The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Humanity’s Journey Through the Planetary Spheres and the Significance of the Knowledge of Christ

[ 1 ] We are gathered here this evening in what is, in a sense, a new setting for our beloved Hanover branch, and this evening marks the most beautiful inauguration of this space, as so many of our friends have come here and thereby once again expressed in their hearts, right here in this place, that they are serious about what we summarize in our spiritual worldview. For some time now, on such occasions, there has indeed always been a difficulty on the one hand, which on the other hand, however, can fill us with a certain satisfaction: that when our friends have created such a setting for their work, it immediately proves to be too small at the very first gatherings. This is, of course, a matter with two sides; yet it is also what can fill our souls with confidence and hope for the vitality of our movement. And so, as we begin our reflection, let me briefly express the heartfelt wish that in these very rooms, too, blessings and prosperity may flourish for the spiritual work being carried out here; let me express the heartfelt wish that this work may proceed in such a way that, through its inner strength and solidity, it may receive the blessing of those who watch over our movement as spiritual guides. We can only receive this blessing if we strive toward the great spiritual ideals with inner honesty, truthfulness, and sincerity. But then, when we work together here in a serious, true, and honest spirit, born of this striving, then we can always be certain that the blessing of those we call the Masters of Wisdom and the Harmony of Feelings will preside over our cause. And so may this blessing flow down upon us, so that our work may become something that gives strength and power to the souls, so that this work may provide a small building block for what is to be contributed to the entire culture of humanity through Spiritual Science.

[ 2 ] To begin, my dear friends, let us start our reflection today by taking a close look at what we call our human consciousness. What, then, do we call our human consciousness? Well, we can start by describing this consciousness. We can say: While we are in the state of sleep—from falling asleep in the evening until waking up the next morning—this consciousness is not within us. No one who, so to speak, has all five senses intact—if I may use that expression—doubts that it is also present when, in the evening upon falling asleep, he loses this consciousness, so to speak. For if they doubted it, they would thereby make the utterly nonsensical claim that everything they have experienced inwardly is lost during sleep and only arises anew the next morning. Anyone who does not hold this nonsensical view is convinced that they continue to exist even during the time of sleep. But that which we call our consciousness is not within them. During sleep, we are not filled with mental images; we are not filled with drives, desires, and passions; we are not filled with pain and suffering—for if the pain becomes so intense that it disturbs our sleep, then consciousness remains present. The person who can distinguish between sleeping and waking can also know what consciousness is. Consciousness is that which returns to the soul with every awakening; the entire sum of mental images, emotions, passions, pains, and so on—that is what returns to the soul in the morning. In what way is this consciousness particularly characteristic of human beings? In human beings, it is particularly characterized by the fact that everything a person can have in their consciousness is, so to speak, accompanied by the feeling, the sensation, the experience of the “I”; and a mental image about which you could not at least think: “I am imagining it”; a sensation about which you could not think: I am feeling; a pain where you could not say: it hurts me—that would not be a true inner experience of your soul. Everything you experience must be linked to the mental image of the “I.” That is indeed the case. Nevertheless, you know that this connection to the mental image of the “I”—we have discussed this often before—only begins at a certain point in life. Around the age of three, the child begins to associate an experience with it, no longer saying: “Little Karl or Little Marie is playing or speaking” and so on, but rather: “I am speaking.” — This is how the awareness of the “I” actually first arises in the course of childhood.

