The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] You know that a question often asked in life and in philosophy is that of the so-called meaning of existence as a whole. Now, over time, through our work in the Spiritual Science, we have surely cultivated a certain modesty precisely in regard to the matter at hand. We know that, through the exploration of the spiritual worlds, human beings do indeed look beyond or think beyond the ordinary sensory world; but we also know that we can by no means presume to speak with any certainty about the ultimate origins or the ultimate and highest meaning of life. Superficial thinking will, of course, object: What do we know at all, then, if we cannot know anything about the meaning of life?

[ 2 ] We have often needed an analogy that can arise from the spirit of Spiritual Science and, so to speak, shed light on what is possible or impossible in this matter. We have said that if someone wanted to travel somewhere and, at first, could only be told at his starting point how to set out on the path to a much nearer destination—but were sent on his way with the assurance that he would receive further assistance at that destination—then, even if he had to ask for directions along the way, he might not know the route to the final destination, he could nevertheless be certain that he will reach his final destination, because he can always proceed from place to place. Thus, as students of Spiritual Science, we do not ask about the “final goals,” but about the next ones—that is, the earthly goal—and we know that it would make no real sense to ask about the final goals. For we have recognized that human life is a matter of development. Thus we must be clear that at the present stage of our development we could understand nothing at all of the later goals of development, and that we would first have to develop to a higher level in order to gain an understanding of what is meant by a later goal. We therefore ask about the next goal and are clear that—by holding precisely this next goal before us as an ideal, striving for it, and, if we use the right means, also achieving it—we will thereby reach a further point in our development, so that at this point we can again ask the right question about the next goal, and so on. While it might seem, therefore, that Spiritual Science makes a person immodest because they look beyond the ordinary world into a spiritual world, they are, on the contrary, made modest precisely regarding these highest things—in contrast to what is often casually raised in questions about the highest things.

[ 3 ] First, we ask ourselves about the purpose of life on Earth. In other words: We ask ourselves what the human being primarily contributes, through the period of development in which he passes through those physical incarnations we call the physical incarnations in the flesh on Earth, to what has been gained in the preceding periods of development—the Saturn, Sun, and Moon eras? — To grasp this, let us bring to mind things we already know from one perspective or another, but which today are to serve us in connecting quite concrete, quite definite concepts with what might be called the meaning of Earth’s evolution. First, let us draw attention to something that has already been pointed out in another context.

[ 4 ] During the period of Greco-Roman culture—one could almost say precisely in the 6th century B.C.—when humanity’s current rational, intellectual way of thinking began, a certain idea was expressed time and again: the idea that all philosophy, all deeper reflection on the mysteries of existence, stems from what one might call wonder or amazement. In other words: As long as a person cannot feel wonder or amazement at the things that surround them, at the phenomena within which they live, they live thoughtlessly and do not inquire in a rational or spiritual manner into the “why” of why things happen one way or another. “All philosophizing stems from wonder or amazement.”—This was a recurring saying in the ancient Greek-Latin cultural period. What, then, does this saying actually mean for the life of the human soul?

[ 5 ] If a person has never seen a locomotive in action—it is, of course, difficult to find such a person in European society today, but it was not so long ago that one could still find such people; now one has to go to quite remote areas to find them—then, when they see a train moving, they will be amazed, and will be particularly surprised that something is moving forward without possessing the forces for forward motion that they are accustomed to seeing whenever forward motion is involved. It is well known that many such people, who were astonished when they saw a locomotive moving, asked whether there were horses inside that were moving the locomotive forward? — Why were people astonished, amazed by what presented itself to them? They were astonished because they saw something that was, in a certain sense, familiar to them and yet seemed unfamiliar. They knew that something was moving forward. But everything that moved forward, they had always seen as being driven by entirely different forces. Now they were witnessing a forward movement unlike anything they had ever seen before. This is what aroused their amazement.

