The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] As has already been indicated, our reflections during these evening sessions this winter will be devoted to a discussion of life between death and rebirth. It is in the nature of things that everything that can make the discussions—which are now to be conducted from a certain perspective not yet addressed here—understandable, comprehensible, and, one might say, provable, will only be fully grasped once the entirety of these winter lectures is available. Naturally, we must anticipate certain things, namely the results of research that has been conducted over the past few months. That which can then serve to make our understanding and comprehension complete can only emerge through the progression of these reflections. However, so that we may communicate more easily about these important matters from the outset, let us begin today with a brief reflection on the human being, as anyone can easily do in daily life.

[ 2 ] When we consider human life, the most significant and outstanding fact that emerges from an unbiased examination is, after all, the human “I” itself. We must now distinguish between the true human “I” and the consciousness of this human “I.” For it must be obvious to everyone that this human ego is certainly already active at least from the moment a human being enters existence through birth, and especially during those periods when the child is still far from having any consciousness of the ego—those periods that are already characterized externally, linguistically, by the fact that the child speaks of itself as if of another person. We have considered these matters on several occasions. We know that around the age of three—though of course there are children for whom this occurs earlier—the child begins to have a sense of self, that it begins to speak of itself in the first person; and we know that this year marks the outer limit—although in some people it is pushed back—regarding how far back a person can later recall what their soul has experienced. Thus, we have a distinct turning point in human life: before this, there is no possibility of clearly and distinctly experiencing oneself in one’s “I”; afterward, the human being experiences themselves in their “I,” finds themselves, so to speak, so at home in their “I” that they can repeatedly recall the experiences of this “I” from memory. What, then, can an unbiased observation of life teach us about why the child gradually transitions, so to speak, from a state of not knowing the “I” to a state of knowing the “I”?

[ 3 ] An unbiased view of life can teach us the following. If, from the very first moments after birth, a child never came into conflict with the outside world, it would not be able to develop a sense of self. You can observe for yourselves how, in life, you sometimes only become aware of your “I” later on. You need only bump your head hard against the edge of a cabinet; then, through this bump, you become aware of your “I” above all else. The collision with the outside world tells you that you are an “I,” and you will hardly forget to think of your “I” when you have given yourself a good bump on the head. These collisions with the external world do not, of course, always have to result in bumps for the child, but they are always present in certain nuances. When the child reaches out its little hand and touches something from the external world, there is a gentle collision with the external world. When the child opens its eyes and light enters them, there is a gentle collision with the external world. Through the outside world, the child comes to know itself, and life in the early years essentially consists of the child distinguishing itself from the outside world and coming to know itself through the outside world. And the result of sufficient collisions with the outside world is synthesized in the soul as the child’s self-awareness. One might say: When the child has experienced a sufficient number of such encounters with the outside world, the result is that it calls itself “I.” Once the child has reached the point of grasping its sense of self, the necessity arises to maintain this sense of self alive and active throughout its entire life. However, this sense of self can be kept alive and active by nothing other than the occurrence of collisions. Collisions with the outside world have, so to speak, fulfilled their purpose once the child has come to say “I” to itself; thus, nothing more can be learned from them, so to speak, for the development of the sense of self. But even from an unbiased observation of, for example, the moment of waking up, a person can already experience how ego-consciousness can only be kept active through collisions.

