The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] It would undoubtedly be best if, when making observations intended to shed light on one Gospel or another, one could always completely disregard the other Gospels; for this would lead to the purest and best understanding of the fundamental tone of the individual Gospel. However, it stands to reason that such an approach—if one does not cast even a single ray of light from one Gospel onto the others—can easily give rise to misunderstandings. Thus, precisely what was described yesterday as the “greatest monologue in world history” could easily be misunderstood if anyone were to consult, not precisely but somewhat superficially, what must be said about the corresponding passage—for example, in reference to the Gospel of Matthew—and what was also stated at the time during the lectures in Bern. In fact, an objection raised from such a perspective would, in a deeper logical sense, actually be the same as if there were a statement: Once upon a time, a person stood here on this podium, and to his left stood a bouquet of roses—and another time one might read: Once a person stood here on this podium, and to his right stood a bouquet of roses—and if someone who had not been present were then to say: That is not true; for on one occasion the bouquet of roses stood on the right, and on another it stood on the left. It simply depends on where the observer in question was standing; then both statements are correct. This is how one must approach the Gospels. We are not dealing here with an abstract biography of Jesus Christ, but with a rich world of both external and occult facts that are presented here.

[ 2 ] To consider this point of view, let us now take a look at what was yesterday called the “greatest monologue in world history,” God’s soliloquy. We must be clear that what unfolded in the course of the whole event took place specifically between Christ Jesus and his disciples, his closest followers. And what was said yesterday—that the spirit of Elijah, after being freed from the physical body of John the Baptist, was active as a kind of group soul of the disciples—must be taken into account in such a consideration in a very special way. What took place at that time did not unfold in such a way that it can simply be recounted in an external manner, but it unfolded in a much more complex way. It was, so to speak, an inner and profound interrelationship between the soul of Christ and the souls of the Twelve. What took place in the soul of Christ were, for that time, all significant processes, processes of a rich nature, manifold processes. But everything that took place in the soul of Christ was, as it were, repeated once more as in a kind of mirror image, in a kind of reflection, in the souls of the disciples, but divided into twelve parts; so that each of the Twelve experienced a part of what was taking place in the soul of Christ Jesus as in a mirror image, but each of the Twelve experienced something different.

[ 3 ] What took place in the soul of Christ Jesus unfolded like a great harmony, like a great symphony; this was reflected in the soul of each of the Twelve in a manner similar to what one of twelve instruments might contribute. Therefore, any event that relates particularly to one or more of the disciples can be described from two perspectives. One can describe how the event in question appears in the soul of Christ, for example, what was presented yesterday as the great world-historical monologue of Christ Jesus; one can describe how it unfolded there, how it was experienced there. There it appears exactly as it was portrayed yesterday. But in a certain mirror image, the same process also takes place in the soul of Peter. The same soul experience takes place in Peter. But while in Christ Jesus it encompasses the whole of humanity, in Peter it takes place in such a way that it is one-twelfth of the totality of humanity, one-twelfth or one zodiac sign of the entire Christ Spirit. Therefore, one must depict it in a different way when depicting it in relation to Christ Jesus himself.

[ 4 ] This is how one must speak when presenting it in the spirit of the Gospel of Mark; for in this Gospel, the most striking events are described, and particular emphasis is placed on what took place within the soul of Christ Jesus himself. In the Gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, what is presented relates more to the soul of Peter and to what Christ Jesus can contribute to explaining what takes place in Peter’s soul. If you read the Gospel carefully, you will be able to see how the Gospel of Matthew includes additional words that present the story from Peter’s perspective. For why are the words added there: “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah; for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”? (Matt. 16:17.) In other words: Something of what the soul of Christ Jesus felt is also felt by the soul of Peter. But in that the soul of Peter feels that his Master is the Christ, this is to be interpreted as Peter being lifted up for a time to an experience in the higher Self and being overwhelmed by what he experiences in this way, and so to speak falling back again. Yet it was still possible for him to penetrate to the insight that is taking place in the soul of the Christ with a different intention, with a different goal. And because he was capable of this, that is why the conferral of the power of the keys, of which the Gospel of Matthew speaks (Matt. 16:19) and which was also discussed in the commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. In contrast, in the Gospel of Mark we have emphasized strongly and exclusively those words which indicate that the event, apart from what it was in Peter, took place simultaneously, in parallel, as the monologue of God.

