The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we saw how the Gospel of Mark omits a portion of the chosen disciples of Christ Jesus living together with him. And this is also clearly implied in the other Gospels. Thus, those closest to him did not participate in the events that unfolded following his arrest—namely, the trial, condemnation, and crucifixion of Christ Jesus. This is yet another feature of the Gospel that is expressed with great deliberation. In a sense, this is meant to express what the path of humanity should be like in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and how people in the time that follows—that is, after the Mystery of Golgotha has been fulfilled—can come to understand this Mystery. For this understanding is to be attained in a completely different way than any other understanding of a historical fact in the evolution of humanity. We can best see how this works from what has unfolded most clearly in our own time.

[ 2 ] Since the eighteenth century, people have sought—from a wide variety of perspectives, one might say—a kind of foundation for modern consciousness to uphold the belief in the mystery of Golgotha. This search has gone through many phases. Up until the eighteenth century, there was, in essence, little inquiry into the nature of the historical documents—historical documents in the sense of those that can confirm the existence of Jesus Christ. What had emanated as an effect from the Mystery of Golgotha was too very much alive in the human souls that mattered. One had, so to speak, seen too clearly what, as an effect, had been linked to the name of Jesus Christ through the centuries for it to have been necessary to ask: Does any document bear witness that Jesus Christ was there? For those who professed faith in Christ Jesus at all, his existence was simply a matter of course, and just as self-evident—far more so than is believed today—was the adherence to the spiritual-divine being of Christ Jesus, which was at once human and at once superhuman.

[ 3 ] But the materialistic era was steadily gaining ground. And with that, something entered human development that is necessarily linked to the materialistic worldview. This worldview cannot tolerate the idea that something of a higher individuality lives within the human being; it cannot tolerate at all the notion that one might look beyond the outer personality to something spiritual within the human being. When one views people from a material perspective—and this happens most radically in our time—people do indeed appear very much alike to a material gaze. All walk on two legs, all have a head with a nose situated in a certain place on the face, all have two eyes, have a part of the head covered with hair, and so on. And the materialistic age sees, of course, how people all look alike in this way. Why should it then look for anything that lies behind this outer human being? That also offends the one who cannot tell himself that behind him, in the incarnation in question, lies something as significant as in other human beings. Materialism does not allow for that. Thus, the possibility of understanding that the Christ could have been present in the person of Jesus of Nazareth was lost. And as the nineteenth century progressed, the very idea of the Christ was lost. More and more, attention was focused solely on Jesus of Nazareth, who must have been born in Nazareth or elsewhere, lived as a human being, merely spread beautiful principles, and then may have died a martyr’s death in some way. The human being Jesus increasingly took the place of the Christ Jesus of previous centuries. This was entirely natural from the materialistic point of view.

[ 4 ] And so it was only natural that what is known as the “Life of Jesus” research emerged in the nineteenth century. Enlightened theology, too, seeks nothing other than this research into the life of Jesus; that is to say, just as one establishes the facts about Charlemagne, Otto the Great, or anyone else, so it seeks to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth. However, it is very difficult to establish the facts about Jesus of Nazareth. For, to begin with, the main documents available are the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul. But in the sense of historical documents, the Gospels cannot, of course, be regarded as such. There are four of them, and from an external, materialistic point of view, they all contradict one another. However, in the course of research into the life of Jesus, all sorts of workarounds have been sought. Now, one can initially set aside a certain phase of research into the life of Jesus which, because it fell during the materialist era, no longer wished to believe in “miracles” and therefore interpreted the miracles that are recounted in the strangest ways, interpretations of the sort that explained the appearance of Christ Jesus on the lake by saying that he had not physically walked across the lake on foot—we have seen, after all, how that stands—but that the disciples simply did not understand the physical order of the world; and now, with a certain excess in the research on the life of Jesus, the matter was presented in such a way that the apostles were sailing in the boat, and Christ Jesus was walking on the opposite shore, and so the people on the far shore could easily be deceived into believing that Christ Jesus was walking on the water. Not to mention other particularly rationalistic excesses, such as the idea that during the transformation of water into wine, something like a wine essence was smuggled in! Someone has even tried to explain John’s baptism in the Jordan by claiming that a dove simply happened to fly by at that moment. All of this exists. What doesn’t exist on the ground that is called the ground of strict, objective science! But one can completely disregard these excesses.

