The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Four Sacrifices of Christ

[ 1 ] The Three Preliminary Stages of the Mystery of Golgotha

[ 2 ] What our present culture needs above all is that, by allowing the findings of Spiritual Science to take effect within us, we may gain a new understanding of Christ. And it is precisely this new understanding of Christ that is met with hostility by many who today bear the official seal of Christianity. It is necessary that we increasingly develop an understanding of how our culture needs a school of selflessness. A renewal of morality, a deepening of human moral life, can only come through the training of selflessness. Under the conditions of the present cycle of time, human beings can only undergo this school of selflessness if they acquire an understanding of true selflessness—a penetrating understanding of true selflessness. Now, as we survey the evolution of the world, the development of the world, we cannot find a deeper understanding of selflessness than that which has been given to us through the appearance of Christ on earth. And to recognize Christ means to undergo the school of selflessness. To recognize Christ means to become acquainted with all those impulses of human development that trickle into our soul in such a way that they ignite, warm, and call forth everything in that soul that is predisposed to selflessness, to active soul-life, to selflessness. Under the influence of materialism, humanity’s selflessness was lost in a way that will only be fully recognized in the future. But by delving into the Mystery of Golgotha, by permeating our entire feeling, our entire soul being, with the knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha, we can once again acquire a culture of selflessness. And we can say: What Christ has done for the development of the Earth is encapsulated in the fundamental impulse of selflessness, and what he can become for the conscious development of the human soul is the school of selflessness! We become most aware of this when we view the Mystery of Golgotha in its broader context.

[ 3 ] This Mystery of Golgotha, as we know it, has taken place once in the course of Earth’s physical evolution. Once, the being we recognize as the Christ-being incarnated in a human body, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But this Mystery of Golgotha has three preliminary stages. Three times something happened beforehand, though not yet on Earth, but in the spiritual world. And in a sense, we have three Mysteries of Golgotha, of which we must say that they have not yet taken place on the physical plane. Only the fourth took place on the physical plane and is the one of which the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles tell us. This greatest event on Earth was prepared by three super-earthly events. These super-earthly events occurred such that one lies in the ancient Lemurian epoch, two lie in the Atlantean epoch. The fourth event lies in the post-Atlantean epoch and is our Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 4 ] The three preceding events did not take place on Earth, but in the spiritual world; however, the power of these events has penetrated down to Earth. Let us try to understand how the forces of these three supermundane events, which prepared the way for the Mystery of Golgotha, have influenced the development of humanity.

[ 5 ] With regard to our moral life, our understanding of the world, and what takes place within our conscious soul, we must first become selfless. This is a task for our present culture as we look toward the future. Humanity must become ever more selfless; therein lies the future of true moral deeds, the future of all acts of love that can be accomplished by humanity on Earth. Our conscious life is on the path to selflessness, or must be on the path to selflessness. In a certain sense, however, there is already something essentially selfless within us. And it would be the greatest misfortune for human beings on Earth if, with regard to certain aspects of their nature, they had to be as selfish as they still must be in many respects today with regard to their moral, intellectual, and emotional lives. If, for example, selfishness were to seize our senses—or could seize them—to the same degree that it seizes our morality, this would be the greatest misfortune for human beings on Earth. For our senses act upon our bodies in such a way that selflessness is expressed in this sensory effect.

[ 6 ] We have eyes in our bodies. We see through these eyes. But we see only because the eyes themselves are selfless; we are not even aware of them. We carry them within us; we see things, as it were, through the eyes, but the eyes themselves are erased as such from our perception. The same is true of the other senses. We perceive the world because our sensory system is selfless. Let us suppose for a moment that our eyes were self-centered. What would happen to us then? We would, for example, approach a blue color, and as we approached it, our eye—because the eye would function in such a way that it would not let the color pass through but would immediately absorb it within the eye itself—would be sucked dry by the blue as it drew near. One would feel it in the eye like a suction force if the eye could become as selfish as we are in our moral, intellectual, and emotional lives. If we were to approach a red color and our eye were not to behave selflessly, but were to lay claim to experiencing the effect of the red within itself, the red would have a stinging effect on our eye. And if our eye were to become selfish, we would experience a sucking or stinging pain in response to all impressions. We would be aware that we have eyes, but we would perceive nothing but a sucking or stinging pain. In reality, modern human beings go through the world knowing that color and light effects exist. But they need not think of the eye. It selflessly effaces itself during perception. And it is the same with the other senses.