[ 3 ] Today we want to ask ourselves: How does the child’s sense of self gradually develop? Now, with this very question, we can see that the simplest—or seemingly simplest—things are not so easy to answer, even though the answer is sometimes quite obvious. How does the child progress from a general, selfless state of consciousness to self-centered mental images? Anyone who truly studies childhood can discover how the child achieves this. You see, there is a very simple observation that anyone can make, which can lead them to see for themselves how the child develops self-awareness. One need only observe seriously enough how this mental image of self develops and strengthens. Observe a child once when they bump their little head on the edge of a table. If you observe childhood more closely, you will find that the sense of self has grown after the child has bumped their little head. For they have perceived themselves. This contributes to the child getting to know themselves. Now, such an experience does not always have to involve injury; there need not always be external scrapes; even when the child places its hands on something, that is a small jolt, and through it the child perceives itself in relation to other things. You will have to admit: The child would not develop a sense of self if it did not perceive itself in relation to the external world, to the resistance of the external world. If the child did not experience any resistance, it would never develop a sense of self. The fact that the child can have an external world facing it gradually forms the sense of self within the child. Then, as you know, the child possesses this sense of self at a certain stage of its life. But what has taken place up to that point does not stop there in the human being; rather, a reversal takes place. The child has developed self-awareness by perceiving external objects as existing outside of itself, thus separating itself from them. Once this self-awareness is established, it still encounters something; it must continually encounter something. Where, then, does it come into contact? That which comes into contact with nothing cannot know anything of itself, at least not within our world, insofar as we live in the world. You see, from the moment when self-consciousness is present, the self comes into contact with its own inner physicality; there the self begins to live inwardly; there the self begins to come into contact with its own body inwardly. You need only think of this, if you wish to create a mental image of it, when the child wakes up every morning. This is the entry of the ego and the astral body into the physical and etheric bodies; there the ego comes into contact with the physical and etheric bodies. Yes, think of it this way: when you reach your hand into the water and move it through it, you encounter resistance everywhere you come into contact with the water. It is the same when the ego descends in the morning and finds itself surrounded by its inner life. But throughout the whole of life, this ego is immersed in the physical and etheric bodies and comes into contact with these bodies on all sides. When you splash around in the water with your hand, you become aware of your hand from all sides; so it is when the ego descends into the etheric body and the physical body and comes into contact on all sides within this physicality. And this happens throughout the whole of life. Throughout one’s entire life, with every new awakening in the morning, the human being must submerge into their physical body and their etheric body, and as a result of this submergence, there are constant collisions between the physical body and the etheric body on the one hand, and the astral body and the I on the other. What is the consequence of this? The consequence is that the entities that collide in this way become worn down. It is the same for the ego and the astral body on the one hand, and the etheric and physical bodies on the other, as if you were constantly striking two bodies against one another. They wear themselves out; and this wearing out is the gradual aging, the wearing down that occurs in human beings over the course of life, and that is also the reason why we die physically at all. Just think: if we had no physical body, no etheric body, then we could not maintain our ego-consciousness either. We would indeed be able to develop ego-consciousness, but we could not sustain it. For we must constantly push inward if it is to be sustained in our consciousness. From this follows nothing less than the extraordinarily significant fact that the development of our ego arises from the destruction of our being. If we could not collide with the members of our being, we could have no sense of self. Indeed, when a person asks, “What is the purpose of destruction, of aging, of death?” one must answer: Destruction, aging, and death exist so that, through destruction, the human being may develop—namely, may continually develop the sense of self. If we could not die—that is the radical expression of this—we could not truly be human. But if we allow this fact to take effect on our soul in its full significance, then the following thought may occur to us, one to which occultism can provide an answer, namely the thought: As human beings, if we wish to live, we always need a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an ego. Just as we are in our present human life, we must say that we need these four members; but in order to attain ego-consciousness, we must destroy them. We must acquire them again and again so that we may destroy them again and again. This is the basis for the necessity of repeated earthly lives, in order to have the opportunity to destroy the human bodies anew and thereby develop further precisely as conscious human beings.

