The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Christ Impulse in the Nature of Time and Its Influence on Human Beings

[ 1 ] In our time, it is becoming increasingly important for souls who are led to Spiritual Science through their karma to gain a deep understanding of what we might call the Mystery of Golgotha. The friends who were present at our last branch meetings have already heard quite a bit about how this Mystery of Golgotha has a spiritual prehistory, that something preceded it, that it is, as it were, the culmination of a series of events. Our dear friends have also heard that the union of the Christ-being with the body of Jesus of Nazareth took place in the course of our Earth’s evolution, and that through this a being walked the fields of our Earth of whom we can say: Through this being, the presence of the cosmic Christ-being within our earthly existence was manifested on the physical plane.

[ 2 ] It is of great significance for the entire future of human development that humanity gain ever greater understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, and that this understanding give rise to ever greater reverence and loving, deeply heartfelt devotion to what took place in the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of human development. We know—this too has been said repeatedly and is well known—that two Jesus children were born in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. One was the Jesus with the Zarathustra I, the other—from the Nathanic line of the House of David—was a very special being. We know that in the twelfth year of the Nathanic Jesus-child, the I of Zarathustra passed over from the other, the Solomonic Jesus-child, and that between the twelfth and thirtieth years this Nathanic Jesus, with the I of Zarathustra, prepared himself to receive, through the event signified by the baptism in the Jordan, to receive the Christ-being by which this Jesus of Nazareth is now permeated, and which, through death, has poured itself out into the spiritual sphere of the Earth, so that humanity may increasingly partake of that which, proceeding from the Mystery of Golgotha as spiritual forces, can flow through all souls and all hearts.

[ 3 ] Now, I have already said that this Mystery of Golgotha, in a certain preparatory sense, had already taken place three times before for the salvation of humanity: once in the ancient Lemurian era, then in the Atlantean era, and then again toward the end of the Atlantean era—that was three times—and then, of course, the fourth time as we know it at the beginning of our calendar in the post-Atlantean era. What we call the Mystery of Golgotha, however, took place solely on the physical plane; the other events, which were the preparatory ones, took place entirely in the spiritual world. But the forces that developed in the process, that which took place, flowed down into the earthly souls and bodies for the salvation of humanity. And in all these preparatory events leading up to the Mystery of Golgotha, it was again the same being who was then born as the Nathanic Jesus child, who was permeated by the Christ-being. That is indeed the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha: that this Jesus-being, who grew up as the Nathanic boy, was permeated by the Christ-being. But this later Nathanic Jesus-being was also present during the three earlier events; it was simply not incarnated as a physical human being. It lived as a spiritual, archangel-like being in the spiritual worlds. And in the spiritual worlds, as in the preliminary stages of the Mystery of Golgotha during the Lemurian epoch and twice during the Atlantean epoch, it was permeated by the Christ-being.

[ 4 ] So one might say: There were, as it were, three angelic lives in the spiritual world. The being who lived these lives as an angel and an archangel was essentially the same one who was later born as a human being and is described as the boy Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Three times this angelic being, who later sacrificed itself as a human being, offered itself as a sacrifice for the penetration of the Christ impulse. Just as we have in Christ Jesus a human being permeated by the Christ impulse, so we can say that we have, three times before that, an angel permeated by the Christ impulse. And just as what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha has flowed out into the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth, so too did what happened through the first three events flow in—albeit from the cosmos. When we look at the course of human development, and see how the Mystery of Golgotha stands at the very center of this human development, we can actually say to ourselves: With this Mystery of Golgotha, we have precisely such a center of earthly development. Everything that happens beforehand points toward this Mystery of Golgotha as a preparation. And everything that has happened since is a gradual, progressive inflow of the forces of the Mystery of Golgotha into human souls and into human hearts.

