The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Before we turn to the subject of our discussion today, I would like to draw your attention once more to the anthroposophical calendar, which has now actually been published, in which I have attempted to bring to life what a calendar can be for human beings by tracing the times, forces, and temporal relationships back to their origins, through which they can be recognized in occult imaginations. Much of what is now expressed only in the abstract symbols of the zodiac images can be brought to life if it is transformed back into an emotional imagination—which was, after all, the original intention behind the zodiac images. This has been achieved in the renewed zodiac images, as presented in the intuitive perception of Miss von Eckhardistein, so that one can once again feel a living connection to the heavens. You need only try to bring to life within yourselves, through your own perception, what is presented in these images.

[ 2 ] You will then find meditation formulas for each week of the year. These meditation formulas are especially recommended to you, for they contain what can be brought to life within the soul and what truly corresponds to a living relationship between the soul’s forces and the forces of the macrocosm. What we might call the passage of time is guided and directed by spiritual beings—by spiritual beings who, in their mutual relationships, in their living interrelationships, actually determine time, create time, one might say. Now, it is quite abstract and merely allegorical if what corresponds to experiences of time in human beings—the temporal aspect of the human soul—were simply equated with processes relating to time in the macrocosm. You will see that quite different experiences of the human soul, which in a certain sense have nothing at all to do with time, are present there. If you bring these things to life in the soul, you will come to know the relationship that the soul can experience between the center and the periphery of sensory experiences. This peculiar relationship can be transformed through these meditations. It can give rise to an imagination of the relationship between the beings that determine the passage of time, so that through these fifty-two formulas one can indeed find the path from the microcosm to the macrocosm.

[ 3 ] What the calendar shows on the surface is merely the exoteric side, for in truth we are in the year 1879. The conditions of the times, which can be perceived through occult observation, are to be truly expressed here. We shall begin with this, for it is, of course, only a first step. With the Mystery of Golgotha comes the birth of ego-consciousness within humanity. And this fact will gradually be recognized more and more in the spiritual culture of our Earth as significant for the entire future of humanity. Thus, people will gradually come to understand that it is justified to count the year 1879 today, that is, 1912 minus 33. This also implies that time is counted from Easter to Easter, that we do not begin with January, because if one sees something essential in the birth of the I-consciousness for the spiritual development of humanity, it is also justified to be reminded of it every year by relating this birth of the I-consciousness itself to the relationships of the microcosm and the macrocosm. A significant aspect of the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm is revealed when the Easter festival is considered in connection with the birth of the I-consciousness. The fact that today there is a tendency to fix the date of Easter on a specific day rather than determining it by the heavens is, of course, a hallmark of our time, which, in all external circumstances, is plunging ever deeper into materialism and forgetting what pertains to the spiritual. It may be necessary for the anthroposophical movement to preserve, in the face of industrialism, commercialism, and materialism in general, the memory of specific dates that are not determined by the payment of money or checks, but by the conditions of the universe. It will be the first major sign that external and internal culture—the entirely materialistic and the spiritualistic paths—must thoroughly coexist side by side, should external culture succeed in tearing the date of Easter away from its determination by the starry world. One would face a sense of hopelessness if one were to believe that a genuine upsurge toward spiritual realities could be possible from within materialistic culture. This is a first attempt for this year; I hope that, by using the calendar, the anthroposophists will support us in presenting it to the world in an ever more perfect form.