[ 5 ] One can look at the research that attempted—since the supernatural was not an option—to view this supernatural in materialistic terms as mere ingredients, and said to itself: If one cannot believe in Jesus Christ, cannot believe that someone was born in Nazareth as the son of a carpenter, was in the temple at the age of twelve, and so on—if one removes everything supernatural and combines what agrees or disagrees in the various Gospels—then one could construct something like a biography of Jesus of Nazareth from this. This has been attempted in the most diverse ways. It was, of course, inevitable that, since many people tried to write such a biography, each biography would turn out differently. But the details cannot be discussed here. There was also a period in Jesus-research during which Jesus of Nazareth was portrayed as a higher human being, much like a higher Socrates, in a similar way to how Socrates was conceived of in the minds of people from a materialistic perspective.

[ 6 ] This is the research into the life of Jesus, which focused above all on constructing a biography of Jesus of Nazareth, but which, in essence, was bound to cause offense once again. Specifically, it caused offense in two respects: first, with regard to the documents themselves. For in the sense in which we speak of historical documents today, in the way historians evaluate their documents, the Gospels are not documents. This is due, first of all, to the many contradictions and to the entire manner in which they have been preserved. The other reason is that in recent years something has been added to this research on the life of Jesus: people have discovered certain passages in the Gospels, recurring remarks that we know refer to supernatural events. But these others, who are caught up in materialistic beliefs today, found these things, and they could not simply conjure them away from the research, as the “Life of Jesus” research conjured them away. This then led to the other approach, to Christ research, which has distinguished itself in recent years, while the “Life of Jesus” research long culminated in the phrase coined by a contemporary professor: the “simple man from Nazareth.” For that was quite agreeable to people. It flattered them not to have to acknowledge anything higher in the Gospels. It suited them better to speak of the “simple man from Nazareth” than to strive upward toward the God-man.

[ 7 ] But the God-man was eventually found. This gave rise to Christology. This is quite peculiar. It emerges in a particularly grotesque form in Benjamin Smith’s book *Ecce Deus* and in other works he has written. It emerges in such a way as to demonstrate: A Jesus of Nazareth did not actually exist at all; he is merely a legend. But the Gospels speak of Christ Jesus. What is this Christ Jesus? Yes, he is a fictional God, an ideal image. And people do have their good reasons for denying the real Jesus of Nazareth from this point of view; for the Gospels speak of the Christ, attributing to him qualities that do not exist at all according to a materialistic view. It follows with certainty that he cannot have existed historically, that he must be fictional. He has thus come into being through the poetry of time, into which the mystery of Golgotha is transposed. In a certain sense, therefore, in recent years there has been a return from Jesus to Christ; but Christ is not at all a real being, but lives only in human thought. Everything in this realm is, so to speak, without foundation today.

[ 8 ] Of course, the general public does not yet know much about the factors at play here. But fundamentally, everything regarding the mystery of Golgotha has been undermined on scientific grounds. There is no longer any solid ground anywhere. Research into the life of Jesus has run its course because it cannot prove anything, and research into Christ cannot be discussed seriously at all. For what matters is the colossal impact that emanated from that being connected with the mystery of Golgotha. If the whole thing is a fabrication, then a materialistic age should actually admit to itself that it ought to wean itself as soon as possible from looking to a work of fiction; for a materialistic age cannot believe in a work of fiction that is said to have accomplished the most important mission of the age. Indeed, our “enlightened” age has gone very far in accumulating contradictions and has no idea how much it, precisely in the scientific field, calls for the application of the saying “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This actually applies to all contemporary research on Jesus and Christ that refuses to stand seriously and worthily on spiritual ground.

[ 9 ] The Gospel itself, however, clearly points to what has emerged in our time in the manner just described. Those who wish to be materialists, who want to believe only in what presents itself to the materialistic consciousness in the realm of the senses, cannot find a path to Christ Jesus. For this path has been cut off by the fact that those who were closest to Christ abandoned him precisely while the Mystery of Golgotha was unfolding and only met him again later; in other words, they did not participate in what took place at that time on the physical plane in Palestine. And everyone knows that no credible documents whatsoever have been provided from the other side. Nevertheless, in the Gospel of Mark and in the other Gospels, we have descriptions of precisely this Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 10 ] How did these accounts come about? It is extremely important to consider this. Let us examine these accounts using a specific example: the Gospel of Mark. It is indeed sufficiently indicated to us in the Gospel of Mark as well, albeit briefly and concisely, following the Resurrection scene, that the young man in the white robe—that is, the cosmic Christ—after the Mystery had been accomplished, revealed himself again to the disciples and exerted an influence upon them. And so such disciples, such apostles as Peter, were subsequently able, through being imbued with the impulse exerted upon them, to be inspired to clairvoyant vision, so that they were able to perceive clairvoyantly afterwards what they had not witnessed with their physical eyes because they had fled. Peter and the others, who were also permitted to be disciples after the Resurrection of Christ Jesus, had their eyes opened clairvoyantly, so that they were able to behold the Mystery of Golgotha through clairvoyance.