[ 5 ] This is how we must take these things. Then, however, we also sense how Christ Jesus actually deals with his own, how he leads them from stage to stage, how, after the spirit of Elijah-John has passed over to them, he can lead them further in their understanding of spiritual mysteries than he could before. And only then do we feel the significance of the fact that the so-called Transfiguration or Transmutation scene follows the passage we discussed yesterday at the end as the monologue of God. This is another significant element in the dramatic composition of the Gospel of Mark. To shed light on this Transfiguration, we must point out a few things that are connected to much of what is necessary for understanding the presentation in the Gospels; first of all, one thing.

[ 6 ] You can read in the Gospel of Mark, and also in the other Gospels, how Jesus Christ speaks of the Son of Man having to suffer greatly, of being attacked by the scribes and the high priests, of being killed, and of being raised after three days. And you will find clear indications throughout, up to a certain point, of how the Apostles at first cannot understand this phrase about the suffering, dying, and risen Son of Man, and how they struggle specifically with understanding this passage (9:31–32). Why do we encounter this peculiar fact? Why do difficulties arise for the Apostles precisely in relation to understanding the actual Mystery of Golgotha? What, then, is this Mystery of Golgotha? We have already mentioned it. It is nothing other than the bringing of Initiation out of the depths of the Mysteries onto the plane of world history. Of course, there is a very significant difference between any initiation and the Mystery of Golgotha. The difference lies in the following:

[ 7 ] Those who had been initiated into the mysteries of various peoples had, in a certain sense, undergone the same experience. They were led through suffering, through a three-day, one might say, apparent death, during which their spirit dwelt outside their body in the spiritual worlds, from where their spirit was then brought back into their body, so that the spirit within the body could remember what it had experienced in the spiritual world and could act as a messenger for the mysteries of the spiritual world. One can therefore say that a journey toward death—though not the death that separates the spirit completely from the physical body, but only for a time—is initiation. A sojourn outside the body and a return to the physical body, thereby becoming a messenger of the divine mysteries—that is initiation. It took place after careful preparation, once the individual had reached a state where the powers of the soul had become so concentrated within him that he could live through these three and a half days without using the instruments of his physical body. But then, after these three and a half days, he had to reunite with his physical body. He had thus, so to speak, undergone this through a rapture into a higher world, apart from ordinary historical events.

[ 8 ] The Mystery of Golgotha was different in its inner essence but similar in its outward appearance. The events that took place during Christ’s sojourn in the body of Jesus of Nazareth led to the actual physical death of the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, to the Spirit of Christ remaining outside the physical body for three days, but then returning—not into the physical body, but into the condensed etheric body, so condensed that the disciples could perceive him, as described in the Gospels; so that Christ could walk and become visible even after the event of Golgotha. Thus the initiation, which had otherwise taken place in the depths of the mysteries, hidden from external eyes, was presented as a historical event, set before all humanity as a unique event. Thus, in a certain sense, the initiation was brought out of the mysteries; it was accomplished by the one Christ before all eyes. But precisely in this way, the conclusion of the old world is marked, and the beginning of the new era has come.

[ 9 ] From the account given by the prophets, you have seen that the spirit of prophecy and what was given to the ancient Hebrew people through that spirit differed from the spirit of initiation among other peoples. The other peoples had leaders who were initiates, initiated in the manner just described. This was not the case with the ancient Hebrew people. Here we are not dealing with initiations as with other peoples, but rather, as we have heard, with an elemental emergence of the spirit within the bodies of those who appeared as prophets—with something that emerges like genies of spirituality. And for this to be possible, we see that among the middle prophets, those souls appear within the ancient Hebrew people who, in earlier incarnations, were initiates among other peoples, so that what they give to the ancient Hebrew people is experienced by them as a remembrance of what they received in initiation. Thus, the shining forth of spiritual life was different among the Old Testament people and different among the other peoples. Among the latter, it occurred through the act of initiation; among the Old Testament people, it came through the gifts implanted in those who were active as prophets among the people.