[ 4 ] Some of our friends from the German Section have been with me over the past few weeks in an anthroposophical field of work abroad: we had entered the Finnish field of work in Helsinki. Such a visit to an anthroposophical field of work abroad is always something that can bring home to the participants: on the one hand, the unity of anthroposophical life, where it is truly represented across the globe, and on the other hand, the deep foundation of this anthroposophical life in contemporary culture, the necessity of this life for contemporary culture. It was, I might say, particularly significant for my consciousness that our friends in Finland had requested a lecture from me on the venerable Finnish epic, the “Kalevala.” The fact that this request was made some time ago meant that I felt compelled to engage with this truly remarkable work of poetry by the remarkable Finnish people from the perspective of occultism as well. And in doing so, something emerged once again that I have mentioned on many other occasions here in this very place. A very special feeling comes over us when, quite independently of everything that people have known about the spiritual world so far and have expressed in their own way in words, we immerse ourselves in these spiritual worlds and discover what they are like and how human beings relate to them, and when we then ask ourselves, just as independently of that: Now that we have gained insight into the spiritual worlds, and also into humanity’s relationship to them, how do we understand what is contained in the traditions of the most diverse peoples, what is contained in the documents that speak to us from centuries past? How do we understand this in light of the insights gained about the supersensible world? — There we have seen how, for example, in the biblical text and in other texts, which are clearly founded on the basis of occultism—albeit in a different mode of expression than we must now use—what we ourselves find today has been expressed from ancient times, from the most diverse periods of human development, and in the most diverse forms. Through this, these texts then take on a whole new aspect and a whole new power for us. Then we say to ourselves: In the worlds into which we wish to enter through the spiritual path of knowledge, through our gradual ascent toward initiation, in these worlds certain people have stood and from within them have given their great revelations to the epochs. And in the most diverse times they have stood within them in the most diverse ways.

[ 5 ] One could be overcome by such a very special feeling regarding the occult significance of the venerable Finnish epic, the Kalevala. And for me personally, the feeling I had toward the Kalevala was particularly vivid—I would even say particularly characteristic. Although this Finnish epic has been translated into all European languages, it differs significantly from all other narrative poetry and cannot be easily compared to any of them.

[ 6 ] Now you know that many years ago, when my book *Theosophy* was first published, an inner necessity—an independent contemplation of the spiritual world—led to the division of the human soul into three soul elements: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. These three soul components have been arrived at solely through occult research, solely through occult observation. When this classification was established, no attention was paid to this or that tradition. Nothing else was consulted but what emerges when one directs the occult gaze into the spiritual worlds. Now, because our friends from the Finnish Section had requested an occult interpretation of the Kalevala, it became necessary to examine the Kalevala from the perspective of occult research.

[ 7 ] It has been emphasized time and again that human consciousness and the life of the human soul, as we know them today, have not always been as they are now; rather, if we look back at the development of humanity, we arrive at those primeval times in which present-day perception, present-day thinking, and the present-day way of relating to the external world did not exist, but an ancient, primordial clairvoyance was characteristic of the primeval human beings. So when we, as it were, turn our gaze back over the course of human development, we find that from a certain point in time, beginning around the year 600 B.C., we also enter the period in human development when a particular configuration of the soul life emerges, which then led to more abstract scientific thinking, whereas earlier there are still remnants remnants of ancient clairvoyance or at least memories of it, which have been preserved longer in one people, less so in another. Everywhere, when we look back at the development of individual peoples, we find that these peoples only gradually struggled their way to the present consciousness. Before that, we have a memory of primeval human times in which normal human consciousness possessed a kind of clairvoyance. And it was in the twilight period between the old clairvoyance and present-day consciousness that the epics and folk poetry actually arose.

[ 8 ] A truth such as the one we now recognize—that the human soul is divided into the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding or emotion, and the soul of consciousness—would, of course, have been entirely beyond the grasp of prehistoric humans. But these people in prehistoric times possessed a genuine clairvoyance, even if it was not illuminated by the present intellect or the present understanding, even if it was somewhat dreamlike and twilight-like. Before the present consciousness arose, they had something like intermediate states between our present waking state and sleeping state, in which, however, they had vivid memories that things had once been different, that all conditions were different, and that the individual human being did not relate to another as present consciousness dictates, but as the old clairvoyance revealed. What the peoples had gone through in the period from the decline of the old clairvoyance to the onset of present-day consciousness, they depicted in the epics, in the great national poetry.

[ 9 ] Today's materialistic person claims that human soul life has gradually evolved from the material processes associated with the human organism—processes that are also found in lower beings. Spiritual Science, however, shows that what is found in the soul life of animals could never have given rise to a division into the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding or feeling, and the soul of consciousness; rather, this inner trinity of the human soul—the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding or feeling, and the soul of consciousness—flowed down directly from a spiritual world into the human being on Earth. Therefore, when a person looks up into the spiritual world, they can say to themselves: Three streams flow down there, corresponding in the spiritual world to three beings who are the direct inspirers of the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. We must seek the creators of these three soul members, as it were, in a world that today belongs to the supersensible realm, but with which the people of primeval times stood in direct connection.