[ 4 ] We know, of course, that this sense of self, along with all other contents—including those of the astral body—disappears during sleep and that it reawakens in the morning upon waking. Why does it awaken then? It awakens because the human being, with his spiritual-soul being, returns once more into his physical body or also into his etheric body. There he once again experiences his collisions, his clashes with the physical body and the etheric body. Anyone who is able to observe the soul life precisely—even without occult knowledge—can notice the following. When they wake up in the morning, they will find that many things preserved in their memory are just coming back up into their consciousness: experienced mental images, experienced sensations, and other experiences rise up into their consciousness; these emerge, as it were, from the depths of consciousness. If one examines all this very closely—one can examine it even without any occult knowledge; one need only have truly acquired some capacity for observing psychological experience—then one finds: What emerges there has a certain impersonal character. — And one can even observe how this character becomes more impersonal the further back in time the events lie, that is, the less we are still involved in them with our immediate sense of self. You can recall events that lie very far back in your life, and you can bring them to mind in such a way that you take as little part in these events as you do in something you experience in the external world that does not particularly concern you. Whatever else is preserved in our memory has a constant tendency to detach itself from our ego. And the fact that we nevertheless see our ego re-enter our consciousness with complete clarity every morning stems from the fact that we immerse ourselves in the same body every morning. Through the collision we experience with it, this body reawakens our sense of self anew each morning. So while the child pushes outward and thereby attains ego-consciousness, we keep the ego-consciousness active by pushing against our own inner self. And we do not merely push in the morning, but force our way in and remain thrust into our own inner self throughout the entire waking state of the day, and our ego-consciousness is kindled by the counterpressure of our body. Our ego is situated within the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, and is in constant collision with them. Thus we can say that we owe our sense of self to the fact that we are inwardly thrust into our physicality and experience the counterpressure from it. We collide with our physicality.

[ 5 ] Now it will be easy for you to understand that this must have a consequence. It has the consequence that collisions always have: when you bump into something, even if it isn’t noticed right away, an injury or damage is caused. In fact, the collisions of the ego with the physical body continually cause damage—in a sense, small acts of destruction—in our physical body. The fact is that we are constantly destroying our physical body. Our entire sense of self could not develop if we did not collide with the physical body and thereby destroy it. And the sum of these destructions is, in truth, nothing other than what causes death in the physical world. We must say: It is to the fact that we are capable of continually destroying our organism—that is, to our destructive activity—that we owe the maintenance of our ego-consciousness.

[ 6 ] In this way, then, we become the destroyers of our astral body, our etheric body, and our physical body. Insofar as we are that, we do behave toward the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body somewhat differently than we do toward the “I” itself. Ordinary life already teaches us that we can become destroyers of our own “I.” Let us now just try to clarify for ourselves, for the time being, how we can, so to speak, become destroyers of our own “I.”

[ 7 ] Our ego is something—whatever it may be—and insofar as it is something in the world, it has a certain value. People sense that their ego has a certain value within the overall order of the world. But people can diminish this value. How do we diminish the value of our ego? If, for example, we cause harm to someone to whom we might owe love, then at that very moment we have indeed diminished the value of our ego. We are worth less in our ego after we have inflicted undeserved suffering on someone; our ego has become less valuable. This is a fact that everyone can recognize for themselves. Yet one can also see that, since human beings never fulfill the ideal of their state of worth, the self is actually constantly engaged in life in making itself more and more worthless—that is, in a sense, working on its own devaluation, on its own destruction. But as long as we remain within our self, we still have the power in life, time and again, to avert that destruction. We can do it, even if we do not always do so. Before we have passed through the gate of death, we can always do it. If we have inflicted undeserved suffering on someone, we can make amends for it in whatever form is possible within the course of life. If you reflect on this, you will realize that between birth and death, a person has the ability to impair their ego, to work toward its devaluation and destruction, but also to make amends for and remove the destruction of the ego.

