The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] First of all, we must draw attention today to certain positive findings from occult research, which, on the one hand, are very well suited to introducing us to the nature of the human being, but which, on the other hand, show us just how complex a being the human being actually is in the world. But can we think otherwise than that human beings are truly complex beings in the world when we consider that the actual ideal image of the human being—what a human being can be when they truly develop all the potentials within them—is essentially the content of the religion of the gods, and that, in essence, all the spiritual beings of the various hierarchies that one can come to know in connection with human nature allow their goals to work together to build up the human being—as the very meaning of the cosmos—out of the entire cosmos!

[ 2 ] The first thing to note is that, through the perceptions he receives from the external world—as they appear to him in his consciousness—a person actually takes in only a small fraction of what is actually rushing toward him. As human beings stand within the physical world, with their sense organs open, observing the world with their intellect—which is bound to their brain and nervous system—and attempting to explain to themselves what is approaching them in this way, only a small part of what is rushing toward them actually reaches a human mental image; only a small part truly enters human consciousness. There is much more contained in light and colors, in sound and so on, than what comes to human consciousness. External materialistic physics, in its childish view of the world, speaks of material processes behind colors, behind light, and so on—atomic vibrations and the like. This is really, one might say, nothing more than a childish view of the world. For in truth, the following is the case.

[ 3 ] We must explore human perception through clairvoyance, for it is only through observing the actual process of perception that we can gain an understanding of the relationship between human beings and the environment around them—even if we remain solely on the physical plane. Something highly peculiar becomes apparent when one observes the process of perception clairvoyantly. Let us say that something acts upon our eye; we perceive light or color, so we have in our consciousness the sensation of light or color: the remarkable thing that is now discovered through spiritual research is that in the human being not only do this light and this color appear, but that, as it were in the wake of light and color, simultaneously with our sensation of light and color images, one might say, a kind of light or color body arises within us. Our eye causes us to have the sensation of light and color. One could therefore say: the light streams in and gives us the sensation of light, but looking deeper into our being, we discover that while the light resides in our consciousness, our human being is permeated by something that must die within this human being so that we may have the sensation of light. We cannot have any perception or sensation from the outside without a kind of “corpse formation”—which arises as it were in the wake of this sensation—penetrating through it. Spiritual research must simply say: Here I am looking at the human being; I know that right now he is sensing red. But I see that this red, which lives in his consciousness, pours out something of itself, as it were, and permeates his entire being—insofar as it has flowed into his skin and the boundaries of his etheric body—with something that is like the corpse of the color, something that kills something within the human being. Just think for a moment that, in fact, whenever we face the physical world with our sense organs open, we take in the corpses of all our perceptions—like phantoms, but effective phantoms—into ourselves. Something always dies within us as we perceive the external world. This is a most peculiar phenomenon. And the spiritual researcher must ask himself: Yes, what is happening there? What is the cause of this most peculiar phenomenon?

[ 4 ] We must consider what is actually happening with what rushes toward us like light. This light has a great deal behind it. What the light reveals is, as it were, merely the outpost of what is rushing toward us. Behind the light, however, lies not the wave motion that external physics fantasizes about, but behind the light, behind all perceptions, behind all impressions lies, first and foremost, that which we can only grasp when we view the world from a perspective of Spiritual Science through imaginations, through creative images. The moment we were to see everything, to perceive everything that lives in the light or in the sound or in the warmth, we would perceive, behind what comes to our consciousness, creative imagination, and within this, inspiration revealing itself anew, and within that, intuition. It is that which comes to our consciousness as a sensation of light and sound, as it were the uppermost layer, as it were merely the foam of what surges toward us, but within it lives that which, if it were to come to our consciousness, could become imagination, inspiration, and intuition within us.

[ 5 ] So, in reality, only a quarter of what rushes toward us is actually present in our perception; the other three-quarters penetrate us without ever entering our consciousness. So while we stand there and have a sensation of color, creative imagination, inspiration, and intuition penetrate us, as it were, through the surface of the color sensation, and sink into us. If we examine these three latter intruders more closely, we find that if this imagination, inspiration, and intuition, as they seek to force their way into our organism through sensory perception, were to actually enter it, they would have such an effect that even during the time of our physical earthly existence between birth and death, they would evoke within us a spiritualization such as I indicated yesterday as a possible result of Lucifer’s temptation. This imagination, inspiration, and intuition would affect us in such a way that we would feel the urge to let go of everything—everything—that still exists within us as a predisposition for our striving toward distant futures, toward the human ideal, and we would want to spiritualize ourselves with all that we are. We would want to become spiritual beings at the level of perfection we have attained by then through our past lives. We would, so to speak, say to ourselves: To become human is too great an effort for us; we would still have to walk a difficult path into the future. We leave behind whatever potential for becoming human still lies within us. We would rather become an angel with all the imperfections we carry within us, for then we ascend directly into the spiritual world, and there we spiritualize our being. We will then, however, become more imperfect than we could have become in the cosmos according to our aptitudes, but we will become spiritual, angelic beings.