[ 6 ] If, then, the philosophers of the Greco-Roman era could only be philosophers because they were capable of wonder, they must have been the kind of people who perceived everything that happens in the world as both familiar and unfamiliar, in that what was happening seemed to them such that it could not have happened the way it did, and that something must be sought in all that was going on around them that was unknown to them.

[ 7 ] Why is it, then, that philosophers have had to approach all things, so to speak, as if they were completely unfamiliar with certain forces or causes at work within them? Since one must assume that philosophers are at least as intelligent as people who pay no attention to their surroundings, one cannot assume that philosophers can only accept in things what is perceived by the ordinary senses. They must therefore miss or sense something else in things that fills them with wonder: that is, something that is not within the sensory world. Hence, philosophers have always sought a supernatural dimension to what exists in the sensory world, as long as materialism has not existed. So one may say that the wonder, the astonishment of the philosophers must actually refer to the fact that they cannot comprehend certain things with what they see with their sensory eyes, but that they must say to themselves: What I see there does not correspond to the mental image I have of it; I must imagine supersensory forces in it. — But in the sensory world, philosophers see no supersensory forces. That alone would be enough for a thinking person to realize that there is a memory within the human being—one that, though not reaching into consciousness, is nevertheless subconscious—dating back to the times when the soul saw something other than sensory objects. That is to say, the soul remembers things it experienced before entering sensory existence, and therefore says to itself: I am amazed that I see things here whose effects astonish me and which are different from everything I have seen before, and which must therefore be explained by forces that I must first summon from the world of the supersensible. — That is why all philosophizing begins with astonishment or wonder, because human beings do indeed approach things in such a way that, before entering the sensory world, they come from a supersensory world, and now sensory things do not correspond to what they perceived in the supersensory world. Hence he is amazed, amazed because things exhibit effects that he does not know from the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] Thus, wonder or amazement points us to the connection between human beings and the supersensible world as something that belongs to a sphere which human beings can enter only when they step out of the world in which they are confined by their physical bodies. This is something that shows us here in this world that human beings actually have a constant urge to transcend themselves. Whoever can remain only within themselves, whom wonder does not drive out of the ordinary ego, remains a person who cannot transcend themselves, who lets the sun rise and set and so on, without caring about anything else. That is what uncultivated peoples do.

[ 9 ] A second factor that detaches a person from the ordinary world—one that already elevates them here from a merely sensory to a supersensory perspective—is compassion or empathy. I have already emphasized this. To those who go through the world without thinking, compassion does not appear to be a great secret or a special mystery. But to those who go through the world thoughtfully, compassion appears precisely as a miracle, as a great mystery. When we view a being only from the outside, it presents to our senses and our intellect what arises from the impressions that come from it. But when we develop compassion, we step beyond the sphere of the impressions that the being makes on us; then we share in what is taking place in the most secret innermost sanctum of beings, we reach out from our own sphere of the self into the sphere of the other being. This means we detach ourselves from ourselves; we move beyond the fact that we are usually confined within the physical body and enter into what the other being contains within itself—and what in this world is already a supersensible realm, for we cannot enter the soul sphere of the other being with our senses or our intellect. The fact that compassion exists in the world is proof that we can already detach ourselves from ourselves within the sensory world, step out of ourselves, and cross over into other beings. We know that it is a moral defect, a moral deficiency in a human being, if they cannot develop compassion. If, so to speak, at the very moment when they should detach themselves from themselves and step over into the other being—not to experience their own pain or joy, but the pain and joy of the other being—if they cease to feel at that moment, as it were, and become powerless, then that is a moral deficiency. The fully developed human being must be able to transcend their earthly life through compassion for other beings; they must be able to experience not what they themselves are, but what another being is.