[ 8 ] In the current cycle of human evolution, human beings do not initially possess this ability with regard to their astral body, etheric body, and physical body. They cannot work on their astral body, etheric body, and physical body in the same way they do with their I through conscious activity, for they are not present with consciousness within these members of their being. What remains is the constant destruction that human beings inflict upon their astral body, etheric body, and physical body. They continually destroy them, yet are unable to do anything to repair them. And it is easy to understand: if we were to enter a new incarnation with the forces corresponding to our physical body, etheric body, and astral body, as we practiced them at the end of our previous incarnation, we would have quite useless astral bodies, etheric bodies, and physical bodies. What is in the soul is, after all, always the source and the reservoir of forces for what is expressed in the physical body. The fact that at the end of a life we have, so to speak, a frail organism is proof that our soul does not possess the forces to keep the organism fresh. To maintain consciousness and keep it active, we have continually worn down our physical shell. With the forces we still possess at the end of an incarnation, we would be unable to accomplish anything in the next incarnation. We must once again receive the forces capable of working on our astral body, etheric body, and physical body in the next incarnation in such a way that these are fresh and healthy within certain limits, usable for a new incarnation. Within earthly existence—this is already evident even from an external perspective—human beings find the possibility of destroying their three bodies; but they do not find the possibility of structuring, working on, and restoring these three bodies completely in a healthy way of their own accord. Here, occult research shows us that in the life between death and the new birth, from the extra-earthly conditions we then experience, the forces come to us that serve to restore the worn-out human sheaths. Between death and new birth, we extend our lives out into the universe, into the cosmos, and the forces we cannot draw from the earth we must draw from the other celestial bodies that initially belong to the earth. In them lie the reservoirs of force for our human sheaths. On Earth, humans have only the possibility of gaining the forces for the perpetual restoration of the ego; the other members of human nature must draw their forces from worlds other than Earth.

[ 9 ] If we first consider the astral body, we see that after death the human being expands outward—truly, literally expands outward—by becoming, so to speak, larger and larger, extending into all the planetary spheres. Through the expansion of their spiritual-soul being, especially during the Kamaloka period—as various beings interpenetrate one another—the human being becomes such a vast being that they reach the boundary marked by the circle described by the Moon around the Earth. Then they expand to the Mercury sphere—what is meant here in occultism by Mercury—then to the Venus sphere, and on to the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, and the Saturn sphere. The human being expands more and more. With the being he has carried through the gate of death, he lives in the true sense in such a way that he becomes a Mercury dweller, a Venus dweller, a Mars dweller, and so on, and he must, in a certain way, have the ability to make himself at home in these other planetary worlds. How does he become at home there, or fail to do so?

[ 10 ] First, when his time in Kamaloka is over, he must possess within himself something that enables him to establish a connection with the forces in the Mercury sphere, to which he is then transferred. Now, when one examines different people in their lives between death and rebirth, it becomes evident that people differ in this respect. Specifically, we find a clear distinction depending on whether a person enters the Mercury sphere with a moral disposition of the soul—the result of a moral life—or with the result of an immoral life. Of course, this encompasses all possible nuances. The person with a moral soul-disposition and state of mind, with a moral outcome of their life, is in the Mercury sphere what one might call a spiritually sociable being; they have the ability to enter into relationships with other beings—either with people who died earlier or with beings of the Mercury sphere—and to exchange, so to speak, life-relationships with them. The immoral person becomes a hermit, feeling excluded from the community of the other inhabitants of this sphere. This is what the moral or immoral state of the soul entails in the life between death and new birth. It is essential that we understand that morality in this sphere brings about our connection and union with the beings living in this sphere, and that our immoral state of mind imprisons our own being, so that while we know the other beings are there, we are, as it were, enclosed within a shell and cannot reach them. This self-imposed isolation is a result, let us say, of an antisocial, immoral human life on Earth.

