The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] In the second public lecture given here, I attempted to describe in broad strokes—as far as is possible in a public lecture—the life that flows for human beings between death and a new birth. What we have encountered here will continue to occupy us in the next two lectures in a more in-depth manner, deepened specifically in that it should appear to us that it explains life here in the physical world more and more. But in order to arrive at such a deepening of the presentation, we need the preparation that was provided in the three previous lectures and is to be provided again in today’s lecture. It is precisely these lectures that are intended to provide us with the means to further deepen what has been presented publicly.

[ 2 ] I have often told our friends here and there that if a person wishes to get to know and understand the spiritual worlds—and it is in the spiritual worlds that we live between death and a new birth— in many respects must acquire concepts and mental images that cannot be derived from the experiences of the physical plane, but which, as humanity increasingly assimilates them, will be of infinite importance—and of ever-growing importance—precisely for life on the physical plane as well. To begin with, let us today clarify a difference between experience in the spiritual world and experience on the physical plane, which, when it first presents itself to our soul, must, in essence, strike us as highly striking and strange, so that it is very easy for us to believe that we can hardly understand such things. However, the more we familiarize ourselves with Spiritual Science, the more we will see that such things become increasingly comprehensible to us.

[ 3 ] As we move through the physical plane, as we allow the experiences of the physical plane to take their course, one thing in particular must strike us when we reflect on it. That is, on this physical plane we have before us what we call reality, what we call existence, being, and actuality. One might say: The less spiritual a person is, the more they rely on what they have before them on the physical plane as the reality that imposes itself. The situation is different with what we wish to acquire on the physical plane as our knowledge, our understanding of reality. We must first, as children, be educated to develop the abilities to acquire knowledge and insight from the physical plane, and we must then continue to work further and further. The acquisition of insight requires spiritual work. Nature, that is, external reality, does not of its own accord reveal what lies within it as wisdom, what lies within it as its laws. We must acquire knowledge of this wisdom, of these laws. And this is, after all, the essence of all human striving for knowledge: to actively acquire, from passively received experiences, that which lies within things as wisdom and as laws. Things are quite different, however, when one enters the spiritual world either through the exercises leading to spiritual research or by passing through the gate of death. It is true that the relationship of the human being to the spiritual environment is not under all circumstances as I am now about to describe; but in important moments, during significant experiences, it is so. After all, it is also the case in our life on the physical plane that we do not always labor for knowledge, but we also take breaks from this work. So too, what I am about to describe is not a constant compulsion in the spiritual world, but rather something that is occasionally necessary for us in the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] For that is the surprising thing: in the spiritual world, human beings do not lack wisdom. One may be a fool in the physical world, yet wisdom flows toward one in all its reality in the spiritual world the moment one is transported into it. Wisdom—that which we acquire with effort in the physical world, that which we must work for day by day if we want it—we have in the spiritual world just as we have nature all around us in the physical world. It is always there, and it is there in the most abundant measure. In a sense, we can say: The less wisdom we have acquired on the physical plane, the more abundantly this wisdom flows toward us on the spiritual plane. But now we have a specific task in relation to this wisdom on the spiritual plane.

[ 5 ] I have spoken to you in recent days about how, on the spiritual plane, one has before one the ideal of humanity, the essence of the religion of the gods, and how one must work one’s way toward it. This is not possible unless one is able, on the spiritual plane, to apply one’s will there—that is, one’s will, one’s feeling will, one’s willing feeling— apply one’s will and feeling in such a way that one continually diminishes the wisdom that constantly flows toward one—which is there like the phenomena of nature in the physical world—and continually takes something away from it. One must possess this ability to take more and more away from the wisdom that confronts one there. Here on the physical plane we must become ever wiser and wiser; there we must strive to apply our will and our feeling in such a way that we take more and more away from the wisdom, obscuring it. For the less we can take away from the wisdom there, the less we find the strength to assert ourselves with these forces in such a way that we, as real beings, approach the ideal of humanity. This approach must consist in our taking more and more away from the wisdom. What we take away there, we can transform within ourselves, so that the transformed wisdom becomes the life forces that drive us toward the ideal of humanity. We must acquire these life forces during this time between death and a new birth. Only by transforming the wisdom that flows abundantly to us into life forces can we truly meet the new incarnation. And when we return to Earth, we must have transformed so much wisdom into life forces—we must have reduced so much of our wisdom—that we possess sufficient life forces to permeate the hereditary substance we receive from our father and mother with enough organizing spiritual life forces. We must therefore take more and more away from wisdom.