[ 4 ] Now, in our earthly life, we have only one human aspect at which we can truly work—our “I.” We can work on the development of our “I” in a certain way. What does it mean, in a spiritual sense, to work on the development of one’s ego? If we want to answer this question, we must be clear about what makes working on the ego necessary. Let us suppose that one person attacks another and says to them: You are a bad person. If that is not true, then the person in question has spoken an untruth. What does such a statement of the “I,” which is an untruth, mean? Yes, this statement of the “I,” which is an untruth, means that from that moment on, the “I” has become less valuable. That is the objective meaning of immorality. We are worth more before the moment we have spoken an untruth than afterward, after we have uttered the untruth. And measure out all spaces and all times: the value of your ego becomes lesser across all spaces and all times, across all infinity and all eternity, if you have diminished it through such an act. Now, however, during the course of life between birth and death, one thing is available to us, so to speak. We can always improve upon what we have contributed to making our self less valuable, provided we can overcome our lie. We can confess to the person to whom we said, “You are a bad person”: “I was wrong; what I said is not true,” and so on. Then we have restored value to our ego; then we have compensated for the harm we inflicted upon our ego; then we have ensured that what we inflicted upon it is once again balanced. Thus, for many things that affect our ego, we have the power, during our lifetime, to create a balance, to improve that which renders the ego imperfect. If, for example, it is part of our task to know something, and we have forgotten it, then our ego is of lesser value; but if we make an effort, we can bring it back into memory. The ego is of lesser value beforehand; once we have brought it back into memory, we have compensated for the damage. So: We can make this ego less valuable; but we can also, in turn, make it ever more valuable. — You see, this ability to, so to speak, revise a link in our life, a link in our humanity—to correct its errors, to move it forward—we possess this ability with regard to the ego.

[ 5 ] Human consciousness, however, does not extend directly to the astral realm, to the etheric realm, and even less so to the physical realm. Nevertheless, life as a whole is a continuous process of destroying these three aspects, yet we have no knowledge of how to repair them time and again. Human beings have control over how to repair the ego, how to compensate for a moral or memory defect; but they have no control over what they are constantly destroying in their astral, etheric, and physical bodies. Nevertheless, this triad is constantly deteriorating, and if we live on like this, we are constantly launching attacks against our three human members: the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. We work on the ego. Indeed, if we did not work on our ego throughout our entire life between birth and death, we would simply not make any progress. However, a human being cannot work as consciously on the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body as on their ego. Nevertheless, what a human being continually destroys must be restored. In the time between death and a new birth, the human being must have what they have destroyed—the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body—reconstituted in the proper way; it must be possible for us to have restored during this time what we previously destroyed in life: the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body. But this can only happen through the work of something beyond our control. It is quite obvious that, unless you possess special magical powers, you have no power to procure an astral body for yourself after you have died. This must be created for the human being from the greater world, from the macrocosm.

[ 6 ] Now you understand the question: Yes, where, then, is that which we have destroyed—for example, in our astral body—reconstituted? After all, we must have a proper body when we are reborn into a new physical existence. Where in the universe can the forces be found that restore the astral body? You see, you can search for these forces on Earth using every possible clairvoyant art, but you will not find them on Earth. And if it depended solely on Earth, a human being’s astral body could never be restored. The materialistic worldview, which believes that all the conditions of human existence are to be found on Earth, is profoundly mistaken. Humanity’s home is not merely on Earth. A true contemplation of life between death and a new birth reveals that the forces humanity needs to restore its astral body lie with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—with the stars of our solar system. The forces emanating from these stars must all work toward the restoration of our astral body; and if we do not obtain these forces from there, we cannot maintain an astral body. But what does that mean? It means nothing other than that after death, or even during an initiation, we must emerge from the physical body using the forces of our astral body. And this astral body expands out into the universe. Whereas otherwise we are compressed into a tiny point at a single location in this universe, after death our entire being expands out into the entire cosmos. In fact, our life between death and a new birth is nothing other than a drawing from the stars of those forces we need so that the members we have destroyed during life can be restored. Thus, from the stars we truly receive that which restores our astral body.