[ 11 ] For the next sphere, which we shall provisionally call the Venus sphere—since in occultism it is always referred to as such—the religious disposition of the soul is decisive for the way in which a person connects with it. People who, during their life on Earth, have developed a sense that everything transitory in things and in human beings themselves is connected to something imperishable, and a sense that the individual life, with its soul disposition, should incline toward the divine-spiritual—such people find a connection to the beings of this sphere. In contrast, for example, the materialistically minded person, who cannot turn his soul toward the eternal and imperishable, toward the divine, is banished within this sphere, as if in the prison of his own being, in solitude. It is precisely within this sphere that we can best see, through occult investigations, how we create the conditions for life in this sphere within our astral body here on Earth through the way we live on Earth. We must, in a certain sense, already here on Earth cultivate understanding and a striving toward that with which we wish to find a connection there. Let us just consider the fact that people on Earth, in the most diverse epochs and at the most diverse times—as it had to be and is quite right—have received mediation with the divine-spiritual life through the various religious creeds and worldviews. Human development could, after all, only proceed in such a way that from the unified source—for example, of religious life—at the most diverse times and for the most diverse peoples, according to their dispositions, according to their climatic and other conditions, the various religious creeds were given by those who had been called to do so by the conditions of the world. These religious creeds thus originate from a unified source; but they are graded differently according to the conditions of the individual peoples. And right up to our own times, people on Earth are divided into groups with regard to their religious creeds and their worldviews. But through what a religious creed or a worldview forms in our soul, we prepare ourselves with the understanding and receptivity necessary for the Venus sphere. The religious sentiments of the Hindu, the religious sentiments of the Chinese, the Muslim, and the Christian prepare their souls in such a way that, in the Venus sphere, these souls have above all understanding, affinity, and sympathy for those beings who share the same sentiments and who have shaped their souls through the same beliefs. One may truly say: It is clearly stated for occult research that while people on Earth today are still—though this will be overturned in the future and is already beginning to be overturned—divided into races, tribes, and so on, and we can distinguish them by these characteristics, there is no such racial division in the Venus sphere, which we experience there with other human beings and other beings. There, human beings are grouped in such a way that only their religious beliefs and their worldviews are decisive. A certain division still exists there for the reason that this very earthly division, including that of religions, is in a certain sense dependent on tribal and racial conditions. But it is not the racial element that is decisive; rather, what is decisive is what the soul experiences through having a particular religious creed.

[ 12 ] After we die, we always spend a certain amount of time within these spheres; then we expand and move on to the next sphere.

[ 13 ] The next realm a human being experiences after the Venus sphere is the Solar sphere. As souls, we actually become inhabitants of the Sun between death and rebirth. The Solar sphere requires something different from the Venus sphere. For the solar sphere, there is a clear, an eminent necessity: if we are to flourish there between death and new birth, we must not merely understand a certain group of people, but understand all human souls, and be able to establish connections with all souls, so to speak. And in the solar sphere, we already feel like hermits, like isolated souls, if we are constrained by the prejudices of any religious creed and are unable to understand those whose souls have been permeated by a different creed. For example, anyone who on Earth has gained only the ability to perceive all that is excellent in a particular religious denomination will not—as we can now say—understand adherents of other religious denominations while in the solar sphere. But this lack of understanding is not the same as it is on Earth. Here, people can walk side by side without understanding one another to the depths of their souls; they can divide into different religious denominations and worldviews. In the Solar Sphere—since we all expand and interpenetrate one another there, we are both together and separated by our inner selves—every separation and every lack of understanding is simultaneously a source of terrible suffering. A reproach we cannot bridge—because we have not been trained to do so on Earth—and which weighs upon us forever is the encounter with every member of a different faith.

