The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Spirit of Christ and Its Relationship to the Development of Consciousness

[ 1 ] Everything that enters into our work ultimately crystallizes around a single point: finding union with the spiritual forces that drive humanity forward. From this perspective, we have repeatedly spoken here of the significance of the Christ Being in the world. Today I would like to say a few words to you that are intended to help us develop a deeper mental image of this Christ impulse and its relationship to us as human beings. If we wish to grasp this Christ impulse in its truth, we must be willing to reflect on various matters. In our time, one hears nothing more than the occasional suggestion that we should push aside everything schoolmasterly, pedantic, and didactic, and embrace living life in art and worldview. So many contemporary minds express their weariness with all things didactic. It is only strange that, as soon as matters of worldview come up, one repeatedly falls back into a longing for the didactic.

[ 2 ] We have had to listen to people speaking of Christ as a world teacher; I once used the expression: “superhuman world teacher.” Many feel comfortable thinking that Christ was someone who came into the world to teach. In contrast, we have repeatedly emphasized the life-giving and life-strengthening nature of the Christ impulse. Through what happened at the baptism in the Jordan, a being found its way into earthly life by sharing the destiny of humanity for three years. Then it flowed out into the Earth’s aura and has been working there ever since.

[ 3 ] When we look back on this Christ event, we must say that the event at Golgotha is a unique occurrence in the history of the Earth. In the context of Earth’s history, this took place only once, but the Christ event had been prepared in the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] Although it is thoroughly mistaken to imagine the Christ-being present in another body, one must nevertheless point to a preparatory event in the development of the world—namely, three preparatory events, preliminary stages of the event at Golgotha. They took place in supermundane, purely spiritual worlds.

[ 5 ] I spoke of the two Jesus children, the Solomonic and the Nathanic Jesus child. The Solomonic one carried the I of Zarathustra within him. It passed into the other child and lived there from the age of twelve to thirty. Then the vessel was filled with the Christ-being. This Nathanic Jesus—and this must be explicitly stated—was, as he was born at the beginning of our era, truly incarnated in a human body for the first time in the world. For he had spent the preliminary stages of his existence in spiritual worlds. He had never before been truly incarnated in a human body. The relationship to Krishna was not a true incarnation, but a vicarious incarnation. When we picture the being of this later Nathanic Jesus before us, we must look to the angelic beings and can say: Before the Christ appeared on Earth, he was not incarnated, but existed three times in the spiritual world as a soul, yet in each of these three stages of existence, something occurred for him again and again, similar to the event of Golgotha. We must therefore seek the preliminary stages of Golgotha in the spiritual worlds. Each of these events has a profound significance for the entire life of humanity on Earth. What we experience there is not influenced solely by what happens within the physical Earth, but also by the spiritual worlds. What was brought about through the three preliminary stages was brought about from outside.

[ 6 ] When humanity lived during the Lemurian epoch, the Luciferic influence had already descended upon it. It sent, as it were, its rays of power into human nature. The effect was felt within. Humanity had to develop differently than it would have if no Luciferic influence had come. Humanity was, so to speak, infected with the Luciferic impulse. From the perspective of Spiritual Science, we can say what this Luciferic influence brought about. Had it remained as strong as it was in Lemuria, something would have happened to our human nature that would have placed it in great danger. What would have happened could be characterized roughly as follows: The twelve sensory powers—for there are twelve—of the human being would have developed in such a way that the human being would have become hypersensitive. Whereas we now look at the red of a rose in such a way that it acts objectively upon us as we gaze at it, the red would then penetrate our eyes as if with thorns, and blue would suck at our vision. We would be hypersensitive. The same would be true of a person’s hearing and all sensory perceptions. We would be unable to perceive anything without feeling pain or pleasure. Humanity was heading toward this through Lucifer. The beings of the higher hierarchies saw this. Just as the Nathanic Jesus later lived, he was present in the spiritual world during the Lemurian epoch as an angelic being, and it was his task to become imbued with the Christ-being. While the physical bodies were later imbued with the Christ-being, at that time the soul element of this angelic being was spiritualized by the Christ-impulse. At that time, the Christ impulse had already descended into the soul of the later Nathanic Jesus. This took place in the spiritual world, but the rays emanating from it spread across the Earth and soothed the hypersensitive human senses, so that the danger was averted that human beings might have perceived the sensory realm only through pain and degrading lust. Thus we look upon the first harbinger of the event at Golgotha and say to ourselves: We have become what we are with regard to our twelve senses because Christ descended into the soul of the future Nathanic Jesus and soothed the human sensory nature.