[ 10 ] We have already drawn attention to a third factor through which human beings transcend what they initially are in their physical bodies. It is the conscience. In ordinary life, a person will desire this or that which corresponds to his instincts or needs, will pursue what appeals to him, and will reject what he finds repulsive. When a person acts in this way, he will do many things for which he then forces himself to criticize himself, as his conscience—the voice of conscience—comes upon him and, so to speak, corrects him. It also depends on this voice of conscience—depending on whether it speaks in one way or another—whether a person may ultimately be satisfied with what they do, or may not be satisfied with it. This, however, testifies that in conscience, a person possesses something through which they transcend the sphere of what they perceive as agreeable or disagreeable in their instincts and so on.

[ 11 ] Awe and wonder, compassion, and conscience are the three things through which human beings transcend themselves even in physical life; through them, things shine into this physical life that cannot enter the human soul through the faculties of reason and the senses.

[ 12 ] It should now be easy to understand that all three of these powers are only possible, can only develop, when a human being passes through incarnations in a physical body; when a physical body separates him, so to speak, from that which enters his soul sphere from another sphere. If a physical body did not separate human beings from the spiritual world and present the external world to them as a sensory world, they would be unable to marvel. It is entirely due to the physical body that human beings are able to marvel at sensory things and must seek the spirit in them. If human beings were not separated from one another, but if they lived as a common unity, so that a shared spiritual essence would flow through the consciousness of each, if every soul were not in a physical body that, so to speak, forms an impenetrable shell around them and separates them from others, then we could not develop what we call compassion. And if this physical body of man were not predisposed to seek things that are conditioned solely by the physical world and can be corrected by something else within him, then conscience could not be perceived as a spiritual force that speaks into his world of instincts, passions, and desires. Thus, human beings must be embodied in a physical body so that they can experience these three things—wonder or amazement, compassion, and conscience.

[ 13 ] In our time, people pay little attention to such mysteries, which nevertheless shed profound light on the world of existence. But, when you think about it, it wasn’t really that long ago that people did indeed concern themselves with such mysteries. You need only realize one thing. Try, for example, to find your way in the world of the Greek gods, those gods of whom Homer tells. Try to let everything that these Greek gods do in their actions take effect on your soul. Or try to understand what the impulses are in a being who stands as the last remnant of an earlier generation on Earth, in Achilles, who is, after all, descended from a divine mother. Go through the Iliad and the Odyssey; ask Homer whether anything ever stirred within these beings caught between humans and gods that one might call a conscience or compassion? Just consider for a moment that Homer builds his entire Iliad on the fact that what is actually raging and wreaking havoc there is “the wrath of Achilles.” That is to say, it is a passion, an eminent passion, and you must strip away everything else found in Greek mythology: the Iliad deals with nothing other than the events that occurred as a result of the wrath of Achilles—that is, as a result of a passion. Look at everything Achilles accomplishes in the course of the narrative and try to see if you can even once say that something like compassion or a conscience stirs within Achilles. But not even what one might call astonishment or wonder stirs within him. That is precisely the greatness of Homer, that he portrays such things in such an admirable way. Follow in the Iliad what expression Achilles makes when he is told that this or that terrible thing has happened. He behaves quite differently from a person who is astonished or amazed. And then take the Greek gods themselves: they develop all manner of impulses of which you can say that they take on a decidedly selfish character in a human being who is confined within a physical body. In the gods, they are spiritual. But in everything that is presented within the Greek pantheon, there is no compassion, no conscience, nor even what we might call astonishment. Why not? Because Homer and the Greeks knew: these are beings belonging to earlier times, preceding the Earth era, where the beings who underwent their human development back then, depending on the planetary conditions that preceded them, had not yet incorporated astonishment, compassion, and conscience into their souls. One must certainly take this into account: that earlier planetary conditions which our Earth has undergone—and in which beings such as those the Greeks worshipped as gods went through their stages of human development—were by no means intended to implant wonder, compassion, and conscience in the soul. That is what Earth’s development is for. This is the purpose of Earth’s evolution: that, on the foundation of Earth’s evolution, what would not exist without it—wonder, amazement, compassion, and conscience—be implanted into the overall development.