[ 14 ] What is to be said here will become even clearer in a certain sense when, starting from this life between death and rebirth, some reference is made to initiation. For what the initiate experiences when he enters the spiritual worlds is, in a certain sense, quite similar to what occurs in this life between death and rebirth. The initiate must immerse himself in these same spheres, and if he were to live under the prejudices of a one-sided worldview, he would undergo the same torments in this solar sphere. Therefore, it is necessary that initiation be preceded by a complete, thorough understanding of every creed that is widespread on our Earth, an understanding of what lives in every single soul, regardless of which worldview it belongs to. Otherwise, everything else toward which one does not bring such understanding is something that comes toward one agonizingly, like infinitely high mountains that seem to be crashing down upon one, like explosive phenomena that come toward one, so that one feels the full force of such explosions unloading upon oneself. All lack of understanding that one directs toward others, because one constricts oneself within it, has this effect in the spiritual worlds. It was not always so. In pre-Christian times, the development of humanity was not such that people first had to evolve toward such an understanding of every single human soul. Humanity had to go through this one-sidedness. But those who were led to a certain leadership of the world had to, more or less consciously, take into themselves that which can provide understanding for everything, without distinction. And even if a human being was merely the leader of a people, they had to be introduced, in a certain way, to an understanding of every human soul. This is so magnificently hinted at in the Old Testament at the point where Abraham encounters Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High. Whoever understands this passage knows that Abraham, who was to become the leader of his people, was, as it were, initiated at that moment—albeit not fully consciously, as is the case in later initiations—with regard to an understanding of that Divine which can work within all human souls. The passage describing Abraham’s encounter with Melchizedek conceals a profound mystery for the development of humanity. But humanity had to be prepared step by step in order to increasingly have the opportunity to truly pass through the solar sphere in a fruitful manner. How did this happen?

[ 15 ] The first impetus in the development of our Earth toward such a proper passage through the solar sphere was given—after the preparations for it had been made by the people of the Old Testament (we will have more to say about this later)—by the Mystery of Golgotha. It is not important at this moment to address the question of whether Christianity, in its development to date, has already exhausted all its goals and all its possibilities for development. It goes without saying that Christianity, in its religious creeds, has developed only certain aspects of the overall Christian principle and, in the details of its positive creeds, certainly lags behind other creeds. What matters, however, is what potential for development it holds within itself, what it can offer to the human being who penetrates ever more deeply into its essence.

[ 16 ] We have already attempted to describe what these possibilities for development can tell us. There is an infinite amount to say on the subject, but we will now focus on just one aspect that can shed light on the point we need at this moment. If we truly understand the various religious creeds from within, we find a characteristic feature that distinguishes them. This is that, in the earlier stages of Earth’s development, the individual creeds were tailored to the individual races, tribes, and ethnic groups of the Earth. Such things have indeed been preserved. We know that truly, even today, only those who were born as Hindus can belong to the Hindu religion. In a certain sense, the older religions are tribal religions, folk religions. Do not take this expression as a disparagement, but merely as a characterization. The individual religions that were given to the peoples by the Initiates—drawn, of course, from the original source of a universal world religion, but adapted to the individual peoples, tribes, and so on—these individual religions have, one might say, something religiously egoistic about them. The peoples have always loved what has grown religiously out of their own flesh and blood. Indeed, we even know that in ancient times, when a religion was established among the peoples of antiquity originating from the mystery sites, it was not someone who was physically a stranger who went there and established a religion, but rather he established a second mystery that was carried to a place where another already existed; but the people were given a member of their own people, of their own tribe, as their leader.

[ 17 ] In this regard, there is a significant difference concerning what can be called true Christianity. The individual to whom the Christian looks—Jesus Christ—had the least impact among the people and in the part of the world where he was born.

[ 18 ] If we now consider conditions in the West: Are they, in religious terms, to be regarded as equivalent to those in India or China—that is, to conditions where folk religions still persist? They are not! Our regions would only be comparable to India or China if, for example, we here in Central Europe were devout followers of Wotan. Then we would be in the same situation; then the religious-egoistic aspect would also come to the fore here. But within the West, the religious-egoistic has disappeared, and the religion of a founder has been adopted—one that does not lie within any folk community at all, but rather lies outside of it. This fact must be faced. What bound blood to blood and contributed to the founding of the ancient religious communities did not play a role in the spread of Christianity. It was the spiritual that essentially played a role there, and a religion was adopted that lay outside the ethnic community—for example, in the West. Why is that? It is because, from its very beginnings, Christianity was, in its deepest roots, designed to be a creed for all people, without distinction of faith, nationality, tribe, race, or anything else that otherwise separates people from one another. Christianity is only truly understood when it is understood in such a way that it touches only the human in human beings, that which is human in all people. And this is not diminished by the fact that Christianity, in its early phases and also in our time, has developed specific creeds; for the potential for the development of what is universally human lies within Christianity. A major shift will even have to take place within the Christian world if Christianity is to be properly understood at its root. A certain distinction will have to be made between the knowledge of Christianity and the reality of Christianity.