[ 7 ] In the field that is called occultism in the true sense of the word, research in this field is very difficult and complicated. Isn’t it true that if you send someone with perfectly healthy eyes—let’s say—to a region in Switzerland, and he climbs a very high mountain and then returns, he will give you a description that corresponds to the facts. But you can well form a mental image of what it would be like if he went to that region a second time and climbed the same mountain again—perhaps a little higher—and he described what he sees from a different perspective. And through descriptions from various perspectives, one will gain an ever more complete, an ever more accurate understanding of the mountain landscape. People tend to believe that once someone has become clairvoyant, they know everything. It’s not that simple. Here, in the spiritual world, it’s always a matter of exploring bit by bit. And even with things that have been thoroughly examined, one always discovers something new. Now, it has been my task over the past two years to once again examine and verify the chapter of life between death and a new birth in greater detail, and I would like to tell you a little about these recent investigations here.*

[ 8 ] Of course, when it comes to a matter like this, you must realize that a true understanding of it can only be had by someone who is able to delve a little deeper into such a subject—someone who has the heart and mind for such contemplation. One cannot expect everything to be substantiated and proven in a single evening. But if one patiently compares and brings together everything that has been said over the course of time, one will find that there is no part of our occultism that does not fit together with the others to form a well-rounded, coherent whole. It has fallen to me in recent times to investigate precisely this period between death and a new birth. And this became particularly evident in the research I have been tasked with in recent times; it was entirely in the spirit of this research to grasp in the mind’s eye the conditions that exist for this entire life between death and a new birth. Here it truly becomes apparent that just as the human being is, so to speak, contracted into his smallest space on Earth between birth and death, he, so to speak, steps further and further beyond this smallest space when he sheds this physical body. As he passes through the gate of death, he expands further and further out; he grows and grows. He grows step by step into the planetary system. He actually grows only as far as the point in our planetary system where the Moon orbits. And the human being becomes so large that his outermost boundaries coincide with the sphere marked by the position of the Moon. That is where the Kamaloka ends. If the human being then continues to grow, he first grows into the sphere formed by Mercury, then into that of Venus. There, in fact, as the human being expands further and further, growing more and more, he becomes so large that his outermost limits are bounded by the solar orbit—that is, where the apparent solar orbit is said to be. We need not concern ourselves here with the Copernican system of the world; we need only create a mental image of the orbits as described in the Düsseldorf Cycle on the spiritual hierarchies and their reflection in the physical world. Thus, as the human being ascends into the spiritual worlds, he grows into the planetary system, into the sphere of the Moon and so on, all the way to the outermost sphere, that of Saturn. And all of this is necessary so that the human being may properly come into contact with the forces that he can obtain for his astral body only from the forces of the planetary system.

[ 9 ] But now a difference becomes apparent when one observes different people. This difference arises, for example, when one observes a person after death who, throughout their life, has cultivated a moral, virtuous disposition within their soul—a person who carries this moral state of mind through death. One can compare such a person with one who carries a less moral state of mind through the gate of death; this makes a great difference, and this becomes evident as soon as the person enters the forces of Mercury. How does this manifest itself? Well, once a person has passed through the gate of death, they perceive—through those means of perception we possess after the Kamaloka period—for example, the beings who were close to them in life and who died before they themselves crossed the gate of death. Are these beings connected to them? Certainly, we come together with all these beings; we also live with them in the life after death. But there is a difference in how we live with the beings with whom we lived on Earth. There is a difference depending on whether a person enters death with a moral state of soul or an immoral one. If a person has been immoral in life, then although they do reunite with their family members and friends, their own being always creates something like a wall through which they cannot pass to reach the other beings. And after death, a person with an immoral state of soul becomes a hermit, a lonely being who has something like a wall around them everywhere and cannot reach the beings into whose sphere they have been placed. But the soul with a moral disposition—the soul with the kind of mental images we have when we purify our will—becomes, so to speak, a sociable spirit and always finds the bridges and connections with the beings in whose sphere it lives. Whether we are solitary or sociable spirits is determined by our immoral or moral state of mind. This decision has very important consequences. The person who is a sociable spirit and is not enclosed within the shell of their being, but can approach the beings of their sphere—this person works fruitfully toward the further development, toward the progress of the whole world; the immoral person, who after death becomes a hermit, a solitary spirit, works toward the destruction of the entire world; he tears holes out of the entire world as large as the degree of his immorality, of his isolation. The effect of such a person’s immoral deeds is torment for him, destruction for the world.