[ 7 ] Then, during the Atlantean epoch, a new danger arose in human life as a result of the Ahrimanic influence gradually combining with the Luciferic influence. Whereas in Lemuria the senses were in danger, now, in the early days of Atlantis, the life organs and the etheric body of the human being were in danger. These organs of an etheric body permeated by the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman would have developed in such a way that human beings would have taken on a form unworthy of the human being. Everything would have had to be arranged so that human beings would have pursued what was useful to them with greed and would have been able to regard what was not beneficial to them only with disgust. Human life would have unfolded between greed and disgust. All organs would have been designed in such a way that human beings would have pounced in a degrading manner, like wild animals, upon what they had to take in, and would have felt deeply humiliated by what was not beneficial to them. That this did not come to pass stems from the second preliminary stage of the event at Golgotha. The danger was such that even in breathing, man would have greedily scooped up the air, and every glimpse of something unsuitable for him would have manifested in a terrible way, accompanied by terrible outbursts of disgust. It was then, for the second time, that this angelic being was permeated by the Christ impulse, and through this, rays of power entered the Earth’s aura and soothed human life.

[ 8 ] Toward the end of the Atlantean epoch, the third preliminary stage developed. Once again, humanity faced a great danger. Now, thinking, feeling, and willing were to be thrown into disarray. The soul’s expressions were to be thrown into disharmony, so that human beings would not have been able to develop thinking, feeling, and willing in an orderly manner, but rather these would have been thrown into a frenzied turmoil. This was averted by the third preliminary stage. Once again, the being who later became the Nathanic Jesus was imbued with the Christ impulse, and order and harmony were brought into the interplay of thinking, feeling, and willing. This was still felt long into the post-Atlantean era. In times that preceded the development of our thinking, the harbingers of an image were already taking shape—an image that extends into our time but is not yet properly understood. When, at the end of the Atlantean era, Christ animated this soul—which later became Jesus of Nazareth—this brought about a being who always mastered the wildly surging emotions and triumphed over the thinking, feeling, and willing that were taking shape as a coherent structure. Humanity then expressed this in the image of St. George or St. Michael, the dragon-slayer. This is the direct imaginative expression of the third harbinger of the event of Golgotha.

[ 9 ] The Greeks, who brought to life in their mental images what shone through from the mysteries of Atlantis, created a divine image of the being who was active in Atlantis. In Apollo, they worshipped the spirit whom they imagined to be the one imbued with the spirit of the sun. They did not call him Christ, but the name is not important. In their sun worship, they honored the third preliminary stage of the event at Golgotha and expressed this outwardly by seeking counsel from the priests of Apollo in matters of great importance. These Greeks knew that woven into the mysteries of existence is that which weaves within the Earth’s aura, and how it has brought order to thinking, feeling, and willing. They felt it so closely connected to the Earth that they said: From the Earth arose in dense form that which, had it not been overcome by Apollo, would have thrown thinking, feeling, and willing into disorder. But Apollo brings order, so that from the Earth’s aura, instead of disharmony, instead of madness, wisdom flows into thinking, feeling, and willing.

[ 10 ] They looked toward that area where steam rose from the earth; they channelled it, collecting it in their sanctuary, so that they might place the priestess of Apollo over the opening, through whom he himself spoke, transforming his wisdom into oracles and counsel for those who sought this wisdom. Just as George and Michael appear in the image, so does Apollo in his sanctuary, pouring prophecies into the soul of the one speaking through him.

