The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Thus, through a series of reflections, we have come to realize how the spiritual lies behind all that we call Maya, or the great illusion. Let us ask ourselves once more: In what way has it become apparent to us that, behind everything we initially perceive through our senses and through our otherwise physically bound conception of the world around us, the spiritual has first been recognized by us?

[ 2 ] We have characterized this spiritual aspect by the fact that, in the course of our recent reflections, we were compelled, as it were, to set aside the immediate external phenomena of the world and to penetrate to those qualities of reality which we have described as a willingness to sacrifice, the virtue of giving, resignation, or renunciation—in short, qualities that we can only come to know by looking into our own souls, qualities that we can meaningfully ascribe, at first, only to our own souls. If we must now ascribe to that which we conceive of as the real—or, we might also say, as the true—behind the world of illusion, qualities such as those just mentioned, then we must say: In this world of true existence, in this world of the real, there lives that which, in terms of its qualities, we can essentially compare only to qualities that we first perceive in our own soul. If, for example, we are to characterize that which expresses itself outwardly in the form of warmth, in terms of its truth as a sacrificial service, as a flowing sacrifice in the world, this means precisely that we have traced the element of warmth back to something spiritual, to something of the spirit; we have, as it were, removed the outer veil of existence and revealed what in the external world corresponds to that which we recognize as our own spiritual nature.

[ 3 ] Before we proceed with our reflections, we need to consider another idea. Namely: Does everything we have within the world of Maya, or the great illusion, truly vanish into a kind of nothingness? Is there truly nothing in this entire sensory world surrounding us and in the world of our external perception that presents itself, so to speak, as the true or as something true?

[ 4 ] It would certainly be a good comparison to say that the world of truth, the world of reality, is initially hidden, just as the inner forces of a pond or even the ocean are hidden within the mass of water; and we could compare the world of Maya to the play of ripples that takes place on the surface. The comparison would be apt, but it shows us precisely that something does rise up from what lies below in the ocean and causes the play of ripples above—the substance of the water and also a certain configuration of forces. Thus, it makes no difference whether we choose this or another comparison. We may well raise the question: Is there not also, within the vast realm of our Maya or illusion, something that is “real”?

[ 5 ] Today we will proceed in the same way as we did in our previous reflections. We will slowly approach what we wish to bring before our souls by starting from inner experiences of our soul. And because we have moved forward spiritually through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of existence and are now approaching the Earth phase, we want to start from even more immediate—one might say, more ordinary—soul experiences than we did last time. Last time we started from the hidden depths of the soul life, from what rises up from what we have come to know in spiritual science as our astral body. There we sensed the longing rising up, and we saw how longing works within beings—for us, initially, in the human being—and how it is this very longing that actually leads the soul life to find satisfaction only in the response of that world of images which we have been able to perceive as the inner movement of this soul life. And through this we have found the path from the microcosmic individual soul to that macrocosmic world-creation which we have attributed to the spirits of movement.

[ 6 ] Today we wish to begin with an even more immediate experience of the soul—an experience that was already noted in ancient Greece, but which remains profoundly significant in its truth even today, and which is suggested by the words: “All philosophy, that is, every striving for a certain kind of human knowledge, begins with wonder.” — That is indeed true. Anyone who reflects even a little and pays attention to the entire process in the experience of their soul as it approaches any kind of knowledge will be able to experience for themselves that a healthy path to knowledge always finds its starting point in wonder, in amazement at something. This wonder, this amazement, from which every process of knowledge must proceed, belongs precisely to those soul experiences that we must describe as those which bring majesty and life into everything sober. For what would any knowledge be that takes root in our soul if it did not spring from wonder? It would truly be a form of knowledge that would have to be entirely steeped in sobriety, in pedantry. It is precisely that process taking place in the soul—which leads from wonder to the delight we derive from solved riddles, and which first rose above wonder—that constitutes the majesty and inner vitality of the process of knowledge. One should actually sense the dryness and withering quality of a knowledge that is not, so to speak, bordered by these two emotions. Framed by wonder and by the joy of the solved riddle is true, healthy knowledge. All other knowledge may be acquired from the outside, may be brought to the person for this or that reason. But knowledge that is not framed by these two emotions has not truly sprung from the human soul in earnest. All the flavor of knowledge, which creates the atmosphere of life within knowledge, emanates from these two things: wonder and the joy of having the wonder fulfilled.