[ 10 ] The moral state of the soul is therefore of great importance even in the early stages of the Kamaloka; it determines our fate for the next period, known as the Venus period. However, there are other mental images to consider—ones that a person has developed during life and that affect them when they enter the spiritual world. These other mental images are religious mental images. The soul lives differently in the Venus sphere after death if it has had a religious bond between the transitory and the eternal, and it lives differently if it has not had this bond. Again, it depends on whether we become sociable spirits or solitary, hermit-like spirits, depending on whether we were religiously inclined in life or not. Closing oneself off in life—religious withdrawal in life—turns us into hermits, into unsociable spirits. Such an irreligious soul feels as if it were enclosed in a capsule, as if in a prison. We know, of course, that there are beings outside of us, but we are as if in a prison, in a capsule, so that we cannot reach them. Thus, for example, the members of the Monist League, insofar as they have excluded every religious feeling in their barren materialistic mental images, will not be united after death in a new society, in a league; each will be locked up in his own prison. This is not, of course, meant as a criticism of the Monist League; it is merely intended to make a fact understandable.

[ 11 ] Here in life, materialistic mental images are a mistake; in the realm of the spirit, they are a fact—namely, the fact that through such mental images, by which we only mistakenly shut ourselves off here in the physical world, we imprison ourselves there in the spirit realm, making ourselves prisoners of our own astral nature. — We deprive ourselves of the attractive forces in the Mercury sphere through an immoral way of life; we deprive ourselves of the attractive forces in the Venus sphere through an irreligious state of soul; we cannot draw the forces we need from this sphere, which means that in our next incarnation we will receive an astral body that is, in a certain sense, imperfect.

[ 12 ] Here you can see how karma is formed; here you can see the mechanism of karma. When one considers this fact from the perspective of occult research, a statement like the one Kant made—as if instinctively—comes into focus in a remarkable way. When he wanted to say which two things inspired him with the greatest admiration, he said: The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. — Apparently they are two things, but in truth they are one and the same. Yes, why does such a feeling of sublimity, of divine, sacred solemnity, overcome us when we look up into the vastness of the starry sky? Because then, without our knowing it, our soul’s sense of home awakens; because then the feeling stirs within the soul: Before you descended to Earth for a new incarnation, you yourself were in these stars, and from these stars you received the finest powers into yourself. And your moral law—it was bestowed upon you while you dwelt in this world of stars. You can perceive what the starry sky has given you between death and a new birth as the finest, most beautiful forces of your soul, if you practice self-knowledge. — What we behold in the starry sky is the moral law given to us from spiritual worlds, for we live with the starry sky between death and a new birth. Whoever wishes to open themselves to the possibility of gaining a glimpse of where their best powers come from should gaze upon the starry sky with such feelings. To those who do not wish to ask at all, but live their days in a dull, unthinking way, the stars will tell them nothing. But to those who ask themselves the question: How does that which is never connected to my physical body come into me? If they then raise their gaze to the starry sky and are overcome by that peculiar feeling; if they can then sense how they might become devout, then they know: it is the memory of our eternal home. Thus one gradually grows into that state where we truly live together with the starry sky between death and a new birth.

[ 13 ] We have been asking, as we have done so far, about our astral body, its connections, and its reconstruction in the spiritual world. We can pose the same question with regard to our etheric body. We must also destroy it throughout our entire life; but we must likewise draw the forces from elsewhere so that we can rebuild it, so that we can enable it to perform its work for the whole human being during life.

[ 14 ] Yes, there were long periods in human evolution on Earth when human beings could do absolutely nothing to ensure that their etheric body would be endowed with positive forces in the next incarnation. But at that time, human beings still possessed a legacy from the era when they first emerged on Earth. As long as the old clairvoyance persisted, there were still such forces within the human being that remained unused at the time of death—reserve forces, so to speak—through which the etheric body could be rebuilt. But this is the purpose of human evolution: that all forces must wane and be replaced by new ones. And today we have truly reached a stage of development where the human being must do something to ensure that his etheric body can be rebuilt. Through everything we do with ordinary mental images, through what we do with any religion on Earth—with a religion limited to a single people on Earth—we do indeed enter the planetary system and draw from it the forces we need to rebuild the astral body; but there is one thing we pass through without drawing the right forces from it: the Sun itself. For our etheric body must also draw its forces from the Sun; our etheric body must draw from the Sun the forces it needs for its reconstruction.