[ 6 ] If one were to encounter, after death, a true materialist who does not acknowledge any _reality_ for the spirit on the physical plane—a materialist who, during his lifetime, said: “All this talk of the spirit is sheer folly; your wisdom is pure fantasy, which I completely reject; I accept nothing but the description of what external nature is”—in such a person, when he is encountered after death, one sees wisdom flowing in so abundantly that he cannot save himself. The spirit flows toward him from all directions. To the same extent that he did not believe in the spirit here, to that same extent is he there flooded with spirit from all sides. Now the task confronts him of transforming this wisdom into life forces, so that he can create a physical reality in the next incarnation. He is to bring forth from this wisdom what he has called reality; he is to reduce this wisdom. But it does not allow itself to be reduced by him; it remains as it is. He cannot manage to turn it into reality. The immense punishment of the spirit lies before him: whereas in his last life, here on the physical plane, he built solely upon reality and completely denied the spirit, he cannot, so to speak, save himself from the spirit and cannot realize anything of this spirit. He is constantly in danger of being unable to re-enter the physical world at all due to forces he himself generates. He lives constantly in fear: The spirit will force its way into the physical world, and I will then have a physical existence that denies everything I recognized as right in my previous life. I will have to let the spirit thrust me into physical reality; I will not be able to make it a reality myself.

[ 7 ] This is certainly a startling thought, but that is how it is. To suffocate, so to speak, in the spirit after death and to find within it no reality such as one alone revered before death—the path to this is to be a true materialist before death and to deny the spirit. Then one suffocates or drowns in the spirit.

[ 8 ] These mental images, however, are concepts that we must increasingly internalize as we pursue our study of spiritual science. For when we internalize such mental images, they also guide us in a harmonious way in our physical lives and show us, as it were, how the two sides of life must complement and balance each other. We cultivate within ourselves the instinct to truly bring about this balance in our way of life.

[ 9 ] I would like to cite yet another example of the connection between physical life and spiritual life. Let us now consider a very specific, individual case. Let’s assume we have lied to someone on the physical plane. You see, I am speaking of individual cases. When we have lied to someone, this occurs at a specific point in time. What I am now going to describe as the corresponding event in the spiritual world, in turn, occurs at a specific point in time between death and a new birth. So let us assume that we lied to someone at a certain time on the physical plane; then, during our stay in the spiritual world—whether we enter it through initiation or through death—there comes a moment when we, with our soul in the spiritual world, are completely, completely filled with the truth that we should have spoken. But this truth, which torments us, stands before us, tormenting us to the same degree that we strayed from it when we told the lie.

[ 10 ] So all one needs to do is lie on the physical plane to bring about a moment in the spiritual world when we are tormented by the corresponding truth—the truth that is the opposite of the lie—because this truth lives within us, burns within us, and we cannot bear it. Our suffering consists specifically in the fact that we realize: this is the truth. But we are such that this truth brings us no pleasure, no joy, no delight, but rather torments us. To be tormented by good things, to be tormented by that which one knows should uplift one—this is one of the peculiarities of experiences in the spiritual world. For example, if in life we have been lazy just once in a matter where diligence would have been our duty, then a time comes in the spiritual world when the diligence that we lacked back then lives within us. It is there, that diligence; it comes quite surely; it lives within us if we have ever been truly lazy on the physical plane. There then comes a time when, due to inner necessities, we must absolutely apply this diligence within ourselves. We devote ourselves entirely to this diligence, and we know it is something immensely valuable, but it torments us; we suffer under it.