[ 11 ] Oh, Christianity is ancient! It is not the name “Christ” that matters. The cult of Apollo worshipped Christ, the Sun Spirit, so that this worship embodies the awareness of the third preliminary stage of the event at Golgotha. Then came the time when humanity faced a fourth great danger. In Lemuria, the physical body faced a danger; then, in Atlantis, the etheric and astral bodies. Now it was the ego that was to be thrown into disorder. This is prepared in such a way that, at the time when the ego was to take hold of human beings in Greek intellectual life, a very peculiar phenomenon reveals itself: all the conditions are present to bring disorder into the ego. One will gradually come to understand how that which was to bring forth this “I” developed in Greek philosophy and so on. I have already attempted to describe how the “I” awoke. It becomes evident through an examination of the philosophy that culminates in the intellectual life of Plato and Aristotle how the “I” gradually emerges. When Thales, Pherecydes of Syros, and Anaxagoras first gave birth to these great ideas, a parallel phenomenon was spreading from Greece throughout the Greek world: alongside the emergence of the “I” came the Sibylline oracles. The Sibyls made their presence felt everywhere. They sometimes spoke great wisdom about the future, but at times also utter madness. Everything that can throw the ego into disorder—just as the ego must fall into disorder without the Christ impulse—found expression in their prophecies. Two things were taking shape: prophets, preparers for the Christ impulse, who sought to receive the young Christ force through pure spiritual deepening, who, in an ordered life of thought, worked through what was unfolding in human evolution; on the other hand, the Sibyls, who are at the mercy of the external influences of the Earth’s aura. We encounter this contrast between Sibyls and prophets in Michelangelo’s depiction in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo shows how the wind and other forces connected elementally with the earth act upon the Sibyls, revealing that there was a danger for the Sibyls that the ego might fall into disorder, and how the prophets act to calm this ego. The study of the prophets alongside the Sibyls in Michelangelo’s paintings can lead us deeply into many mysteries. In the forces at work through the Sibyls, we see how the human ego seeks to fall into disorder on a fourth level. The order heralded by the Prophet’s teaching was established through the Mystery of Golgotha—the order of the ego forces in such a way that the human ego learned to feel ever more deeply: not I, but Christ within me. — What in the case of the Sibyls would have contributed to the disorder of the ego emerges in an orderly manner through the Christ impulse. Because the human ego must develop on Earth, the event of Golgotha had to take place on Earth; Christ had to permeate the body of Jesus, the actual physical body, whereas in the preliminary stages an angel was animated.

[ 12 ] Thus did Golgotha come to play a role in the development of the Earth. There is deep truth in what Augustine says: Christianity has always existed; it is only now that we call it Christianity. — In Augustine’s time, people sensed that the servants of Apollos were Christians, even if they were not called by that name. It was a veneration of the third, now purely spiritual event. Thus Christ gradually drew near to the Earth. The first and second preliminary stages took place in the Devachan world, the third in the astral world, and the event of Golgotha in the physical world.

[ 13 ] But Christ did not enter the Earth’s aura as a teacher; rather, he did so through his own power. This must be emphasized again and again. If Christ had sought to work only through what people could have understood of him, he would have been able to accomplish very little.

[ 14 ] He entered into the course of development as a living being. Human understanding must strive to rise to his level. This is how we see the dogmatic disputes unfold. Human judgment is still far from being able to penetrate the Christ impulse. The Christ impulse works in the depths, flowing through souls as a living force. We can trace this force. Let us look at an event from October 28, 312. At that time, Constantine fought a battle against Maxentius near Rome. Maxentius’s army was four times as large as Constantine’s. Constantine was victorious. Anyone who looks at history objectively will say: The course of all of Europe would have been different if Constantine had not won. — It was a remarkable battle. It was not external strength that prevailed, nor was it human judgment. The battle was not fought with what arose from human judgment. It was fought by both sides according to subconscious impulses, into which the Christ impulse played a part. Maxentius consulted the Sibylline books. They told him: If you do not remain where you are, if you leave Rome, you will subdue Rome’s great enemy. — A dream also told him he should leave Rome and fight at the gates. In Rome, he was securely entrenched. Human judgment did not determine the outcome of this battle. The subconscious worked within the souls of Maxentius and Constantine. A dream revealed to Constantine that he should carry the symbol of Christianity at the head of the army. Dreams decided this battle, which determined the fate of Europe. Human judgment was not capable of bringing about what was to be brought about; rather, the Christ impulse was at work, pitting Constantine’s army—four times weaker—against Maxentius outside Rome. Through that which humans cannot judge, the guidance of human affairs took place. This is significant for the entire course of human history.

[ 15 ] The Christ impulse worked in the subconscious of souls as a spiritual impulse. It worked in the same way later on, when the map of Europe once again took on a completely different shape. Had the Maid of Orleans not stepped to her king’s side at the decisive moment, the course of European history would have been entirely different. Once again, it was not human judgment but the Christ impulse that made use of a human instrument. It is not for us to judge whether this was good or bad.