[ 7 ] Selflessness reigns in our senses. But the senses would never have attained this selflessness; it would have been taken from them as early as the Lemurian era if Lucifer had been free to act on his own in that ancient time. The spirit of whom the Bible rightly says: ‘Your eyes shall be opened’—this spirit made it necessary for human beings to be placed in a sphere of earthly life in which their eyes, had they developed as they would have had to under the influence of Lucifer, would have become selfish. And at every impression—and so it would have been for the other senses as well—the human being would have cried out: ‘Oh, it stings here!’ — and he would not have perceived the red color in his surroundings, or he would have said: ‘Oh, it is sucking at me’ — and would not have perceived the blue color, but rather the sucking effect in his eye. This danger to human development was averted as early as the Lemurian epoch by the fact that — but not on Earth at that time, rather in the supersensible worlds — the very being who later, through the Mystery of Golgotha, incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, was at that time ensouled—I cannot say incarnated—in an archangelic being, a being from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi. Thus, while the Earth was passing through its Lemurian epoch, there lived in spiritual heights a being who—one might say, through a kind of foreshadowing of the baptism of John—came into being because an archangel sacrificed his soul, and the Christ permeated this archangelic being. Through this, however, he unleashed a force that worked into human earthly evolution. And the result of this influence was a calming of the senses, a harmonization of the senses. And when we are able today to use our senses in such a way that these senses are selfless, we will—if we have understood this fact and have been made grateful to the world order—look back to ancient times and say: What we are as sensory beings, what makes it possible for us to perceive not pain through our senses but the magnificent nature around us, stems from the first Christ sacrifice. By incarnating in an archangel, he brought about the effect that diverted the danger of sensory selfishness from human evolution. That was the first preliminary stage of the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 8 ] Gradually, human beings will learn to develop a deep, meaningful religious feeling when they look upon the splendor of nature, when they gaze up at the starry sky, at everything that sunlight illuminates, at all that surrounds us in the animal, mineral, and plant kingdoms; human beings will learn to say: That I can thus behold the world around me, that I am thus placed within this world, that my senses are not sources of pain but instruments for perceiving the world’s glory—I owe this to the first sacrifice made by Christ as a preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. And before us we glimpse, in perspective, a time when the contemplation of nature, the enjoyment of nature, will be permeated by Christ, when people will feel and say to themselves, as they go out and delight in the glorious spring, in the beauties of summer, or in other delights of nature: As we take in all the splendor that nature spreads out around us, we must be aware: It is not we, but Christ within our senses who makes us capable of perceiving nature in this way.

[ 9 ] And it was in the early stages of Atlantean development that—now driven by Lucifer and Ahriman—selfishness sought to take hold of another system of human organization, namely the life organs. Let us try to visualize the essence of our life organization from this perspective. What, then, is this essence? One need only consider what happens to a person when this essence of the life organs is impaired. And it is impaired when organic diseases of the life organs arise. Then the person begins to experience the selfishness of their lungs, heart, stomach, and other organs. That is when the times begin when a person, only by feeling the pain, knows they have a stomach, a heart—when they know it in their immediate consciousness: Being sick means that an organ has become selfish, leading a life of its own within our organism. In ordinary, normal human life, this is not the case. There, within the overall organization of the human being, the individual organs live selflessly. And our everyday condition only keeps us securely upright in the world when we can go through the world with selfless organs, when we do not feel that we have a stomach, lungs, and so on, but when we have them without feeling them, when they do not assert themselves immediately, but when they are serving members of the whole organism.