[ 5 ] If we examine more closely which part of the human being has been given that which flows from the power of the Mystery of Golgotha, we can say: When it opens, the power of the Mystery of Golgotha flows into the human element—the human element that can develop its consciousness in the world of the physical plane. Is this not so? We cannot yet speak of Christ Jesus to a child who has just been born. There is no way we can make the child understand what Christ Jesus is. And if we were to let the child’s eyes linger on any image—be it an image like the Sistine Madonna with the infant Jesus or the crucifix—we would notice, if we could look into the child’s soul, that in the very earliest stages of childhood we cannot yet reach them with our external educational means of the physical plane. We can, of course, from the time when the child begins to babble, of course, accustom it to pronouncing the name of Christ; we can teach it mental images that point to Christ. But we will not yet feel ready to cultivate a deeper understanding of the heart in the earliest stages of a child’s life. And one thing is clear to anyone who is able to shed light on the child’s mind through the means of Spiritual Science: the weakest way in which we can bring about a dawning of the Christ-feeling through external educational means—this weakest way truly begins only at the point in the child’s life that they later recall: the point at which their sense of self awakens. Certainly, even in the first few years after the ego-consciousness has awakened, there will not be much understanding. But everything we convey there regarding Christ-mental images, without introducing it into dogmatics—what we convey in such a way that there is something of the life of the Christ impulse in the words and mental images—will benefit the person who grows from this child throughout their entire later life. After the awakening of the ego-consciousness, we can already do certain things, even if only a dawning consciousness is present. After the awakening of the ego-consciousness, for example, the child—even if we cannot yet begin to influence it through physical means—looks at the Sistine Madonna and at the cross with Christ on it quite differently than before. For just as the Mystery of Golgotha has entered into the earthly development of humanity, so is it destined to work in the progress of spiritual life on the physical plane. And in truth, the human being only consciously enters the physical plane when the ego awakens. What, then, comes before that?

[ 6 ] Three things precede the awakening of the “I” in the child—three things I have already mentioned in earlier lectures, three things of immense importance. The child learns to walk; that is, it learns to rise from a position in which it is still unable to direct its physical orientation away from the earth and up toward the celestial heights of the cosmos. It learns to move from one position to the other—the very thing that distinguishes human beings from animals in the first place. It learns, through its own inner strength, to assume an upright posture, to turn its gaze away from the earthly realm, toward which the animal must nevertheless have directed it through its very nature and form, for the exceptions are only apparent. It is the upright posture that the child learns before the sense of self awakens. We are truly repeating in our present post-Atlantean life the things that we, as human beings, first acquired over the course of time. What we acquired only gradually during the ancient Lemurian era—learning to walk upright, learning to stand upright—we repeat before our ego awakens consciously, now in childhood. This is compressed into the time when it does not yet depend on our consciousness, when it still acts as an unconscious force of uprightness. Those animals that have an approximately vertical, upward-directed gait have organized their entire organism in such a way that they naturally assume this position, which is, after all, not quite upright. Like so many comparisons, however, this one would also be misleading. Human beings are called upon, in the early stages of their lives, before their sense of self awakens, to bring themselves into an upright, vertical position out of the predisposition of this self, to rise above the posture in which they still found themselves during the ancient Lunar Age. At that time, the axis of their spine was parallel to the surface of the Moon; it was essentially horizontal. In the ancient Lemurian era, human beings learned to transform the lunar orientation into an earthly one. This occurred because, during the Earth’s development, it was first the spirits of form who instilled the ego into human beings from their own substance. And the first manifestation of this instillation of the ego is that inner force through which human beings raise themselves upright. Thus, human beings are snatched from the Earth by their posture. The Earth itself possesses spiritual forces that can flow through the spine if it remains horizontal during natural growth, as in the animal body. But the Earth has no powers of its own to serve directly the human being, who can be oriented vertically through his I, whose consciousness awakens later. In order for the human being to develop harmoniously with an upright, vertical gait, forces must flow in from the cosmos, from the extraterrestrial. Lucifer and Ahriman could have thrown all human development into disorder by tearing humanity away from the spiritual forces of the earthly realm through its upright posture, had the first Christ event not occurred in the ancient Lemurian era.