[ 6 ] Here, once again, you can see from an example just how important what is called the threshold of the spiritual world is, and how important the being known as the Guardian of the Threshold is. For there he stands at the very point I have just spoken of. He allows only the sensation itself to enter our consciousness and does not allow that which, if it were to enter our consciousness as imagination, inspiration, or intuition, would create within us—as we are—an immediate urge toward spiritualization, accompanied by a renunciation of all future human life. This must be veiled from us; the door of our consciousness is closed against it, yet it penetrates our being. And as it penetrates our being without our being able to illuminate it with the light of our consciousness—as we must allow it to descend into the dark depths of our subconscious—the spiritual beings whose adversary is Lucifer enter our being from the other side, and a struggle now arises within us between Lucifer, who sends his imagination, inspiration, and intuition, and those spiritual beings whose adversary is Lucifer. We would always witness this struggle in every sensation, in every perception, were it not for the threshold set for the spiritual world in relation to external perception, which only the clairvoyant gaze does not close off.

[ 7 ] From this you can see what is actually taking place within human nature. The result of this struggle that is taking place there is what I have characterized as a kind of corpse, a partial corpse, within us. This corpse is the expression of what must become entirely material within us, like a mineral inclusion, so that we do not find ourselves in a position to spiritualize it. If this corpse were not formed through the struggle between Lucifer and his opponents, we would have within us, instead of this corpse, the result of imagination, inspiration, and intuition, and we would ascend directly into the spiritual world. This corpse forms the counterweight through which the good spiritual beings, whose adversary is Lucifer, initially sustain us in the physical world—sustaining us in such a way that we have, as it were, veiled within it that which must arise in us as an urge toward spiritualization, so that we may strive, beyond this veiling, toward the true ideal of human nature, the full unfolding of all the potentials that may lie within us. Thus, because this enclosure—this phantom of a corpse, as it were—forms within us, and because, as we perceive, we are constantly permeated, so to speak, by something that is at the same time a corpse, we thereby kill within ourselves, during the act of perception, this ever-rising urge toward spiritualization. And as this enclosure forms, what arises is what I have often alluded to—and what is important is that one grasps it in its full significance.

[ 8 ] You see, when you look into a mirror, you have a pane of glass in front of you, but you would be looking right through that pane if it were not coated with a reflective layer. Because the pane of glass has a reflective coating, whatever is in front of the mirror is reflected. If you were to stand before your physical body in such a way that you could experience not only your perceptions but also your imaginings, inspirations, and intuitions entering it, then you would see right through the physical body, and you would experience a feeling that would make you say something like: I want nothing to do with this physical body; I pay it no mind at all, but I rise, just as I am, into the spiritual world. Truly, the physical body would stand before you like a glass mirror that has no coating. But now the physical body is permeated by this corpse. That is like the coating of the mirror. And now everything that falls upon it is reflected, but only in the way we experience it in our sensory perceptions. This is how sensory perceptions arise. Our constant corpse, which we carry within us, is the mirror coating of our entire body, and through it we see ourselves in the physical world. Through this, we exist as this individual physical being in the physical world. This is how complex the human being appears.

