The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Three Paths of the Soul to Christ: The Path of Initiation

[ 1 ] If I may briefly return to the point at which yesterday’s presentations culminated, I would like to say that they should give rise in every person to the possibility, through a corresponding deepening of their being and through a trust rooted in the spiritual worlds, of allowing a certain mood of the soul, a certain state of mind, to arise within them that tells them: It is not only the things present within the Earth’s sphere that flow into human beings; not only the things that originate from the evolution of the Earth itself, but it is possible for a human being to attune their soul in such a way that they receive helping forces from the spiritual worlds that can flow into them, bringing about a balance between the individual egoistic self and the totality of our organization, if they open themselves to this possibility that has flowed into the Earth mission. Whoever can gain trust in this inflow from the spiritual worlds has—whatever he may call this inner event, this inner experience—experienced the personal Christ experience within. Everything else concerning this matter will become clear to us if we start today from the third way to Christ, from the path of initiation.

[ 2 ] Having thus outlined the path of the Gospels and the path of inner experience, we have the two paths that are open to every human being on the way to Christ; I say explicitly: to every human being. The path of initiation requires a certain amount of preparation, as should be clear to everyone. In our time, this first and foremost involves a genuine, not merely theoretical, immersion in true, authentic Spiritual Science, which—at least in our present age—must always be the starting point if we are to understand what the path of initiation is. Now it is good to preface this with a few words about the nature of initiation in a certain sense. Initiation is the highest thing that a human being can ultimately attain in the course of Earth’s evolution; for it leads the human being to a certain understanding, to a genuine insight into the mysteries of the spiritual world. What takes place in the spiritual worlds is, after all, the content, the subject matter of initiation, and true knowledge, a direct perception of events in the spiritual worlds, is attained through the path of initiation. Even when initiation is characterized in this way, something quite special must strike anyone who allows this characterization to take effect upon their soul. It is, in essence, already stated that initiation is, if I may use the expression, a super-religious path. Now, the great religions that have spread across the globe over the course of human epochs and are still present in humanity today are all, if we study them at their starting point, originally founded by initiation, by the Initiates. They flowed from what great Initiates were able to give to humanity. But the religions were given to humanity in such a way that, in the content of these religions, people received what was appropriate to them, depending on the era in which they lived, the race to which they belonged, and indeed even the region of the world in which they lived.

[ 3 ] Today, within the course of human development, we are living in a very special epoch, and it is precisely the task of Spiritual Science to understand that we are living in a special time. Just as Spiritual Science can be presented and disseminated to our fellow human beings today, so was this not possible anywhere in past epochs. Anthroposophy as such could not be taught in public. It is only in our time that we have begun to teach anthroposophy. The religions were precisely the means by which the mysteries of initiation could be introduced into humanity in a manner appropriate to each respective group of people. But today we are in a position, through anthroposophy, to offer something that is not suited to a single race, a single region of the earth, or a single group of people, but which can offer every human being, wherever they may be on earth, insight into those mysteries of existence for whose knowledge souls long—knowledge they must possess if their hearts are to be strong in their work on earth. This already shows, however, that through anthroposophy something is to be given that occupies a higher standpoint than the religious standpoints were and still are today, wherever these religious standpoints are asserted. Anthroposophy is, in a sense, that which must now make the mysteries of initiation accessible to humanity in general, whereas in the various ancient religious systems of the Earth, the mysteries of initiation were always expressed in a particular way, in a differentiated manner, appropriate to the individual groups of people.

[ 4 ] What follows from this? It follows that we find a wide variety of religions spread across the earth, all of which trace their origins back to this or that religious founder. First, we find the Krishna religion tracing back to Krishna; second, the Buddha religion tracing back to the Buddha; third, the ancient Hebrew religion tracing back to Moses; and we find Christianity tracing back to Jesus of Nazareth. Since religions have flowed from initiation, we must realize that we cannot stand today on the ground occupied by religious philosophers who wish to be enlightened. Comparative religious philosophers hold a secret view of religions: namely, they regard them all as false or as childish stages of human development. But as anthroposophists, since we come to recognize that religions are merely differentiated expressions of the truths of initiation, we stand on the ground of understanding the true and not the false in the various religious systems. We allow the religious systems their full right to coexist. We regard them as equal revelations of the great truths of initiation.