[ 19 ] Although Paul had already begun to make this distinction, and anyone who understands Paul can grasp something of it, this distinction has been little understood to this day. By wresting the Christian confession of Christ Jesus from mere Judaism and coining the phrase, “Christ died not only for the Jews but also for the Gentiles,” Paul did something monumental for the correct understanding of Christianity. For it would be entirely wrong for anyone to claim that the Mystery of Golgotha took place only for those who call themselves Christians. It took place for all people! This is also what Paul means when he says that Christ died for the Gentiles as well, not merely for the Jews. For what has passed into all earthly life through the Mystery of Golgotha also has significance for all earthly life. And as grotesque as it may still sound today to those who do not make the distinction I am about to mention, one must nevertheless say: Only he understands the root of Christianity who, for example, is able to view a follower of another religious system—regardless of whether he calls himself Indian or Chinese or anything else—in such a way that he asks himself: How much of the Christian is there in him? — It does not matter whether this person knows this, but rather that he knows what the reality of Christianity is—just as it does not matter whether a person knows physiology if it is to be admitted that he knows the fact of digestion. Anyone who, within his religious system today, still has no conscious relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha has simply not yet acquired an understanding of it; but that does not give the other person the right to deny the reality of Christianity for him. Only when Christians have become Christians to the extent that they seek out the Christian element in all earthly souls—and not when they have first instilled it in other souls through some attempts at conversion—only then will the root of Christianity be properly understood. But all of this lies within properly understood Christianity. One must distinguish between the reality and the understanding of Christianity. To understand what has been on Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha is a great ideal, an ideal of an important insight for the Earth, an insight that people will gradually come to grasp. But the reality has taken place; it is already here, in that the Mystery of Golgotha has been accomplished.

[ 20 ] However, our life in the solar sphere depends entirely on the relationship we have established with the Mystery of Golgotha. Our life in the solar sphere depends on this relationship to such an extent that what can be experienced in the solar sphere—establishing a relationship with all human beings— is only possible through such a relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha as has just been characterized: through a relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha that no longer confines us to an imperfect form of Christianity in this or that denomination. Otherwise, we make ourselves, under all circumstances in the solar sphere, into lonely human beings who cannot find the souls, the minds of other human beings. — There is a saying whose power extends into the solar sphere: where we, as beings within the solar sphere, encounter another human being, there we can be sociable with that other human being and not, as it were, push them away through our own nature, if the saying holds true in our soul: Where two wish to unite in my name, I can be in their midst. — In the true knowledge of Christ, all people can come together within the solar sphere. And this coming together is of immense importance, of great significance. For a decision takes place within the solar sphere for the human being: he must possess a certain understanding within the solar sphere. And we can best grasp this understanding through an extraordinarily significant fact that could actually lie before every soul, but which human souls simply do not always realize.

[ 21 ] One of the most beautiful sayings in the New Testament is the one we can characterize as follows: Christ Jesus seeks to awaken in human beings an awareness of the divine-spiritual core within the human soul—that “God” lives as a divine spark in every human soul, that every human being possesses a divinity within. Christ Jesus emphasized this particularly strongly, and with all his might and power he declared: “You are all gods!” And he emphasized it so strongly that one can see from the saying: He regards this designation of the human being—when the human being applies it to himself—as the correct one. —Another being also uttered this saying. The Old Testament symbolically expresses the occasion on which this occurred. Lucifer, at the beginning of human evolution, utters the statement: “You will be like gods!” One must take note of this fact. Two beings utter the same statement in substance: You will be or are to be like gods—Lucifer and Christ! And what does the Bible mean by emphasizing both so clearly? It means that from Lucifer’s nature this statement becomes a curse—from Christ’s nature, the highest blessing. Is there not a wondrous mystery hidden within this? What Lucifer cast into humanity as the voice of temptation—Christ was permitted to speak to humanity as the highest wisdom. It is written in bold letters in the relevant document that what matters is not merely the content of any given utterance, but essentially who utters it. Let us take this to heart: that we must always take things deeply enough at first, and that we can learn a great deal from what is already available to us externally and exoterically!