[ 9 ] Let us consider the other case, in which we do not merely perceive, but actually think. When we think, these are not sensory perceptions. Sensory perceptions may be the impetus for it, but actual thinking does not take place through sensory perceptions; rather, it occurs on a deeper, inner level. When we think, our actual thinking does not make impressions on our physical body, but it does make impressions on our etheric body. But when we think, not everything that lies within the thoughts enters into us. If everything that lies within the thoughts were to enter into us, then every time we think, we would first feel a multitude of living elemental beings pulsating within us; we would feel completely enlivened from within. In Munich I once said: If someone were to experience thoughts as they are, they would feel within the thoughts in such a confusion as in an anthill; everything would be life. We do not perceive this life in human thinking, because, in turn, only the foam of it, as it were, comes to our consciousness and forms precisely the shadow images of the thoughts that arise within us as our thinking. In contrast, what permeates the thoughts as living forces sinks into our etheric body. We do not perceive the living elemental beings that swarm through us there, but rather we perceive in the thoughts, as it were, only an extract, something like a shadow. The other, however—life—draws into us, and as it draws into us, it in turn permeates us in such a way that a new struggle arises within our etheric body, now a struggle between the progressive spirits and Ahriman, the Ahrimanic beings. And the expression of this struggle is that thoughts do not unfold within us as they would if they were living beings. If they were to unfold as they truly are, we would feel ourselves within the life of the thought-beings: they would move back and forth—but we do not perceive this. Instead, our etheric body, which would otherwise be completely transparent, is made opaque, as it were; I would say it becomes like a smoky topaz, which is permeated by dark layers, whereas quartz is completely transparent and pure. Thus our etheric body is permeated by spiritual darkness. That which permeates our etheric body is our treasure trove of memories.

[ 10 ] The treasure trove of memory arises because, in our etheric body, through the processes mentioned, thoughts are reflected, as it were, but now they are reflected in time, extending to the point up to which we actually remember in physical life. These are the reflected thoughts we hold in memory—the thoughts reflected from time. But deep down in our etheric body, behind the memory, the good divine-spiritual beings—whose adversary is Ahriman—are at work; there they create and fashion the forces that can in turn enliven what has died in the physical body through the processes described earlier. So while a corpse is being created in our physical body—a corpse that must be created, for otherwise we would have the urge to spiritualize ourselves with all the shortcomings we carry within us—something like a revitalizing life force emanates from the etheric body. So that what has been killed there can truly be transformed back into life in the future.

[ 11 ] But only now do we begin to realize the significance of what comes before and what comes after. For if we were to act upon the imaginings, inspirations, and intuitions that enter us in our immediate present, we would be following Lucifer and spiritualizing ourselves. But by casting them into the future—by not giving them free rein now, but preserving them as seeds for the future—they regain their true nature. What we would currently misuse, we will use in the future, once we have passed through the gate of death, to build ourselves a new life from the spiritual world. What, if we were to use it in the physical world, would lead us to spiritualize ourselves through our shortcomings, guides us after death as forces to return once more to physical life on Earth. Thus do things work in opposite ways in the various worlds.

[ 12 ] This is how it is with our thinking. And now let us consider our feeling. Indeed, what we carry within us as an inner feeling, as an inner sensation, is not, in turn, what it could actually be according to its entire inner nature. What we carry within us as a feeling, what comes to our consciousness as our feeling, is in fact, again, only a shadow of what truly lives within us, for spiritual beings also live within our feelings. If you recall what I said in the first lecture, you will sense that the spiritual beings who actually underlie the entire planetary system live within them; it is just that they do not come to our consciousness. Feeling, as we know it, comes to our consciousness; the other remains outside our consciousness. What does that actually mean: that the other remains outside our consciousness? It is truly very difficult to find the words in ordinary language that precisely characterize these things. Just as we must say: Perception and thinking produce within us something that is actually like a killing—though in thinking, through the counteraction, it is at the same time a kind of encouragement toward a future life—so we must say: Every feeling that resides within us, every feeling that arises within us, is not actually fully born within us, does not fully come into being. If everything that resides within us as we feel were to come out, then what lives there in the feeling would seize us quite differently, work through us quite differently. That which lies behind the feeling, that which makes the feeling a living being—a living being whose life is nourished by the entire planetary system—does not come out directly. The feeling, in turn, emerges from us only as a shadow of what it actually is. This means that once one truly enters one’s emotional world with a deeper sense of humanity, one actually feels something unsatisfying about every emotion. Toward every feeling, one feels that it could be intensified, that it could emerge more strongly. Specifically, one must have something like a secret experience with regard to the feeling: it could reveal much more to us of what lies within it; it conceals something of what lives within us, what is in the depths of the soul, and what emerges only half-born.

