The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Three Paths of the Soul to Christ I

[ 1 ] The Path Through the Gospels and the Path of Inner Experience

[ 2 ] On these two more intimate evenings, we will be discussing a question a matter of humanity that touches our souls extraordinarily deeply in two respects: first, because the question of Christ is one that, for two millennia now, has not merely occupied countless souls on Earth, but from which spiritual lifeblood, soul strength, comfort and hope in suffering, and strength and security in action have flowed for countless earthly souls. And not only that, but when we consider all that we have around us in terms of external, exoteric culture—what has been created over many centuries—then, upon deeper reflection, we see that all of this would have been impossible had the Christ impulse not taken hold of a large part of humanity. This is the one consideration that shows us how compelling the Christ question must be when we now approach it with the insights of anthroposophy. This is only one aspect of the interest we bring to this problem; the other aspect of our interest stems from the particular psychological and spiritual conditions of our time, our epoch. We need only look around the world and seek to understand the longings and the searching of the human soul, and we will be able to say to ourselves: Human souls are increasingly seeking something that has been associated with the name of Christ in the souls throughout the centuries, and souls are increasingly coming to the conviction that a renewal of the paths, a renewal of interest, and a deepening of understanding are necessary if the needs of human souls—which will continue to grow in relation to Christ—are to be satisfied. While on the one hand we find a yearning for insights into Christ, on the other hand we find, in numerous souls of the present, hesitation and uncertainty regarding the means employed thus far. And so it is precisely this question—arising from the longing to have an answer and from the uncertainty of discovering the truth—that is one of the most pressing of the present.

[ 3 ] It is therefore only natural that a spiritual movement which delves more deeply into the spiritual foundations should have the task of clarifying this question. While things may be this way today, in a relatively short time—indeed, in quite a short time—they will be quite different! If we look a little selflessly at what people—the descendants of our time—will need with regard to the Christ, then we will have to say to ourselves: Even if many people of the present derive satisfaction from what is available, more and more souls will feel insecure, and more and more will yearn for answers. Thus, when we speak of the Christ today, we speak of what we foresee will be necessary for the people of the very near future. Anthroposophy would not fulfill its task if it did not put itself in a position to use its insights to shed light on these points, to the extent that this is possible today.

[ 4 ] My starting point will be to point out the three paths by which, in accordance with the course of human development, the soul can reach Christ. When speaking of the three paths, one must also briefly mention the first path, which is no longer a path today but once was; which need not be an esoteric path today, as the anthroposophical path is in our time, but which was a path for millions of souls throughout the centuries. This first path is that through the so-called Christian texts, through the Gospels. This path was the only possible one for millions upon millions of people and remains so for countless people today. The second path by which the human soul can seek Christ is what might be called the path through inner experience, which numerous souls in the present and in the near future must take, primarily due to their particular nature and characteristics. The third path is the one that can at least begin to be understood in our time through the anthroposophical movement: the path through initiation. — Thus, there are three paths to Christ: first, the path through the Gospels; second, the path through inner experience; and third, the path through initiation.

[ 5 ] The first path, the one through the Gospels, need only be briefly described here. We all know, after all, that over the centuries the Gospels have become food for the hearts and souls of countless people. We also know how even the most enlightened, the most critical minds—and these are not the irreligious ones—begin to lose all connection to this path, because it is argued that today, based on external knowledge alone, it is impossible to discern which historical facts actually underlie what the Gospels recount. If people of past centuries had read the Gospels as a scholar might read them today—someone who has undergone today’s scientific education—the Gospels would not have been able to exert the powerful effect, the life-changing impact, that emanated from them. Now, if the Gospels were not read in past centuries the way today’s educated person reads them, how were they read? — To reflect from the outset on what took place in Palestine at the beginning of our era—this is something that readers of the Gospels in earlier centuries did not consider, and it is something that numerous readers of the Gospels still do not consider today. Those who begin to examine in the Gospels what took place before the eyes of the inhabitants of Palestine at the beginning of our era are misled by the historical character of the events in Palestine. That is not how people of past centuries read them. They read in such a way that they allowed an image—such as the Samaritan woman at the well, or Christ delivering the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples—to take hold of their souls. From the very beginning, readers of the Gospels did not concern themselves with the question of external physical reality. How their hearts were moved, how their feelings stirred in the presence of these great, powerful images—that was the main thing for these people. Furthermore, the main thing was what took shape in their hearts, what strength and sense of life they drew from these images. They felt that spiritual life-blood and strength flowed to them from these images. When they allowed these images to work upon their souls, they felt strong; they felt that they would be weak without these images. And then they felt a living, personal connection to what is recounted in the Gospels; the question of historical reality no longer occurred to them. The Gospels themselves were reality; they were present as a force; there was no need to ask where they came from; one knew that people had written them not by earthly means, but through impulses from the spiritual worlds. I am not claiming that one must feel this way today—what one must do depends on the development of humanity—but I am claiming that this is how people felt throughout the centuries.