[ 16 ] I can illustrate how the Christ impulse works beneath the threshold of consciousness through another example. It makes use of strange forms of revelation—strange, that is, to the materialist. As modern spiritual life approached, there was something in its development that would have caused materialism to extend its reach even further over European life. If certain events had not occurred, it would have been possible that even in souls that still felt themselves to be spiritual, entirely material mental images would have taken hold. Indeed, understanding of the Christ impulse would have declined so far even in much earlier centuries that people would have doubted his physical existence. Then Arthur Drews and others would have had a much easier time of it. In the 16th and 17th centuries, when there was a danger of losing all connection with the Christ impulse, the sentiment spread across the remotest regions of Europe: Why should one believe that Christ ever lived? — And the same thing happened simultaneously in the most diverse places. In almost all regions of Europe, everywhere it became apparent that through the most diverse human settlements, through villages and towns, it was not always the same, but always a different physical, human personality who passed through. The opinion spread that this human personality, who appeared in a particularly strange guise, was Ahasver, the eternal Jew, who had wandered through the world ever since he had cast Christ from himself. The news spread that there lived a person who could say from personal experience: I have seen Christ; he truly lived. — In the most diverse places, this figure walked through the villages, attended church services in a dreadful state, clad in completely outdated clothing, and recounted the event to which they could bear witness. Bishops and abbots invited such figures to banquets and organized festivities. There, these figures always said: “We can strengthen your conviction that Christ walked the earth, for he passed by me, and because I treated him as I did, I must now wander through the world in this state.”

[ 17 ] From what we learn in history, we have no mental image of how deeply Ahasver’s stories affected people’s minds a few centuries ago. They were always different individuals, but they saw Christ pass before them, as in an Ahasver retrospective, so that they were believed. From them came the conviction: Yes! He lived, for he can speak of

[ 18 ] tell him. — Superficial people today might say: Could this really have had such a great influence that it averted the danger of the historical Christ being completely forgotten? — They do not know that such events took place throughout the world that history has not recorded. The fact that we are not completely mired in materialism today is a consequence of what emanated from these personalities. Today, “that could not happen.” In some places Ahasver had thick calluses, peculiar clothing, long hair, yellowed skin; he was tall and gaunt; in other places he was small, had a hunchback, but was always imbued with the consciousness, the vision of what the soul believed it had experienced at the moment when Christ passed before it.

[ 19 ] This ability—to look back into the Akashic Records and identify with them to the point of truly believing in them—was instilled in numerous individuals. Today, all these Ahasveruses would be sent to an asylum; back then, they were instruments for strengthening spiritual life. Bishops and abbots drew strength from them in the power of the Christian faith. From the spiritual worlds, the seed was planted in psychically gifted individuals, enabling them to look back upon the event at Golgotha. Through the peculiar nature of their consciousness, the narrators then saw themselves within that image. That was true; it was the living contemplation of the event of Golgotha. Much more than in the human’s higher consciousness, where the power of judgment asserts itself, what emanated from the Christ impulse took place in the subconscious regions of the soul. Today’s materialistically minded person easily scoffs at such things. They will regard this as a psychological epidemic and say: What credence can be given to what comes from diseased souls? — One might ask this materialist what he would say if someone became mentally ill to the point that psychiatrists locked him up in an asylum, but there, out of his enlightenment, he began to conceive of the air motor that truly exists as an idea in people’s minds? They would then accept that from such a soul as well and not ask whether it comes from a diseased soul. Whether a soul is diseased is neither a criterion nor an objection. The point is to examine the content of what comes from the soul. The worst thing about our materialistic mindset is that we appeal to secondary considerations rather than to the power of truth.