[ 5 ] And from this follows something of immense importance for practical intuition and practical action. And what is this important point? That from the anthroposophical spirit will follow a full understanding, deep respect, and full recognition of the core of truth in all religions, and that those who, out of an anthroposophical mindset, reflect on the world and its course of development will respect the truths present in the various religious systems. The highest esteem will arise, and the highest respect will take hold. Yes, my dear friends, this is what will result from the anthroposophical spiritual current for the various religious creeds on Earth: We will go to the adherents of the various religious systems of the Earth, and we will not believe that we can graft or instill other creeds upon them. Rather, we will go to them, and from our own religious creed we will develop what is true in their creed. And one who is born in a region where a particular religion prevails will not, out of that religion, intolerantly reject other religions, but will be able to respond to what is contained as truth in the various religions. Let us take an example. Such an example can only be understood by those who, in the depths of their souls, take the anthroposophical attitude seriously—that which must follow from the recognition of the fundamental conditions of the nature of initiation. Let us suppose that a Westerner has grown up within Christianity. He may have come to know Christianity by having absorbed the great truths of its Gospels. Perhaps he has already arrived at what is called the path of inner experience to Christ Jesus; perhaps he has already experienced Christ in his inner life. Let us assume that he now becomes acquainted with another religion, for example, Buddhism. From those who are deeply immersed in the sacred truths and insights of Buddhism, he learns what is a stumbling block to the materialistic Westerner, but which we anthroposophists can understand, he learns that the founder of their religion, after having lived many incarnations on Earth as a Bodhisattva, was reborn as a prince, as the son of Shuddhodana; he further comes to recognize that in the twenty-ninth year of his life as a Bodhisattva he ascended to become the Buddha; that with this ascension to Buddhahood, this religion—since it stems from initiation—conveys a great truth that applies not only to Buddhism but to all humanity, a truth that every initiate will acknowledge, and that all people who understand Buddhism will acknowledge; he comes to realize that the adherent of Buddhism rightly says: When the Bodhisattva becomes the Buddha in a human incarnation, this incarnation, which the Buddha must undergo on Earth, is the last; then he does not return to a human body again.

[ 6 ] Anyone deeply immersed in Buddhism would feel profound pain if it were claimed that the Buddha would return in a physical body. Deep suffering would be inflicted upon such a follower of the Buddha if some power were to deny him this truth: that the Bodhisattva who became the Buddha could never again appear on earth in a physical body. We anthroposophists, however, recognize the truth contained in the religions; we stand on the ground of seeking the truth of the various religions and not their error. Thus we go to those who understand Buddhism and learn to recognize—or learn through initiation to recognize—that it is true: that individuality which lived on Earth as a Bodhisattva and became a Buddha has, since that time, attained spiritual heights from which it need not descend again to this physical Earth. From that moment on, we will no longer, if we stand on the ground of the doctrine of reincarnation, hold up to a Buddhist the assertion that the Buddha could return in a physical body. True, genuine knowledge will create an understanding for every form of religion arising from initiation. We respect the forms of religion that have developed on Earth by recognizing what they have to offer as truth. Yes, I confess this sincerely and honestly, just as the strictest Buddhist can confess to this truth: that the Bodhisattva who was on Earth and ascended to Buddhahood has thereby reached a height of human development that makes it impossible for him to descend to Earth again. This means having an understanding of the various religious forms on Earth.