[ 10 ] Through the work of its prophets, the ancient Hebrew people were prepared to experience that unique initiation, which was now not the initiation of a human being but the initiation of a cosmic individuality—if one still wishes to speak of initiation, which is actually no longer accurate. Thus the ancient Hebrew people were prepared to receive what was to take the place of the old initiation: to look in the right way upon the Mystery of Golgotha. But this also means that the apostles belonging to the Old Testament people initially have no understanding of the words that characterize the initiation. Christ Jesus speaks of initiation, and he expresses himself by saying: to hasten toward death, to be in the tomb for three days, then to be raised. That is the description of initiation. Had he given this description of initiation to his disciples in a different way, they would have understood him. But because this way of speaking was not familiar to the people of the Old Testament, the Twelve did not understand this description at first. Therefore, we are rightly reminded of how astonished the apostles are and do not know what he is talking about when he speaks of the suffering, dying, and rising of the Son of Man.

[ 11 ] Such things are therefore entirely in keeping with a historical account that reflects the spirit of what actually happened. When the ancient initiate underwent his initiation, what happened to him was that, while he was outside his body, he was in a higher world, not in the world of ordinary sensory existence. Outside his body, he was united, so to speak, with the realities of a higher plane. When he then returned to his body, what was it that he had experienced in the spiritual world while out of his body? It was memory. He had to speak in such a way that he could say: I remember my experiences in the out-of-body state just as one otherwise remembers what one experienced yesterday and the day before. And he could bear witness to them. For the initiates, it amounted to little more than carrying within their souls the mysteries of the spiritual worlds, just as the human soul carries within itself the experiences of yesterday as memories. And just as the soul is united with what it preserves as memory, so the initiates carried within themselves the mysteries of the spiritual worlds and were united with them.

[ 12 ] Why was this so? It was so because, up until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the human soul on Earth was not at all capable of allowing the realms of the heavens, the supersensible worlds, to enter into the I. They could not reach the true I at all; they could not unite with the I. Only when one looked beyond oneself or sensed beyond through clairvoyance, as was the case in ancient times, when one, I might say, dreamed oneself out or emerged from the I through initiation, could one enter the supersensible worlds. But within the I there was no understanding, no power of judgment for the higher worlds. That is how it was at that time. With all the powers belonging to the ego, human beings could not unite with the spiritual worlds before the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 13 ] That was the secret that was to be revealed to people through the baptism of John: that the time had now come when the realms of heaven were to shine into the self, were to reach the self—the earthly self. Oh, it had been hinted at time and again throughout the ages how, in ancient times, what human beings could experience as their soul life could not ascend into the supersensible worlds. It was like a disharmony in ancient times between the experience of humanity’s true home, the spiritual world, and what took place within the human being—even if one wishes to call the old soul-nature the “I.” This inner human being was separated from the spiritual world; one could unite with it only in exceptional states. And even when all the power of that which was later to become the “I,” that which was later to dwell within the human being—even when all the power all the impulses of this “I” nevertheless filled human beings—say, through initiation or through the memory of a previously experienced initiation in a later incarnation—when the power of the “I,” the “I” not yet destined for human physicality, forced its way into human physicality as a force, what then happened? What happened then is always hinted at: in pre-Christian times, the power of the “I” that transcends human physicality, so to speak, had no real place in the body and broke through what was intended for the “I.”

[ 14 ] Such people, then, who carry more of the supersensible world within themselves—who carry within themselves something from the supersensible world that, even in pre-Christian times, already foreshadows, as it were, what the “I” is to become later—break their physicality with this “I”-force, because this “I”-force is too strong for the pre-Christian era. And this is indicated, for example, by the fact that in certain individuals, when they possess this ego-force within themselves, the ego can only dwell within them if the body is in some way injured or vulnerable, has some easily injured spot that is then also injured. There, the human being is, through something in themselves, more exposed to the environment than is the case through the rest of their physicality. We need only recall the vulnerability of Achilles’ heel, the vulnerability of Siegfried, and Oedipus, where the power of the ego breaks through the physical body. The presence of the wound suggests to us that only a broken body is fitting for the greatness of the ego, for the superhuman power of the ego that lies within it.

[ 15 ] What is actually being said here may, if phrased differently, still come across as quite significant to our souls. Let us suppose that some person in pre-Christian times would—it need not be with full consciousness—be filled within with all the impulses, with all the forces that are later to permeate the ego, and would, with this, one might say, superego-force, with this superhuman force, submerge into his body. He would have to break this body and not see it as it is when the weak ego—or the weak inner self—is inside it. He would have to see it differently, this person of ancient times, who would have possessed all the power of the ego within himself to step out of his body. He would have seen it as a broken body under the influence of the superego, would have seen it covered with all manner of wounds, because in ancient times only the weak ego—or the weak inner self—penetrates the body so weakly that it can remain whole.