[ 10 ] On another occasion, at another time, we will discuss why illness is caused by the selfishness of the organs; today we shall merely point out the normal state of affairs. If it had depended solely on Ahriman and Lucifer, entirely different conditions would have arisen as early as the Atlantean epoch. Every single human organ would have become self-centered, and something quite remarkable would have occurred. Let us suppose that a person approached a piece of fruit—that is, something that exists in the external world and can be consumed by us, or that has some connection to our physical constitution. One day, this very relationship to our vital organs will become a subject of medical study, when science allows itself to be inspired by Spiritual Science. Then we will know that, for example, when a person picks cherries from a tree and eats them, precisely what passes into the organism through the cherries has a special relationship to certain organs; other fruits have different relationships to other organs. Everything that enters the human organism has certain relationships to this organism. If what was meant to have happened through Ahriman and Lucifer in the Atlantean era had been fulfilled, then, for example, we would have picked cherries, and the organ related to the cherries would have felt an intense craving. An infinite greed would have been expressed there, and the human being would have felt the organ in question selfishly standing out from the whole organism, but the other organs would have fought against it just as selfishly within his organism. Or let us take another case: suppose there is something that is harmful to the human being. Just as things in the external world have certain beneficial relationships with the human being, so do other things in the external world have harmful relationships. If the human being were to approach some poisonous plant or something else that would have only harmful effects on this or that organ, he would sense this relationship through the inner activity of the organ, and this would express itself in a terrible, agonizing feeling of fear. The person would feel: there is something before them that affects their organ in such a way that it feels, as it were, burned out.

[ 11 ] Let us not consider what humans eat, but rather the air that surrounds us. Everything present in the air has a connection to our organs. If what Ahriman and Lucifer intended had come to pass, if human beings were left entirely to their own devices, they would be driven through the world by the most animalistic craving for whatever is beneficial to one organ or another, and by a terrible revulsion toward whatever is harmful to one organ or another. Let us create a mental image of ourselves being placed in the world in this way, with such physical organs, so that we would be, to the highest degree, a plaything for every pleasant aroma, which we would chase after even if it were an hour away, or a feeling of revulsion would compel us from afar to flee. If we were tossed back and forth like a rubber ball, just imagine, how could we possibly develop in the world? That this did not come to pass, that our life organs have been tempered, that they have been harmonized, is the result of the fact that during the time when humanity underwent the first Atlantean development, the second preliminary stage of the Mystery of Golgotha took place in the super-earthly spheres. Once again, the Christ Being incarnated in an archangelic being, and what was brought about by this radiated down into the Earth’s atmosphere. This gave rise to that harmonization, that dampening of the life organs, which makes the organs in human beings selfless. In our interaction with the external world, we would constantly be the cause of the worst illnesses; we could not be healthy at all if this second Christ event had not taken place. And again—this presents itself to us as a prospect for the future—when humanity is able to imbue itself with a genuine understanding of the spiritual world, it will develop a sense of gratitude toward the spiritual beings on whom human beings depend. Humanity will be filled with that true piety through which it will say: I feel that I can only be a physical human being with the selflessness of my organs because it is not I alone who have developed in the world, but the Christ within me, who has fashioned my organs in such a way that I can be human! — Thus we learn more and more that, fundamentally, we must understand everything that makes us human in the most all-encompassing sense in such a way that we say: Not I, but the Christ within me. — The Christ has provided for the entire development of humanity in the three preliminary stages of the Mystery of Golgotha, which He accomplished prior to the actual Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 12 ] It was during the final stages of the Atlantean era that humanity faced a third danger. Thinking, feeling, and willing were to be thrown into disorder. Selfishness was to take hold of thinking, feeling, and willing. What would have resulted from this? Well, human beings would have willed this or that, would have followed this or that impulse of the will; their thinking would have followed one impulse, their feeling another. It was necessary for the development of humanity that thinking, feeling, and willing be integrated into the totality of the soul as selfless elements. Under the mere influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, they would not have been able to do this. Then thinking, feeling, and willing would have become selfish; they would have, as it were, torn apart the soul’s harmonious working. Then, toward the end of the Atlantean development, the third Christ event occurred. Once again, the Christ Being incarnated in an archangelic being, and the power that arose in the supersensible world through the Christ permeating an archangelic being made possible the harmonization of thinking, feeling, and willing. Truly, just as the physical rays of the sun must act upon the earth so that all plant life does not wither, so must the Sun Spirit from the supersensible worlds reflect its light upon the earth, as I have now described. On the third stage, it harmonized thinking, feeling, and willing, just as they had to be harmonized for normal human life.