[ 7 ] Let us consider the opposite case: that a follower of Buddhism rises to anthroposophical knowledge. He would come to realize, either through a genuine understanding of Christianity or through the principle of initiation, that there is a different form of religion in another part of the world, where those who understand this form of religion are clear that there once lived a personality who did not actually belong to any nation, least of all to the West, that from the age of thirty to thirty-three, there lived within this personality such an impulse, such a force of spiritual life, to which we were able to point yesterday, to which the seven holy Rishis pointed in their Vishvakarman, to which Zarathustra pointed in his Ahura Mazdao, to which the Egyptians referred as their Osiris, and which the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch called the Christ. But that is not the point; the point is to recognize in the Christ that which lived for three years as an impulse within the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which was not previously present on Earth, that which descended from spiritual heights into the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, that which underwent the Mystery of Golgotha within this personality, and that which, as the Christ impulse is a unique impulse for the Earth and does not coincide with any ordinary incarnation of humanity; that which was once present as Christ and cannot return in any human being, but, as the Bible calls it, will come in the clouds of heaven, that is, will reveal itself to humanity as a spiritual revelation. That is the Christian creed.

[ 8 ] Anyone who stands within Buddhism, imbued with the seriousness and dignity of Spiritual Science, will have to acknowledge that they must also honor and respect this Christian creed, just as Christians must respect theirs. The Buddhist who has risen to Spiritual Science and takes it seriously will say: Just as you, as a Christian, place your trust in the teaching that the Bodhisattva who has become the Buddha does not return to Earth, so it seems appropriate to me that you know that the Buddha cannot return; so I, as a Buddhist, acknowledge that the one you call Christ cannot return in a physical incarnation, but lived as a unique impulse for only three years in a physical human body. — If we find in anthroposophy a mutual understanding among religions such that the principle of initiation can penetrate the hearts of people, so that one person does not impose a foreign sphere upon another, then we will achieve an understanding that unites people across the entire earth, and then we will establish peace among the various religious denominations on earth.

[ 9 ] In Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth is regarded as the founder of the religion. The Christian principle of initiation has to do with Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of the religion, only as a matter of fact—a fact that can be examined by occultists as such. With the same love and the same care with which the life of the Buddha or another founder of a religion is studied, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is studied by those who know the principle of initiation. How this life of Jesus of Nazareth unfolds purely on the basis of occultism is described in my short treatise “The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity.” The actual Christian principle of initiation, however, relates to recognizing the Christ; it relates to the path to the Christ. And this Christian religious principle has for many centuries been preparing what has now been characterized as a principle of peace throughout the entire earth, in that it does not proceed at all from a religious founder as such, but from a fact that once took place in the world.

[ 10 ] This is the fundamental difference between Christianity and other religions: the task that the principle of initiation—which leads to Christ—has in the world differs from the cultures that have emerged from other religious principles. The task of the Christian principle of initiation within its mission in the world arose from a fact, from an event, not from a personality. This will become clear if we first establish a few prerequisites. One can, in fact, state a single sentence, make a single statement, and thereby—albeit superficially—characterize the starting point of esoteric Christianity, of Christian initiation: it is the death that was experienced in the union of the Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. The fact of that death, which we call the Mystery of Golgotha, is what must be understood from the principle of Christian initiation. Now, one can gain a true understanding of this death only if one first grasps the mission of death within the development of our Earth. Yesterday we pointed out that frailty, infirmity, illness, and death are connected with the incompatibility of our ego—permeated by the Luciferic principle—with our physical organization. Ultimately, death is connected with the Luciferic principle, and in a very special way. It would be a completely mistaken view to assume that Lucifer brought death. Lucifer did not bring death. He brought what we might call the possibility of error, including moral error, the differentiation of human beings into races, and the possibility of freedom. That is what Lucifer brought. If everything that Lucifer brought had been the sole influence on humanity, if nothing had been set against him, then this Luciferic principle would have led to humanity falling out of, breaking away from, the ongoing divine evolution. Humanity would indeed have spiritualized itself, but in a direction entirely different from that of the advancing divine evolution. In order to keep humanity within this divine evolution, to prevent it from being lost to divine evolution, a special arrangement had to be made: that human beings be constantly reminded of the consequences of abusing the possibility of error and freedom. All illness, frailty, infirmity, and death are warnings that man would have to stray from the ongoing divine evolution if he were to possess the possibility of Luciferic freedom while still being healthy and vigorous. Thus, illness, infirmity, and death are not gifts from Lucifer, but gifts from the good, wise divine powers, who have thereby erected a barrier against the influences of Lucifer.