[ 11 ] There is only one clairvoyant path to the Mystery of Golgotha, even though it took place on the physical plane. We must bear this in mind. The Gospel indicates this quite clearly by describing how the most devoted disciples had fled at the decisive moment; so that in a soul such as Peter’s, after it had received the impulse of the Risen One, the memory of what had happened after the flight was rekindled. Otherwise, a person remembers only what they were present for in their sensory consciousness. In the case of such clairvoyance, as it occurred among the disciples, the situation is such that—in contrast to ordinary memory—one has events—physical-sensory ones—in mind, even though one was not present for them. So, with regard to the flash of memory in a soul such as Peter’s, think of the events in which he was not directly present. And so, for example, Peter taught those who wished to hear him, drawing from his memory, about the Mystery of Golgotha; he taught them what he remembered, even though he had not been present.

[ 12 ] In this way, the teaching—the revelation of the Mystery of Golgotha—came about. But the impulse that had gone out from Christ to disciples such as Peter was also able to be communicated to those who, in turn, were disciples of these disciples. One such disciple of Peter was the one who originally compiled—albeit only orally—the so-called Gospel of Mark. Thus the impulse that had made itself felt in Peter himself passed over into Mark’s soul, so that Mark himself saw in his own soul the light of what had taken place in Jerusalem as the Mystery of Golgotha. For a long time, Mark was a disciple of Peter. Then he, Mark, came to a place where he truly had, so to speak, the external milieu, the external surroundings, from which he could give his Gospel the coloring that this particular Gospel needed.

[ 13 ] In all our discussions—perhaps more will be said on this later—we have seen that the Gospel of Mark most clearly allows us to sense the full cosmic grandeur and significance of Christ. The original author of the Gospel of Mark was inspired to depict the cosmic greatness of Christ precisely by the place to which he had been transferred after having been a disciple of Peter. He was transferred to Alexandria in Egypt, lived there at a time when, in a certain sense, Jewish theosophical-philosophical scholarship in Alexandria had reached a certain height, and was able to absorb there what were then the best aspects of pagan Gnosticism. There he was able to absorb views that were also present at that time regarding the emergence of the human being from the spiritual realm, the coming into contact of this human being with Lucifer and Ahriman, and the incorporation of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces into the human soul. He was able to absorb from pagan Gnosticism everything that offered an understanding of humanity’s origin from the cosmos in the formation of our planet. But Mark was also able to see, precisely in a place located within Egypt, how stark the contrast was between what humanity was originally destined for and what humanity had subsequently become.

[ 14 ] This is most clearly evident in Egyptian culture—a culture that originated from the highest revelations, revelations that were then reflected in Egyptian architecture, particularly in the pyramids and palaces, and in the culture of the Sphinx; yet this culture increasingly descended into decadence and corruption in Egypt; so that precisely the greatest works of Egyptian culture fell further and further into decline, especially during the third cultural period, into the worst manifestations of black magic, into the worst excesses of the corruption of the spiritual. In a certain sense, if one had the spiritual eyes to do so, one could still perceive the deepest mysteries in what was being practiced in Egypt, because it stemmed from the original, pure wisdom of Hermes; but it required, more and more, a soul that looked to the depths, not to what was present as corruption. Even in Moses’ time, corruption was already far advanced, and even he had to extract from Egyptian culture that which, on the one hand, existed as a good within it—though scarcely visible to a soul as noble as Moses’—so that it might reach posterity via the detour through the Moses-soul. — Then the discussion continued with corruption in a spiritual context.

[ 15 ] How humanity could have fallen so low, how it could have become so completely absorbed in materialism—especially in terms of its worldview—stood vividly before Markus’s soul. And Markus experienced precisely something that—albeit in a completely different form, but in a certain way similar—humanity can experience again today, though only those who have the feeling and sensitivity for it. For we are actually experiencing today the rebirth of Egyptian culture. I have often emphasized how peculiar the connections in human evolution are, and said how, of the seven successive cultural periods within a larger era, the fourth cultural period—with Hellenism and the Mystery of Golgotha—stands apart. But the third cultural epoch, with its Egyptian-Chaldean culture, is reemerging in today’s culture—albeit in a non-spiritual way—within our modern science. In our materialistic culture, indeed even in the outer manifestations of culture, we are witnessing a certain revival of the third cultural epoch within the fifth. Likewise, in a certain sense, the second will reappear in the sixth and the first in the seventh. Thus these periods encompass and intertwine with one another. This has often been emphasized. What a spirit like Markus was able to experience in the most intense way back then is being experienced today.