[ 11 ] Or let us consider a case that perhaps lies less in human caprice and more in other processes of life—processes that take place, I might say, in the depths of existence and are connected with the course of our karma; let us consider the case where we have suffered from an illness in our physical life. If we have gone through an illness in physical life that caused us pain or the like, then at some point in the spiritual world we experience the opposite mood, the opposite state: that of health, of being well. To the same extent that the illness has weakened us, this mood of being healthy strengthens us during our stay in the spiritual world. This is a case that perhaps not only shocks our intellect like the other things that have been brought up, but penetrates much deeper into the emotional realm of our soul, disturbing that soul. We know, of course, that matters of Spiritual Science must always be grasped through feeling. But in this case we must consider the following: We must realize that here, as it were, there is something like a shadow over the connection between physical illness and the health that strengthens us in the spiritual world. The connection is true, but there is something in the human breast that, emotionally speaking, cannot quite agree with this connection. This must certainly be admitted. However, this connection has another effect when it is truly grasped by us. And this effect can be characterized in the following way.

[ 12 ] Let us suppose that a person immerses themselves in Spiritual Science, that a person makes a serious effort to truly take Spiritual Science into themselves, not in the same way one takes in other sciences. One can study these sciences theoretically, in mere thoughts; one can acquire their concepts. One should never simply absorb Spiritual Science in this way. It should become like a spiritual lifeblood within us. Spiritual Science should weave and live within us; it should actually awaken sensations and feelings in us through all the concepts it offers. For someone who truly listens to Spiritual Science with the right ear, there is actually nothing in this Spiritual Science that does not either, on the one hand, uplift us, or, on the other hand, allow us to look into the abysses of existence, so that we may find our way precisely within these abysses. One might say: Whoever understands Spiritual Science correctly follows what it says everywhere, accompanied by these and those feelings. Whoever takes Spiritual Science into themselves will, simply by the fact that the concepts of Spiritual Science live within them, by acquiring those habits of imagination that have just been indicated as necessary for Spiritual Science, truly transform their soul even in the physical world. I have, after all, often pointed out how the study—the serious study—of Spiritual Science itself belongs to the best and most penetrating exercises.

[ 13 ] Gradually, something peculiar begins to emerge in the person who is delving into Spiritual Science. Such a person—who may or may not be doing exercises to become a spiritual researcher themselves, but who is simply making a serious effort to understand Spiritual Science—may for a long, long time be unable to even think of seeing anything clairvoyantly. They will be able to do so one day, but that may still be a distant ideal for them. But whoever truly allows Spiritual Science to work upon their soul in the sense indicated will see that the instincts of life, the more unconscious driving forces of life, are changing within their soul. Their soul truly becomes different. One does not enter into the practice of Spiritual Science without this Spiritual Science instinctively influencing the soul, transforming it, giving it different sympathies and antipathies, and, as it were, flooding it with light, so that it feels more certain than it did before. One can observe this in every sphere of life; in every sphere of life, Spiritual Science manifests itself in the manner described. One may be an unskilled person in life and become a practitioner of Spiritual Science, and one will see that, without having done anything other than imbuing oneself with this Spiritual Science, one becomes more skilled even in the most practical tasks. Do not say: “I know very clumsy spiritual scientists who are still far from becoming skilled!” — Try to reflect on the extent to which they have not yet, as their karma requires, truly imbued themselves inwardly with Spiritual Science. One can be a painter and, to a certain extent, master the art of painting. When one becomes a person engaged in Spiritual Science, one will see that what has just been indicated flows into the instinctive mastery of the art of painting. One mixes colors more easily; the ideas one wants come more readily. Or let us suppose one is a scholar, and one is supposed to work on something scientific. Many who find themselves in this situation will know how much effort it often takes to gather the literature needed to solve a particular question. When one becomes a scholar of Spiritual Science, one no longer goes to the libraries as before and has fifty books handed to one that are of no use, but rather one immediately grasps the right one. Spiritual Science truly intervenes in life, alters the instincts, and instills in our soul ‘driving forces that place us more skillfully within life.’