[ 7 ] But what is the origin of wonder itself? Why does wonder—that is, amazement at some external phenomenon—arise in our soul? Wonder arises because we initially feel that some being, thing, or fact that appears before us is foreign to us. This strangeness is the first element that leads to wonder, to amazement. But we do not feel wonder or amazement in the face of everything that is strange, but only in the face of that which is strange yet with which we feel a certain kinship—so much so that we say to ourselves: There is something in this thing or being that is not yet within me, but which can pass into me. — Thus, we feel both a kinship with and a sense of strangeness toward a thing that we initially grasp through wonder and amazement.

[ 8 ] The word “wonder” is also connected to the word “miracle,” which we apply to an event to which human understanding initially finds no apparent connection. But that can only be his own fault, or at least need only be his own fault. And he would not react with rejection toward what he calls a “miracle” if he did not, in a certain sense, still claim that it should reveal itself to him—that is, that it should, in a certain sense, be related to him. For why do people who proceed from materialistic or purely rational concepts deny, for example, what others recognize as a miracle, if they have no direct proof that a lie or untruth exists? Even philosophers today must admit that one can never prove, from the phenomena of the world that are before human beings, that, for example, the Christ incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth did not rise from the dead. One can cite reasons against it. But what are these reasons? They are logically untenable! Even enlightened philosophers admit this today. For the reasons put forward by the materialist side—for example, that all the people these people have seen so far do not initially rise from the dead like Christ—these reasons stand on the same logical level as someone who, having seen only fish so far, now wants to prove from the nature of fish that there are no birds. One can never logically deduce from one class of beings that other beings do not exist. Nor can one deduce anything—from the experiences one can have with human beings on the physical plane—regarding the events of Golgotha, which are initially described as miracles. But if you tell a person something that they would have to call a miracle, even if the matter were true, and they say, “I cannot understand it”—they are not thereby contradicting what we have said about the concept of wonder; for they clearly show in their behavior that this starting point of all knowledge is also well-founded for them. For he demands that what is communicated to him have something familiar to him. He wants it to be able to become, in a certain way, his own in the spiritual realm, and since he believes that he cannot have it, that it is not related to him, he rejects it. Even if we were to approach the very limit, the concept of wonder itself, we would see that wonder or astonishment—from which all philosophy has already proceeded in the sense of ancient Greek thought—is based on the fact that the human being finds himself facing something foreign, yet must recognize it as something akin to himself. Let us now attempt to build a bridge between these concepts and what we brought before our souls last time.

[ 9 ] Last time we showed how a certain progress in evolution is brought about by beings being willing to make sacrifices, but that these sacrifices are refused or rejected; and we recognized in these rejected sacrifices one of the key factors that played a role during the ancient lunar evolution. One of the most essential aspects of the ancient lunar evolution is that at that time, certain beings were to offer sacrifices to higher beings, which these higher beings declined, so that, as it were, the sacrificial smoke of the ancient lunar beings rose up to the higher beings but was not accepted by them and was returned as substance to the beings who had intended to make the sacrifice. And we have seen that a large part of the peculiarity of the beings of the ancient Moon consisted in their feeling that which they had sought to send upward from themselves to higher beings as sacrificial substance being repelled within them. Indeed, we have seen that what sought to ascend to the higher beings but could not did in fact remain within the beings in question, and thereby took shape within these beings of the rejected sacrifice as the power of longing. And we still find in all that we experience in our own souls as longing a legacy of those ancient lunar processes, which consist in the fact that beings at that time found their offerings rejected. The entire character of the ancient lunar development, understood spiritually, the entire spiritual atmosphere of the ancient Moon, can in many respects be characterized by the fact that there are beings on the ancient Moon who wish to offer their sacrifices but find that these sacrifices are not accepted because the higher beings have resigned themselves to them. This is the peculiar melancholic underlying feature of the ancient lunar atmosphere: the rejected sacrifice. And the rejected sacrifice of Cain, in which one of the starting points of our earthly human evolution is symbolically indicated, appears to us as a kind of repetition of the fundamental trait of the ancient lunar development, which is playing out there in the soul of Cain, who sees his sacrifice not accepted. This is something that can symbolize for us a suffering, a pain, which gives birth to longing, as was the case with the beings of the ancient lunar existence.