[ 6 ] Why could this be the case? Well, Spiritual Science is only now teaching us about this. When we begin to understand the Gospels from a spiritual scientific perspective and try to penetrate what flows down from the spiritual worlds and is contained in the Gospels, we stand before the Gospels in such a way that we say: Based on insights from Spiritual Science, quite independently of these Gospels, we recognize what happened in human evolution with the Christ impulse, and then find what is contained in the Gospels, independently of them. How, then, do we approach the Gospels from a Spiritual Science perspective?

[ 7 ] If I may use a simple analogy, I could say: Let us suppose that a person has informed himself about a certain matter. Armed with this knowledge, he meets a second person and begins to speak with him. At first, he does not want to assume that the other person knows anything about the subject he has researched; but from the conversation he realizes: the other person knows just as much as I do. What, then, is reasonable to assume? The reasonable thing is to assume that the other person has gained insight from the same or similar sources. The same applies to the Gospels. We can do this, no matter from what standpoint we approach the Gospels. A society could be founded by people who are readers of the Gospels in the manner described. Then there could also be people in such a society who are outright opponents of the Gospels from the outset and who say: If we examine these Gospels using the methods of external science, we find that these Gospels were written much later than the events in Palestine could have taken place; the accounts contradict one another; in short, these Gospels cannot be regarded as historical documents. — Such people might also be present in such a society, and one could still say: Well, let us leave the Gospels alone for the time being, but let us investigate the supersensible worlds! — And if we engage in true spiritual research and gain true supersensible insights, we would be able to discover that, in the course of human development, a mighty impulse once occurred that struck into human development as an impulse from the spiritual worlds, from which something immense emanated for human development, and then we would see that this impulse first took hold of a person particularly suited to it at the beginning of our era. All this and many other insights connected to this one—which we can only draw from supersensible research—we would possess—and those who wish to know nothing of the Gospels could have them just as much as the others. Then one can approach the Gospels and say: Very well, at first we didn’t concern ourselves with these Gospels at all; strangely enough, when we read them carefully, we see that they contain what we find independently of them in the field of Spiritual Science. Now we recognize their value from a completely different perspective. — Then we realize clearly that it cannot be otherwise, that those who wrote the Gospels drew from the same source that is now opening up to humanity through the spiritual movement. This is precisely what we are facing, what will come more and more, what will assert itself in the appreciation of the Gospel documents. If this is so, then we must say: People will be able to find, through other means, what can be recognized from these documents. And so these insights are beginning to become more and more sacred to us through the spiritual insights of the present. They were already at work through the power of the Gospels. Because the Gospels are imbued with the most sacred insights, the most spiritual impulses of humanity, they were effective even where they were accepted naively. Spiritual insights do not work merely in the abstract, not merely in theory; rather, wherever they are, they act as a life force, as the lifeblood of the soul. And more and more, people will recognize how comfort, strength, and security flow from these insights.

[ 8 ] When, on the other hand, we speak of the inner path to Christ, we encounter more and more things that can only be understood and felt in the present if we approach them with a proper understanding of Spiritual Science. We should try to speak of the inner experience of Christ in such a way that one can see how it can arise in every human being, independent of any particular tradition. To do this, however, we must view the human being through the insights we have gained from Spiritual Science. When we delve into these insights, we find that even the most elementary insights become fruitful when we apply them to life. It becomes clear to us that we move beyond the abstract schematics regarding the seven members of the human being when we consider the becoming and development of the human being. The physical human body undergoes its particular development during the first seven years of life. We also observe that during the second seven years of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, the forces of the etheric body are at work in the human being. Then the forces of the astral body begin to play a role in the human being, and only then, around the age of twenty or twenty-one—depending on the nature of their entire constitution and the forces within them—does that aspect of the human being emerge which appears as the “I,” as the bearer of the “I” with the power it actually possesses through its constitution to serve as the bearer of the “I” throughout the entire life of the human being. In our present day, it is actually not yet widely recognized that the bearer of the I only truly becomes viable in the twentieth and twenty-first years, because the present age is not yet inclined to pay attention to these things.