[ 16 ] What I have just said is expressed in the Prophets. The passage is worded roughly as follows (Zechariah 12:10): The person who unites within himself all the power of the ego and faces the human body sees it pierced, wounded, and riddled with holes. For the higher power of the ego, which in ancient times could not yet dwell within the human inner being, pierces, penetrates, and shreds the body. This is an impulse that runs through human evolution because, due to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, human beings in pre-Christian times had to be endowed with a lesser measure of their ego than the full ego encompasses. And because the body is suited only for this lesser portion and not for the full power of the ego, it is thus worn down. And therefore—not because this occurs in pre-Christian times, but because with Christ Jesus the full ego suddenly entered into physicality, because the egoic nature entered there most powerfully— therefore this physicality had to be regarded not merely with a single wound, as was the case with so many human individualities who bore a super-I, but with five wounds, with five wounds that are necessary because of the protrusion of the Christ-being, that is, the full I of the human being, beyond the form of physicality, beyond the appropriate form of physicality. Because of this transcendence, the cross had to rise on the physical plane of world history, bearing the Christ body just as the human body would be if, in a single moment, the entire sum of humanity—of which humanity has lost a great part through the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences—were to dwell in a single human being.

[ 17 ] This is a profound mystery that, through esoteric science, presents us with a vivid image of Golgotha. And anyone who understands what humanity and human nature are, what the Earth-I is, and what the relationship is between the Earth-I and the human form of the body, to the form of the human body, knows that when the Earth-I is fully permeated by the human body, the permeation cannot be the same as that which is normal for the walking human being; rather, when the human being steps outside of himself and, looking at himself, can ask: ‘What would this body be like if all of the I-ness were to enter into it? — would see it with five wounds. From human nature and from the Earth being itself follows the form of the cross with Christ and the wounds on Golgotha. Even within the image, the Mystery of Golgotha can emerge from the contemplation of human nature, from what can be known. This is the peculiarity: that there is a possibility not only in clairvoyance—where it proves to be natural—to look upon how the cross is raised on Golgotha, how the crucifixion takes place, and to behold the truth of this historical event, but that there is a possibility that through the Mystery of Golgotha we may even bring human reason so close to the Mystery of Golgotha that, if one uses this human reason finely enough, sharply enough, it is transformed into imagination, into a mental picture, which then contains truth; whereby, when one understands what Christ is and how he relates to the form of the human body, the human imagination is so guided that the image of Golgotha itself arises. This is how many of the older Christian painters were guided; they were not always clairvoyants, but were driven by the power of their understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha to the image of Golgotha itself, so that they could paint it. It was precisely at that great turning point in human evolution that the understanding of the Christ-being—that is, of the human primordial ego—was brought from clairvoyance to the human ego-soul.

[ 18 ] Clairvoyance makes it possible to behold the Mystery of Golgotha outside the body. How? If a connection to the Mystery of Golgotha has been established within the body, it is possible even today to behold the Mystery of Golgotha in the higher worlds and thereby to witness the full affirmation of this great turning point in human evolution. But it is also possible to comprehend this Mystery of Golgotha, and the words I have just spoken should provide the means for such comprehension. Of course, one must meditate at length, must reflect at length on what has been said. And if anyone feels that what has just been said is difficult to understand, that may be considered justified; for, naturally, that which can lead the human soul to a full understanding of the greatest, the highest, the most significant event that has taken place on Earth belongs to the most difficult things. In a certain sense, the disciples were to be led toward this; and of these, Peter, James, and John proved to be the most suitable for gradually being brought to a new understanding of human evolution.

[ 19 ] It is good to keep in mind, from a wide variety of perspectives, the significant period that began at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. That is precisely why it is so gratifying that you were able to hear Hegel’s account of this moment this morning. For all that human understanding can offer can indeed converge to grasp the most significant event that occurred at that time—an event that had been maturing over the preceding centuries, unfolding around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and then slowly preparing and determining the further evolution of humanity. It took place in various locations on Earth. We can trace these events not only in Palestine, where the event of Golgotha itself took place, but—if we proceed in the right way—we can also trace them at other points on Earth; it is just that the event of Golgotha did not take place there. But we can trace humanity’s descent and ascent, humanity’s lifting up through the effect of the Mystery of Golgotha, which spread throughout the Western world. We can trace the descent in particular, and it is interesting how we can trace humanity’s descent.