[ 10 ] Now we know that the moment we ascend into the spiritual world, our human perception becomes imagination, regardless of whether we ascend through conscious training, as will be the case with modern humans, or whether it was through the ancient clairvoyance of earlier times. There, too, the soul ascended to a kind of imagination. Hence, it had before it in images the outflow of the threefold human soul from the spiritual world. — Now, in the Finnish national epic, three heroes appear before us. At first, they are most remarkable, these three strange creatures, who possess something superhuman and yet, step by step, something genuinely human. But if one looks more closely and examines the matter, particularly through occult means, it becomes clear that these three heroic figures represent the creators, the ultimate creators and inspirers of the human soul’s powers. The creator of the feeling soul corresponds to the figure described in the Kalevala under the name Wäinämöinen; the creator of the intellectual or emotional soul is depicted as Ilmarinen, and the creator of the conscious soul as Lemminkäinen. Thus, in the national poetry of this remarkable people, we encounter in an imaginative form—arising from original human clairvoyance—what modern occult research has rediscovered. And when we consider the human being of today, as he appears to us as an external human being, as we have him before us, he is possible only because this threefold soul being was first predisposed in the course of human evolution on Earth. I have already hinted at this in the public lectures at the Berlin Architects’ House, “The Origin of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science,” on January 4, 1912, and “The Origin of the Animal World in the Light of Spiritual Science,” on January 18, 1912. We must form the mental image that at one point in the course of the Earth’s development there existed neither humans nor animals, but, so to speak, an undifferentiated form of Earth life; that then the beings who had only reached the level of animality were the first to separate themselves, whereas, when all the animals were already present, the human being waited until different earthly conditions had arisen, and because he had waited for different earthly conditions, he was able to attain his present form. That is to say, while the animals had already developed their various forms on Earth, human beings were still up in the spiritual world; they began to develop only after the animals had already attained their fixed forms. And it is the case that human beings first received this predisposition in the three soul members: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. Then they brought into earthly conditions the possibility of appearing in outer form as human beings, just as they are now.

[ 11 ] When we consider this, we can say: Humanity, as it now stands before us as a fully formed being, actually sent the animal kingdom down ahead of it and then followed, when conditions on Earth were such that it could express its soul life—predisposed to threefoldness—in an outer form. — But what does that actually mean? Strangely enough, when one considers these occult truths, those religious traditions based on occultism regain their profound value and are merely freed from the old mental images with which one could no longer associate anything meaningful. Human beings only took in the earthly conditions, the earthly matter, when they could transform it in such a way that it could become their present form, a form that could become the imprint of their soul life, their threefold soul life. Humanity thus processed earthly matter according to the laws of its soul life, incorporated what constitutes earthly matter into the plan of its soul life, and thus became the earthly human being—that is, it shaped earthly matter according to the pattern of its soul’s ideal. One need only now think of the biblical mental image of the shaping of earth substance—not earth dust, but earth substance—into a human being; then one has given a deep meaning to this biblical mental image, which has been so much mocked by modern “clarification”—that is to say, the Enlightenment. For it points specifically to the moment when the animals were already there—having descended earlier—and it was from the substance of the earth that what now stands before us as the physical human being was first formed according to the soul’s archetype.

[ 12 ] It is truly remarkable that this process is so magnificently depicted in the imaginative realm of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala; there, it is portrayed as the forging of a mysterious instrument known in the Kalevala as the Sampo. The most curious explanations have been offered for this mysterious instrument, the Sampo. In truth, it is the etheric body forged from the interaction of the three soul principles, the physical body being its imprint. Thus, here—and it is not at all necessary for us to go into the finer details here, it need only be pointed out—in the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, something that quite naturally stems from the memory of the Finnish people, which was still a remnant of earlier clairvoyant perceptions; and in these clairvoyant perceptions, people still knew something of the descent of the human being as a threefold spiritual being into the physical body. What is remarkable about such a thing is that we find in the ancient heroic songs of humanity what we are now gaining as truths, as insights into the spiritual worlds. What we have found in many examples regarding the documents important to all humanity, we find here in a particular example that, one might say, emerged as if from oblivion in the 19th century. For it had indeed been forgotten and was only compiled in the course of the 19th century from folk songs that were alive among the people. Nothing of what we have today as the Kalevala had been written down at the beginning of the 19th century; rather, it was first heard from the people and then compiled, having thus lived only among the people. When faced with such a fact, we need nothing other than what is there. That is to say, what is there in such a case? It is this: a 19th-century scholar observes that the people are singing about all sorts of things that are quite interesting—and sets out to collect these things. Now they are compiled, and in this way become valuable to the people once more; attention is paid to them, the works are translated into all European languages, scholars offer foolish explanations of the individual items, but the thing is there—it has lived among the people.