[ 9 ] What does it mean that the bearer of the ego becomes even more active in the twentieth or twenty-first year? One must observe the developing human being through the means of occultism and perceive his deeper organizational forces. His organizing forces are constantly changing: from birth to the age of seven, from the age of seven to sexual maturity, and from sexual maturity to the development of the ego. However, they change in such a way that they cannot be examined using the methods of ordinary physiology or anatomy. One can, however, recognize them through the means of occultism and say: It is only around the age of twenty that the human being develops these forces in such a way that a fully self-sufficient ego-bearer is present. Before that, this ego-bearer is not yet fully formed. Before that, the human physicality, including the supersensory aspect, is not yet a true ego-bearer. If, therefore, we consider the human limbs from the perspective of the great cosmic principle, we must say: Due to the peculiarity of their organization, human beings only become truly mature enough to develop an ego from within themselves in their twentieth and twenty-first years, not before.

[ 10 ] We can counter this fact with another: namely, that in the first years of life, while fully conscious, we literally dream our way into life, as if falling asleep into it, and that it is only from a certain point onward that life unfolds in such a way that our own memories begin. Our parents or older siblings can tell us about what happened before this point; from this point on, the human being says in their inner soul: I am the one I am. — From the moment they say: I did this, I thought that — the human being mentally calculates their “I.” What came before is lost in the twilight of the soul. Our memory extends only to this specific point in time. What, then, is the situation when we hold these two facts together: the fact that the actual bearer of the human “I” is born in the twentieth and twenty-first years, and the fact that we designate ourselves as an “I” in our soul from the third and fourth years onward? What we find is that, in the current cycle of human development, a person has a sense of self—a feeling—that does not correspond to their inner organization as it has come to be. For self-consciousness emerges in the third and fourth years, whereas the organization for the self does not appear until the twentieth and twenty-first years. This fact is of fundamental importance for understanding the human being. If one presents this fact abstractly as a finding of Spiritual Science, one will not be particularly moved by it; but because this fact is true, there are numerous experiences that human beings know very well but do not view in the light of this fact. Everything a person can experience in terms of conflict between external organization and inner experience, in terms of suffering and pain in life because certain things are not possible for them due to their organization, in terms of disharmony between what they desire and want and what they can accomplish, the fact that they can have ideals that extend beyond their organization— all of this leads back to the fact that the consciousness of our ego follows a completely different path than the bearer of our ego. In this respect, we are a twofold human being: an outer human being, organized to develop his egohood in his twentieth or twenty-first year, and an inner soul-human being, who already in his fourth and fifth years emancipates himself from his outer organization in terms of his soul life. The emancipation of ego-consciousness from the outer organization takes place in childhood. We undergo a process in our soul that proceeds independently of our outer organization, a process that can even come into sharp conflict with our outer organization. With regard to the inner consciousness of the ego, we are inclined to disregard our organization—that which lies down in our bodies. Psychologically, we develop quite differently from the way our bodies develop. The course of inner human development is therefore twofold. The course of the development of our physical organization proceeds from the first to the seventh year, then from the seventh to the fourteenth year, and from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year in the manner described. The course of inner development is such that we are entirely independent of the former; the consciousness of our “I” emancipates itself from the earliest childhood and makes its own independent path through life. But what is the consequence of this peculiar fact of human development? Only the occultist can tell us.

[ 11 ] When we take a comprehensive look at what the occultist has to teach, we arrive at a peculiar realization. We come to see, in fact, that illness, the frailty of the human organism—that is, everything that makes infirmity, old age, and death possible—stems from the fact that we are, in essence, a duality. We die because we are organized in a certain way and, in our organization, take no account of the development of our ego. The fact that we follow an independent path with our ego, one that pays no heed to our physical body, is brought to our attention by this very body when it opposes the development of the ego through illness, infirmity, and death. We are reminded that our ego development proceeds entirely separately from our organization. Where, then, does this peculiar fact of duality in human nature actually come from?