[ 20 ] Let us return to Greece and consider how events unfolded half a millennium before the events at Golgotha took place. Over in the East, where Krishna appeared, people were, in a certain sense, ahead of their time. They were ahead, so to speak, in the era of the decline of ancient clairvoyance. There is something peculiar about this culture, particularly that of India, for example. While in the immediate post-Atlantean era in India the first great post-Atlantean cultural flowering occurred, and in the purest way—the purest way for the human soul—a glimpse into the spiritual world still existed, which in the Rishis was combined with a wonderful ability to portray what was seen, so that it could influence later periods, and then, when clairvoyance disappeared, was preserved for later times in such significant revelations as the Krishna revelation, what was actual clairvoyance had already died out by the end of the third epoch. But through Krishna and his disciples, the facts that could be seen were expressed in wonderful words and preserved, so that what had been seen in the past was recorded in the scriptures. What occurred further west, for example in Greece, never actually took place in India.

[ 21 ] When we truly take a close look at the Indian world, we can say: The ancient gift of clairvoyance is fading; in its place, those—of whom Krishna is the most significant—record in wondrous words what was once beheld. This is then contained in the Word, in the Veda. And whoever immerses themselves in the Word experiences its resonance in their soul. But what arises is not what arose in Socrates, for example, or in other philosophers. What one might call Western reason, Western judgment, does not occur in Indian souls. What we speak of today in the most eminent sense, when we speak of the innermost power of the I, does not even arise in India. Therefore, as soon as the old clairvoyance had faded, something else immediately asserted itself: the urge toward yoga, the systematic ascent into the worlds that have been lost in a natural way. And yoga becomes an artificial form of clairvoyance. And fundamentally, the philosophy of yoga immediately takes the place of the old clairvoyance, without the intermediary phase that occurs, for example, in Greek philosophy, which is purely rational. This does not occur at all in Indian culture. This intermediate phase does not exist at all. And if we take the Vedanta philosophy of Vyasa, we can say: It is not characterized, as Western worldviews teach, as permeated by ideas or reason, but rather it has, as it were, been brought down from the higher worlds and expressed in human words; that is its distinctive feature: not attained through human concepts, not conceived like the Socratic or Platonic elements, but perceived clairvoyantly.

[ 22 ] It is difficult to fully grasp these things; but there is a way to experience this difference even today. Pick up any philosophy book, any exposition of a philosophical system within Western philosophy. What can seriously be called philosophy today—how is it usually arrived at? If you look into the workshop of a person who can be called a serious philosopher, you can see how these systems have been arrived at through the exertion of logical judgment and logical thinking. All of this has been formed step by step. And those who practice philosophy in this way cannot really understand that what they are weaving there from concept to concept can, in a certain sense, also be perceived clairvoyantly—that one has it before one’s eyes in a clairvoyant way. Hence the difficulty in making oneself understood when one, so to speak, in a single stroke clairvoyantly surveys certain philosophical concepts—which are otherwise woven “by the sweat of one’s brow” from idea to idea—and does not need to take all the individual steps of thought. The concepts of Vedanta philosophy are, as it were, concepts viewed clairvoyantly. They are not acquired through the sweat of one’s brow following the example of European philosophers, but are brought down clairvoyantly; they are precisely the last remnants—the remnants of ancient clairvoyance diluted into abstract concepts—or the first, still meager conquests in the supersensible world achieved through yoga.