[ 11 ] Thus we must say: Everything that confronts us in the world as an external, ongoing human evil—as illness and death—exists so that we humans remain bound to earthly existence until we have the opportunity to make amends, so that we may be trained to adapt to our organization. We suffer so that, through our suffering, we may draw upon the experiences needed to find balance between our ego, permeated by Lucifer, and our organization, permeated by the divine. Our organization remains hidden from us until we have fully imbued our ego with the laws of evolution progressing in the divine sense. Every death is thus the starting point for something else. Man cannot die without taking with him that which gives him the possibility of one day overcoming death in his successive incarnations. All pain exists so that we may draw from suffering the experiences of how we must adapt to our ongoing divine organization. However, this question cannot be readily addressed outside the context of the entire process of evolution.

[ 12 ] We can study this matter particularly well by examining, from an occult perspective, the relationship between human beings and the next lower realm, the animal kingdom. We know that, throughout the course of evolution, human beings have always inflicted pain on animals and have killed them. Those who learn to recognize karma in human life often find it very unjust that animals—which do not reincarnate—should suffer, endure pain, and, in the case of higher animals, even pass through death with a certain degree of consciousness. There is supposed to be no karmic compensation for this! Humans, of course, undergo karmic compensation in the Kamaloka for the pain they have inflicted on animals, but I do not wish to speak of that now; I am speaking of the compensation for the animals. Let us clarify one point. When we look at the development of humanity, we see how much suffering humans have inflicted upon the animal kingdom and how many animals they have killed. What do these sufferings, these deaths, mean in the course of evolution?

[ 13 ] Here, the occult study shows us that every pain inflicted upon a sentient being other than a human, that every death, is a seed sown for the future. Just as animals are intended by the ongoing divine evolution, they are not destined to have incarnations like humans. But if a change occurs in this wise world plan, if humans intervene and do not allow the evolution of animals to proceed as it should without humans, what then happens? Well, occult research teaches us that every pain, every death that humans inflict upon animals—that all of these will return and be resurrected, not through reincarnation, but because pain and suffering were inflicted upon the animals. This pain, this suffering, brings the animal kingdom back into being. The animals that have been inflicted with pain will not, admittedly, be resurrected in the same form, but that which feels pain within them will return. It returns in such a way that the animals’ pain is balanced out, so that every pain is countered by its opposite feeling. This pain, this suffering, this death—they are the seed that humans have sown; they return in such a way that every pain is counterbalanced by its opposite feeling in the future. To use a concrete example: When the Earth is replaced by Jupiter, the animals will not appear in their present form, but their pains and sufferings will awaken the sensory powers of pain. They will live within human beings and incarnate in them as parasitic animals. From the sensations and feelings of these human beings, the compensation for their pain will be created. This is the occult truth that can be stated objectively and unvarnished, even if it is not pleasant for people today. Humanity will suffer it one day, and the animal will find compensation for its pain in a certain sense of well-being, in a positive sensation. This is already happening slowly and gradually in the course of the present earthly life, strange as it may seem. Why, then, are people tormented by beings that are actually neither animals nor plants, but stand between the two—beings that derive a sense of well-being from human suffering, such as bacteria and similar creatures? They have brought this fate upon themselves in earlier incarnations by inflicting suffering and death upon animals. For the being—even if it does not appear in the same form—perceives across the ages and finds compensation for its pain in the suffering that humans must endure. Thus, all that occurs in terms of suffering and pain is by no means without consequences. It is a sowing from which springs forth that which has been brought about by pain, suffering, and death. No suffering, no pain, no death can occur without thereby bringing about something that will later come to fruition.