[ 16 ] Let us turn our gaze to culture—there is no need to describe it this way to the outside world, because it cannot bear it—and, setting aside the most radical manifestations of corruption, we can say: Everything is mechanized; and in truth, within our materialistic culture today, it is really only the mechanism that is worshipped, even if people do not call it prayer and even if they do not call it piety. But the powers of the soul, which were once directed toward spiritual beings, are today directed toward machines, toward mechanisms; attention is devoted to them as was once, one might truly say, devoted to the gods. This is particularly true with regard to science—this science that has no idea how little it actually has to do, on the one hand, with truth, with real truth, and, on the other hand, with real logic.

[ 17 ] Viewed from a certain higher perspective, however, we do indeed have a serious, deeply intense striving and a deeply intense longing today. In Munich, a lecture was given on the longing of our time, particularly on how this longing has taken shape in individual souls. But in so-called “official” science, this longing is absent; instead, one might say, there is a certain complacent satisfaction—but a satisfaction with something peculiar: with the unreal and the illogical. Nowhere is this science capable of even recognizing how deeply it is entrenched in the very opposite of all logic. One perceives all this, one experiences all this, and it is truly the case that in the evolution of humanity, one pole must ignite the other. Precisely this inadequacy of external science, this unreal and illogical nature of external science, and this self-importance and utter lack of awareness of what external science is actually like—this will and must gradually give rise to the noblest reaction, the longing for the spiritual, in the human soul in our time.

[ 18 ] It will be a long time before people who are deeply entrenched in our unnaturalness and illogicality stop mocking spiritual science, ridiculing it, or labeling it as some kind of danger. But through the inner power of the facts, the opposite pole will ignite all on its own. And if only those who understand something of this would not fall into the disease of compromise and would see clearly, things could move faster than they do now. For we experience it time and again: as soon as a scholar appears and says something that another believes is “entirely anthroposophical,” a great deal of fuss is made about it. And if someone even preaches from a pulpit about something that another believes is “entirely anthroposophical,” then even more is made of it. It is not a matter of making such compromises, but of placing ourselves quite clearly and truthfully within spiritual life and allowing it to work upon us through its impulses. The more we realize that the inner vitality of spiritual life must be kindled, and the more we convince ourselves that we cannot, under any circumstances, acknowledge the justification for extracting anything from the materialistic thinking of our time other than what makes sense, the better it is. This is different from showing that truly advancing science is in harmony with spiritual research. That can be demonstrated, and it can truly be demonstrated at every turn.

[ 19 ] For this science truly commits logical blunders of the sort on almost every page of its literary works, such as the one to which one of our friends has repeatedly drawn attention in a humorous manner, pointing out that it is the logical blunder of Professor Schlaucherl from the “Fliegende Blätter” who seeks to prove how a frog actually hears. To this end, Professor Schlaucherl has the frog jump onto the table, then slaps the tabletop. The frog hops away; therefore, it must have heard it. But then he rips off its legs and slaps the tabletop again. The frog does not hop away now; therefore, it is clear that the frog heard it with its legs. For when it still had its legs, it hopped away when the tabletop was tapped; afterwards, it did not. — Scholars also conduct all sorts of experiments with the frog; but their logical conclusions in other fields follow exactly this example, as is the case, for instance, with the much-vaunted brain research. There, they point out: If this or that part of the brain is present, one can, for example, have a verbal memory, or one can harbor these or those thoughts; if that part is no longer there, one cannot have those thoughts or loses one’s verbal memory—just like the frog that hears with its legs. There is no logic to these things. For the fact that a person can think with a part of their brain, or that they cannot think if they lack that part of the brain, there are no other reasons for this than the fact that the frog cannot hear when its legs have been torn out. It is exactly the same, only people do not realize that the entire conclusion is based on nothing other than errors in reasoning. Thus, one could demonstrate error upon error in reasoning in everything that is believed today to be a solid scientific result. But the more mistakes one makes, the prouder one becomes of science and the more one rails against spiritual science.

[ 20 ] This will increasingly give rise to the noblest response: a longing for spiritual science. This is merely the reaction, adapted to our time, of what a soul like Mark had to experience, in that it was revealed to him precisely in his own time how humanity had descended from its former spiritual heights and fallen into mere attachment to the material. This gave him such a deep understanding that the greatest impulse lives in the supersensible; and his teacher then supported this as well. What Peter had given him was not something that could have come from a sensory tradition of the Mystery of Golgotha, as if someone had been able to see with their own eyes what had taken place in Jerusalem; rather, these things were investigated clairvoyantly afterward. This is how all the accounts concerning Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha came into being.