[ 10 ] We saw last time that a kind of balance was established between these rejected sacrifices and the longing that arose in the beings as a result of the sacrifice not being accepted, through the appearance of the spirits of movement on the ancient moon. This at least created the possibility that the longing that had arisen in the beings of the rejected sacrifice could be satisfied in a certain way. Imagine this quite vividly: you have higher beings to whom sacrifices are to be made, but the sacrificial substances are rejected. This gives rise to a longing in these beings who wanted to make the sacrifice, and who now feel: If I could have offered my sacrifice to those higher beings, the best of my own being would live within them, I myself would live within these higher beings; but as it is, I am excluded from these beings—I stand here, and these higher beings stand there! — But the spirits of movement—we can understand this almost literally—bring these beings, in whom the longing for the higher beings is kindled by the rejected offering, into such situations that they can approach the higher beings from the most diverse sides. So that what lies dormant within them as an offering that cannot be made may at least be balanced by the abundance of impressions received from the higher beings, who are, as it were, surrounded by the beings of the rejected offering; that which is not satisfied by the rejection of the sacrifice can be balanced by the fact that, in the positions of these beings, a relationship to the higher beings arises, as would have occurred through an offered sacrifice.

[ 11 ] We can fully understand what is meant by this if we think of the higher beings, symbolically speaking, as the sun, and then, in a single position, of the lower beings as a planet. Now let us suppose that the beings of the lower planet wish to offer their sacrifices to the higher planet, that is, the Sun. But the Sun rejects them, and the sacrificial substances must remain with the beings of the rejected sacrifice; in doing so, these beings feel filled with longing in their loneliness, in their isolation. Now the spirits of movement bring them into the sphere of the higher beings; only then is it possible for them, instead of the immediate upward flow of their sacrificial substance, to set this sacrificial substance itself in motion and thereby bring it into a relationship with the beings of a higher order. It is just as if a person is unable to cope with their longing through a single great satisfaction and then experiences a series of partial satisfactions: so that their whole mind is set in motion when they experience such a series of partial satisfactions. We described this in more detail last time. We have seen how, through the impressions now coming from the outside—because the being does not feel inwardly united with the higher beings in the act of sacrifice—a substitute arises; this has shown us how such beings nevertheless attain a certain satisfaction.

[ 12 ] Yet it cannot be denied that what should have been sacrificed would continue to exist in a different way among the higher beings than among the lower beings. For the actual conditions of existence of what should have been sacrificed lie with the higher beings. In the case of the lower beings, therefore, different conditions of existence must come into play. — Again, we can visualize this as follows: If the entire substance contained within a planet could flow into the sun and the sun did not repel it, then the beings of that planet would find different conditions of existence within the sun than they would otherwise, when the sun repels them, outside the sun, within the planet. In short: An alienation of what we must call the “content of the sacrifice” occurs, an alienation of this sacrificial substance from its origin.

[ 13 ] Now consider this idea: that beings must retain within themselves something they would gladly offer as a sacrifice, and regarding which they feel and sense that it would only find its true meaning if it could be offered as a sacrifice. If you bring to mind the feelings of such beings, you will perceive what might be called: the isolation of a certain part of the world-being from its true purpose and from its true, great world-purpose. Beings have something within them that—if we may speak figuratively—would actually find its purpose in a place other than within themselves. The consequence of this is that this displacement—if we may again speak figuratively—of the rejected sacrificial smoke, of the rejected sacrificial substance, causes this sacrificial substance to be cast out, initially, from the rest of the world process.