[ 13 ] We will now proceed with what we have today in the way of spiritual insights. Whether one wants to or not, if one has only good will, it turns out that what has been lived among the people, what has been gathered from the people, contains occult content—occult content that we find again today, just as we find it, if we have good will, in Homer’s Iliad, in the Odyssey, in the Nibelungenlied, and so on. One must simply have that very goodwill to seek these things, must seek earnestly, though one must not approach the matter with allegories or through the means of symbolic myth interpretation, but rather allow them to take effect directly upon oneself. What we ourselves have discovered in the occult realm shines out to us from the imaginations of time immemorial. But here something special comes into play. For something quite special occurred to me in connection with the Kalevala. When I took the Kalevala in my hands, I also heard that the concluding runes, which deal with a contact between Old Finnish spiritual life and Christianity, must obviously have been added later; for while everything else has the old pagan character, the concluding runes certainly carry something Christian within them, but something delicately Christian. And then it became clear to me, wonderfully enough, that this belongs to it, that without these final runes the Kalevala is simply inconceivable. That is to say, just as the Kalevala came into being and lived among the people, everything is shaped in such a way that it ultimately culminates quite naturally in a delicate allusion to Christianity. And one might say, to the most impersonal Christianity imaginable, to a Christianity that is the most un-Palestinian of all, barely recognizable by Christian standards. So that we must reckon here with the fact that from one and the same soul was born what could no longer be born together with Christian culture among the other civilized peoples of Europe: for when Christian culture arrived, the time had long since passed in which clairvoyance still reached back to the times corresponding to the descent of the threefold human soul into human form. Thus, we find here among the Finnish people a remnant of the fusion of ancient clairvoyance with the influences brought in by Christian culture. This has resulted in something quite remarkable, something quite unique, which perhaps cannot be found elsewhere on earth. It is perhaps due to the special veneration that the Kalevala enjoys in Finland that this epic has been spared the fate of the Iliad. For I do not know if many of you are aware that scholarship first chopped the Iliad into small pieces and then claimed that this Iliad did not originate from a man named Homer—not from a single person at all—but was merely a collection of songs gathered later. With the Kalevala, we do have the fact that the work has been collected. But it is a whole, a unified whole; one may have to make some amendments in the future, but it is a unified whole. So the fact is that here a collection of occult imaginations has been gathered from the consciousness of the people, which, through their own content, clearly reveal themselves as such for the spiritual worldview. If one traces the matter back with the Akashic Records, it turns out that it leads back to the ancient sacred mysteries of northern Europe, that these things were inspired by the initiates and given to the people and incorporated into their tradition.

[ 14 ] Why have I explained these facts to you? What we usually discuss regarding Spiritual Science matters—what we have been discussing for years—was also discussed in Helsinki and is being discussed in other parts of Europe. I would say that what was particularly new—and specifically Finnish—was the public lecture I was able to give on the occult content of national epics, and especially on the occult content of the Kalevala. And there one could fully sense what is essential to the Spiritual Science movement, what will increasingly assert itself as the essential truth across the entire earth. One feels: With Spiritual Science, one is at home everywhere in relation to spiritual life, for it is the light that shines into the spiritual path that humanity has taken across the earth. And so it is once again an overwhelming feeling to find, through Spiritual Science, the true essence in these collected folk poems, which now form a whole—to discover how the folk-souls once spoke and composed poetry, right into the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries, still holding vivid memories of the ancient clairvoyance that then lived among the people—among this peculiar Finnish people who have preserved customs and arts of an ancient magical nature—and then to see how Spiritual Science first makes all these things understandable to us, how it leads us to their understanding.