[ 23 ] But people living further west have gone through something different. Here we are looking at peculiar, significant inner events in the evolution of humanity. Let us consider a curious philosopher from the sixth century B.C.: Pherecydes of Syros. A peculiar philosopher! A philosopher whom today’s philosophers do not recognize as a philosopher. There are philosophy books today that actually say this. I will quote two words verbatim: “Well, that is all childish description, childish symbols”; “childish and brilliant,” says someone today who considers himself particularly superior to that ancient philosopher. So, half a millennium before the Christian era, a strange thinker appears in Syros. However, he presents things differently from the other thinkers who would later be called philosophers. Pherecydes of Syros says, for example: What one sees in the world is based on a triad: Chronos, Zeus, Chthon. From Chronos emerge the airy, the fiery, and the watery elements. And with all that arises from these three powers, a serpentine being comes into conflict: Ophioneus. — Everything he describes, one can visualize if one follows his account—even without clairvoyance, but merely with a little imagination: Chronos, not merely as abstractly flowing time, but as a being, a real being, rendered visible; likewise Zeus, the infinite ether, as the self-animated omnipresence; Chthon, that through which the otherwise celestial becomes earthly, which draws together what is woven apart in space into the planet Earth in order to have an earthly existence; all of this unfolding on Earth; then, intermingling like a hostile element, a kind of serpentine being. If one investigates what the remarkable Pherckydes of Syros describes here, one needs spiritual research to understand it; for he is a last straggler of the old clairvoyance. He sees the world of causes behind the sensory world and describes these causes with his clairvoyant powers. Of course, this does not please those who operate solely in concepts. He observes the living weaving of the good gods and the interplay of the hostile forces, which he describes as they are seen clairvoyantly. He sees how the elements are born from Chronos, from real time.

[ 24 ] So here we have, in the philosopher Pherecydes of Syros, a man who still looks into the world with his soul—a world revealed by clairvoyant consciousness—and describes it in a way that can be followed. Thus he still stands there in the Western world in the sixth century B.C.E. Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Heraclitus—who are almost his contemporaries—already stand in a different place. Here, two worlds truly converge. But what is the state of their souls? The old clairvoyance within them has been extinguished, paralyzed. At most, only the longing for these spiritual worlds remains. And what do they experience in the place where a remnant of the old vision still existed in the sage of Syros, where he still looked into the elemental world of causes? That is already closed to them. They no longer see into it. It is as if this very world were trying to close itself off from them, as if it were still half there for them and yet were withdrawing from them again, so that they substitute abstract concepts belonging to the ego for the old clairvoyance. This is what it looks like in these souls. This is a very peculiar state of the soul in Western souls. This is the state of mind that works toward reason, toward the power of judgment, which are precisely what are supposed to characterize the ego. We see it in individual souls, for example, when Heraclitus still describes the living, weaving fire—one might say with a final hint of true clairvoyant vision—as the cause of all things; Thales describes water, but not the physical, sensory water—just as Heraclitus does not mean the physical, sensory fire—but rather something from the elemental world that they can still half-see, while it half-eludes them, forcing them to resort to abstract concepts. There we look into these souls, and there we understand how something of the mood of these souls could still resonate into our own time.

[ 25 ] If only our contemporaries would not so often skim over certain things so thoughtlessly! Today, it is easy to skim over a passage in Nietzsche that can deeply move, captivate, and shake one. It appears in his posthumous work *Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks*, in which he describes Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles. There is a passage right at the beginning—one must feel it out—where Nietzsche has sensed something of what was experienced in the souls of these first solitary Greek thinkers. Look up the passage in Nietzsche where he says: What must it have been like in the souls of these heroic philosophical figures, who had to make the transition from the age of living contemplation—of which even he knew nothing, though he sensed it—when the old vitality in the souls was replaced by abstract, dry, sober concepts, where “Being,” this sober, dry, abstract, cold “Being” as a concept took the place of the full vitality that clairvoyant consciousness possessed? And Nietzsche feels: It is as if one’s blood were to congeal when one passes from the world of vitality into the world of concepts with Thales or Heraclitus, when these men use concepts of “Being” and “Becoming,” so that one feels transported from the warm becoming into the icy realm of concepts.

[ 26 ] One must feel transported back to the age in which these people lived, must sense how they stood as the Mystery of Golgotha drew near, one must empathize with them to such an extent that one senses how a dark echo of ancient times still lingers within them, yet they stand there in such a way that they must content themselves with what abstract judgment is in the human ego—something that was not at all necessary in earlier times. And while in the subsequent era the world of concepts became ever richer and richer, in the early days, as the world of concepts was just emerging, the Greek philosophers could grasp only the simplest of concepts. How they struggle with concepts, with the abstract “Being”; how, for example, the philosophers of the Eleatic school struggle with the abstract “Being”! Thus the groundwork is laid for what the actual abstract qualities of the ego are.