[ 13 ] What would have become of humankind if this third Christ event had not taken place? It would have been seized with fury by its wild desires, by the life of its will. He might have gone mad, even as, on the other hand, his intellect would have thought selfishly and scornfully about what the will accomplishes in its frenzy. This was averted by the third Christ event, for the Christ was present for the third time as a Christ-being in the outer soul of an archangel, a being from the hierarchy of the Archangeloi.

[ 14 ] Humanity has preserved a memory of how human passion and human thought were harmonized by the forces that were then working down from the super-earthly worlds. And this symbol of remembrance exists; it is simply not understood correctly. St. George defeating the dragon, or Michael defeating the dragon, is the symbol that was created for the third Christ event, since Christ took on the form of an archangel. And the dragon he tramples is the one who has thrown human thinking, feeling, and willing into disorder. All who look to St. George and the dragon, or to Michael and the dragon, or to similar matters, are in truth speaking of the third Christ event. And the Greeks, who in their wondrous mythology created something like afterimages of what took place in the spiritual world at the end of the Atlantean epoch, revered the Sun Spirit as the harmonizer of thinking, feeling, and willing in human beings. “You, Sun Spirit,” said those people in Greece who knew something of this, “ you have taken on a soul in an ethereal spiritual form—for such is the form of those we now call Archangels. There you have unfolded into harmony, upon your wondrous lyre on which you make the tones of the human soul resound harmoniously, that which would otherwise rage wildly and uncontrollably through the human soul as thinking, feeling, and willing! — Thus the Sun Spirit became the guardian spirit of the passions raging wildly within the human being, when they, as could happen, were stirred to life by the wild vapors rising from the earth’s interior, breaking through the earth. And if a human being were to expose themselves to these vapors and allow only them to affect them, their thinking, feeling, and willing would be in a wild, chaotic turmoil within them. Thus the Greeks placed the Pythia above those vapors that, through Lucifer and Ahriman, brought the passions from the earth into disorder; but Apollo outshone the Pythia, vanquished the wildness of the passions—and she became a prophetess. In the sun spirit of Apollo, the Greeks perceived the Christ of the third Christ event. And in the relationship to this—the mood of the Pythia that governs the passions, in this protection that the god Apollo bestowed upon the Pythia—in this, the Greeks saw the effect of the third Christ sacrifice: the harmonization of human passions thrown into disorder through the third Christ event. But the sun spirit Apollo is, in essence, the same for the Greeks as what was depicted in the image as Michael or St. George defeating the dragon.

[ 15 ] So we see that it made sense for Justin the Martyr to make a curious statement. A statement which, since it was made by the martyr, may still be regarded as Christian, even though various contemporary representatives of Christianity would condemn it as heretical. Justin said: Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato were also Christians, but only in the sense that one could be a Christian before the Mystery of Golgotha had been fulfilled. Today’s theologians know nothing of this anymore, but the early days of Christianity, the Christian martyrs, still knew that the ancient Greek sages, even if they may not have used the name of Christ, would nevertheless have answered, based on their knowledge of the mysteries, if asked: ‘Who was Apollo?’ they would have answered, drawing on their knowledge of the mysteries: ‘The great Sun Spirit who will later live in a human being; he appears to us in Apollo in such a way that he is ensouled within him as in the form of an archangel.’

[ 16 ] And then came the fourth, the earthly Mystery, that of Golgotha. The same Christ-being who had incarnated three times in the form of an archangel—that same Christ-figure—then incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth through the event we call the baptism of John in the Jordan.

[ 17 ] I admit that it will seem strange to you when I say: Three times has this being incarnated in the form of an archangel and then taken on a human form. For it would be more logical to say that between the incarnation in the form of an archangel and the incarnation in human form there was an incarnation in the form of an angel—that is, that the Christ would have incarnated in the form of an angel at one of the stages. That is how it appears. But even if people accuse one of fabricating the things that come from Spiritual Science, truly, it is not so. You can see that from other things as well. And if you ask me: How is it that Christ did not descend from hierarchy to hierarchy and only then descend to humanity—if you ask me that today, I must answer: I do not know, because I do not speculate at all. Rather, factual research shows that Christ made use of an archangelic form three times—the angelic form was omitted—and then of a human form. I leave it to future research to determine why this is so. Today I do not yet know, but it is so. If one were to invent it, one would—as you can gather from what has just been said—do it quite differently.