[ 14 ] If you grasp what is being expressed here not with your intellect—for it cannot comprehend such things—but with your feelings, you will have the sense that it is something torn away from the general process of the world. For the beings who have rejected the sacrifice, it is merely something they have cast aside. For the other beings, in whom the sacrificial substance has remained, it is something upon which the character of the strangeness of its own origin is imprinted. We thus have beings upon whose substance the strangeness of its origin is imprinted. But this—if one understands it intuitively, if one pictures this idea intuitively before one’s soul—if one pictures before one’s soul something in which the strangeness of its origin is inherent—that is death. And death in the universe is nothing other than what necessarily occurs with the rejected sacrificial substance in the beings who must retain precisely this sacrificial substance. Thus we come from resignation, from the renunciation we found on the third stage of evolution, regarding that which has been renounced by the higher beings, to death. And death, in its true meaning, is nothing other than the quality of being-contents that are not in their true place, that are excluded from their true place.

[ 15 ] Even when death occurs in a person’s actual life, the same principle underlies it. For when we look at the corpse that remains in the world of Maya, it contains nothing other than a substance that, at the moment of death, is separated from the I, the astral body, and the etheric body—a substance that is alienated from the being within which it has its true meaning. For the human physical body has no meaning without the etheric body, astral body, and I; it is meaningless, excluded from its meaning at that moment. What we can no longer comprehend when a human being dies is precisely what presents itself to us in the macrocosm. Because the beings of the higher spheres reject what is to be offered to them as a sacrifice, this rejected sacrificial substance falls into death within the beings to whom it has been rejected, for death is the exclusion of any worldly substance, any worldly being, from its true meaning.

[ 16 ] With this, however, we have entered into a spiritual characterization of what we call the fourth element in the universe. If fire was for us the purest sense of sacrifice—and wherever fire or heat meets us, sacrifice lies spiritually behind it—if we found, behind all that is spread out as air around our Earth, a giving or bestowing virtue, a virtue flowing forth in truth; if we could characterize flowing water that is, liquid as an element, as spiritual resignation or renunciation, then we must characterize the element of earth, which alone can become the bearer of death—for death would not exist if the element of earth did not exist—as that which has been severed from its meaning through renunciation. Now you have something concrete where the solid forms from the liquid. For this also reflects, in a certain way, a spiritual process. Let us imagine that ice forms within the mass of water in a pond; the water thus becomes solid. In truth, there is nothing underlying this other than that which causes the water to become ice cuts it off from the essence of water. Therein lies the spiritual aspect of becoming solid, the spiritual aspect of becoming earth. For in terms of the characteristics of the four elements, ice is also “earth” and only the liquid is “water.” — A severing from its essence is what we can call death, and that in which death manifests itself, plays out, is the element of earth.

[ 17 ] We began by raising the question of whether there is anything at all that is true within our world of illusion, of Maya, whether there is anything there that corresponds, so to speak, to reality. Let us now examine quite closely the concept we have just set before our minds. I told you from the very beginning: the concepts in our reflections are somewhat complicated. It will therefore be necessary for us not only to grasp them intellectually but also to meditate on them; only then will they become fully clear to us. But let us now take this concept of death, or rather that of the earthly; it reveals a very peculiar aspect to us. Whereas with all other concepts we could say to ourselves: “With regard to what is there in the world of Maya around us, there is actually nothing true at all; rather, the true lies in a spiritual reality underlying it”—we have now discovered something where that which we have within Maya is characterized as dead precisely because it is separated from its meaning, because it ought to be in the spiritual. Thus, something has been cut off and brought into Maya that should not actually be there. Throughout the entire vast realm of Maya, or the great illusion, we are faced with nothing but deceptions, nothing but illusions. But we bring something into Maya that corresponds to the true precisely because it is cut off from its true meaning in the spiritual, and the moment it enters, destruction, death, approaches it. This tells us nothing less than the great occult truth: within the world of Maya, the only thing that reveals itself in its reality is death! We must trace all other phenomena back to their reality; all other phenomena that occur within Maya have the true behind them: Only death is the true within Maya, for it consists in something being severed from the true and taken into Maya. Therefore, death is the only true thing within Maya.

[ 18 ] And when we now move from what one might call the general Maya that pervades everything to the great principles of the world, a very important and essential consequence of this statement arises for occult science: that within our world of Maya, only death is truly real. We can approach what I wish to say here from another angle as well. We can first consider the beings of the other realms that surround us.