[ 14 ] Do you recall how I myself pointed out to you that, so to speak, the concept of conscience demonstrably emerged during a certain period of Greek civilization: as we can still show, that in Aeschylus what we call conscience plays no role at all, that in his work the memories of the avenging Furies are still present, and that it is only in Euripides that what we call conscience is clearly elaborated. The concept of conscience only emerges gradually during the Greco-Roman cultural epoch. Regarding the concept of wonder or amazement, I have been able to tell you today that it only developed during the period when people began to philosophize in the style of the Greco-Roman era. And when we consider a remarkable fact of the spiritual development of the Earth, this fact sheds a far-reaching light on what we call compassion, sympathy, and what we can also call love in the true sense. In our present-day materialistic age, it is even extraordinarily difficult to maintain the right perspective on precisely this concept of compassion and love. For many of you will know how, especially in our present-day materialistic age, this concept is distorted and caricatured, in that materialism in our time draws the concept of love as close as possible to the concept of sexuality, with which it has absolutely nothing to do. This is a point where our current spiritual culture not only departs from reason but also from what is in any way still permissible in healthy thinking. Here, the development of our time, through its materialism, is already moving not only into the irrational and illogical, but into the shameful, when what can be called love and what falls under the concept of sexuality are brought so close together. The fact that, under certain circumstances, sexuality may approach love between a man and a woman does not justify bringing these two concepts as close together as possible: the all-encompassing nature of love and compassion and the entirely specific nature of sexuality. And logically, it is just as sensible to regard the concept of, say, a locomotive and the running over of a person—because locomotives sometimes run over people—as two related concepts, as it is today to bring the concept of love and that of sexuality closer together because, under certain circumstances, these things are found in close proximity to one another. But this does not stem from any scientific premise, but rather from the nonsensical and even, in some cases, quite unhealthy way of thinking of our time.

[ 15 ] In contrast, another fact is infinitely better suited to pointing out to us the significance of the concepts of love and compassion: namely, that remarkable fact that at a certain point in time, one might say, something occurs among all peoples in the course of human development that differs from one another in many essential respects, yet is the same across the earth in one respect: in the acceptance of the concept of love, the concept of compassion. And here again it is remarkable that five, six, seven centuries before the Christ impulse entered humanity, founders of worldviews appeared across the entire earth. They appear among all peoples. It is highly significant that we find, for instance, both Lao-tzu and Confucius in China six centuries before our era, the Buddha in India, the later Zarathustra—not the original one—in Persia, and Pythagoras in Greece. How different these religious founders are! Only a very abstract mind, unable to perceive the differences, could suggest—as is often done today, though only through nonsense—that Lao-tzu or Confucius contain the same elements as other religious founders. That is not the case. But one thing is true of all of them: they all contain in their teachings the element that compassion or love must reign from human soul to human soul! This is what is significant: that six centuries before our era, awareness began to stir of how love and compassion are to be incorporated into the ongoing stream of human development.

[ 16 ] So one might say: Everything points to this—the emergence of wonder and amazement, the awakening of conscience, and the emergence of love and compassion in the ongoing stream of human development—that during the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, all signs indicate that what we might call the meaning of Earth’s development is truly being woven into the fabric of human evolution.