[ 7 ] In that ancient Lemurian era, within the realm that, as a spiritual realm, is closest to our earthly realm, the Christ Being permeated that being—who was, however, a kind of angelic being who later became the Nathanic Jesus. This was a preliminary stage of the Mystery of Golgotha. The result of this was that in this ancient Lemurian era—but in ethereal, spiritual realms—the later Nathanic Jesus, who would otherwise have taken the form of an angel, naturally assumed not a physical but an ethereal human form. In the super-earthly region—but in the next super-earthly region—the Jesus of Nazareth is to be found as an ethereal angelic form. Through his union with the Christ, he has taken on an ethereal human form. Thus something new has entered the cosmos, which now radiates onto the Earth and enables the human being—the physical human form on Earth, into which the power of the ethereal, super-earthly Christ-being has flowed—to protect itself from that destruction which would have had to penetrate had it not been possible for this power to radiate in from the cosmos and permeate the human being, so that the formative power lives within him, the power that makes him an upright, orderly being. Disorder would have ensued had not the power of that shaping, that formation—which can now radiate in because the first Christ event took place—flowed in with the physical power of the Sun. That which humanity thereby received within itself has lived on in the development of humanity since the ancient Lemurian era. And we truly observe a developing human child when, at the moment the child rises from the crawling, sliding, helpless state and stands or walks for the first time, when at that very moment we say: This can only happen rightly and for the good of humanity because the first Christ event took place in the ancient Lemurian era, because the one who, as the Nathanic Jesus, became imbued with the Christ, took on a human-etheric form in the Lemurian era as a spiritual-etheric being through this imbuement with the Christ.

[ 8 ] Yes, Spiritual Science exists to enrich our feelings. A feeling like this—one that can live in our soul when we see a child stand up and learn to walk—certainly has deep religious roots. Later on, we should often remind ourselves why the child walks, and then reflect on how this is due to the Christ impulse. Then, through Spiritual Science, we have enriched our worldview and acquired a feeling for our surroundings that we could not otherwise have. Through Spiritual Science, we perceive, as it were, the protectors, the guardians of a child’s growth and development. We perceive how the Christ force radiates around this childlike being and this childlike development.

[ 9 ] From my account of the Lemurian era in the Akashic Records, which discusses the Lemurian ancestors, you will have seen that these ancestors were mute. It was actually the Atlantean who first learned to speak. Those essays on the Akashic Records explain how this came about. This is the second of the abilities a child acquires before the actual sense of self awakens: learning to speak. The awakening of the sense of self follows only after learning to speak. Learning to speak is based entirely on a kind of imitation, for which, however, the predispositions lie deep within human nature. This speech, in turn, is a human ability that has entered into the earthly human being through his forward development. Because the spirits of form have permeated him, he is able to speak a language and live his earthly life on the physical plane. In this way, through two elements, he severs himself from those spiritual forces that are active on Earth. Animals do not actually learn to speak; they are permeated by these spiritual forces of the Earth. Even communication through gestures in animals is not the same as human speech. And if one were to teach an animal a similar form of speech through training or other means, conditions would arise outside its body that would first have to be discussed by Spiritual Science—a topic that lies beyond the scope of our discussion today. Let us remain with the normal development of the human being and say that this human speech was already predisposed in the human being from divine heights through what the spirits of form have poured into it. Let us remain with this and observe how the human being has transformed from a mute being into a speaking being. Through this, he has made himself independent of the forces that spiritually permeate the Earth, just as he made himself independent of the primal current through upright posture. Through the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, everything in speech would have become base if humanity had been left to the Earth alone, had not cosmic-spiritual influences descending to Earth poured into the human being. Humanity would have developed its entire culture of life in such a way—all its physical organs, larynx, tongue, throat, and so on, indeed even the deeper organs such as the heart and so on— insofar as they are connected to it, human beings would have developed them in the Atlantean era, had nothing happened through the Christ, such that human beings would have been capable only of expressing—in a poor, babbling manner, much like a sibyl or a medium—that which selfishly causes them pain, joy, pleasure, or lust. Human beings would indeed be able to produce much more artificial sounds than animals, but in their sounds they would have found expressions only for what lives within them. For what takes place in the organism as physical processes, they would have found the living words of sensation. The entire language would have become a sum of interjections. Whereas we now condense our words of sensation to a small measure, the art of human language, with all its complexity, would have developed only as far as interjections. This was averted in human evolution. The disorder in this power of speech—insofar as this disorder expresses the inner life of the human being—was averted by the second Christ event, by the fact that this being in the etheric realm, who later became the boy Jesus of Nazareth, was permeated a second time by the Christ-being, and that it assumed such a being that now permeated the physical organs of the human being in such a way that the human being became capable of uttering something other than mere words of feeling. That he became capable of grasping the objective world—this was made possible by the Second Christ Event.