[ 13 ] When we consider our will—everything within us that can be a desire or a will—it is the same here, only to a greater degree, just as it is with feeling. Except that behind the will stands the spiritual being, the fundamental being, which actually lives in the sun. Not merely what lives in the planets, but what lives in the entire sun also lives there within the will. But it remains hidden. The will is even less fully born than feeling. Will would permeate us quite, quite differently if everything that lies within it were truly brought to light in our consciousness. In reality, only the very outermost surface of the will, only the most superficial froth-like formations of the will, come to expression. The rest remains hidden from us. And why does, in essence, a whole world remain hidden from us in feeling and in will? Because what remains hidden from us, if viewed from the physical plane, could not be borne by us; from the physical plane, it would appear such that we would want to ward it off, that we would want to turn away from it.

[ 14 ] That which lives in our feelings and will and has not yet come to fruition is karma in the making. Let’s say, for example, that we feel hostility toward someone—to choose a concrete example. Yes, what comes to our consciousness in this hostile feeling is merely the outer play of waves. Within it lie forces that extend across the entire planetary system. But what remains hidden from us is precisely what tells us: Through your hostile feeling, you are planting something imperfect within yourself; you must balance this out. — The moment what lives down there were to surface, the image of that which must balance the hostile feeling in karma would appear before us. And we would join forces with Lucifer and Ahriman to ward off this balancing, because we would be judging from the standpoint of the physical plane. But this is hidden from us on this physical plane; the Guardian of the Threshold conceals it from us for the simple reason that we can only judge these things—which do not arise from our feelings or our will—when we live in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. There we want what we would otherwise never want; there we want that which corresponds to a hostile mood to be truly balanced out, because there we have a genuine interest in the content of the religion of the gods, in the perfect ideal of humanity that seeks to make us into perfect human beings. We know that what has been caused by a hostile feeling must be made up for through an opposite balancing force. It must be preserved for the future after death, and only then may what is unborn in our feelings and our will come to light.

[ 15 ] Well, you see, I have presented to you, so to speak, a fourfold aspect of the human soul core. That which remains unborn from our feeling lives in the astral body; that which remains unborn from the will lives in the I. So, as we perceive the outer world, we have within us something like a physical phantom body, which is actually the mirror-like covering for our physical body. We have within us an enclosure, as it were, a darkening of the etheric body. We have within us something in the astral body that does not come to birth in the time between birth and death, and we have something from our will that does not come to birth in this time. — This fourfold aspect that the human being carries within must be preserved for the time between death and a new birth. But it lives within us as our soul core with the same certainty as the seed lies within the plant for the coming year. So you see, we can not only speak generally of a soul core, but we can even grasp this soul core in its fourfold nature. When we, let us say, carry a feeling within us that causes us unease, particularly from within, when we are not quite at peace with our lives, this happens because pressure is exerted from the unborn part of our feelings upon the conscious part of our feelings. How can this pressure be averted? Yes, you see, this pressure is something under whose threat human beings are, in essence, constantly standing. For what I have just described to you—insofar as it relates to feeling and will, that is, to what actually constitutes our inner soul life in the sense of the first lecture—is precisely what brings us into inner disharmony. If there were true harmony between the conscious part of feeling and will and that which remains beyond the threshold of consciousness—if there were a proper balance, true harmony—we would move through the sensory world as satisfied and capable human beings. Herein lies the root of all inner dissatisfaction. When someone experiences inner dissatisfaction, it stems from the pressure of the subconscious aspect of feeling and willing.

[ 16 ] Now I must add to what I have just said that, with regard to all these circumstances I have described, the nature of the human being has indeed changed in the course of its development. Things actually stand exactly as I have just described them in our time. They did not always stand that way. In earlier times of human development—let us say during the ancient Persian, Egyptian, and ancient Indian epochs—it was different. Of course, perceptions flowed in exactly the same way then, and they contained imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions; but in those earlier times, these imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions did not remain entirely without effect on human beings as they do today. They did not completely kill the inner physicality of the human being; they did not provide such a dense mineral influence, and this was because in those earlier times, from the other side—out of feeling and will—something sprang up when perceptions came from the outside under certain conditions. If, for example, we go back to the ancient times of Egyptian and Babylonian culture and observe the people there, we see that these very people perceived things quite differently. They certainly faced the external sensory world just as we do, but their bodies were still organized in such a way that the imaginations hidden within sensory perceptions did not have a completely stifling effect, but rather approached people with a certain liveliness. But because they entered with such vitality, they evoked within the human being the inner counterpart of what now remains entirely hidden from us within the ego and the astral body. The spiritual beings of the solar and planetary systems pressed forward from within and, in a sense, reflected what was brought to life through imagination. So that for the members of the ancient Egyptian and Babylonian cultures, there were certain moments of perception when, as they cast their gaze out into the physical world, they did not merely take in physical perceptions as we do, but rather these perceptions came to life. They knew that behind them lay something that unfolds in the realm of imagination. Therefore, they were not yet so foolish as to suppose, following the pattern of our present-day physicists, that material atomic vibrations lay behind perceptions, but they knew that there was life behind them, and from within them emerged, radiating outward, the images of the animated starry sky, even the sun. This was particularly strong during the Persian culture, where something like the inner spiritual power of the sun truly shone forth during external perception—Ahura Mazdao!