[ 12 ] When we consider the various factors and view human beings in the context of reality, it becomes clear to us that if, at a certain point in Earth’s evolution—namely during the Lemurian period—only progressive forces had intervened in human development, the development of the human youth today would proceed quite differently, namely in such a way that it would keep pace with the development of the ego. At every stage, spiritual development would correspond exactly with physical development. Human beings would then have been unable to develop in any way other than what is required as an ideal today, for example, in my short treatise *The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science*. Had only progressive forces been at work back then, the peculiar result would have been that in the first twenty years of life, human beings would have become much less self-reliant than they are now. This lack of self-reliance is not meant in a negative sense; it is meant in such a way that, in fact, each of you would be quite in agreement with this lack of self-reliance. For human nature in the first seven years of life is purely geared toward imitation. Since adults, had only the progressive forces been at work during the Lemurian epoch, would do nothing shameful, children from the first to the seventh year of life would be unable to imitate anything bad. In the second seven years of life, the principle of authority would prevail, whereas today it is not only a scourge of the countryside but of the entire earth that people between the ages of seven and fourteen want to become independent, and are even raised to form independent judgments. Adults would have been the natural authorities for the children. From the age of fourteen to twenty-one, a person would have looked much less inward at themselves; they would have turned more outward. The power of ideals, the power to immerse oneself in life’s dreams, would have become immensely significant to them. Life’s dreams would have sprung from their hearts, and then full self-awareness would have emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first years. Thus, the first seven years of life would have seen a period of imitation, followed by the second seven years of looking up to authorities, and then the third seven years of the sprouting of ideals that would lead the human being to full self-consciousness. This course of development has been disrupted in the course of human evolution by the sum of the forces also at work in evolution, which are called the Luciferic forces. Since the Lemurian epoch, they have torn self-consciousness away from the foundation of the organism. The fact that we already possess self-consciousness at the earliest age is precisely attributable to the Luciferic forces.

[ 13 ] How did the Luciferic forces intervene? The Luciferic forces are beings who remained behind on the Moon and therefore have no sense of the Earth mission, of what was to develop on Earth starting at the age of twenty-one: the ego. They took humanity as it had come over from the Moon and planted within it, as a seed, the capacity for independent soul development. Thus, the Luciferic forces lie at the root of the premature emergence of ego-consciousness, in this peculiar conflict within human nature. Only today does anthroposophy provide an understanding of this fact. Every person who is capable of feeling naturally can sense this. For every person can feel that there is something within them that separates them from their full humanity. Everything we call unwarranted egoism in our nature—detachment from the actual work of humanity—stems from the fact that the ego does not follow the proper path of organization. This is how we see the human being before us. Then, when they can feel: I could be different from what I am; I have something within me that is at odds with myself—then he feels the conflict between the progressive forces and the Luciferic forces within his inner being. This reality had to be brought about in the course of human evolution. It was necessary because, after all, the human being would never have become truly free without the Luciferic beings; he would always have remained bound to his organization. What, on the one hand, brings the human being into conflict with his own organism is what, on the other hand, first gives him the possibility of being free. But one thing remains from this duality of the organism for ordinary human life. This is evident in the fact that we sense from our ego that it has become incapable of transforming the organism of its own accord.

[ 14 ] If we look around at the broad scope of what constitutes the human being, we find the two forces described above. There are the organic forces of our human nature, which are meant to develop in seven-year cycles, and on the other hand, the Luciferic forces. If nothing else were to occur in the course of human development in nature and in spiritual life, it would follow that human beings could never, through their emancipated ego, come into full harmony with their nature. If nothing else were to emerge from the sphere of earthly existence, then development could be nothing other than that the human being would become increasingly estranged from his own organism, that his organism would become ever more frail, ever more withered, and that the conflict would inevitably grow ever greater. If a person were only to come to feel this truly as a insight from Spiritual Science, then a great moment would come in his life in which he would say to himself: Here I stand with my human organization, which is given to me by the progressive forces that work every seven years—he need not express this in such clear words, he need only feel it vaguely—but because this organization has a counterforce that develops independently, it becomes frail and sick and finally dies. — Deep within his soul life, the human being feels this. He need only have the sense of this discrepancy between the inner self and the outer organization. If he truly lives within this feeling, then something enters his soul—even without his needing to know anything about anthroposophy—indeed, from where? At first he does not know where—but something enters his soul of which he feels: I myself, with the ‘I’ that I recall, am powerless against my organization, which I cannot cope with. But there is something I can take up as a force into my ‘I,’ something I can take up into my consciousness as a conviction; something comes in directly from the spiritual worlds that does not lie within me, but which permeates my soul. Something can flow into my soul from unknown worlds. When I take it into my heart, when I permeate my “I” with it, then it helps me directly from the spiritual worlds. Call what comes from the spiritual worlds whatever you like; that is not important, but the feeling is what matters.