[ 15 ] In pre-Christian times, it was the case that as a person evolved upward into the spiritual world, they took a portion of the forces of the etheric body with them, and these reserve forces enabled them to draw from the sun what they needed to rebuild their etheric body in a new incarnation. This is different now: human beings are now increasingly unaffected by the forces of the sun. Unless they take the necessary steps to prepare their etheric body—by pouring into their soul what the forces drawn from the sun can provide for the reconstruction of their etheric body—they pass through the solar sphere untouched.

[ 16 ] Now, what we can feel from a single religious creed on Earth can never give us in our soul what we need to survive in the solar sphere. That which we can pour into our etheric body—that which we then need in our soul so that it can pass fruitfully through the solar sphere—can come to us only from the common element that flows through all human religions. And what flows within it? Well, if you compare the various religions of the world—and this is indeed one of the most significant tasks of Spiritual Science work, to truly study the core of truth in the various religions—if you compare them all with one another, you will find one thing. You will find that these religions were always perfect in their own way, but specifically for a particular people, for a particular era; that they gave this people, this era, the most significant thing that this time could receive. And, fundamentally speaking, we know the most about a religion precisely where these religions were able to serve their time and their people by closing themselves off in a certain self-centered way, just as they were given from the great primal source of life.

[ 17 ] We have, after all, been studying religions for more than ten years; but a start had to be made at some point in order to give humanity something that transcends the individual religions, something that, as it were, encompasses everything to which the individual religions have pointed. How did this come about? It came about because a religion emerged that is a selfless religion. Its perfection lies precisely in the fact that it was not limited to a single people or a single era. The Hindu religion, for example, is a religion that is egoistic in the most eminent sense. For anyone who is not a Hindu cannot be accepted into this religion. This Hindu religion is thus tailored in a special sense to the Hindu people. The same is true of the other territorial religions. The greatness of the individual religious creeds lies in the fact that they were tailored to specific earthly conditions. Whoever fails to recognize that religions derive their perfection precisely from the fact that they are limited to specific earthly conditions, whoever insists only that all religious systems have come from a single source, can never arrive at true understanding.

[ 18 ] What does it mean, then, to speak only of unity? It means, for example, that someone says: “On the table are salt, pepper, paprika, and sugar,” but we do not wish to emphasize what each one means on its own; rather, we seek the unity that is expressed in the various spices—pepper, salt, paprika, and sugar. — One can speak of these things in this way, but when it comes to moving from talk to reality, when it comes to using the various spices individually according to their own characteristics, one will certainly become aware of the difference. No one, when using the various spices, will say that they are all simply spices without distinction. For if there really were no difference, then try taking salt or pepper and putting them in your coffee or tea instead of sugar; you will certainly feel the difference. The same logical blunder is made by someone who does not truly distinguish between the individual religious creeds, but says: they all come from the same source.