[ 14 ] Let us consider, in this light, the death on Golgotha that resulted from the union of the Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. The first thing that becomes clear to anyone undergoing the corresponding initiation is that this death on Golgotha was not an ordinary death on earth, like an ordinary human death or any other kind of death. Those who do not yet believe in the supersensible cannot even begin to comprehend this death on Golgotha. For even outwardly, this Mystery of Golgotha has something very peculiar about it, something from which humanity has much to learn. For no historical account tells of the Mystery of Golgotha, and critics of the Gospels claim that the Gospels are not at all authoritative as historical documents. Initiation principles have been applied to what was not written from historical observation. What happened on Golgotha can still be perceived by the initiated today; people who undergo the initiation process can still see it today in the Akashic Records. The Gospel writers, too, wrote it down solely from the Akashic Records. An event is described, but the original Gospel writers did not think to consult the perceptions of the physical plane in doing so. Even back then, the awareness was so strong that one was dealing with something related to the supersensible worlds, and that the most important thing was to establish a relationship with the supersensible worlds. From the sensory world, a true relationship to these events cannot be established. What happened becomes clear through initiation. One might say: At the beginning of our era, a man lived, Jesus of Nazareth; at the age of thirty, he underwent a certain transformation through the reception of the Christ and was crucified three years later—this would signify an event in the ongoing history of humanity. If one were to say that, it would be the opposite of what the initiate comes to know; it would be a matter of humanity on Earth, no matter how much one spiritualized it. That is not what matters in the principle of initiation.

[ 15 ] Basically, one could say—but please don’t misunderstand me—one could say, to put it bluntly: First of all, what happened on Golgotha was not an event that concerns human beings insofar as they exist on the physical plane. First of all! It is not a matter of recounting that a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived at the beginning of our era, who underwent a certain transformation in the thirtieth year of his life through the reception of the Christ and was then crucified in his thirty-third year; that is not how one recounts the initiatory truth of Christianity. One must say something like this: The one to be initiated into the Christian principle experiences the following. The Earth was preceded by a lunar state. During this lunar state, the Luciferic beings remained behind. These Luciferic beings continued to develop alongside the advancing divine-spiritual beings. In the Lemurian epoch, Lucifer approached humanity, inserted himself into human earthly evolution, and brought about what was described yesterday. Thus, Lucifer was present throughout the entire course of human evolution. Had human evolution continued with Lucifer, it would gradually have come to pass that the mission of the Earth would not have reached its goal. Humanity would have withered away; the human ego would have detached itself and broken away from divine-spiritual evolution. On the ancient Moon, a number of beings belonging to the supersensible worlds came to realize, so to speak, that Lucifer had fallen away and had turned against them. Thus the gods had to see that Lucifer had become the adversary of progressive divine development. For the time being, we can completely disregard what this means for humanity. Let us regard this as a matter between the gods and their adversaries, the Luciferic beings, and let us regard the human race as a creation of the gods. Such was the situation.

[ 16 ] There is something peculiar about the spiritual, the supersensible worlds. One thing that exists on Earth is absent there; death in all its forms does not exist there. In the supersensible worlds, beings transform; they do not die. Metamorphosis, not birth and death, is what exists there. For example, the group souls that are in the supersensible worlds do not die, but rather transform and undergo metamorphosis. Birth and death do not exist where the physical world has never exerted its influence. Only where the characteristics of the physical world have already to some extent passed over into the beings of the supersensible world is there something that can be regarded as analogous to death, as is the case with the nature spirits; but we cannot go into that today. In the actual supersensible world there is no birth and death, but only transformation, metamorphosis.

[ 17 ] For the divine-spiritual beings who may be described as the creators of humankind, birth and death do not apply. Nor does Lucifer incarnate as a human being in the physical world. He works within human beings, through human beings, using them, as it were, as his vehicle. Thus we are dealing with the gods and with the Luciferic beings who, so to speak, look down upon their creations. Had evolution continued in this way, nothing would have happened in the world of the gods, and the gods’ purpose with regard to humanity would not have been fulfilled. Then Lucifer would have thwarted the gods’ plan. The gods had to make a sacrifice—that was their business—they had to experience something that played into their sphere in such a way that gods cannot actually experience it if they remain in their sphere. They had to send a being from their ranks onto the physical plane who experienced something that gods in the spiritual worlds cannot otherwise experience. The gods had to send Christ down to Earth to combat the Luciferic principle. In the course of time, when the time was fulfilled, the gods—who are collectively known as the divine Father World—sent Christ down so that he might come to know the infinite sufferings of human beings, which mean something quite different for a god than for a human being. Thus the gods entered the earthly sphere to combat the Luciferic spirits. A god had to suffer death on the cross, the most shameful of human deaths, as Paul particularly emphasizes. We were once able to become witnesses in the course of Earth’s development, looking into the spiritual worlds as through a window, to a matter of the gods.