[ 17 ] If we go back to even earlier times, we find this interplay, this meeting of the inner and the outer, expressed even more strongly. Today this can no longer be the case, but a substitute can exist, and here we come to a point where we will, I would say, truly understand our task within the anthroposophical worldview from the very nature of the matter itself. A substitute must be created. We face the external world with our perceptions. We think about it, even though a part of this external world remains closed to us, exerting a numbing and darkening effect upon us. But we can enliven what is there, which is deadening and darkening, through Spiritual Science. And it is precisely through the enlivening of what is otherwise deadening and darkening that such a science arises, as it has been presented in the development through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages in my Occult Science. Every human being possesses this knowledge of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions; it is simply buried in the depths of their consciousness. They would not wish to be an earthly human being if they could see it so readily, without sufficient preparation. They would prefer that the Earth concern them not at all and that they could conclude with the Moon evolution. All the insights we can gain through Spiritual Science illuminate for us what remains hidden from us regarding the development of the past by penetrating into us. For what lives out there in the sensory perceptions as imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions—and does not enter within—is actually, when viewed through the veil of sensory perception, that which we have experienced in the past.

[ 18 ] It is a different matter altogether when it comes to what lives in our feelings and will. People may say—and many people today feel an urge to do so—: “Oh, what does any of this have to do with me, whatever these complicated minds are devising or have devised about a supernatural world?” I don’t take such mental images to heart.” — Anyone who says that has never grasped why religions actually came into being in the course of world history. For this is what all religious mental images have in common: that they refer to things human beings cannot perceive through the senses, that in religious mental images human beings must be filled with something they cannot perceive through the senses. Mental images that stem from what can be perceived through the senses can never give our feelings and will an impulse that serves as a driving force after death. In order for that which is unborn within us—in our feelings, in our will—to take effect, since it is meant to take effect after our ‘death,’ we do not need the mental images we can acquire through our sensory perceptions or through the intellect bound to the brain; those are of no help to us. Solely those mental images that correspond to what is not truly external, those that, when we take them in, make us devout, through which we look up into a spiritual world—these give us the impulse, the momentum, that we need after death. To imagine religiously means: to imagine what cannot yet work within us, but which is a force of action after death. With religious mental images, we take in not only concepts of knowledge, but something that can become effective after our death, and which must be such in the physical body precisely so that those who do not wish to reflect on such forces of action can laugh at it and reject it in their materialism. But he possesses only a paralysed power to bring forth what is unborn in his feeling and willing if he does not imbue himself with the mental images of the supersensible.

[ 19 ] That is why it must be emphasized so often: What has passed is illuminated by clairvoyant consciousness. It is recognized anew in the present, even insofar as it exists behind the veil of the sensory world as imagination, inspiration, and intuition, and exerts its influence upon the sensory world. In the past, this was given to people as religious faith, so that they would not lose all momentum for the time after death, so that they might have something in the core of their soul that could keep it alive, even after shedding the physical body. Now the time has come when people, out of understanding—out of an understanding of Spiritual Science—should acquire mental images of the supersensible worlds. Therefore, it cannot be emphasized often enough: only as a spiritual researcher can one investigate these things in the supersensible world. But once they have been investigated and communicated, there is something in our deepest soul that is a secret language of that soul, and which can understand and grasp what has been investigated by the spiritual researcher. Only when the prejudices of the intellect and the senses come into play is what is presented by spiritual research as supersensible mental images regarded as nonsense, as folly, and as fantasy—and yet, when it is received, it gives us the momentum for the soul’s core so that it may find its way in the cosmos throughout all future times. Only those who undergo an esoteric development will ever explore the content of the spiritual world. To know this content, to work through it inwardly in consciousness, to hold it in ideas and concepts, to possess it as a certainty of the soul’s existence in the spiritual world—this is something that people will increasingly need as essential spiritual nourishment.