[ 10 ] And yet language—the power of language, the human ability to translate emotional stirrings into words—still faced a danger. Through the second Christ event, it might well have come to pass that human beings would not only have found sounds, interjections, and words of feeling for their inner lives, but that they would have been able, in a certain sense, to detach what they had evoked as an inner linguistic impulse. But to designate external things through words, so that the words might be true signs of the external things—this was still endangered by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences right up into the Atlantean epoch. Then the third Christ event took place. For the third time, the being in the spiritual heights—who was later born as the Nathanic Jesus—united with the Christ being, and once again poured out the powers it had now assumed into the human capacity for speech. The power of this Christ-Jesus being now permeated the organs of the human body a second time, insofar as these organs find expression in the power of speech. This gave the power of speech the ability to create, through words, real signs for the external environment, and thereby to establish language as a means of communication across the various regions of humanity. The child could never have learned to speak had these two Christ events not occurred during the Atlantean era. And we in turn enrich our perception through Spiritual Science when, as the child begins to speak and becomes increasingly proficient in speech, we reflect on how the Christ impulses reign within the unconscious, and how the Christ power lives protectively and fosteringly within the power of speech.

[ 11 ] Then came the post-Atlantean epoch, following the three Christ events, which I have once again described today—from a certain perspective—in terms of their influence on human development.

[ 12 ] In post-Atlantean evolution, the peoples who primarily belonged to that stage of human development we call the Egyptian-Chaldean culture were initially tasked with repeating what had happened to humanity in the ancient Lemurian era, but this time with full consciousness. In the Lemuric era, human beings learned quite unconsciously to be upright beings; in the Atlantean era, they learned to be speaking beings. Because their power of thought had not yet awakened at that time, they absorbed the Christ impulse quite unconsciously. In the post-Atlantean era, they were to be gradually led to understand what they had unconsciously absorbed in earlier times. What enabled them to look out uprightly into cosmic heights was the Christ impulse. They experienced this unconsciously, as they had to in the Lemurian era. Then, though not yet fully conscious, yet as a preparation for full consciousness, the peoples of Egypt were to be guided to revere that which lives in the human power of uprightness. The initiates, who were to influence Egyptian culture, ensured that they learned to revere this by having the people erect the pyramids, which rise from the earth into the cosmos. Even now we can admire how this uplifting force was expressed through the interplay of cosmic forces in the entire form and orientation of the pyramids’ construction. The obelisks were to be erected so that humanity might begin to penetrate into that which is the power of upliftment. The wondrous hieroglyphs in the pyramids and on the obelisks, which were meant to point toward the Christ, awakened the superhuman forces from the Lemurian era. But even to such a dim understanding as the Egyptians could attain regarding the uplifting force, they could not attain regarding the power of speech. Their minds first had to receive the proper training for perception so that in later times one might comprehend the mystery of how Christ lives in the human gift of speech. This was to be received with the most sacred reverence in the maturing human soul. The hierophants, the initiates of Egyptian culture, ensured this in a wondrous way by erecting the enigmatic Sphinx with its silent, bronze form—which, under the influence of the cosmos, resonated only to the extent of the human elevation of that time. In the sight of the silent Sphinx, which only resounded under certain conditions and relationships through the rising sun as it entered from the cosmos, that sacred awe of the soul took shape, through which the soul was prepared to understand the language that had to be spoken at the time when humanity was to be brought to a higher consciousness regarding how the Christ impulse gradually enters into the earthly development of humanity. What the sphinxes could not yet say, but for which they prepared, was to be told to humanity. The Christ impulse lies in the formation of the word movement. This was told to humanity in the words:

In the beginning was the Word,
And the Word was with God,
And the Word was God.
This was with God in the beginning.
It was there where everything came into being,
And nothing came into being
Except through the Word.
In the Word was life,
And life was
The light of mankind.

[ 13 ] “In the Word was life, and the life was the light of men”—these words appear at the point where the Gospel emerged from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, where, prepared by Greco-Roman culture, humanity had come to repeat in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch what had taken place in the Atlantean era. Just as the veneration of the act of standing upright was repeated in the Egyptian era, so now the veneration of the Word was repeated. This is how the superhuman spiritual forces influence the development of humanity.

[ 14 ] A third thing the child must learn before it actually awakens to self-consciousness is a mental image and thinking. This kind of thinking was originally reserved for humanity in the post-Atlantean era—indeed, strictly speaking, only for humanity in the fourth post-Atlantean period. Before that, people thought in images. I will describe this again in the book that is soon to be published: *The Riddles of Philosophy*. Children, too, think in images. The ability to think thoughts was only granted to humanity; conceptual thinking first arose in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C.E. Then conceptual thinking continued to develop further. Now we are right in the midst of it. The development of thinking is such that our ego is seized by this thinking. That thinking can also be connected to the Christ impulse, that thinking as such has not become disordered in its effect on the ego—this is what the fourth Christ event, the Mystery of Golgotha, was for. And if our thinking is to become increasingly orderly, if it is to develop more and more in such a way that our thoughts do not run chaotically amok but are permeated and interwoven with inner feeling and inner sensation, if healthy, truth-seeking thinking is to be developed more and more, this happens because, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the fourth Christ event, this thinking has received the impulse to do so, having been able to receive it through the fact that the Christ impulse has poured itself out into the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth.

[ 15 ] This first occurred during the Lemurian era, when Lucifer posed a threat to the upright nature of humankind.

[ 16 ] It happened a second time during the Atlantic epoch. At that time, humanity was saved from the danger threatening its language, given that language is an expression that comes from within. The danger was that language would fall into disarray.

[ 17 ] It happened for the third time toward the end of the Atlantean epoch. Because the Christ permeated the spiritual being of the future Jesus of Nazareth, the gift of speech—insofar as it serves as a sign for external things—was saved from danger by the Christ.

[ 18 ] The fourth danger lay in thinking, in the inner mental image of thoughts. Human beings are saved from this danger by penetrating with their thoughts into those forms that live within them—as is now possible if they so desire and prepare themselves for it through Spiritual Science—into forms such as those that have flowed out through the Mystery of Golgotha into the spiritual sphere of the Earth.

[ 19 ] We have now reached a point in human development where the first words of the Gospel of John may be spoken in yet another form; where they may be spoken in the form:

In the very beginning is the Thought,
And the Thought is with God,
And the Thought is divine.
In it is life,
And life shall become the light of my self.
And may the divine thought shine into my self,
So that the darkness of my self may embrace
The divine thought.

[ 20 ] It was not explicitly stated, but this was the goal pursued in the course of human development.