[ 17 ] How infinitely superficial, how infinitely foolish it is when people say, for example: Why did human beings first have to descend from the divine-spiritual worlds into the physical world, since they are meant to evolve back up again? Why couldn’t they have stayed up there? — He could not remain up there because he could only take in the three forces of wonder or amazement, love or compassion, and conscience or moral demand upon the Earth, through the descent into physical earthly development. So we must say to ourselves: We look toward the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch and see impulses entering humanity during it which—actually only from that point onward—must increasingly take hold in humanity. It is, of course, very easy even today to point out how little compassion and love, how little conscience, already prevails in humanity. Certainly, one can still point to these things today. But when pointing these things out, one must at the same time draw attention to the fact that even in the Greco-Roman era there were so many recognized slaves in the world, and that even a philosopher as great as Aristotle regarded the existence of slaves as necessary in human nature, and that since that time, love has taken such a firm hold that, even though inequalities among people still exist today, there is already something like a sense of shame in people’s souls regarding certain things. That is to say, precisely the forces that entered human development back then are developing more and more in people’s souls. Today, no one would dare—unless, perhaps, in a one-sided way, they share Nietzsche’s tragic fate—to openly take the position that today, as in ancient Greece, conscious, explicit slavery should be reintroduced. (Nietzsche’s followers can be entirely disregarded here, for Nietzsche, had he been in his right mind, would have shaken them off.) And no one will deny that the greatest feeling in the human soul is that of love and compassion, and that it must be humanity’s task to make that voice ever finer and finer, which sounds into the soul as if from another world.

[ 18 ] Having taken to heart that it is, as it were, the very purpose of Earth’s evolution to develop the three forces described, we now turn our attention to the impulse we have so often cited as the most important impulse within Earth’s evolution—the one that falls precisely within the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch: the Christ impulse. Even a superficial observation shows us that it falls precisely within that era in which the Earth is ripe to develop the three qualities, the three forces: wonder or amazement, compassion or love, and conscience or moral demand—the era in which these first appear as truly human qualities. How have we viewed the Christ impulse?

[ 19 ] We have considered him in such a way that we understand how he actually entered into human evolution. I would like to make a comment here regarding what I said about the Christ impulse, what I said about the lagging behind of a portion of certain spiritual forces as something superhuman when humanity began to undergo its development here on Earth, and that this impulse flowed in during the time we can describe as indicated in the Bible by John’s baptism in the Jordan. So that what had not been taken up by the Luciferic forces came in, having waited until the fourth cultural epoch to then unite with humanity. Keep this in mind along with what I have often mentioned: that actually, if one cannot draw attention in this way to the things that show us how the spiritual world interacts with the physical, it is a bad habit to counter this with the most abstract concepts, such as that of the “three Logoi.” I have often emphasized that an ordinary person can usually form a mental image of “Logoi” that includes just the five letters. If you nevertheless hear it said outside our movement that we present the matter as though the Christ were the “second Logos”—whereby it is treated as if what is said outside our movement were said within it— then you can see that it is necessary to bear in mind that distortions of what is presented here are constantly the order of the day. While we strive here, time and again, to explore, expand upon, and gather from all sides whatever can deepen the concept of Christ, matters outside our sphere of work are presented as if we were pinning down an abstract concept here and speaking in an external manner such that Christ is the “second Logos.” But within the Theosophical Movement, consciences should be so sharpened that one knows such a thing ought not to happen. As long as it is still possible to do things that simply distort the opinions of others, the Theosophical Movement does not stand on a particularly high moral level, and it is of no use to say that it is fine for all manner of opinions to be represented within the Theosophical Society. That remains a mere phrase as long as one allows oneself to spread false opinions in any other area about what is held elsewhere. Certainly, it must be permitted to spread all manner of opinions, but not false opinions about others. And it is necessary that spiritual conscience be sharpened in this regard, for otherwise all sense of truth will eventually be driven out of the Theosophical Movement, and then we will not be able to continue the necessary spiritual movement within the Theosophical Movement. We must take these matters seriously and not gloss over them superficially. We must be clear that, admittedly, less will be able to be printed if one wishes to print only what one knows for certain. But what harm is there if less is actually printed? Or what harm is there if less is spoken, if only the true, the real, that which is, is spoken? Recently, one could read in foreign journals how we speak of Christ as the “Second Logos,” and how a theosophical-Christian orientation is represented here that is suitable only for Germany—for no other country. One could read how a narrow-minded theosophy is being practiced here, and how from Leipzig, from a certain movement known to you, a “broad-minded” theosophical movement is being promoted. When one reads such things, one must say: That sacred sharpening of the conscience, which is necessary for a spiritual movement, is not present in the theosophical movement. And if we do not have that sacred sharpening of the conscience, if we do not feel strictly bound to the most sacred truth, then we will not make progress in any other way!