[ 15 ] Among the many signs that could be cited for what presents itself to us, so to speak, as great spiritual realities of our immediately approaching time, this is also one: Spiritual Science carries us into a linguistically entirely foreign realm, for the Finnish language differs entirely from all other European languages; one understands nothing of it outwardly; one is carried into a completely foreign realm. And what does one come to know through Spiritual Science? What does one speak of through Spiritual Science with this people, who, in relation to what has happened in the last few centuries, are entirely foreign to the other European peoples? One speaks with them about what is their most sacred, which is now reviving to such an extent that people are turning to the Kalevala, that the Kalevala is coming alive throughout the civilized world. One immediately comes to understand one another in that most sacred thing which the Folk-souls express.

[ 16 ] This is how it may be throughout the entire world if one grasps two things that must serve as the fundamental basis for all anthroposophical life. The first is that we are indeed on the threshold of a new revelation of spiritual truths for humanity. Attention has often been drawn to this. You will find the most explicit reference to this fact in my Rosicrucian Mystery Play *The Portal of Initiation*, where it is stated that we are moving toward times in which human souls will become increasingly open to the spiritual worlds, so that revelations from the spiritual worlds will break in; that the human soul, because it is growing toward the spiritual world and because this will be a kind of natural phenomenon, will truly open itself to the spiritual world, so that human beings will gradually—over the course of the next three millennia—grow upward into the spiritual world. Through Spiritual Science, we must simply learn to understand to what extent and why this must come to pass. Just recall for a moment a fact that has often been mentioned.

[ 17 ] When we consider the post-Atlantean cultures, we find that in the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch—the ancient, sacred Indian Rishi culture—we have, one might say, a culture that springs directly from the human etheric body. Then, in the ancient Persian cultural epoch, we have a culture arising from what we call the feeling body, the astral body. In the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epoch, we have a culture arising from the feeling soul. From the intellectual or emotional soul, we have a culture in the Greek-Latin epoch, and in our own time, we have a culture arising from the conscious soul. Then there will come a culture based on the Spirit-Self, and so on. If you take in this entire course of post-Atlantean cultural development, you will say to yourself: Throughout this entire post-Atlantean cultural period, the situation is such that we have a kind of descending line all the way down to the Greco-Latin era. It is clearly perceptible in this period that, on the one hand—this cannot be denied—humanity has descended most deeply onto the physical plane. The peculiarity of this fourth post-Atlantean cultural period is indeed revealed in an immense entanglement and interweaving of spiritual life with the physical plane. At the same time, however, we see the influence we call the Mystery of Golgotha. We have often emphasized this necessary convergence of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch with the Mystery of Golgotha. Recall everything you know about the matter. But there is another important fact to consider as well. In the individual life, this course of human development is expressed in many ways. Up to the age of seven, we have the development of the physical body. From the description that has often been given and is contained in the short treatise “The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science,” we know that up to the age of seven we have primarily a development of the physical body; this represents a phase of human development prior to the great Atlantean catastrophe. Then, in a certain sense repeated from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life, albeit in a veiled form, we have what is imprinted within human culture itself as the culture of the etheric body, which you find elevated to its highest glory in ancient Indian times. Then we have the culture that we might describe as corresponding to the ancient Persian era: from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year of life, the culture of the astral body. Then we have the culture of the Egyptian-Chaldean period, reflected in the individual life in the development of the human being from the age of twenty-one to twenty-eight; then follows, reflected in the individual life, the cultural development that we can describe as the Greco-Latin culture, from the age of twenty-eight into the thirty-fifth year. This is an important time. For just as a turning point occurred back then for post-Atlantean humanity—from a descending to an ascending culture—so too can a turning point occur in the individual human being between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five. We stand at the midpoint of the individual life, facing simultaneously an ascending and a descending phase of life. As we pass the thirty-fifth year, we enter, so to speak, into the withering of life, into the outward drying up and withering of the human being. For this period, there must be something in the individual human nature that corresponds to the transition from the descending to the ascending culture. It is no coincidence that the Mystery of Golgotha in the life of Christ Jesus fell precisely within this period, between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years; rather, this is self-evident to those who perceive these connections. It had to occur precisely during the period corresponding to the development of the intellectual or emotional soul. Now, when we consider the external culture of humanity, we have been in the development of the conscious soul since the end of the Middle Ages. This will continue for a long time to come. Then comes the development of the Spirit-Self.