[ 14 ] Of course, what I am about to say must always be viewed in the context of human karma. Human beings are subject to karma under all circumstances; this must always be taken into account. But now, taking karma into account, the following is nevertheless the case: Let us suppose that a certain type of illness afflicts someone who has entered into Spiritual Science in the manner described, and it is part of their karma that they can be healed. It may, of course, be part of their karma that the illness cannot be healed. But karma never dictates, when we are faced with an illness, that the illness must necessarily take a certain course in a fatalistic sense; it may or may not be curable. The person who has now imbued themselves with Spiritual Science has an instinct implanted in their soul that helps them to counter the illness and its weaknesses with the appropriate strengthening or remedy from within themselves. What one otherwise experiences as consequences of the illness in the spiritual world still works back into the soul, insofar as one is still in the physical body, acting as an instinct. One either prevents the illness or finds within oneself the paths to the healing forces. When clairvoyant consciousness finds the right healing factors for this or that illness, it happens in the following way: Such a clairvoyant has the ability to hold the image of the illness before them. So let us assume he has the image before him: this is the illness; in such and such a way it weakens the person. Because the individual in question possesses clairvoyant consciousness, the opposite image appears to him: the corresponding mood of recovery and the strengthening that wells up from that mood. What comes as a counterbalance in the spiritual world for the person who was ill in the physical world is what confronts the clairvoyant. From this, he can offer his advice. One does not even need to be a fully developed clairvoyant; rather, it can arise instinctively from observing the picture of the illness. But what in the clairvoyant consciousness brings about what actually comes as a counterbalance in the spiritual world is something that belongs to the clinical picture, just as the upward swing of the pendulum on one side corresponds to the upward swing on the other. Precisely from this example, you can see what the relationship between the physical plane and the spiritual world is, and how fruitful the knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world can be for living on the physical plane.

[ 15 ] Let us return once more to what was cited today as a specific example: that just as nature surrounds us on the physical plane, so too does the spiritual—the wisdom-filled spiritual—surround us in the spiritual world, and it is always there. Now, if you can understand this in a special way, then a light will be shed on the processes of the spiritual world that is of extraordinary importance. In the physical world, we can pass by things in such a way that, as we observe them, we ask: What is the nature of this thing? What is the situation? What is the law of this nature, of this process? Or else, we walk past indifferently and do not ask at all. We will never learn anything meaningful on the physical plane unless, so to speak, things prompt us to ask questions of understanding, unless things present us with riddles, so that these riddles arise within us. By merely observing things and processes, we will never be able to develop a self-directed soul on the physical plane. On the spiritual plane, it is different again. On the physical plane, we ask questions of things and processes, and we must strive to examine things, to figure out how we can derive the answer to the question we ask ourselves from the things themselves. We must examine things. On the spiritual plane, the things and beings around us are spiritual; and it is the things that ask us, not we who ask the things. The things ask us; they stand there—the events and beings—and we stand before them and are continually questioned by them. We must now have the ability to draw from the infinite sea of wisdom that which can answer the questions being posed to us. We must not seek the answers from things and events, but from within ourselves, for it is things that ask us; all around us are the questioning things.

[ 16 ] The following point should also be considered: Let us suppose we are faced with some process or being from the spiritual world; in reality, we do not encounter it in any other way than that it poses a question to us. Let us suppose it poses the question. We are thus confronted with our own wisdom. But we cannot find the means to develop such a will—a feeling will, a willing feeling—that we might give the answer from this wisdom, even though we know: the answers are within us. Our inner being is of infinite depth; all the answers are within us, yet we cannot find the means to truly give the answer. And the consequence of this is that we rush past in the stream of time and miss the opportunity—namely, the right moment—to give the answer, because we have not acquired the ability, perhaps due to our prior development, to have the maturity to answer this question at that very moment. We have developed too slowly in relation to what we should answer: we could only answer later. But the opportunity does not come again; we have missed it. We have not taken advantage of all opportunities. Thus we pass by things and events without giving them an answer. We continually have such experiences in the spiritual world. It therefore happens that in the life between death and a new birth we stand before a being who asks us. We have not managed, through our earthly lives and the spiritual lives in between, to be able to give an answer now that it is asking us. We must move on, must enter the next incarnation. The consequence of this is that we must first receive the impulses again through the good gods, without our awareness, in the next earthly incarnation, so that we do not pass by the same question again next time. Such are the connections.