[ 20 ] That had to be said. And it will be necessary, especially within the Theosophical Movement, to keep a close eye on people when it comes to what is always presented as love and compassion.

[ 21 ] If we now consider the Christ impulse in such a way that we see in it the downflow of that spiritual impulse which remained behind in the ancient Lemurian epoch and which united with the development of the Earth in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch at the point marked by the baptism of John in the Jordan and completed by the Mystery of Golgotha, then, when we portray the Christ impulse in this way, we have something of which we always say that what we call the Christ was indeed not incarnated in an ordinary physical human being at that time. We know how complex the nature of that Jesus of Nazareth was, so that he could take in the Christ impulse throughout the three years of his life. Therefore, we are clear that for three years, enveloped in the three sheaths of another human being, the Christ impulse lived on Earth; but we are also clear that the Christ impulse was not “incarnated” on Earth even then, but only permeated and filled the flesh of the one who stood there as Jesus of Nazareth. We must understand this when it is said that there can be no question of a return of the Christ, but only of a unique impulse during the time of the Palestinian events, when all that remained of Jesus of Nazareth at the baptism by John were his physical body, etheric body, and astral body, and these were filled by the Christ impulse, which, as it were, walked the earth for three years within them. Since that time, we know, the Christ has been connected to the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth and can be found there by those who wish to receive him. He has been present in the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth since that time and was not there before. This is the significant turning point in the Earth’s development: that from this time onward, the Earth contains something it did not previously contain within itself.

[ 22 ] Now, however, we know that when we look around us, we see the various kingdoms of nature; yet the way we perceive them is not real, but rather it is maya, the great illusion. When we look into the animal kingdom, we see individual forms arising and passing away, and regard at most the group soul as enduring. When we look at the plants, we likewise see the individual plants arise and pass away, but behind them we see the Earth Spirit, which we have depicted as something enduring. And it is similar with the minerals. Thus we see the spiritual as something enduring, but the physical—whether in the animal, plant, or mineral kingdom—we cannot regard as enduring. Indeed, when we observe the Earth’s process with our external senses, we see how the Earth planet is gradually pulverizing and will one day dissolve into Earth dust. We have described what will happen when the Earth’s body is cast off by the Earth spirit, just as the individual human body is cast off by the human spirit. What will remain as the highest substance of the Earth when the Earth has reached its goal? The Christ impulse was present on Earth; it existed, as it were, as a spiritual substance. It remains. It is taken up by human beings during the Earth’s development. But how does it live on? When he walked on Earth for three years, he did not have a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body of his own; he had taken on the three sheaths from Jesus of Nazareth. But as the Earth reaches its goal, it will, like the human being, be a fully developed being corresponding to the Christ impulse. But from where does the Christ impulse take these three sheaths? From that which can only be taken from the Earth. Whatever has been lived out on Earth since the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—in the course of human development that began with the Mystery of Golgotha—in terms of wonder or amazement at things, everything that can live within us as wonder and amazement, this finally flows to the Christ and forms the astral body of the Christ impulse. And everything that takes root in human souls as love and compassion forms the etheric body of the Christ impulse, and what lives as conscience in human beings and animates them, from the Mystery of Golgotha to the end of the Earth, forms the physical body—or its equivalent—for the Christ impulse.

[ 23 ] This is how a saying from the Gospel takes on its true meaning: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers, you did for me!” We have described how what happens from person to person is perceived by Christ as the successive individual atoms of his own etheric body: whatever is developed in love and compassion forms part of the etheric body of Christ. Thus, at the end of Earth’s evolution, he will be enveloped in threefold fashion by what has lived within human beings and what, once they have transcended their ego, will have become the Christ’s garment.