[ 20 ] This is what shows us how we can understand the mission of our anthroposophical movement from within the matter itself. In ancient times, it was still the case that knowledge came from above and the content of that knowledge met it from below. Therefore, the ancients still had a direct awareness of the spiritual worlds, but this awareness grew increasingly dark and dull. Had it not grown dark and dull, human beings would not have attained full consciousness of their ego. Human beings can attain full consciousness of their ego only by developing to the highest degree within their physical body that phantom of the body of which I have spoken. Our physical body, as it were, must be completely covered—as a transparent being—with a mirror-like coating, and only when it is completely covered can we feel fully that we can say: I am an ego. This complete covering, however, developed only slowly and gradually. It developed in the course of human evolution, and this development was completed in the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. By then, the mirror coating was complete. Before that, the lower and the higher still met; the lower and the higher came together within the human being. But, one might say, the lower and the higher were completely pushed aside by the fact that the mirror coating was perfect, and the human being perceived only the reflection from the physical body. That was only when the event of Golgotha entered human development.

[ 21 ] What actually happened there? Yes, let us take a very close look at what took place! Just imagine these ancient people in the times before the Mystery of Golgotha; imagine that state of consciousness! From outside comes the enlivening of imaginations; from within rise images of the extra-human spiritual world. What are these images that rise up within the human being? As we know, this was possible in ancient times when the human state of consciousness was subdued. Those who recognized these things, who in ancient times, as initiates, were able to look into the human soul—how this coming together of animated imagination from the outside and inner vision still lived within it—did not say: “Man sees this alone”—but these ancient initiates said: It is, for example, Yahweh or Jehovah who looks upon his world within the human being, as was the case with the ancient Jews. God thinks within the human being. Just as we say today in our cycle of development, when we have thoughts: “I think”—so did those who knew these things in ancient times say, when visions arose from the spiritual world: “The gods think within us.” — Or when the unity of the Divine was recognized in monotheism: Yahweh thinks within man. Man is the stage for divine thoughts. — People felt so fulfilled that they said: The gods think within me.

[ 22 ] But human evolution made it increasingly impossible for this to continue. One might say that darkness increasingly stood in the way of the visions and thoughts of the gods within human nature. The inner phantom of death grew ever stronger, ever more significant. The time was approaching when no thoughts would rise up from human nature to meet the gods. Then that divine being—of whom one might say that she thought through the human being—felt that her consciousness—for this consciousness does indeed consist in her thoughts—was becoming ever more dull, ever more dim. And a longing arose in this divine being to awaken a new form of consciousness. Human beings come to a different form of consciousness. Gods, by creating a new consciousness, create something essential with it; for them, something essential thereby comes into being. And this essential being that came into being was, for the divine being now in question—who felt her consciousness fading away—Christ. Christ is the child of the Godhead who restores the consciousness of the Godhead within the human being. Thus the Christ-being had to become integrated into the human being.

[ 23 ] And we must take this awareness into ourselves: as we perceive the sensory world, we continually allow death to flow into us. And we allow darkness and obscurity to flow into us as we think about this world. And we allow the unborn to flow into us as we feel and will. All of this lies deep in the depths of our consciousness; there we allow our dying and our as-yet-unborn—which we can only need after we have died—to flow in. But that would be futile if we could not sink it into the essence that the Godhead has given birth to as the essence of a new consciousness, if we could not allow it to flow into the Christ-essence.

[ 24 ] We can attain this awareness by truly recognizing the meaning of the entire process of evolution through Spiritual Science: Yes, we send down into the subconscious depths that which dies within us. But this dying—which we sink deeper and deeper into our own being—is received by the Christ who lives toward us. In what dies within us, what darkens within us, what remains unborn, the Christ revives us. We allow that which must die to die within us, so that we may approach the true ideal of humanity with all our faculties. But what we pour into ourselves as dying, we pour into the Christ-being, just as it has permeated human evolution since the founding of Christianity. And what remains unborn within us—our feeling and willing—we know is received by the Christ-substance, into which it is sunk after death.

[ 25 ] Christ has lived within us ever since he underwent the Mystery of Golgotha. Into Christ we immerse the dying that is present in every perception. And into the Christ-being we immerse the darkness in our thinking. We send our darkened thoughts into the light, into the spiritual sunlight of Christ. And when we pass through the gate of death, our unborn feelings and our unborn will plunge into the substance of Christ. If we understand this development correctly, we say of it: We die into Christ.

[ 26 ] In Christo morimur.