[ 18 ] Previously—so says the principle of initiation—human beings had to ascend into the divine-spiritual worlds under all circumstances in order to partake of the principle of initiation. The principle of initiation stands before all humanity in the Mystery of Golgotha, an event that is at once sensory on the physical plane—if only people would see it—and supersensory, a matter truly of the gods. This is the essential point: that once a god passed through death as atonement for Lucifer, and that human beings were permitted to witness it. This is what the principle of initiation offers as Christian wisdom, and what is the very source of confidence in the fact that something can flow to human beings as human beings as a power capable of carrying them beyond the earthly sphere and beyond death: because once the gods settled their affairs on earth and allowed human beings to witness it. That is why what radiates from the Mystery of Golgotha is something universally human. And while every pain, every suffering, every death has its effect—even those that humans inflict upon animals—this death, too, has its effect. This death was a seed sown by the gods, something that remained connected to the Earth and has remained connected ever since, so closely connected that every human being will find it through trust, through love for the spiritual worlds. They will find it! The initiate recognizes that this is so; the person of faith and trust feels that help for his striving can come to him from the spiritual worlds, if only he can develop enough faith and trust. This will develop in a very specific way.

[ 19 ] There were those who were contemporaries of the Egyptian initiates. Through initiation, these initiates made clear to their disciples the full tragedy of the conflict between the gods and Lucifer by symbolically presenting the Osiris-Seth myth to people in their mysteries. Yesterday we already considered what feelings the Osiris-Seth myth evoked in the Egyptians. There lived the divine-spiritual being to whom people sought to attain; this was called Osiris. But on Earth, human beings cannot unite with Osiris; they must first pass through the gate of death. Osiris could not live on earth; he was immediately dismembered; there was no place here for what was embodied in Osiris. As if looking toward an afterlife, the last cultural epoch before the Greco-Roman one looked up to Christ, to the Osiris principle. Then came the Greek era, which was so thoroughly permeated by the feeling that it was better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows. In the time when this was still felt within Greece, in the ancient heroic age, people sensed the full discrepancy between the ego permeated by the Luciferic principle and the ongoing human organization. At that time, people felt that the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch unfolded in such a way that they had to incorporate much of what can be experienced on the Earth itself. Hence the abnormality, the strangeness of this period. In no other period do so many peculiar sequences of incarnations occur as in this fourth period. Here on Earth, people have much to work through because they look more to the Earth than to the world beyond, as the third cultural epoch still did. The Greeks did not value this incorporation into Osiris; they were more concerned with investing as much as possible into human incarnations themselves; they wanted to live out as much as possible within the incarnations. Hence the curious fact that Pythagoras, the great initiator of a certain strand of Greek culture, fought alongside the Trojans in an earlier incarnation as a Trojan hero, just as he himself says that he was the Trojan hero mentioned in Homer, and that he recognized himself as an opponent of the Greeks because he recognized his shield. When Pythagoras recounts that he was Euphorbos, anthroposophy teaches us to fully understand this confession. The Greeks placed special value on what the individual physical incarnations meant to them, even the greatest among them.

[ 20 ] But the fourth post-Atlantean epoch was also meant to lead humanity to perceive the spiritual worlds in their full significance, for it was during that time that the Mystery of Golgotha took place. While in Greek culture people valued the outer world above all else, the Mystery of Golgotha took place in an unknown corner of the earth; there, on the earthly stage where people usually conduct their human affairs, the gods conducted their own affairs.