[ 18 ] Thus began the fourth stage of the Mystery of Golgotha. This Mystery of Golgotha averted another danger: the danger that, under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, the human ego would have fallen into disorder. The sense organs would have been thrown into disorder by Lucifer during the Lemurian epoch; in the early Atlantean epoch, disorder and disharmony threatened the life organs; in the late Atlantean epoch, the soul organs—those organs underlying thinking, feeling, and willing—were threatened. And in the post-Atlantean era, disorder threatened the ego itself. Because the ego was to take its place in human development during this time, efforts were made to establish harmony between this ego and the forces of the cosmos, so that the ego would not become a plaything of the cosmic forces. It could have become a plaything between these forces. It would have been formed in such a way that it could not have retained its self, and if it had been surrendered to these forces, that which comes from the soul would have been carried away by all the elemental forces derived from wind, air, and waves. They would have carried the human being away everywhere.

[ 19 ] Michelangelo painted it. Look at the paintings Michelangelo created. He painted what threatened humanity. It was evident in the Sibyls. He painted it wonderfully, depicting the type of person who feels their ego falling into disorder, so that when this ego falls into disorder, all kinds of wonderful wisdom can emerge, but in such a way that the person cannot control it. Look at how Michelangelo painted them. They depict the various stages of those who, through the disorder of the ego, have surrendered to the elemental beings. On the other hand, however, something else also emerges. In the same space, he has painted the contemplative figures of prophecy, in whom one can see that they let shine forth that which maintains the order of the ego in relation to the cosmos. It moves us deeply when we see the yearning for the ego in the prophets, and on the other hand see the human beings who have been thrown into disorder by the ego itself, and then see Christ himself in this space—Christ, who incarnates in a human body and who must bring order to the ego that was to come into the world.

[ 20 ] Yes, Spiritual Science will show us ever more deeply how this human “I” can attain selflessness through the fourth Christ event, the Mystery of Golgotha. The senses have said: Not I, but Christ within us. The organs of life have said: Not I, but Christ within us. The organs of the soul have said: Not I, but Christ within us. The moral and intellectual life of the human being must learn to say: Not I, but Christ within me. — Every step into the spiritual world shows us this.

[ 21 ] I wanted to discuss this today so that, on another occasion—which we will hopefully have quite soon— we can provide specific occult evidence for these facts and show how what we call Spiritual Science will permeate our moral and intellectual lives in such a way that human beings become disciples of selflessness, that Christ lives within us, and that we feel Christ alive in every word spoken about Spiritual Science.

[ 22 ] Let me mention just one more thing. You know that we have been performing our Mystery Dramas in Munich since 1909. One may consider what we have presented on the Mystery Stage to be good or bad, but that is not the issue at hand. But what has been done required a certain kind of power—a power that does not readily come to a person simply because they are a human being on earth. You see, when we work in Dornach today, when we want to work with our various types of hardwoods, we need physical strength. We cannot say that we can consciously summon this physical strength. It comes from our body, from what we are capable of in the soul. We do not have it in our hands. Nor do we have everything in our hands that we accomplish in the spiritual realm and for which we need spiritual strength. That does not depend solely on our talents as human beings, just as it does not depend on our talents whether we can do something, but also on the muscular strength of our body. Thus we need spiritual powers that are just as outside of us as the muscular powers are outside our soul. I know that shallow people may come and say: You are a fool; you believe that spiritual powers come to you from outside, whereas they arise only from within yourself. — Let them take me for a fool. I find them to be precisely the kind of people who cannot distinguish hunger from a piece of bread. I know how spiritual forces flow into people from outside. Just as one can believe—only if one is mad—that hunger itself produces the bread that satisfies it, so little is that the case; just as little does the power of our soul produce those forces we need for spiritual work: they must flow into us, must come to us. And just as we know very well that hunger is within us and bread comes from outside—if we are not mad—so too does the one who lives in spiritual worlds know what is within him and what comes from outside. And for my part, since the year 1909, whenever it came to developing in all stillness and tranquility what was necessary for the Mystery Plays, I felt the spiritual power that came from outside. I knew that the spiritual eye of a spiritual being rested upon what had been done. And I speak of this as a direct experience.