[ 27 ] Now let us imagine such a soul, one that stands in the West, prepared for the West’s mission, but which still carries within itself the strongest echoes of the ancient clairvoyance. In India, these echoes have long since faded; in the West, they are still present. The soul’s impulse wants to enter the elemental world, but consciousness cannot. A mood like the Buddha’s mood could not arise in these souls. The Buddha’s mood would have said: We are cast out into the world of suffering; therefore, let us free ourselves from it. No, the Western souls wanted to grasp something of what lay before them. They could not enter into what lay behind them; in the world before them, they had only cold, icy concepts. Let us imagine a soul such as Pherekydes of Syros. He is the one who, as the last, was able to look into what lies within the elemental world. But let us imagine one of the other souls. It cannot see how the elements are born alive out of Chronos; it cannot see that the serpent-being Ophioneus begins the conflict with the higher gods; but in the image it holds fast to the fact that something is working into the sensible world. It does not see through to Chronos; but it sees what emerges from Chronos as an imprint in the sensory world: fire, water, air, and earth. It does not see how the higher gods are fought by the lower ones, how the serpent god Lucifer rebels; but it sees how disharmony and harmony, friendship and enmity prevail. She sees love and hate as abstract concepts, fire, water, air, and earth as abstract elements. She sees what now still penetrates the soul; but what was once seen by her contemporaries is veiled.

[ 28 ] Let us imagine such a soul, one that is still fully immersed in the vitality of earlier times, but cannot glimpse the spiritual world, one that can grasp only the outer image, and from which—because of its special mission—that which once brought happiness to humanity is veiled; on the other hand, however, it has nothing of the new world of the ego but a few concepts to which it must cling—then we have the soul of Empedocles. For this is how the soul of Empedocles stands before us when we seek to grasp its innermost essence. Empedocles is almost a contemporary of the Sage of Syros. He lived barely two-thirds of a century later. But his soul is of a very different nature. It had to make the transition across the Rubicon from the old clairvoyance to the abstract comprehension of the ego. There we see how two worlds suddenly collide. There we see how the ego dawns and moves toward its fulfillment. There we see the souls of the ancient Greek philosophers, who were condemned to first take in what we now call reason and logic; there we see how their souls were emptied of the ancient revelations. And into these souls the new impulse, the impulse of Golgotha, had to be poured.

[ 29 ] Such was the nature of the souls when this impulse arose. But they had to yearn for a new fulfillment. Only then could they understand it. In Indian thought, there is almost no transition comparable to what we find among the solitary Greek thinkers. Therefore, Indian philosophy, which made the transition directly to the teachings of yoga, offers little opportunity to find the path to the Mystery of Golgotha. Greek philosophy is so prepared that it yearns for the Mystery of Golgotha. Look at Gnosticism, how it demands the Mystery of Golgotha in its philosophy. The philosophy of the Mystery of Golgotha arises on Greek soil because the finest of the Greek souls yearned to receive the impulse of Golgotha.

[ 30 ] One must have good will to understand what has happened in the evolution of humanity; then, one might say, one senses something of what one might call: it is like a call and a response on the face of the earth. We look to Greece, we look further to Sicily at such souls, of whom Empedocles is a particularly outstanding one, and we hear a strange call. How can we characterize it? How do such souls speak? Something like this—let us look into the soul of Empedocles—: I know historically of initiation. I know historically that through initiation the supersensible worlds entered the human soul. But now a different age has come. Initiation can no longer come to life directly. The human soul has entered a different stage. We need a new impulse reaching into the I. Where are you, impulse, that can take the place of the old initiation we can no longer experience, that places before the new I the same mystery that the old clairvoyance contained? — And to this answers the other call, coming from Golgotha: I was permitted to bring forth, by submitting myself to the gods and not to human beings, the secrets of the Mysteries and to set them before all humanity, so that what otherwise stood in the depths of the Mysteries may stand before all humanity.

[ 31 ] Just as the Western world seeks a new solution to the riddle of the world, so too does what has been born, for example, in the southern part of Europe within the Greek soul. And just like the answer—which, however, can only be understood in relation to the West—seems to us the great monologue of God, of which we spoke at the end of yesterday’s lecture and of which we intend to speak further tomorrow.