[ 21 ] The Mystery of Golgotha is an event that took place on the physical plane, but could only be viewed retrospectively through clairvoyance. I ask you to bear this in mind in particular: that the Mystery of Golgotha is a physical, sensory event, but one for which the path to understanding must be sought through superphysical, supersensory means—and must be sought despite the documents that have survived. Those who do not understand this may argue about the validity of one Gospel or another. For those who know the facts, all these questions do not exist. They know that we must look through the incomplete traditions that the Gospels often present, to what clairvoyant research can still show us today. And there, when we examine the truth of what happened, through the reconstructions based on the data of the Akashic Records, how we are to understand the Gospels and what we are to read in the individual passages—namely, what, at that time when humanity had sunk lowest from its former heights, stood before humanity as the true dignity of the human being, as the true essence of the human being.

[ 22 ] The divine-spiritual powers have given human beings their outer image, their outer form. But whatever has dwelt within this outer form since the ancient Lemurian era has always been under the influence of the Luciferic forces and, as development progressed, also of the Ahrimanic forces. Under these influences, what people called science, knowledge, and understanding then took shape. No wonder that, had the true, supersensory being of the human being been placed before humanity at precisely that time, people would have recognized it the least, would have known the least of what the human being had become. Human knowledge, human insight, had become more and more entangled in the sensory realm. Human insight was gradually able to penetrate ever less into the true human being.

[ 23 ] This is what it is all about, and this is what we must take into consideration when we turn once more to the forsaken Son of Man, to the figure of the human being who stands before us at the moment when, according to the Gospel of Mark, the cosmic Christ was no longer in any close connection with the Son of Man. There stood before humanity, before whom all this was set forth, the human being, the human being in the form that the divine-spiritual powers had given to humanity. Thus he stood there, but ennobled, spiritualized by the three-year sojourn of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. Thus he stood there before his fellow human beings. In terms of their understanding, human beings had attained only what had become of their comprehension and knowledge through the millennia-long influence of Lucifer and Ahriman. But there stood the human being who, over the course of three years, had driven the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences out of himself. There stood, restored before the other human beings, what the human being was before Lucifer and Ahriman came. Only through the impulse of the cosmic Christ was the human being once again as he had been when, coming from the spiritual world, he was placed into the physical world. There stood the Spirit of Humanity, the Son of Man, before those who were then the judges and executioners in Jerusalem; but he stood there as he could become when everything that had brought him down had been driven out of human nature. There stood the human being, as the Mystery of Golgotha unfolded, in the image before his fellow human beings, before which other human beings should have stood and said in adoration: Here I am myself in my true essence, in my highest ideal; here I am in the form I am to create out of myself through the most ardent striving that can come only from my soul. There I stand before that which alone is worthy of reverence and worship in myself; there I stand before the Divine within me, of which the Apostles, had they been able to practice self-knowledge, would have had to say to themselves: There is nothing in the entire wide expanse of existence that can be compared in permanence and greatness to that which stands before us in the Son of Man.

[ 24 ] Humanity should have possessed this self-awareness at that historic moment. And what did humanity do? It spat upon the Son of Man, scourged him, and led him out to the place of crucifixion. This is the dramatic turning point between what should have been—the recognition that here stood something incomparable to anything in the whole world—and what is now presented to us. What is depicted is the human being who, instead of recognizing himself, tramples himself into the dust, who kills himself because he does not recognize himself, and who can only through this lesson, through this cosmic lesson, receive the impulse to gradually attain his true being within the broader perspective of Earth’s evolution.

[ 25 ] Such was the moment in world history, and this is how we must characterize it if we wish to characterize it correctly, just as the Gospel of Mark suggests to us in its striking, powerful phrases. For this is not merely to be understood; it is to be felt, to be sensed. From this trampling of one’s own being into the dust then arose what was described in my lecture series “From Jesus to Christ” in Karlsruhe as the “Phantom.” For through the act of the human being trampling his own being into the dust, that which was the outer image of the Godhead was transformed into the “Phantom,” which multiplies and, in the further development of humanity, can increasingly penetrate into souls, as was depicted in the Karlsruhe lecture series.

[ 26 ] When one looks at things this way, the great difference truly becomes apparent between what the Gospel of Mark actually intends to convey and what many people today seek to make of it. For anyone who understands a Gospel—and especially the Gospel of Mark—who understands it in such a way that they perceive and feel what is described in terms of its artistic structure and its profound content, this feeling becomes a real inner reality—that very real inner reality which must indeed be present if one is to develop a relationship with Christ Jesus. The soul must already surrender itself a little to a contemplative approach rooted in feeling and perception, which might be characterized in such a way that one forms a mental image from something like the Gospel of Mark: How were my fellow human beings, who surrounded the Son of Man, there where they should have seen themselves in their highest ideal—how were they caught up in error!