[ 20 ] When we look at the development of humanity in this way, it becomes clear to us that we must understand the Christ impulse as a living force that works far more in the depths of the soul and makes use of physical means than people realize. Had it remained limited to that, its influence would not have gone very far. But in our time, things are beginning to change, so that little by little what was thought for the Greeks—and with which the consciousness of the human ego was actually born—must begin to work within us. How does this thought assert itself today? This need not be substantiated by Spiritual Science, but by philosophy. In the centuries before the founding of Christianity, beginning with Parmenides and extending to Aristotle, thought begins to emerge in the development of the world. Thinking in images begins only in Greek life. This prepares the way for true self-consciousness. Then comes the Christ impulse. It works in conjunction with what has emerged as the power of the self. In our time, we see this in Hegelianism, which is indeed little noticed but is a significant phenomenon of humanity, as Hegel wrestles with the thought that seeks to encompass the entire world. Humanity develops in the world; it crowns this development by filling the world with thought. Through this, it perceives the environment. But thought can do two things: it can develop properly—which can be compared to the development of a seed into a flower—or the seed can serve as human nourishment. In that case, it is torn from its continuous flow. If it remains in the continuous flow, a new plant develops; life for the future is likely to spring from it. It is the same with human thought. It is said that through it we form images of the environment. But using it for such knowledge is like using seeds for food. We divert the thought from its current. But if it persists in its current—if we do not, so to speak, use it for nourishment—then we allow it to live its own germ life, let it blossom into meditation and inspiration, let it develop into a new, life-giving existence. That is the true current for the thought. In the future, people will recognize that what has been regarded as knowledge of the world behaves like the grain that does not develop into new grain but is driven out into an entirely different current; but what we learn to recognize through knowledge of the higher world is the thought grasped philosophically in freedom, which leads directly into spiritual life through meditation and concentration.

[ 21 ] We have reached the point where it will be recognized that ordinary knowledge stands to supersensory knowledge as a grain used for food stands to one that grows into new grain. Inner knowledge of thoughts is what the future must bring. Philosophy in the old sense has been overcome; its time has passed. People will realize that such knowledge must always exist, but that it must lead to a secondary stream of development. They will realize that the living thought, which transforms itself into meditation and concentration, leads to spiritual knowledge of human nature and to knowledge of the spiritual world.

[ 22 ] When we consider various phenomena in our spiritual life, certain things may strike us. Here, one is certainly free to say and discuss things that would be misunderstood in the outer world. A man is regarded today as a great philosophical mind who, in essence, limits his wisdom to repeating over and over again: Human beings must not stop at external knowledge; they must grasp the spirit. — One could say that he is repeating, in different variations: Human beings cannot stop at mere external knowledge; they must grasp the spiritual within themselves, must experience it within themselves; it must not be grasped merely in concepts, but must become alive. He does not say what the spirit is; nothing is recognized. This is the hallmark of Eucken’s philosophy. It does not lead to true spiritual knowledge. When thinking takes shape out of itself, it does not become an indeterminate spiritual experience, but rather it becomes rounded within itself, and what we have come to know as the etheric body resonates with thinking. When thinking transforms into meditation, this thought will take shape, and from the human etheric body there emerges—the spiritual human being. Humanity, in its development, is on the path from philosophy to a living knowledge of the spirit.

[ 23 ] We are on the right path. Those who recognize this understand the times, but one cannot gain a true understanding of these matters without developing a sacred reverence for knowledge—a reverence that restrains one from applying one’s own judgment as the ultimate standard. One must always be willing to prepare oneself for new knowledge, for as the soul is, it is fit only for the secondary stream of knowledge. Only when it develops further is it fit to truly enter the spiritual world. Only then do we truly understand our task within our community, when we feel, with all humility, how we are called to know something of this great reevaluation of all concepts of knowledge that seek to lead into spiritual life. We wish to remain entirely modest, yet we may call some who are regarded today as great minds mere shallow chatterers, for this is not disparaging criticism. What we must find our way into is: combining clear, strong, and energetic judgment regarding what we strive for with humility; recognizing that, in the grand scheme of things, we are only at the beginning, but our hearts can swell, can glow with joy at the thought of what is to become of that toward which we wish to steer, to which we wish to dedicate our most intimate soul forces. I wish to appeal not only to your imagination, but to the deepest powers of your heart, to that part of your soul where your deepest feeling for the pulse of the times is to be found. Then you will understand what is meant by the fact that such speech is intended only to hint at what the leading forces of our time—the spiritual individualities of whom we know that they move through the currents of our age—call upon us to speak. We do not move forward merely by acquiring ever more concepts for what the spiritual world is—we must make it our own—but we truly move forward only by connecting each new idea with something that springs from the deepest depths of our soul, so that this ever-increasing understanding may prove itself before the leading powers of the age. We can feel them speaking into the innermost depths of our soul. Long before we hear this speaking as a warning, we can feel how our movement is thus carried by these spiritual guiding powers, whose heralds we are in the true sense within our movement. This consciousness should pour out like a true stream of the soul over what we are doing.