[ 18 ] Now, for the individual human being, the “I” actually appears quite irregularly—in fact, extraordinarily so. Today—and I will elaborate on these facts in the future—I can only hint at what this is all about. Consider how, in the normal human development, the physical body develops up to the age of seven, the etheric body up to the age of fourteen, and so on. Then, as you can read in *The Education of the Child from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science*, the ego would actually only begin to enter the intellectual or emotional soul in a regular manner, for only then do we have the proper instrument for the ego in the external organization. Now, however, the I enters into the human being already in the very earliest period, quite independently of the outer organization, at the point in time up to which one later recalls. Why is it that, when viewed as an outer organization, the human being gives birth to its I between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, but in reality gives birth to it in earliest childhood? This stems from the displacement of the inner human being relative to the outer human being by the Luciferic forces. As we have always had to point out, it is the Luciferic forces that signify a lagging behind in time. Our ego, as we carry it within us, is based on Luciferic forces, for it is based on recollection of what has remained from our experiences. Lucifer detaches this ego. Therefore, it lives detached from the outer organism. For a time, the situation was such that the human being had to connect outwardly to something other than his mere ego. That meant that, if it was to be done in the right way, they had to connect to a human being who once lived in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, reached the age of thirty-three, and was then inspired by the Christ with a power that, however, could not survive on Earth beyond the age of thirty-three, but passed away with death at the age of thirty-three. At first it was an external, historical connection; it simply had to be recounted as a historical fact by parents to their children, by the children to their children, and so on. What I have often described to you from the one side, consider it now from the inner side. Up to this point, where the development of the conscious soul lies, when a person looks back, they remember their ego that was once born: for a person sleeps their way into earthly existence. What happened before this point is told to us by our parents, older siblings, and so on. Just as a person now remembers this “I,” which is the Luciferic “I,” so will they later—and this will emerge as something quite special in human development over the next three millennia—see themselves, as in an imagination, facing another “I.” In the future, they will remember that at a certain point in their childhood the Luciferic ego emerged, and that at another point, which they recall, the Christ-ego, so to speak, stands in opposition to the Luciferic ego, and instead of a single ego-point, two will appear. The fact that this appears as a memory will be proof that the Christ event is not yet to take place, but that it has already occurred. In short, just as a person currently remembers his ego, so will he later remember the imagination of the second ego and thereby find the path to what we have characterized as the Christ appearance.

[ 19 ] That human beings are indeed moving toward new inner experiences, spiritual experiences of a completely new kind—this is what must be understood on the basis of Spiritual Science. For, naturally, what human beings are to experience must be prepared. Thus, we are moving toward new experiences of the human soul. That is the first thing that is necessary for Spiritual Science. The second is that these new experiences are such that they will bring peace, unity, and harmony to the earth and among humanity. And they truly do bring them! That is why understanding the national spirit from a completely different perspective is so overwhelmingly magnificent. One understands what the national spirit has created when one illuminates it through Spiritual Science. One need only have the will to engage with what springs from this national spirit, and not impose anything upon it. This must be the other side, the attitude side, of a spiritual worldview. Let us consider it very seriously. How does it stand? People have argued, have done more than argue, have fought bloody battles in successive eras over individual religious opinions. If one understands the fundamental essence of Spiritual Science, then in the future one will no longer fight over individual religious opinions. What one will focus on will be the facts, the spiritual facts, and one will have differences of opinion regarding individual religious problems just as one has differences of opinion in other matters, but not in the way that has led to bloody battles. For one will recognize that the great revelations to the people, wherever they occur, can be traced back to certain important insights. One will get to the bottom of these insights; one will understand that truths are contained within the various religions. Comparative religious studies has made great strides today with regard to the individual religious systems and their comparison with one another. It has brought to light some fine results. But what attitude does it more or less embody? It embodies the attitude—even if it more or less concedes it—that all religions are false. These comparative religious studies do not focus on the truth content, but on the error content. Spiritual Science, however, will focus on the truth content of the individual religions, on what has entered the religions from the principles of initiation, from the various initiations. And how will people then relate to one another? Let us ask: How will a Christian face a Buddhist? — The Christian will come to know the truly magnificent and sublime aspects of the Buddhist system; he will come to know them because Christianity itself will bring itself to understand reincarnation and karma—the greatness that Buddhism embodies in reincarnation and karma. But he will understand something else as well, namely, that there are certain individualities in the development of the world who become Buddhas from Bodhisattvas. The Christian will understand what he can actually only learn to understand through an anthroposophical development: how the prince of Suddhodana, in the twenty-ninth year of his life—it had to be precisely then; all these facts emerge if you only consider these things as they are taught in Spiritual Science—becomes a Buddha. This is connected to what is described in the short treatise “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science.” Through such an understanding, the Christian will also grasp that a being such as such an individuality does not descend to Earth again in a physical body. He who is truly a Christian theosophist—and, if you will, a Christian theosophist—does not view what exists in Buddhism as a fable or a myth; rather, he believes, like the Buddhist himself, in this truth: that the Bodhisattva became a Buddha at the age of twenty-nine and does not return in a physical body. And he respects and honors this belief, he believes with the Buddhist, believes what the Buddhist believes, stands on his own ground within Buddhism, does not regard it as a childish fantasy, but knows that in the prince Suddhodana an individuality has risen to such a dignity that it no longer needs to descend into a physical body, but works in another way into the development of humanity. And the Christian would never interfere in the spiritual affairs of the Buddhist in such a way as to point him toward something foreign. He will understand what the Buddhist can extract from Buddhism as truth.