[ 27 ] If one is truly a person of our materialistic age, then one jots down a remark like this or lets slip a remark such as those one can often read or hear today, especially among the monistically superstitious—that is to say, among the monistically enlightened: Why is existence the way it is? No one has yet been able to answer this. Why do we suffer pain? Buddha, Christ, Socrates, and Giordano Bruno were not able to lift even a corner of this veil. — We hear it repeated in countless variations. Such people who write this down do not realize that they are declaring themselves to be something far greater than Buddha, Christ, Socrates, and so on, and that they understand everything in this sense. But how could it be otherwise in an age in which every private lecturer understands better the things that have transpired in history, and about which every private lecturer writes the books that he must write professionally?

[ 28 ] It might seem as though this were spoken out of a craving for criticism of our times. No, that is not the case. Rather, these things must come before our soul, because it is only by allowing them to come before our soul that we gain the proper distance from something as overwhelmingly great as the Gospels are, as the Gospel of Mark is, for example. It is for no other reason than that people can only so slowly bring themselves to such heights that these things are misunderstood again and again and presented to people in the most extreme distortions. The Gospels are magnificent in every detail, and fundamentally, every detail teaches us something extraordinary.

[ 29 ] Thus, we can still learn a great deal from the final chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Of course, I would have to speak at length if all the great ideas of the Gospel of Mark were to be highlighted. But a detail such as the very beginning of the sixteenth chapter shows us how deeply the Gospel writer penetrated the mysteries of existence. It was precisely the author of the Gospel of Mark who penetrated deeply into the mysteries of existence. He knew, therefore—as has just been described—how humanity had fallen from its spiritual heights into materialism. He knew how little the human capacity for understanding was equal to the human being, how little people in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were inclined to understand what had happened there.

[ 30 ] Now, recall something I have often pointed out regarding the feminine and the masculine—namely, that the feminine element, so to speak—not as an individuality, not as the individual woman, but as “womanhood ”—has not quite descended to the physical plane; whereas man—again, not the individual personality, not the being in a single incarnation, but “manhood”—has crossed the threshold downward, so that in truth, true humanity lies between man and woman. That is why, in individual incarnations, the human being as such alternates between the sexes. But it is now simply the case that the woman, as a woman, due to the different structure of the brain, due to the different way in which she can use the brain, is better able to grasp spiritual ideas. In contrast, the man is much more organized—precisely because of his external physicality—to think his way into materialism, because, to put it crudely, his brain is harder. The female brain is softer, less stubborn, less hardened within itself, though this says nothing about the individual personality. The individual personality need not take this to its credit or blame; for there are many women whose bodies house quite a stubborn mind, not to mention the opposite. But on the whole, it is true that the female brain is easier to use when it comes to understanding something specific, provided the will to do so is present. That is why the Gospel writer has women approach first when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled.

“And when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint him.” (16:1)

[ 31 ] And he appears first to them, the young man, that is, the cosmic Christ; only then to the male believers. True occultism, true Spiritual Science, plays a role right down to these details of the composition, right down to the details of the composition and the content of the Gospels, and in particular the pithy Gospel of Mark.

[ 32 ] When we feel what speaks from the Gospels and allow ourselves to be inspired by what we feel and sense, it is through this alone that we find the path to the Mystery of Golgotha. And then the question no longer arises: Are these Gospels authentic or inauthentic in an external, historical sense? That may be left to those who understand nothing of the matter to investigate. But to those who, through Spiritual Science, strive to feel and understand the Gospels, it will gradually become clear that these are not meant to be historical documents at all, but rather records that pour themselves into our souls. And when they pour their impulses into our souls, then the souls are moved—without documents—by what they feel and experience when they turn their gaze toward the Mystery of Golgotha, when they behold how human understanding, human knowledge, and human insight have fallen short in relation to the human being, how they spat upon and crucified this being whom they should have revered, in wise self-knowledge, as the highest ideal. And then the highest power will emanate from this feeling, enabling one to climb upward toward that which shines forth from this ideal of Golgotha and radiates to all those who feel it, who wish to perceive it. For it is only when people come to understand how the spiritual reality, the Christ, lived as a cosmic entity in the body of Jesus of Nazareth when they will understand how all the other leaders of humanity who existed in the world were first sent forth by Christ as his forerunners, as those who were to prepare the way for him so that he might be recognized and understood. At the very moment the Mystery of Golgotha took place, however, all preparation was of little use; for at the decisive moment, everything failed. But the time will increasingly come when people will understand not only the Mystery of Golgotha, but also the other events that cluster around the Mystery of Golgotha, and through whose help the Mystery of Golgotha itself can also be understood more and more.