[ 22 ] It is in the solar sphere, between death and new birth, that we hear, above all else, the full power of these words spoken to our human soul again and again: You are a god; you shall be a god! — And there is one thing we always know for certain when we arrive in the solar sphere: we know that Lucifer meets us there again and brings this utterance quite forcefully to our souls. From that point on, we begin to understand Lucifer quite well—Christ, however, only if we have gradually prepared ourselves on Earth to understand him. We do not bring any understanding of this utterance into the solar sphere—insofar as it resounds from the essence of Christ—unless we have acquired this understanding on Earth through our relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha. — To put it simply, I would like to say the following. In the solar sphere, we encounter two thrones. The throne of Lucifer: There the word of our divinity resounds seductively to us, and this throne is always occupied. The other throne appears to us—or rather, it still appears quite empty to many people—for on this other throne in the solar sphere we must, in our life between death and new birth, find what one might call the Akashic image of Christ. And if we can find this Akashic image of Christ in the life between death and new birth in the solar sphere, then—as we shall see in the following remarks—this is for our salvation. But we can only find it because Christ descended from the Sun and united with the Earth sphere, and because we can sharpen our spiritual eye through an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha on Earth, so that Christ’s throne on the Sun does not appear empty to us, but so that his deeds become visible to us—the deeds he performed when he himself still dwelt on the Sun. — It is certainly true—I even said that I must express myself in trivial terms if I am to speak of these two thrones—that one can only ever speak of these sublime conditions in more or less figurative terms; but whoever strives ever more to attain understanding will realize that the words coined on Earth are insufficient, and that, in order to make oneself understood, one must already resort to imagery.

[ 23 ] Now, we can only find understanding and support for what we need during the solar sphere if we have acquired something on Earth that interacts not only with the astral forces but also with the etheric forces. If you follow what I have described, you will know that religions interact with the etheric forces, working upon the human etheric body. It remains a good spiritual legacy for all of us that forces from the solar sphere are brought into our souls when we have gained an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For from the solar sphere we must draw those forces we need so that we may regain our etheric body in the proper way for the next incarnation. In contrast, we draw from the other planetary spheres the forces we need so that we may receive our astral body in the proper way in the next incarnation.

[ 24 ] Now, let no one believe that what I have just said is meant in any sense or style other than that of human development. I told you earlier: Even in pre-Christian times, a leader of humanity such as Abraham, in his encounter with Melchizedek, or Malekzadik, was able to acquire these powers for the solar sphere. This is not meant to be an intolerant assertion, as if human beings could acquire the powers to establish the right relationship with the beings in the solar sphere only through orthodox Christianity; rather, it is a fact of evolution that must be stated. Namely, that the possibilities of ancient times, when the Akashic image of Christ could be beheld through other means, are fading more and more with the progress of Earth’s evolution. Abraham’s spiritual eyes were fully open to the Akashic image of Christ in the solar sphere. That is entirely correct. There is no objection to the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha had not yet taken place and that Christ was still on the Sun; during this time, He was united in His reality with other planetary spheres. It was certainly the case that back then and up to our own times, people were able to see what was there to be seen. And if we go back even further, to those primeval times when the first teachers of ancient India, the holy Rishis, were the leaders of their people, then these were indeed such leaders of humanity who were well acquainted with the Christ, who was still in the Sun at that time, and who also imparted such an understanding—albeit not using the later names—to those who professed allegiance to them. Even though the Mystery of Golgotha had not yet permeated the sphere of knowledge in those ancient times, it was certainly possible for those who drew the innermost truths from the depths of being to also gain that which enabled human beings to draw from the Sun what could renew their etheric bodies in the appropriate way. But these possibilities ceased with the further development of humanity; and they must cease, because ever new forces must be introduced into humanity.