[ 15 ] Let us suppose that a person is unable to cope with life today and says to himself: “So I must search within the vast scope of what I find on earth to see if, somewhere, a force can spring forth that can give me something to help me escape this inner conflict, something to lead me out of it.” — It is only natural that people can no longer cope with the means of the old denominations, that they can no longer connect with the old ecclesiastical mental images in a way that gives them the strength they seek. But let us suppose, to give a concrete example, that such a person were to turn to one of the ancient sacred religions; let us say, for example, that they turned to Buddhism and immersed themselves in the extraordinary teachings of Buddhism. If a person naturally feels the described conflict with all their strength—I am not saying that this arises from a theory, but from an indefinable feeling—then they would feel as follows: In the personality, the individuality of Gautama Buddha, there lived something that can only come into the world on the basis of a long evolution. This individuality has passed through many incarnations, has attained ever higher and higher degrees of evolution, and has finally reached the point where, in the twenty-ninth year of his life as Gautama Buddha, he was able to ascend from Bodhisattva to Buddha—to ascend in such a way that this individuality no longer needed to return to a physical body. What flows forth from this individuality, and how did it come about? Every open mind can feel what speaks from the Buddha—that which has first come into being and grown through the Bodhisattva within the course of Earth’s evolution, within many incarnations. All of this contains, in the most beautiful and magnificent sense, the forces found in the sphere of the Earth, in the interplay of the forces of organization and the Luciferic forces. Therefore, what flows from the Bodhisattva to the Buddha—because it has passed from incarnation to incarnation, because it originates solely from the same forces from which human forces originate—therefore, it works in such a way that the open-minded soul does not feel what can bring about full harmony between the human ego and its physical body. The soul feels: There must be something that does not pass from incarnation to incarnation, but which can flow directly from the spiritual worlds into every human soul. — When the human soul feels that it must have a relationship with what flows down from the heavens, then it begins to have an inner experience of Christ. Then it also becomes clear to it that something had to arise in the Christ Jesus that differs from all that came before. This is the radical, fundamental difference between the life of the Christ and that of the Buddha.

[ 16 ] The Buddha evolved from a Bodhisattva into a Buddha through the forces that enable human beings to ascend from incarnation to incarnation, just as is the case with other great founders of religions. Something entered the life of Jesus of Nazareth; something worked into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth for three years—something that flowed down directly from the spiritual worlds, something that had nothing to do with human evolution, something that had not previously been connected to a human life. We must bring this distinction quite clearly before our souls if we wish to understand why there was something in what the fourth post-Atlantean epoch called the Christ that was different from all other religious impulses, and why the other religions have always pointed humanity toward this Christ.

[ 17 ] When we look back from the post-Atlantean era to the ancient sacred Indian culture, we see the seven holy Rishis emerge, in whose souls there lived something of the direct perception of the spiritual worlds. If one had asked one of the seven holy Rishis about the fundamental mood of his soul, he would have said: We look up to the spiritual powers from which all human development has arisen. This reveals itself to us in seven rays, but above that lies something else, something that lies beyond our sphere. — What the seven holy Rishis perceived in this way was later called Vishvakarman. The seven holy Rishis spoke of a power that did not develop with the Earth.

[ 18 ] Then came the Zarathustra culture. When Zarathustra turned his gaze toward the spirits of the sun, he spoke of something that was to flow into human development directly through a current from the spiritual worlds. What we can give to humanity, Zarathustra said, is not what will one day flow into humanity directly from the spiritual worlds, far from the sun. That which is spiritual in the sun is what later Persian culture called Ahura Mazdao.