[ 21 ] The fourth post-Atlantean culture began in the 8th century B.C. About three and a half centuries later, the idea had matured to the point where it could be articulated by the Greek philosophers with the clarity that subsequently led to Platonic philosophy. Then human life became permeated with the Christ impulse. When the 15th century A.D. began, the fifth post-Atlantean period began. Just as long as it took from the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period to an understanding of the idea, so long did it take from the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period to a conscious articulation of the nature of the idea—that is, up to Flegel. Human thought reached its zenith in Hegel with the statement: “The life and weaving of thought in truth is the active spirit.” — What Hegel says in such a seemingly incomprehensible way can actually be expressed with the words: “/p”

In the beginning is the thought,
And infinite is the thought,
And the life of the thought is the light of the self.
May the radiant thought fill
The darkness of my self,
That the darkness of my self may embrace it,
The living thought,
And live and weave in its divine beginning.

[ 22 ] This is how the development of humanity generally proceeds. Humanity has not yet come very far, for Hegel himself was the subject of much slander. One might well say: And though the radiant thought shone into the darkness, the darkness would have none of it. — When one learns to comprehend one’s life, the life of thought, then one will understand what is incumbent upon humanity in its future existence.

[ 23 ] But at the same time, because we stand on the foundation of Spiritual Science, we have something more. Later epochs are always already being prepared in earlier epochs. And as we stand in the midst of the fifth post-Atlantean period, as we cultivate Spiritual Science and have more and more to contribute to the understanding of living thought—of thought that is becoming clairvoyant—we are at the same time preparing the sixth post-Atlantean period.

[ 24 ] Just as life flows into thought through the Christ impulse, so it will also flow into something that belongs to the capacity of the human soul and that must not be confused with mere thought. From the unconscious, the child develops its capacities. As it attains ego-consciousness, it enters the sphere where it can assimilate, where it must develop, that which can enter from the outside through the Christ impulse. Once the child has learned to walk, once it has learned to speak, and as it begins to work its way toward the “I” through the process of learning to think, we can already gradually see how the conscious Christ impulse, which has entered through the Mystery of Golgotha, works upon the child. Humanity today cannot yet take in the Christ impulse into something else that lies within its soul capacities. To guide this Christ impulse into upright walking, into speaking and thinking—this is made possible by what has been there for humanity for millennia through human culture. To introduce the Christ impulse into a fourth element, to prepare for this introduction into a fourth human faculty—we must also bear this in mind when we stand firmly on the ground of Spiritual Science. We must also bear this in mind! Where the Christ impulse cannot yet be introduced, but where it is preparing to be introduced—that is human memory, the act of remembering. For in addition to upright walking and standing, speaking, and thinking, the Christ power now enters into memory. We can understand Christ when he speaks to us through the Gospels. But we are only being prepared as human beings for Christ to also enter into our thoughts, which then live and exist within us as remembered thoughts and mental images, and continue to live within us in this way. And a time will come for humanity—which, however, will only be fully realized in the sixth major period of human development, but is now being prepared—when people will look back on what they have experienced and what lives within them as memory, and will be able to see that Christ lives within the power of memory. Through every mental image, Christ will be able to speak. And even when we revive our mental images in memory, Christ will be connected to that memory—to that which is as closely, as intimately connected to us as our memory itself. Humanity will be able to look back on its life and say to itself: Just as I remember, just as the power of memory lives within me, so does the Christ impulse poured into this memory live within it. The path offered to human beings to make the words “Not I, but Christ in me” ever more real—this path is paved by the fact that the Christ impulse will gradually enter into the power of memory. It is not yet there. When it is within, when the Christ impulse lives not only in the human mind but when the Christ impulse pours out over the entire expanse, over the entire strip of memories, then the human being will, for example, no longer be limited to learning history from external documents, for then their power of memory will expand. Christ will live in this memory. And because Christ has entered into their power of remembrance, because Christ lives in their power of remembrance, human beings will thereby know how Christ worked in a super-earthly way up to the Mystery of Golgotha, how he prepared for it and passed through this Mystery of Golgotha, and how he continues to work as an impulse in history. Just as truly and really as memory is present in ordinary life today, so will human beings be able to survey this. One will not be able to survey the earthly development of humanity inwardly in any other way than by then perceiving the Christ impulse at the center. All the power of memory will be permeated and at the same time strengthened by the penetration of the Christ impulse into the power of memory, into the power of recollection. In the future, the following may also hold true for us who are to grasp Christianity in a living way:

In the very beginning is memory,
And memory lives on,
And memory is divine.
And memory is life,
And this life is the human self,
Which flows within the human being himself.
Not he alone, but the Christ within him.
When he remembers the divine life,
The Christ is in his memory,
And as a radiant life of remembrance
The Christ will shine
Into every darkness that is immediately present.

[ 25 ] We will be able to say: Christ is present in our inner spiritual life. Some of us will sense this as we learn to connect with the Christ impulse by recalling how, as children, we learned to stand upright and speak by connecting with the Christ impulse. Some of us also sense this by regarding our memory, as it is now, as a preparation—something that would fall into disarray in the future if it did not have the will to allow itself to be permeated by the Christ impulse. If there were a materialism on Earth that denied the Christ, then memory would fall into disarray. Then more and more people would appear whose memory would become chaotic, who would grow increasingly dull in their dark ego-consciousness, were it not for memory shining into this dark ego-consciousness. Our memory can only develop properly if the Christ impulse is properly understood. Then history will live as a living memory in such a way that an understanding of the true events penetrates into memory. Then human memory will understand the center of world events. Then the power of vision will assert itself for the human being. Ordinary memory, which is directed only toward one life, will expand to include previous incarnations. Memory is now a preparation, but it is perfected by the Christ. Whether we look outward, seeing how we developed as children while still unconscious, or whether we then look inward, or whether we look into what remains in memory as our inner self through a deeper exploration of our inner being—everywhere we see the living power and efficacy of the Christ impulse.

[ 26 ] In the new Christ event, which is now approaching not physically but etherically, and which is connected with the first awakening of the power of memory, with the first awakening of the Christ-infusion of memory, this Christ event will be such that Christ will approach humanity as an angelic being. We must prepare ourselves for this.

[ 27 ] Thus, Spiritual Science should not merely enrich us with theories, but should instill within us something that enables us to perceive both what the world presents to us and what we ourselves are with different sensations and feelings. Our emotional and sensory life can be enriched if, through Spiritual Science, we truly penetrate the essence of the Christ impulse and its working within the human being and in the spiritual nature of the human being. It is good if we often remember this:

In the very beginning was the power of memory.
The power of memory shall become divine,
And the power of memory shall become divine.
Everything that arises within the self,
Shall become such,
That it is something that has arisen
From memory illuminated by Christ, made divine.
In it shall be life,
And in it shall be the radiant light,
Which from the remembering mind
Shines into the darkness of the present.
And may the darkness, as it is now,
Be penetrated by the light of memory made divine.

[ 28 ] When we take the meaning of such words to heart, we are taking in something that is fitting for us as human beings to take in. Just as the plant forms the seed for the next plant life, so do we learn to feel within ourselves not only with the fruits that come to us from earlier incarnations, but to feel in such a way that we understand how to pass over into the following incarnations. In the following incarnations, our capacity for memory would be in a poor state if we did not imbue ourselves with the Christ impulse. Thinking is still only sparingly permeated by the Christ impulse, and yet it is already approaching our memory. Let us learn through Spiritual Science not only to live for the temporal human being who lives between birth and death, but let us learn to live for that human being who passes through ever-recurring incarnations. And let us learn through Spiritual Science what can be for us, for the full living out of our own human soul, the right understanding and comprehension, the right perception, the right feeling of the strongest impulse in the entire development of humanity: the Christ impulse.