[ 23 ] In the early days, when we were working in Germany in the field of our Spiritual Science, a friend of ours came to us who received what we were able to offer at that time with wonderful enthusiasm. But she not only received with a wonderful, devoted enthusiasm what we were able to offer at that time regarding human evolution, cosmic mysteries, reincarnation, and karma; she also combined this with a wonderful aesthetic sense. Everything we went through with this person in teaching and conversation was bathed in beauty. We were still few in number back then. We had not yet needed to squeeze into such a space as is the case today. And the things we speak of today before a large audience—when we discussed them, there were only three of us: myself and two other people. One of these people left us on the physical plane as early as 1904, passing into the spiritual world. As is often the case, such individuals undergo a process of development after death. In 1907, when we performed Schuré’s reconstruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries at our congress, there was still no sign of such an influence. It began in 1909 and has grown steadily in recent years. I knew precisely that this was the individuality of that personality so dear to us, whom one could truly love objectively, purely because of such a quality. Having passed into the spiritual world, she acted as a guardian angel for what we had to accomplish in uniting the aesthetic with the esoteric in our mysteries. And thus, one felt well protected by this personality, who had been taken into the spiritual world in 1904, by that which then passed into our earthly activity, which flowed into earthly activity and which permeated us—to which we look up gratefully, as it was expressed through the resting gaze of a spiritual personality upon our deeds.

[ 24 ] But then, when it came to cultivating with that personality what one might call: dialogue—one can call it a dialogue because it is a kind of interaction—when that should occur, it was always the case that this personality revealed: the more we imbue ourselves with the thought of Christ in earthly evolution, the better we can find the path to our earthly effectiveness. If I were to clothe in earthly words what this individuality always spoke, I would say—though of course I must express only symbolically what is different in the spiritual world: I find my way to you so well because you are increasingly finding the way to make your Spiritual Science an expression of what the living Word of Christ itself is.

[ 25 ] This will become the Christ impulse for us: the living bridge between life on Earth and life in the higher worlds. Three times has the Christ, from the higher worlds, endowed humanity with the very nature it needs in order to live rightly. Three times has the Christ made the human organs of sense, life, and feeling selfless. Now it is up to human beings to become selfless in intellectual and moral terms by learning to understand, for this intellectual and moral life, the words: Not I, but the Christ in me.

[ 26 ] The world will recognize that what we proclaim as Spiritual Science is the Word of Christ. He said: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” — The mission of Spiritual Science in our time is to open the gates to the living Christ. The dead unite with the living in understanding, knowing that Christ has found the transition from heaven to earthly activity. And when the dead draw near to the living on earth as their closest guardian spirits, they find the souls of the living all the more intensely, all the more so, the more these souls themselves are permeated and spiritualized by the Christ impulse. Christ, as the high Sun Spirit, descended from the super-earthly worlds through the Mystery of Golgotha so that he might take up residence in human souls. Spiritual Science is to become the message of how Christ can take up residence in human souls. When Christ takes up residence in human souls on Earth, then the Christ-force will in turn radiate back from the Earth’s aura into those worlds which Christ has left for the salvation of Earth’s people, and the entire cosmos will be permeated by Christ.

[ 27 ] We gradually rise to such a deep understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha through a genuine immersion in Spiritual Science. When we consider this, and also consider what a school of selflessness must be like for the intellectual and moral life of humanity in the future, then we will be so intensely imbued with the necessity of the proclamation of the Mystery of Golgotha by Spiritual Science! Then we will know what is meant by the spiritual-scientific impulses that seek to enter the present. Then that Christ impulse will permeate humanity—one that truly all people can accept, because Christ did not appear to a single nation, but because he is the high solar being who belongs to the whole earth and who can penetrate all human souls, regardless of which nation or religion they belong to. May, little by little, a great many people find their way to such an understanding of the Christ impulse and to such an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha; then perhaps that which is today called unchristian and condemned as heresy by many who consider themselves Christian will appear to be the most Christian of all.

[ 28 ] Let us not merely attempt to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha intellectually; let us strive to embrace this Mystery of Golgotha with our whole soul—and for this, we need Spiritual Science. Then, too, we will be able to know ourselves as members of our spiritual movement, as those souls who understand what humanity needs now and in the near future.

[ 29 ] Those were the topics I wanted to discuss with you today. I hope that, in the not-too-distant future, I will have the opportunity to continue these reflections here in this city.