[ 25 ] What has been said is meant as a fact of evolution. We are moving toward a future in which people will increasingly deprive themselves of the opportunity to truly experience the solar sphere during the time between death and rebirth as they distance themselves from the Christ event. It is true: We must seek the Christian in every soul. If we wish to understand the root of Christianity, we must ask ourselves, regarding every person we encounter: How much of the Christian is there in them? — But it is also true that a person can exclude themselves from Christianity by failing to bring to consciousness what it truly is. And if we repeat Paul’s words once more: “ Christ died not only for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles,” we may add: But if, in the further progress of humanity, people were to exclude themselves and increasingly and consciously reject the Mystery of Golgotha, this would prevent what was done for them from reaching them. The blessing of the Mystery of Golgotha has been accomplished for all people. Every human being is free to allow this blessing to take effect within them. But the extent to which they allow it to take effect will, in the future, depend more and more on how far they are able to seek, from the solar sphere, the forces necessary for their etheric body to be properly formed in the next incarnation. We shall speak in the coming days of the immeasurable consequences this has for the entire future of the human race on Earth.

[ 26 ] Thus, Christianity—which, though little understood, nevertheless connected itself to the Mystery of Golgotha—is humanity’s first step toward reestablishing the proper relationship with the solar sphere. A second impulse is to be the correct anthroposophical understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. One can gain a proper relationship to the solar sphere by learning to penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha more and more deeply. But once a person has lived their way into the solar sphere, they continue outward, living their way into the Martian sphere, for example. The point is that they do not merely establish a proper relationship with the solar forces within the solar sphere, but also carry this relationship with them as they continue outward into the Martian sphere. So that their consciousness does not fade away, so that it does not end with the solar sphere, but so that they can carry it into the Martian sphere, into the Jovian sphere, which they must then live through—for this, it is necessary for our human cycle that a spiritual understanding of what lives in our religions and worldviews take root in human souls. Hence the search for an understanding of what lives in religions and worldviews. In place of Spiritual Science understanding, a completely different kind of understanding will come, one that people today can scarcely even dream of. For just as true as a truth is in an epoch when it is imbued with a sense of truth, so true is it that ever new and new impulses will enter into human development. It is certainly true that what anthroposophy has to offer applies only to a specific epoch, so that humanity, when it takes up anthroposophy, carries it forward into the future as assimilated impulses, in order to take up the forces of the future with these assimilated powers.

[ 27 ] We have thus been able to show the connection between life on earth and life between death and rebirth. No one can fail to see that human beings truly need knowledge, a sense, and a feeling for life between death and rebirth just as much as for earthly life itself, because when they enter earthly life, the well-being, confidence, strength, and hope of that earthly life depend on the forces they bring with them from the life between their last death and their present birth. But what forces we can draw from there depends, in turn, on how we behaved in our previous incarnation; what moral disposition, what religious disposition, or what general human spiritual disposition we have acquired. Thus we must realize that, through our active participation in the supersensible realm in which we live between death and rebirth, we are either contributing to the further development of the entire human race or to its destruction. For if human beings did not acquire the forces that can give them healthy astral bodies, the forces within the human astral bodies would become empty and barren, and humanity would sink morally and religiously on the Earth. And if they did not acquire the forces for the etheric bodies, they would wither away as the human race on Earth. Everyone can form their own mental image: To what extent must I cooperate so that not merely sickly bodies walk the face of the Earth? Anthroposophy is not merely a body of knowledge, but a responsibility that connects us with the entire being of the Earth and maintains that connection.