[ 19 ] We might ask: Do minerals, for example, die? — For the occultist, it makes no sense to say that minerals die. — That would be about as meaningful as saying that the fingernail we cut off has died. The fingernail is not something that, as a totality, has a claim to existence; rather, it is merely a part of us, and when we cut it off, we have separated it from ourselves and torn away the life connected to us. It does not truly die until we ourselves die. So in the same sense, says occult science, minerals do not die. For minerals are merely members of a great organism, just as the fingernail is a member of our organism; and when a mineral appears to perish, it is merely torn away from this great organism, just as the piece of fingernail is torn away from our organism when we cut it off. The destruction of the mineral is not death, for the mineral does not live in itself, but in the great organism of which it is a part.

[ 20 ] If you recall the lecture on the nature of plants, you will know that it was said: The plant, as such, is not independent either, but is a member—not, like the mineral, of a large organism, but of the entire Earth organism; and from an occult perspective, it makes no sense to speak of the life of a single plant; rather, one must speak of the Earth organism, of which plants are parts everywhere. And when we bring them to their “death,” it is like cutting off a fingernail: we cannot say that the fingernail has died. Nor can we say this of the plants, for they belong to a great organism that is identical with the whole Earth and is an organism that falls asleep in spring, sends the plants as its organs toward the sun, and awakens in autumn, taking the spiritual essence of the plants back into itself when it takes in the seeds of the plants. It makes no sense to consider plants in isolation, for the Earth organism does not die when individual plants wither on it, just as we, when we get gray hair, do not die either if we cannot naturally turn the gray hair black again. Only we are in a different situation than the plants. But the Earth is in a situation that could be compared to a human being who could transform gray hair back into black. So the Earth does not die; rather, what is revealed in the withering of the plants is a process that takes place on the surface. Thus, we can never say that the plants are truly dying.

[ 21 ] But even regarding animals, we cannot initially say that they die as we do. For the individual animal does not truly exist; only the group soul exists, which is in the supersensible realm. What the animal truly is exists only on the astral plane as the group soul, and the individual animal is condensed from the group soul. And when it dies, it is a limb cast off by the group soul, and the group soul replaces it with another.

[ 22 ] What we therefore encounter as death in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms is only apparent; it is death only within Maya. In truth, the only one who truly dies is the human being who, through the development of his individuality, descends into his physical body, in which he must exist in reality during his earthly life. In truth, speaking of “death” makes sense only in relation to the human being’s earthly existence.

[ 23 ] When we consider this, we must say: Only human beings can truly experience death. — For human beings, therefore, what we learn through occult research is a true overcoming of death, a true victory over death. For in other beings, death is only apparent; it does not actually exist. If we were to ascend further, from human beings back to the beings of the higher hierarchies, we would likewise find that they do not know death in the human sense; so that, strictly speaking, there is a real death—that is, a death on the physical plane—only for those beings who also have something to gain on the physical plane. Human beings, however, must gain their sense of self on the physical plane. He could not find this without death. It makes no sense to speak of true death either in the case of the beings who stand below human beings or in the case of the beings who stand higher than human beings. Then, however, it will seem understandable that we have no possibility whatsoever of erasing the most significant earthly deed of that being we call the Christ Being. For we have seen that for this Christ-being, the Mystery of Golgotha is the most essential: the victory of life over death. But where can this victory over death take place? Can it take place in the higher worlds? No! For even in the case of the lower beings we have mentioned—in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—one cannot speak of death, because their true essence actually lies in the higher, supersensible worlds. And we will elaborate further in the course of the Winter Lectures that even in the case of the higher beings, one cannot speak of death, but only of transformations, of metamorphoses, of reconstitution. We can speak of a break in life that we call “death” only in the case of human beings. And human beings can experience this death only on the physical plane. If human beings had never come to the physical plane, they would know nothing of death, for no being that has not entered the physical plane knows anything of death. In the other worlds, there is no such thing as “death,” but only transformations, metamorphoses. If Christ were to pass through death, he would have to descend to the physical plane! For only there could he experience death.