[ 24 ] Now you can see how human beings live in union with Christ. From the Mystery of Golgotha to the culmination of Earth’s evolution, human beings will become ever more perfect as they develop into what can exist within them—namely, an “I”-being. But human beings will be united with the Christ-being who has come among them by continually stepping outside of themselves and, through wounding and wonder, establishing the astral body of Christ. Christ does not build his own astral body; rather, in what human beings find within themselves as wonder or amazement, they will contribute to the astral body of Christ. His etheric body will be built through compassion and love, which will prevail from person to person, and his physical body through what will develop in human beings as conscience. Whatever humanity sins in these three areas simultaneously deprives the Christ on Earth of the possibility of fully developing, that is, it leaves earthly development deficient. Those who walk the earth indifferently, who do not wish to acquaint themselves with what may be revealed to them on earth, deprive the astral body of Christ of the possibility of its complete development through their indifference; those who live their lives without compassion or love prevent the etheric body of Christ from developing fully; and those who are unscrupulous prevent the same for his physical body; but this means that the Earth cannot reach the goal of its development at all.

[ 25 ] We must therefore consider the overcoming of the egoistic principle in the evolution of the Earth. Consequently, the Christ impulse will become ever more deeply rooted in human culture, and what was demonstrated in the last lecture here—by drawing attention to how, for example, in Raphael’s paintings the Christ impulse has taken root in humanity in an interdenominational way—will continue to unfold. Yes, even the external pictorial representation of Christ—the mental image of him that is to be depicted outwardly—is a question that has yet to be resolved. Many feelings will have to pass through human souls on Earth before, among the many attempts made over the course of the epochs, one emerges that will to some extent show what Christ is as the supersensible impulse that is becoming part of Earth’s development. In the attempts made so far, there are not even the beginnings of such a representation of Christ. For what must emerge is the emerging outward form of the interweaving of the impulses of wonder, compassion, and conscience. What is expressed therein must be expressed in such a way that the face of Christ becomes so alive that that which makes a human being an earthly human being—the sensual and desirous—is overcome by that which spiritualizes the face. There must be supreme power in the face, in that everything conceivable as the highest unfolding of conscience is revealed in the uniquely shaped chin and mouth when he stands before one, when the painter or sculptor will shape him, a mouth from which one can sense that it is not there for eating, but for expressing what has ever been cultivated in humanity as morality and conscience, and that to this end the entire skeletal system, its dentition, and lower jaw are formed as a mouth. This will be expressed in such a face. With this subform of the face will be associated a power that radiates, dismembers, and tears apart the entire rest of the human body, so that it becomes a different form, thereby overcoming certain other forces, so that it will be impossible to give the Christ, who will display such a mouth, any physical form whatsoever like that of today’s physical human being. Instead, he will be given eyes from which all the power of compassion will speak—the kind of compassion with which only eyes can look upon beings—not to receive impressions, but to enter fully into their joys and sufferings with one’s whole soul. And he will have a forehead where one cannot suppose that the sensory impressions of the earth are being thought, but a forehead that will protrude slightly forward above the eyes, arching over that part of the brain: but not a “thinking brow” that processes what is there, but rather wonder will be expressed from the brow that rises above the eyes and gently curves backward over the head, thereby expressing what one might call wonder at the mysteries of the world. This will have to be a head that human beings cannot find in physical humanity.

[ 26 ] That afterimage of Christ should really be something like the ideal of the Christ figure. And this is the feeling that strives toward this ideal, if one is to strive for it in the course of development: as humanity engages in artistic activity to portray the highest ideal through spiritual science, the feeling must arise more and more for the sake of human development: You must not look at something that is already there if you wish to form Christ, but you must let the forces work within you and allow yourself to be inwardly permeated by all that a spiritual immersion in the spiritual development of the world—through the three important impulses of wonder, compassion, and conscience—can give you.