[ 21 ] When the Egyptian looked toward death as he thought of Osiris, then in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch one came to know a contemporary form of religion in which lived the impulse that could give people the sense that something is taking place in this physical world that is actually a divine matter—the living refutation of what the Greeks had believed until then: It is better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows. — For now the Greeks came to know the one who had descended as a king from the realm of the gods and had lived out his destiny on earth among human beings as a beggar. That was the answer to the sentiment of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. But this is also the complex of sentiments from which the rays for the future development of the earth can emanate. The Egyptian had looked up to Osiris, who was the Christ for him, in order to unite with him after death; in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Mystery of Golgotha was regarded as the contemporary event that taught humanity that an occurrence had taken place in the physical world that was a matter for the gods.

[ 22 ] We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, people will add the great teachings of karma to the others; they will learn to understand their karma. In our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, people experience the third act, which follows logically from the Osiris act and the act of the Mystery of Golgotha. They will learn to grasp the mental image: I have been placed on Earth through birth; my destiny is on Earth, I experience joy and suffering, I must understand that what I experience as joy and suffering does not come to me in vain, that it is my karma, and that it comes to me because it is my karma, my great teacher. I look upon what was before my birth, what placed me in this incarnation, because this is necessary for my destiny and my further development. Who sent me here? Who will place me within my destiny on this Earth until I have worked off my karma? I will thank Christ for this, that human beings may be called again and again to endure their destinies until they have worked off their karma on Earth. That is why Jesus of Nazareth, through whom Christ spoke, could not say to people: “Try to leave the physical body as quickly as possible”—but he had to say to people: I will place you in your destiny on this Earth until you have worked off your karma. You must work off your karma. — As we approach the future, people will learn that they were united with the Christ before birth, that they experienced from him the grace to work off their old karma in their incarnations.

[ 23 ] Thus the people of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch looked up to Jesus of Nazareth as the bearer of the Christ. In the same way, the people of our time will learn that the Christ will reveal himself in ever more supersensible ways and will increasingly govern the threads of karma in the affairs of the Earth. They will come to know that spiritual power as the destiny that the Greeks were not yet able to recognize: the one that will lead people to work out their karma in the most appropriate way in their subsequent incarnations. As to a judge, as to a Lord of Karma, people will look up to the Christ in the succession of incarnations as they experience their destiny. Thus will people come to terms with their destiny, so that they are thereby inspired to deepen their souls more and more, until they can say to themselves: This destiny is not bestowed upon me by an impersonal power; this destiny is bestowed upon me by that with which I feel a kinship in my innermost being. In karma itself I perceive what is akin to my being. I love my karma because it makes me better and better. — This is how one learns to love karma, and this becomes the impulse to recognize Christ. It was only through the Mystery of Golgotha that people learned to love their karma. And this will continue further and further, and people will increasingly learn that under Lucifer’s influence alone, the Earth could never have reached its goal, that human development would have had to deteriorate more and more without Christ.

[ 24 ] But Christianity does not view Christ as a personality, as the founder of an abstract religious system. In our present age, a religious founder, according to the demands of our time, only stirs up discord. Christian initiation does not originate from a personality, but from a fact, an impersonal divine act that took place before the eyes of humanity. Thus, this mystery of Golgotha—of what took place at the beginning of our era, from which sprang the seed of this unique death, which now blossoms as humanity’s love for its destiny, for its karma—has been handed down to a particular branch of humanity.

[ 25 ] We have seen that the death inflicted by humans upon animals has a certain consequence. Death on Golgotha acts like a seed in the human soul, which thereby feels its connection to Christ. So it was with the Mystery of Golgotha: The One died, just as we can take a single seed and place it in the earth so that it sprouts in the field and that which has sprung from the single seed multiplies. Thus the death of a God on the cross was realized. The seed was sown on Golgotha; the soil was the human soul; what sprouts are humanity’s relationships to the supersensible Christ, who will never again disappear from the evolution of the Earth, who will always appear to humanity in the most diverse ways. Just as people saw him physically at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so in the near future they will rise to an etheric image of Christ: they will see Christ as Paul saw him.