[ 24 ] Thus we see that, in a remarkable way, the truth of the higher worlds also plays a role in the historical development of humanity within Maya. While for all other historical events we can only make sense of them with our thinking by saying: Here on the physical plane is the historical event, but the cause for it lies above in the spiritual world, to which we must go—we cannot say of the event of Golgotha: This event is down here on the physical plane, and something corresponding to it lies in the higher world. - Certainly, Christ himself belongs to the higher worlds and descended to the physical plane. But there is no archetype, such as we must seek for all other historical events, for what took place on Golgotha. That took place solely on the physical plane.

[ 25 ] Among the many pieces of evidence that could be cited from occult science to support this fact is, for example, that the event at Damascus—as we have already described on several occasions—will be repeated over the course of the next three millennia for a sufficiently large number of people. That is to say, people will develop such abilities that they will perceive the Christ on the astral plane as an etheric form, as was the case with Paul on the road to Damascus. This event—the perception of the Christ through higher abilities gradually developing in people over the course of the next three millennia—begins in our 20th century. From that point on, these abilities will gradually emerge and will develop in a sufficiently large number of people over the next three millennia. This means that a sufficiently large number of people will know, through insight into the higher worlds, that Christ is a reality, that he lives; they will come to know him as he lives now. And they will not only come to know the way he lives now, but, just like Paul, they will gain the conviction that he died and rose again. But the foundation for this cannot be laid in the higher worlds; it must be laid on the physical plane.

[ 26 ] So if anyone today is already able to understand and grasp these things—how the development of Christ himself is progressing, and with it the development of certain human abilities—if anyone realizes thereby comes to understand that he understands spiritual science today, then nothing prevents him, once he has passed through the gate of death, from participating in this event when it truly enters the human world as the first shining of the Christ. Thus, the one who prepares for this event today in the physical body can also experience it in the life between death and a new birth. But those people who do not prepare themselves for this, who do not acquire an understanding of it in this incarnation, will know nothing in the life that follows—between death and a new birth—of what will happen in relation to the Christ from our century onward through the next three millennia. They must wait until they are incarnated again and continue to prepare themselves for it on Earth. Thus, what had to take place as the cause of all subsequent Christ development on Earth—the death on Golgotha and what was thereby created—can only be comprehended within the physical body. Among all the facts that are important to us for the higher life, this is the only one that can be comprehended only within the physical body. Then it is further processed, further developed in the higher worlds. But we must first grasp it within the physical body. Just as the Mystery of Golgotha could never have taken place in the higher worlds—just as it has no archetype in the higher worlds, but is an event that, because it encompasses death, is concluded within the physical plane—so too must the understanding of it be acquired on the physical plane. Indeed, it is even one of the very tasks of human beings on Earth to acquire this understanding in one of their incarnations.

[ 27 ] We must therefore say that, on a larger scale, we have found something that, so to speak, reveals to us on the physical plane something immediately real, something immediately true. So what, then, is real on the physical plane? Real on the physical plane in such a way that we can pause and say: Here we have something true! — is death in the human world, not in the other realms of nature. And with regard to the historical events that occur in the course of Earth’s development, if we wish to understand these historical events, we must proceed from each such historical event to a spiritual archetype—except in the case of the Mystery of Golgotha. In this, we have something that, just as it is, belongs directly to the world of truth.

[ 28 ] Now, it is extremely interesting that, in a sense, the other side of what has just been discussed also comes into view. It is truly extraordinarily significant to see how this event of Golgotha is today denied as a real event altogether, how people, when we speak of external history, say that it cannot be proven in the context of historical facts. Now, among the historical facts that are essential, there is hardly one that can be so poorly proven by external, historically realistic evidence as the Mystery of Golgotha. Consider how much easier it is, by comparison, to work with historical evidence regarding the existence of Socrates or Plato or any Greek hero, insofar as they are significant for the progress of humanity in the external world; and how people can, to a certain extent, quite rightly come and say: No history may claim that a Jesus of Nazareth ever lived! - There are no external historical counterarguments here. This cannot be treated in the same way as other historical facts.