[ 19 ] But if one wishes to understand how the living bond runs through the various religions toward a great goal, then one must come to know this bond; one must truly study the religions in terms of their value for the individual spheres. This has been happening for more than ten years within our Central European Section of the Theosophical Society; but once the beginning was made, a kind of religion was sought for something that has nothing to do with human differences, that has to do only with what is human, which is without distinction of color, race, and so on. How is this expressed? Do we in truth have a national religion, as the Hindus or the Jews have? If we were to worship Wotan, then we would be in the same position as the Hindus. But we do not worship Wotan. The West has professed its faith in Christ, who is not a Westerner, who is an outsider in terms of his ancestry. The way the West has aligned itself with Christ is not a national-egoistic way of binding itself to a creed. Of course, we cannot exhaustively cover the subject matter touched upon here within the scope of a single lecture; only individual points of view can ever be presented. It should be noted that the way in which the West has adopted its religious creed has been an absolutely unselfish one. The predominance of the Christ principle is also evident in another way. Convene a serious congress composed of religious scholars from various denominations, who are to endeavor to compare the individual religious systems impartially with one another. I would like to ask them whether there is anything in any religion, in the same sense, that is valid throughout the entire world as the following: that we have one and the same statement which, coming from two sides, means something entirely different, as in Christianity. It is a profound remark in the Gospel that Christ Jesus makes when he says to those he taught: “There is a divine element living within all of you; are you not then gods?” He says it with all force: “You are gods” (John 10:34). By this, Christ Jesus means: There is a spark within every human breast that is divine, which must be kindled, so that one may say: Be like the gods! A word from Lucifer leads to a different, indeed exactly opposite, effect when he approaches humanity to draw it down from the realm of the gods, saying to humanity: “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). There the meaning was entirely different. The same utterance, leading humanity to ruin at the beginning of the descent into the abyss; the same utterance, a pointer to our highest goal! One should seek this in some religious creed in the same way! Either one or the other is present; but both are not present. Let one investigate—but let one investigate carefully—and one will see how much is contained in the few words that have just been spoken. Why has Christianity taken this important matter into itself? So that it may be shown that what matters is not the mere content, but the essence from which it originates. Why? Because Christianity began, in the true sense, to point toward and work toward what its very essence proclaims: there is not merely kinship of tribes, but kinship of humanity—something that applies without distinction of race, nationality, or creed, something that transcends all races and all ages. That is why Christianity is at the same time so intimately connected with the human soul, because what Christianity can offer need not remain foreign to any human soul. Not all people on earth admit this yet. But what is true must ultimately prevail.

[ 20 ] Today, however, people are not even ready to recognize that Buddhists and Hindus do not need to reject Christ. Just imagine what it would mean if someone were to appear—someone who thinks deeply—and say to us: It is wrong of you, followers of Christ, to say specifically of Christ: all faiths can unite in him, can equally recognize him as their highest goal. In doing so, you give Christ preferential treatment. You must not make such a claim specifically about Christ. — Why not? Perhaps because the Hindu might demand that we should also revere his teachings alone? We do not wish to detract from these teachings, which we truly revere as highly as any Hindu. May the Buddhist say: I must not acknowledge Christ, for that is not written in my Buddhist scriptures? Does it matter if something that is true is not written in specific scriptures? Is it anti-Buddhist to profess belief in the Copernican system of the world, even though nothing about it is found in Buddhist scriptures? May the Buddhist say: “It is not right; it is anti-Buddhist to profess belief in the Copernican system of the world, for there is nothing in my books about the Copernican system of the world”? — Just as with the Copernican world system, the recent findings of Spiritual Science regarding the Christ Being are something that can be accepted by a Hindu or a follower of another religious system; this has nothing to do with a religious creed. Anyone who rejects what Spiritual Science has to say about the Christ impulse in relation to religious creeds does not have a true understanding of how one should approach a religious creed. — Perhaps, my dear friends, the time will come again when we will see how what we have to say about the nature of the Christ impulse and its relationship to all religious creeds and worldviews speaks just as deeply to our hearts and souls as it strives to penetrate with the utmost consistency into the individual phases. — It is not easy for the individual to grasp how we are attempting to bring together the elements that can lead to a true understanding of the Christ impulse. And in our present cycle, humanity needs an understanding of what we call the Christ Being. Committing oneself to Christ has nothing to do with a single, self-contained religious system; a true Christian is only one who is accustomed to viewing every human being as one who carries the Christian principle within themselves; for a true Christian, the Christian element is sought in a Chinese person, a Hindu, and so on. — The true understanding of anyone who professes Christ lies in becoming aware that the Christ impulse is not limited to one part of the earth—this would be a mistake. The reality is that since the Mystery of Golgotha, what Paul already said for the regions to which he spoke has truly come to pass. Paul proclaimed: Christ died also for the Gentiles. — But humanity must understand that Christ did not come for a specific people, for a specific, limited time, but for the entire population of the earth, for everyone. And this Christ has scattered his phantom seeds into every soul, and progress will consist solely in the souls becoming aware of them. So we are not merely working out a theory, not merely so that our intellect gains a few more concepts when we engage in Spiritual Science, but we come together so that our hearts and souls may be moved. If we approach the Christ impulse with this kind of understanding, it will ultimately bring about that all people on earth attain the deepest understanding of Christ, an understanding of the Christ word: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Those who work together in this spirit find the bridge from soul to soul. But this is what the Christ impulse will accomplish throughout the whole earth. The true Christ impulse—that is what the living life of our branches should be. Then occultism comes and shows us—if we make it a matter of concern to us—the reality of the Christ impulse through our feeling: then something is instilled into our souls that makes them capable of finding the passage through the solar sphere, so that the etheric body can be restored to us in the right way in the next incarnation. We truly take up Spiritual Science only when we bring a deep understanding of the reception of the Christ impulse to it. Only in this way will our etheric body be strong and vigorous upon entering a new incarnation. The etheric bodies will degenerate more and more if people know nothing of the Christ and his mission for the entire development of the Earth. Through an understanding of the Christ Being, we will escape this degeneration of the etheric body; this makes us sun-capable, sun-like; this makes us fit to be able to receive forces from the realm from which the Christ came. Since the Christ has been here, human beings can take with them from the Earth the forces that lead them into the solar sphere. Then we can return to the Earth, and in the next incarnation, the forces that strengthen our etheric body will live on. If we do not take in the Christ impulse, then the etheric bodies will become increasingly incapable of drawing their sustaining, building forces from the solar sphere in order to be able to work properly here on Earth. We must be clear that the life of the Earth truly depends not on mere theoretical understanding, but on a complete permeation by the event of Golgotha. This is what true occult research shows us.