[ 20 ] And what will a Buddhist say who, as a Buddhist theosophist, stands in opposition to Christianity? He will try to comprehend what it means that in a personality known as Jesus of Nazareth, in the thirtieth year of his life, the ego was replaced by the One whom the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch has called the Christ, who then dwelt for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He will understand what it means that that which exists as the substance of the Christ—and which, through death, had to go with the Christ Jesus—has flowed out over the culture of humanity. He will try to grasp that this life, from the baptism by John in the Jordan to the Mystery of Golgotha, represents a unique event in human development, and that what was once incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth cannot return, just as the Buddha can never return to Earth. Just as the Buddha was there earlier as a Bodhisattva, only to then ascend as a Buddha into the spiritual worlds, so does the Christian standing on theosophical ground hold this in high regard. Just as the individuality of the Christ descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, just as it lived there for three years, passed through death, and just as this power has spread throughout the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth and continues to live there, the Buddhist theosophist, the theosophical Buddhist, respects this entire recognition of these spiritual facts in relation to what the Christian must acknowledge as his creed. Mutual understanding of the creeds on Earth and thus mutual harmony: this is the fundamental principle of a Spiritual Science view of the world. And it would be absurd if the Christian were to teach that an individuality could arise that would be the reincarnated Buddha. The Buddhist population would have to rebel against such a course of action if such a teaching were brought into a Buddhist region. But it would surely bring discord into a Christian community if people were to hear that what Christ is could reincarnate in the flesh. Theosophy, however, exists to bring mutual understanding of the various religious currents emerging from the initiations across the Earth. Then there will be true Theosophy, true Spiritual Science, in the hearts of people when this is understood. Then there will be no new sects forming, no new announcements of external physical prophets, for whom humanity no longer waits in that external sense. Instead, people will also come to understand that Rosicrucian principle which has been established since the founding of Rosicrucianism: that those who are to teach must not speak of their mission to the outer world before the appointed time. Within Rosicrucianism, it is an ancient rule that no one who is to be regarded as a teacher of the Rosicrucian tradition may speak to the outer exoteric world during their lifetime, but only one hundred years after their death. Not before, because only then can the impersonal element be introduced into a true spiritual movement.

[ 21 ] To be clear that we are facing a development of the human soul in which the human soul will become increasingly aware of the spiritual element shining within, and that through this the supersensible Christ event will occur, of which we may speak prophetically, and to be clear that genuine theosophy must increasingly lead to an understanding of what is religiously sacred to the individual—these are the two things that make a person a theosophist within the theosophical movement. It is by his clarity regarding these two things that one will be able to recognize whether a person has truly grasped the task of theosophy in the present.