[ 19 ] In the Egyptian mysteries, the question of Christ was perceived from a particularly tragic perspective. It was perceived in the deepest possible way—if by “depth” we mean a state of human feeling in which the following awareness is imprinted particularly strongly upon the soul: Humanity originates from that which is spiritual. The Egyptian initiate says to himself: Wherever we turn our gaze, we perceive in our surroundings the fall from the original spiritual. Nowhere in the outer world is the spiritual to be found in its immediate, unadulterated form. Only then, when the human being passes through the gate of death, does he behold that from which he originates. One must first die—in terms of inner experience, not in terms of initiation—then one is united with the Osiris principle, as the ancient Egyptians called the Christ principle; it is not possible in life; there lies the discrepancy. Everything within the sphere of the Earth does not lead to Osiris; the soul must have passed through the gate of death to be united with Osiris. Then, in death, the soul becomes a part of Osiris; it itself becomes a kind of Osiris. The outer world has become such that it has dismembered Osiris through his enemy—that is, through everything that belongs to the outer world. And the initiate of the Egyptian mysteries said: Just as humanity is now in our culture, it is a kind of remembrance of the ancient Moon Age. Just as the culture of the seven holy Rishis is a kind of remembrance of the ancient Saturn Age, just as the Zarathustra culture is a remembrance of the ancient Sun Age, so the Osiris culture is a remnant of the ancient Lunar Age, when the Moon first separated from the Sun with its beings, but upon which remained the beings from whom humanity originated. There the separation of humanity took place from the good forces of its organization, from the source of its life forces. But for humanity, through what they will undergo in terms of longing and deprivation regarding the spiritual, the time will come when Osiris will descend and reveal himself as something that must come as a new influence—something that was not previously on Earth, because it had already separated from the Earth during the ancient Moon era.

[ 20 ] All that to which the seven holy Rishis and Zarathustra pointed, and which the Egyptians said people of their time could never attain in life, was the power, the impulse, that manifested itself for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. All the great religions have spoken of him; he revealed himself in Jesus of Nazareth, to whom all religions pointed. Thus, it was not only Christians who spoke of the Christ, but also the adherents of all the ancient religions. Thus, in the course of human development, something came to pass that humanity needs and that is attainable through inner experience.

[ 21 ] Let’s suppose a person grew up on a desert island. Those who raised him told him nothing about what is happening in the world regarding the name of Christ and the Gospels, but they told him only what exists in the culture, without using the Gospels or the name of Christ. What has arisen in the culture under the influence of Christ, but stripped of the name of Christ—that is what would be brought to him. What would happen then? Then the following mood would have to arise in such a person; one day he would say: Something lives within me that is in accordance with my general human constitution; I cannot yet approach it. For that in which my ego-consciousness lives presents itself to me in such a way that I need something there which cannot come to me through human culture—an impulse from the spiritual worlds—in order to make the ego stronger again in its organization, from which it has emancipated itself. — If such a person can only strongly sense what the human being needs, then something may come upon him from which he recognizes: something must flow forth directly from the spiritual worlds that immediately takes root in his ego. He does not know that this is called Christ, but he knows that he can be permeated in his consciousness by the realization that he can cherish within his ego that which comes to him from the spiritual worlds. Then something will come to him of which he may say to himself: Well, I may be sick, I may be weak, I may die, but from my I I can make myself stronger, I can send something into my being that gives me strength, that gives me power directly from the spiritual worlds. — What he calls it is irrelevant. When a person comes to this feeling, then he is seized by the Christ impulse. Not the one who says that he can receive something from a teacher who has gone from incarnation to incarnation, but the one who feels that impulses of power and strength can come directly from the spiritual world—that is the one seized by the Christ impulse. People can have this inner experience; without it, people cannot live; without it, people will not be able to live in the future. They can have this inner experience because this impulse, which came directly from the spiritual worlds, once lived objectively in Jesus of Nazareth for three years. Just as it is true that one can plant a seed in the earth and that many other seeds can spring from this one, so it is true that the Christ impulse was once planted in humanity, and that since that time there has been something in humanity that was not there before.

[ 22 ] That is why Egyptian life is so tragic: because people felt that they could not reach Osiris in this life, that they first had to pass through the gate of death to be united with him—that is, we are still speaking only of the inner experience of initiation. Since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, however, what was previously impossible has become possible: that human beings seek their connection with the spiritual world from within themselves, from within their individual incarnation. And this stems from the fact that the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha can shine forth in every soul, and since that time can enter into every human being through inner experience. Not the Christ who was on earth—the soul does not concern itself with him—but the Christ who is accessible through inner experience. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, it has been possible to establish a connection with the spiritual in individual incarnations. And because this is so, something has happened with the single event of Golgotha that can radiate out into humanity—something that is not the result of achievements in successive incarnations. Therefore, it is impossible for the Christ to reveal himself in a way that is the result of many incarnations, just as the Buddha came into being through his incarnations as a Bodhisattva.

[ 23 ] Tomorrow we will see how, in the future, the path to Christ can be found within the evolution of humanity.