[ 29 ] It is most curious: this event, which occurred on the outer physical plane, has something in common with all supernatural phenomena, which likewise cannot be proven externally. And it is pretty much the same people who deny the supersensible world and who lack the capacity to grasp this event, which is not at all supersensible. One can describe it in terms of its effects. But then people entertain the idea that such effects could also occur without the actual event having taken place in history, and they then explain them as a consequence of sociological conditions. For those, however, who know the inner course of world-becoming, the idea that effects such as those of Christianity could occur without a power behind them is just as sensible as saying that cabbages can grow in a field without seeds having been sown beforehand. Indeed, we can go even further and say that for those involved in the final shaping of the Gospels, there was no way to prove the historical event of the Mystery of Golgotha as a historical event with historical grounds, for it truly passed by almost without a trace to all external observation. Do you know how those involved in the later composition of the Gospels convinced themselves of these events—with the exception of the writer of the Gospel of John, who was, after all, a direct contemporary of these events? They convinced themselves, initially not from historical documents, for they had nothing else but oral accounts and the mystery texts—as these circumstances are described in *Christianity as a Mystical Fact* —but they convinced themselves of the real existence of Christ Jesus through the constellations, as they were still great experts on the connection between the macrocosm and the microcosm. They possessed a knowledge of this that one can already acquire today by calculating the constellation of the stars for the relevant point in world history and saying: If the constellation of the stars is such and such, then He who is called the Christ must have lived on Earth. — This is how the writers of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke became convinced of the historical events. For they obtained the content through clairvoyance, but they gained their conviction in the same way that one gains conviction through the constellations of the macrocosm that this or that can be taking place on Earth. Therefore, only one who knows such things can instill faith in them. Attempting to prove the inaccuracy of what is presented here against the historicity of the Gospels is a futile task. Rather, as anthroposophists, we must be clear that we must stand on an entirely different ground: on the ground of that which we can only attain through an insight into occult science.

[ 30 ] I would like to point out something here regarding this view, which I have already attempted to explain in recent days at another location: how one cannot, with valid objections—that is, with objections that are correct in themselves—touch upon the realities of which spiritual science speaks, so that no matter how much correct information people may offer, which is correct according to their knowledge, it does not refute spiritual science. In the lecture “How Does One Justify Theosophy?”, I used a parable and said: A little boy in a village always had to go get the rolls for his family’s breakfast. In that place, a roll cost two kreuzers, and he was always given ten kreuzers to take with him. Now he would bring home—and it should be noted here that he was no great mathematician—the number of rolls from the Greisler—as the baker was called there—and paid no further attention to it. But then a foster son was taken into the family, and he was sent to the baker’s to get rolls instead of the other boy. Since he was good at math, he thought to himself: You’re going to get rolls; you’ve been given ten kreuzers; one roll costs two kreuzers; ten divided by two is five; so you’ll bring home five rolls. He went off, but he brought six rolls home. Then he said to himself: “That’s wrong; you can’t get that many, and since your math is correct, you’ll bring five rolls home tomorrow.” The next day he was given ten kreuzers again and brought six rolls home once more. The calculation was correct, but it didn’t match reality, because in reality things were different. In reality, it was customary in that place that someone who bought rolls for ten kreuzers would get one extra for free, so six instead of five. The boy’s objection was therefore correct—it just didn’t match reality.

[ 31 ] Thus, even the most ingeniously conceived objections to the spiritual sciences may all be valid, yet they need not have anything to do with reality, for reality may be based on entirely different foundations. This example is excellent for clarifying, even from an epistemological perspective, the relationship between what is correct in calculation and what is true in reality.

[ 32 ] Thus, in our efforts to reduce the world of Maya to the true—whereby it has become clear to us that all fire is sacrifice, all that is air-like is a flowing, bestowing, or giving virtue, and all that is liquid is renunciation, resignation— today we have added to these three truths the one that the true essence of the earth or the solid is death, the severance from its worldly meaning in any form of substance. But through the fact that this severance occurs, death itself enters the world of Maya or illusion as a reality. The gods themselves could not even come to know death if they did not in some way descend into the physical world to comprehend death in the physical world, in the world of Maya or illusion, in its truth,

[ 33 ] This is what we wish to add today to the concepts we have already covered. Let it be noted once again that clarity regarding these concepts—which will be necessary for us to thoroughly explore many aspects of the Gospel of Mark—can only be attained through careful meditation and by allowing it to sink into our souls again and again. For the Gospel of Mark can only be understood if one bases it on the most fundamental concepts of the world.