[ 33 ] For the time being, the European peoples may still be viewed with suspicion because they do not act like many other peoples, who recognize only those religious creeds that have sprung from their own nation or race as the true religion—as we see so clearly in India, for example, where only that which has sprung from one’s own blood is considered valid. Oh, in theosophical circles one often speaks of equality, of the recognition of all religions, while in truth one merely seeks to impose one’s own and regards it as the religion of wisdom. The Europeans cannot do this at all; for not a single European people now has any national deity, any deity that has grown from its own soil, as the Asian peoples do. Christ Jesus belongs to Asia, and the European peoples have adopted him, have allowed him to work upon them. There is no selfishness in the acceptance of Christ Jesus, and it would be a complete distortion of the facts to compare the way Europeans speak of Christ Jesus with the way other peoples speak of their national deities—for example, the way the Chinese speak of Confucius or the way the Indians speak of Krishna and Buddha.

[ 34 ] One can speak of Christ Jesus purely from the standpoint of objective history. This objective history has nothing to do with anything other than the great call for human self-knowledge, which was so thoroughly distorted into its opposite while the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place. But through the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity has been given the opportunity to receive the impulse to come to itself, whereas at that time, as we have seen, everything failed in humanity with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha in terms of knowledge, of external knowledge. And so, in time, when they understand themselves correctly, all the religions of the world will gradually work together to understand what lies in the Mystery of Golgotha, in order to make it accessible to humanity as an impulse.

[ 35 ] Only when one realizes that speaking of Christ Jesus is not a matter of a self-serving religious creed, but rather something that every religious creed can acknowledge in the same sense as a historical fact of human evolution, will one come to understand the core of wisdom and truth in all religions. And the extent to which one is not yet ready to accept Spiritual Science in the true sense is the extent to which one still rejects a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. The measure of one’s understanding of Spiritual Science, however, is given by the extent of one’s understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, the Christian who professes Spiritual Science can actually communicate with all people in the world. And when, in an arrogance bordering on the excessive—which is, however, quite understandable and can be called justified—the representatives of other religious systems say: “You Christians have only a single incarnation of God, but we can offer several; thus we possess what you have in a richer measure”—the Christian should not respond by, for example, emulating them in regard to Christ Jesus, for then he would not understand the Mystery of Golgotha. The correct thing is, in fact, that the Christian can indeed say—even to one who can point to many incarnations of his religious founder—: “Now, certainly, all those who have many incarnations were simply unable to accomplish the Mystery of Golgotha. And let one seek this, in the manner in which it is presented within Christianity, in any of the other religions!”

[ 36 ] On other occasions I have already explained that when we trace the life of the Buddha, we arrive at the point that we have identified in the Gospel of Mark as the Transfiguration—where the Buddha, having reached the very end of human life, dissolves into light, as it is depicted, which indeed corresponds to the occult truth. For the Christ—as you will find described in *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*—what occurs in the Transfiguration scene takes place, only not in the sense that he undergoes the Transfiguration as an individual, but rather that he converses on the mountain, at the very spot where cosmic events are to unfold, with Elijah and Moses. Only then does the Mystery of Golgotha begin, following this Transfiguration scene. This is so vividly contained in the documents themselves that the denial of this fact, once one has recognized it through the comparison of the Buddha’s life with the Christ’s life, appears fundamentally impossible. And in essence, what I have been able to tell you today about the feelings that arise within us in the face of humanity’s great misunderstanding of the Son of Man is merely a consequence of what you will also find hinted at in my book *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*.

[ 37 ] In a certain sense, I may say now, as we conclude our reflections on the Gospel of Mark: In a certain way, it is the program that existed at the very beginning of our anthroposophical movement in Central Europe with regard to Christianity; this program has been elaborated in detail. When we began, the basic outline was given of how religions can show a further development and culminate in the Christ problem. We have examined the individual Gospels; we have considered various aspects of world phenomena. We have tried to penetrate ever deeper and deeper into the depths of occult life, elaborating on what was hinted at back then. We consistently sought to continue our work. In essence, we have done nothing other than elaborate in detail what was clearly stated at our starting point. Was this not the most natural progression regarding the Christ problem within the anthroposophical movement of Central Europe? Where this has happened, one truly cannot demand of us—if other people converted three years ago to a Christ concept that is impossible in the sense of Christianity—that we, through our consistent work, should convert to this Christ concept invented three years ago. It has often been emphasized recently that the Theosophical Society should be a forum for all opinions. Certainly, it should be. But it looks different when it is also supposed to be a forum for the successive, varying opinions of the same individual—when that same individual now asserts something different from what they claimed four years ago and now demands that the Theosophical Society be a forum for this opinion. That may perhaps be possible, but one need not go along with it. And one need not be a heretic simply because one does not go along with these things. In Central Europe, however, they go even further; they go so far as to call white black and black white!