[ 26 ] What Christian initiation holds has been preserved in the symbol of the Holy Grail; it has been brought into the community that confers Christian initiation. For those who receive Christian initiation, what is said here is not an abstract theory, not a hypothesis, but a fact of the supersensible worlds. The care of Christian initiation was entrusted to those who were custodians of the Holy Grail and later to the custodians of the Rosicrucian community. That which emanates from Christian initiation should, by its very nature, act impersonally. All that is personal should be excluded from this; for the personal has brought only strife and discord to humanity and will bring it ever more in the future. Therefore, it is a strict law for those who—symbolically speaking—serve the Holy Grail, or—in reality — serve the care of Christian Initiation—that none of those who are to play a leading role of the first order within the Brotherhood of the Holy Grail or the Rosicrucian Fellowship, neither they nor those living in their vicinity, may speak of the mysteries that reign within them until a hundred years have passed since their death. There is no way to learn what the matter is with a leading figure of the first order until a hundred years have passed since their death.

[ 27 ] This has been a strict rule within the Rosicrucian Order since its founding. No one in the exoteric world ever learns who a leader within the Rosicrucian community is until a hundred years have passed since his death. By then, what he has given has already passed into humanity and become an objective asset of humanity. Therefore, anything personal is excluded. It will never be possible to point to a personality in an earthly body as the bearer of the Christian mystery. Only a hundred years after the death of such a personality would this be possible. This is a law that all Brothers of the Rosicrucians strictly observe. Never will a Rosicrucian Brother point to a living personality as a leader of the first order with regard to that which is to flow into humanity as Christian initiation. Just as in ancient times it was already possible to point prophetically to those who were to come, just as the prophets were preceded by their forerunners, their prophets, just as these prophets pointed to the founders of religions who were to come later, just as in the time of Jesus of Nazareth contemporaries, for example John the Baptist, pointed to the one who was their contemporary, so the spiritual organization of humanity was necessarily transformed after the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that it can no longer be the role of a prophet to point to a personality who is to come or who is present. Instead, reference will be made to a personality who was the bearer of the Christian mystery—that spiritual reality which is tested by human hearts—only a hundred years after she has passed through the gate of death from the physical plane.

[ 28 ] All these things do not happen out of human caprice, but because they must happen. They must happen because humanity now stands at a time when love, peace, and understanding must spread in the process of human development. But they will only spread if we learn to take what is there impersonally, if we learn to uphold what has been given to humanity in the course of human development, in which truth has been at work. Never again, when we as Westerners encounter a Buddhist, will we seek to persuade or force him to become a Christian, because we believe that what has been given to him and what is contained as the deepest essence of his religion will already lead him to Christ. Above all, we believe in his own truth. We do not offend the Buddhist’s feelings by saying that it is not true that his religious founder, having lived among humans as a Bodhisattva, no longer has any claim to physical incarnations as a Buddha. In this way, we foster peace among the religious denominations. Thus, in the future, the Christian will understand the Buddhist, and the Buddhist will understand the Christian. The Buddhist who will understand Christianity will say: I understand that the Christian makes an impersonal reality the principle of his religion, an impersonal fact—the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha—a divine matter in which man may observe and receive what can connect him with the Divine. — No sensible Buddhist will come and tell the Christian that Christ can be embodied in a physical body. Rather, he will see this as a transgression of the true religious principle. No new, discord-sowing creed with a religious leader of a personal nature will be introduced into the world in this way; rather, the principle of initiation itself, with its peace, its harmony, and its understanding-promoting nature, will offer all religions a revitalizing understanding and will not seek to impose the truth of one religion upon another. Just as the Eastern Buddhist would reply to a Westerner who told him that the Buddha could appear in a physical body: “Then you understand nothing of it; then you simply do not know what a Buddha is”—so would the Buddhist who has grasped the true essence of Christianity and represents spiritual insight with seriousness and dignity reply to one who speaks to him of a Christ incarnated in the flesh: You do not understand Christianity if you believe that Christ will return in a physical body; you understand Christianity just as little as one who believes that the Buddha could appear in a physical body understands Buddhism. — What the Christian, if he is an anthroposophist, will always grant to the Buddhist, the Buddhist, if he is an anthroposophist, will also grant to the Christian. And so will every adherent of every religious creed on earth. Thus will anthroposophy bring about the great, understanding union, the synthesis of the religious creeds on earth.