[ 21 ] And this occult research further shows us how we can receive what is prepared for us in the physical body. For the physical body is bestowed upon us through what is called the Father-Principle. But through the peculiarity expressed by the words of Christ Jesus: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), we also become partakers of the Father-principle through the Christ impulse; that is to say, the Christ impulse leads us at the same time to the divine Father-forces.

[ 22 ] What is the greatest benefit we can gain from our spiritual deepening? One could have a mental image of a soul among you who, upon leaving the room, would say to themselves: “Now I have actually forgotten everything except for every single word.” This would be an extreme case; it would be the most radical case. That, my dear friends, would not even be the greatest harm. For I could imagine a case in which such a person, stepping out onto the street, would nevertheless carry with them a feeling, a sensation, that is the result of what they have heard here, even if they have otherwise forgotten everything. And this feeling is the main thing. What we experience in our hearts—that is the main thing. But we cannot experience it any other way when we hear the words than by this: we must surrender ourselves to them in every detail, so that our minds may be filled with the powerful impulse. If everything that spiritual knowledge can be for us contributes to the betterment of our soul, then we have gained what is right. And indeed, if, in the true sense, through what is reflected in his mind by Spiritual Science, a person becomes capable of understanding his fellow human beings just a little more, then it has done its work in him. For Spiritual Science is life, immediate life. It is neither refuted nor proven through logical disputations. It is proven and evaluated through life. And it will prove itself by finding people into whose souls it can enter. But what could lift us up more than knowing that we are coming to know the source of our true life between death and a new birth, feeling our kinship with the entire universe! What could strengthen us more in our duties in this life than the knowledge that we carry within us the forces of the universe, for whose outpouring we must prepare ourselves in this life, so that they may become effective within us when we once again enter the world of the planets and the world of the sun between death and a new birth. And for the one who truly understands the things that occultism can reveal to him about humanity’s relationship to the world of the stars, his prayer—which he then directs to the world with understanding—is sincere and might go something like this: “The more I become aware of how I have been born out of the universe, the more I feel the responsibility to develop within myself the forces that the entire universe has given me; the better a human being I will be able to become.” And whoever knows how to pray this prayer from the deepest depths of their soul may also hope that it will become a real ideal for them; they may also hope that through the power of such a prayer they will become an ever better and more perfect human being. Thus, what we receive through true Spiritual Science works down into the most intimate depths.