[ 38 ] This is indeed a solemn moment, as we bring to a close the work we have been carrying out programmatically for the past ten years. Let us stand firm in this work, neither losing heart nor failing to show understanding toward others. But let us clearly recognize what we must do; let us stand firmly on our ground and not allow ourselves to be led astray by anything, even if one calls white black and black white, or even if, in the face of everything that has taken place within our Central European anthroposophical movement—where everyone strives to the best of their ability to give what they have to give, where everyone is called upon to do their best without regard for any authority—if one claims to this movement that this Central European anthroposophical movement contains fanatics and dogmatists, and if those who speak of a dogma that is barely three years old wish to establish an opposition to the terrible dogma of Central Europe. It is hard to see what nonsense is being perpetrated today in the name of Christ. But this also entitles us to see nothing more than an objective technical term in the use of such a word. We merely describe the fact in question, without emotion, without criticism; this objective fact is itself to blame for having to be described with such a word.

[ 39 ] But for us, these facts, when compared to what can flow from a genuine understanding of something like the Gospel of Mark, lead us to nothing other than to continue working in the direction we have recognized as the correct one—a direction that has proven itself to us not only in the general program, which is already derived from the positive facts, but which proves itself to us anew every day when we apply it to the individual problems, to the individual facts. And nothing other than a confirmation of what was said at our starting point has been revealed to us as we have proceeded step by step through the details of the matters we have to investigate.

[ 40 ] Thus, even when we contemplate the greatest things, no feeling can arise within us other than the genuine and true striving for truth. Things such as contemplating the mystery of Golgotha already possess the necessary healing power to dispel error, if one truly approaches them in spirit, and to realize how, fundamentally, it is only the lack of will for truth that prevents people from truly following the path that opens up from the earthly to the cosmic, when the cosmic Christ is examined in Jesus of Nazareth. But he reveals himself to us so clearly when we truly understand a text such as the Gospel of Mark.

[ 41 ] Thus, as these writings become accessible to human understanding through Spiritual Science and spiritual contemplation, they will gradually reach the rest of humanity and be understood more and more. And more and more, the words in the Gospels will be seen as those that had to be found—even disregarding their apparent meaning—through subsequent clairvoyant insight into the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who wrote the Gospels described the physical events retrospectively based on clairvoyant observation. One must understand this, but one must also recognize the necessity of it, since the people who were contemporaries of the events in Palestine could not understand what was happening at the time, because only this event itself could provide the impulse for its understanding. Before this event had taken place, there could be no one there who could understand it. It first had to take effect. That is why it can only be understood afterward. For the key to understanding this Mystery of Golgotha is the Mystery of Golgotha itself. Christ first had to work through everything he was to accomplish, right up to the Mystery of Golgotha. Only then could understanding of him himself arise through what he had accomplished. Then, through what he was, the Word could be kindled, which is at the same time the expression of his true being. And so, through what the Christ was, the Primordial Word is kindled—the Word that has been communicated to us and that can be recognized in clairvoyant contemplation—this Word that also proclaims the true nature of the Mystery of Golgotha. And we may also think of this Word when we speak of the Christ’s own words—the words that he not only spoke himself, but also kindled in the souls of those who were able to understand him, so that they could designate and describe his essence from within human souls.

[ 42 ] Humanity will continue to receive the impulses of the Mystery of Golgotha for as long as the Earth exists. Then there will be an interim period between the “Earth” and “Jupiter.” Such an interim period is always associated with the fact that not only the individual planet, but everything around it, changes, descends into chaos, and passes through a Pralaya. Not only does the Earth itself change in the Pralaya, but also the heavens belonging to the Earth. But what has been given to the Earth through the Word spoken by Christ—which he kindled in those who recognized him and which will endure in those who recognize him—that is the true essence of earthly existence. And a true understanding gives us the truth of the saying that hints at the cosmic course, how the Earth and the aspect of heaven—the aspect of heaven as seen from the Earth—will change after the Earth has found its goal and heaven and Earth will pass away. But such a word of Christ, which can be spoken about heaven and Earth, will remain. If one understands the Gospels correctly, then one feels the innermost impulses of the Gospels; then one feels not only the truth but also the power of the word, which communicates itself to us as power and lets us stand firm on the earth’s foundation and look out over the globe, as we take in the word with full understanding:

[ 43 ] “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Matt. 24:35) The words of Christ will never pass away, even if heaven and earth do. One may say this according to occult knowledge, for the truths spoken of the Mystery of Golgotha will still remain. The Gospel of Mark kindles in our souls the realization that heaven and earth will pass away, but that what we can know about the Mystery of Golgotha will endure with us into future times, even when heaven and earth have passed away.