But what do they receive in return from those who reflect it back in the act of receiving? — Their own being, by their having given it away, became a gift to the macrocosm; there it was their inner self. Now it reflects back: their own being meets them from without. They see their own inner self distributed throughout the whole world and reflected back from without as light, as the reflection of their own being.

[ 16 ] The inner and the outer are the two opposites that now confront us. The earlier and the later transform and become such that they transform into the inner and the outer. “Space” is born! Through the bestowing virtue of the spirits of wisdom, space comes into being on the ancient sun. Previously, “space” could only have a figurative meaning. Now we have space, but initially only in two dimensions: not yet up and down, not yet right and left, but only exterior and interior. — In reality, these two opposites already appear toward the end of the old Saturn, but they are repeated in their true meaning, as space-creating, on the old Sun.

[ 17 ] And if we now wish to form a conception of all these processes again in the same way we did last time, when the image of the sacrificing thrones appeared before our soul, giving birth to the spirits of the age, we will not yet depict a body consisting of light, for this light does not yet radiate outward; it is present only as an inner reflection. We must imagine a sphere as an inner space, with the image of Saturn repeating itself at the center: the Thrones as spirits, as if kneeling before the Cherubim, the winged beings, sacrificing their own being; and joining them, the spirits of wisdom, sinking into the sight of the sacrifice. And now one can envision that the fervor lying within the sacrifice is transformed in the devotion of the spirits of wisdom, so that it can be sensed as sacrificial smoke, as air rising from the act of sacrifice as sacrificial smoke. And we obtain a complete picture when we imagine: the sacrificing thrones kneeling before the cherubim, and joining the sacrifice as in a dance, the spirits of wisdom, devoted in their mood to what they behold at the center of the sun in the sacrifice of the thrones; thereby growing in their mood into the image of the sacrificial smoke that spreads in all directions, which flows out, eventually condenses, and from its clouds brings forth the figures of the archangels, who reflect from the periphery the gift of the sacrificial smoke as light, illuminating the interior of the sun, returning the gift of the spirits of wisdom, and thus creating the sphere of the sun. It consists, as a gift, of fire and sacrificial smoke. At the outer periphery sit the archangels, the creators of light, who later reflect what is first present on the sun; it takes time, but then it returns as light. What, then, do the archangels preserve? They preserve what came before; the gifts of the Spirits of Wisdom that they receive, they radiate back; but what was in time, they return as space, and by radiating it back as space, they return what they themselves have received through the Archai, the beginnings. Thus they are the angels of the beginning, because they make effective in later times what was in the past. Archangeloi, messengers of the beginning, they are!

[ 18 ] It is truly wonderful when such a word reemerges from genuine occult knowledge, and we then reflect on how this word has come down to us from ancient traditions—through the school of Dionysius the Areopagite, who was a disciple of Paul. It is wonderful to see that this word is so deeply imprinted that, when we rediscover it independently of what is written there, what was there emerges once more. This must fill us with the greatest reverence, and we then feel connected to the ancient sacred schools of initiatory wisdom, of initiatory science, so that we feel, as it were, as if this ancient wisdom were flowing into us as we grasp it with understanding, after we have created for ourselves the possibility of receiving it independently of the ancient tradition. Anyone who can sense even a little the resonance of the ancient expressions handed down to us, without paying attention to these expressions themselves, feels placed within the workings of the spirits of the ages through the human spirit. What emerges is a wonderful sense of connection with the entire course of human evolution; a sense of security in these matters.

[ 19 ] The archangels preserve the memory of the very beginnings. But whatever existed on any of the planets is repeated at a later time, except that the later period always adds something different, so that the essence of the Sun, in a certain sense, confronts us again in what confronts us on our Earth.

[ 20 ] The entire vision, the entire sensation that we have been able to grasp here, which gives us a picture of the thrones offering sacrifice, of the cherubim receiving the sacrifice, of the fiery glow emanating from the sacrifice, of the sacrificial smoke spreading like air, of the light reflected by the archangels who preserve for later times what took place in the beginning—this sensation is something that can evoke within us a true understanding of everything connected with the creations that arise from such a sensation.

[ 21 ] Thus, in this milieu—which I have just described as a soul milieu—we have grasped more spiritually what we previously gained from a more physical image. And we shall now see that what appeared on Earth as the Christ Being was born out of this milieu; and we will only understand what is brought to Earth through the Christ Being if we take to heart the concept of the virtue of giving, the virtue that works through grace, as it radiates back in the light of the universe within the inner substance of the solar realm, which is permeated and illuminated by this light. If we elevate what we have just described to a picture, transform it into an imagination, and conceive that all this is brought to Earth by this Being and lives out its life on Earth, then we will be able to perceive the true spiritual essence of the Christ impulse even more deeply. We will then understand what a dark foreboding can dwell in the human soul when, in response to some depiction, that soul senses that what has just been described can, in a certain way, come alive again on Earth.

[ 22 ] Let us imagine for a moment that what has just been described regarding the sun could be concentrated entirely within the soul of a being, could be wound up and carried away, only to reappear later. And it would reappear on Earth and work in such a way that, from what has been created through the ancient act of sacrifice and the sacrificial smoke, the light-creating time, and the bestowing virtue, it would convey the essence of the grace-filled effect and reflect it from the universe of warm bliss and the splendor of light. Let us conceive all this concentrated in a soul, bestowing it upon earthly existence; gathered around it are those who are now to be called as earthly beings to reflect this back, to preserve it for the remainder of earthly existence: In the center, the One who bestows from the sacrifice and through the sacrifice; around Him, those who are to receive it; connected to this at the same time is what the sacrifice is, and everything associated with it, as it were, translated into earthly existence. And on the other hand, the possibility of destroying this sacrifice, so that everything that can be given to the human being as a grace-filled effect can just as easily be accepted as rejected. If we imagine all this embodied in an intuition, then one can have such a feeling toward Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper”: the entire sun, with the sacrificial beings, with the beings of bestowing virtue, with the beings of warm bliss and radiant glory, spiritually captured—reflected back by those who are chosen to preserve it from earlier times into later times; prepared for the earth in such a way that it can also be rejected in the traitor.

[ 23 ] The essence of the Earth, insofar as the essence of the Sun reappears on Earth—one can perceive it in this way. And if this is felt not in an external, intellectual manner, but in a truly artistic way, then one has sensed something of what is actually the driving force in such a great work of art, which, as it were, reflects the essence of earthly existence. And when we next see how Christ emerges from the solar milieu, we will understand even better what has often been said: If a spirit were to descend from Mars to Earth and see everything it could not understand, it might not grasp a single aspect of Earth, but it would understand the true mission of Earth if it could allow Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to take effect upon it. There, such a Martian would be able to see how the solar existence must be mysteriously woven into earthly existence, and everything that one might tell him about what the Earth signifies would thereby become clear to him. That the Earth signifies something, he would understand, and he would know what the Earth is all about: He would say to himself: Whatever else may be happening on Earth that has significance only for some corner of earthly existence. But if this act could truly be depicted—the act that shines out at me here from the colors when I hold the central figure together with the surrounding ones—then I feel what the spirits of wisdom felt on the Sun, what resounds to us here again in the words: ‘Do this in remembrance of me!’ The preservation of the earlier in the later: this word only becomes understandable to us when we grasp it out of the whole context of the world that we have now come to know. — I merely wanted to suggest how something like an artistic act of the very highest order is connected with the entire becoming of the world.

[ 24 ] Next time, our task will be to understand the Christ-being within the spiritual essence of the sun, and then to move on to the spiritual essence of the moon.