[ 17 ] I have often mentioned that the further back we go in human evolution, the more we realize that people did not possess the current mental state, but rather had a kind of clairvoyance on the physical plane. Our present way of perceiving things has evolved from a dim, dreamlike form of clairvoyance. And the more we encounter people who still stand at primitive, elemental stages of soul development, the more we find their thinking and feeling to be akin to that original clairvoyance. Although true clairvoyance—I mean primitive, atavistic clairvoyance—is becoming increasingly rare, one still finds, when one goes out into elementary rural environments, people who have preserved something from earlier times, so that one finds echoes of the times of earlier clairvoyance. This clairvoyance shows us—albeit in a dim, dreamlike form, since it is, after all, a gaze into the spiritual worlds—peculiarities that we encounter again in developed clairvoyance, only that there they do not appear dim and dreamlike, but clear and distinct. Spiritual Science shows us that human beings, as they are now in the present cycle of time, must continually and increasingly provide answers to the inquiring beings at the right time as they pass through the life between death and a new birth. For their proper further development, their approach to the ideal of the gods of the perfect human being, depends on whether they can provide these answers. As I said, people used to translate this into the realm of dreams, and a remnant of this has remained in numerous fairy-tale-like, legend-like motifs. They are becoming fewer and fewer among the people. But these fairy-tale-like, legend-like motifs tell us, for example: This or that person encounters a spiritual being who asks him questions again and again, and he stands before it and must answer. But he is aware that he must answer by a certain stroke of the clock or some other sign. This, which one might call the “question motif” of fairy tales and legends, is very widespread. It was the same in the earlier dreamlike clairvoyance as what now occurs again in the spiritual world in the form I have described. In general, what characterizes the spiritual world can in all cases serve as a wonderful guide for understanding myths, legends, fairy tales, and so on in the right way and placing them where they belong. This is precisely a point where one sees how, everywhere—including in the spiritual culture of the present—development, so to speak, stands at the threshold of Spiritual Science. It is quite interesting that a book such as that of my late friend Ludwig Laistner, *The Riddle of the Sphinx*, which is in many respects beautiful in its intent, is nevertheless insufficient because, if it were to be sufficient, it would have had to address the motives behind these questions—which Ludwig Laistner treats in particular detail—from the perspective of Spiritual Science knowledge; that is, the author would have had to know something of how Spiritual Science truth plays into the matter.

[ 18 ] So, when we consider the characteristic cases listed above, we see that there is something very specific that matters in one’s behavior in the spiritual world. Gathering knowledge in the spiritual world, as one does here on the physical plane, is not what matters. What matters is, in fact, to reduce this knowledge—namely, to transform the power of cognition into life force. One cannot be a researcher in the spiritual world in the same sense as one can be in the physical world; that would be very out of place there. For one can know everything there; it is all around one. What matters is that one can develop the will and the feeling toward knowledge, toward insight, so that in each individual case one draws from the entire treasure of one’s will precisely that which enables one to apply wisdom; otherwise, one suffocates or drowns in wisdom. So while here in the physical world it is a matter of thinking, there in the spiritual world it is a matter of the corresponding development of the will—the feeling will, the will that, out of wisdom, prepares and shapes reality, the will that becomes a creative force, a kind of creative power. We have the spirit there, just as we have nature here; but to guide the spirit toward nature—that is our task. A beautiful statement has been preserved from the theosophical literature of the first half of the 19th century by Ötinger, who lived in Murrhardt in Württemberg, and who had advanced so far in his own spiritual development that he was able, quite consciously at certain times, to serve as a helper to spiritual beings—that is, souls—who are not on the physical plane. He coined the remarkable sentence, which is very beautiful and very true: Nature and the form of nature are the end of spiritual creative power. What I have now developed from the spiritual world itself is contained in this sentence. In the spiritual world, creative power strives to bring up to reality that which first surges and swells in wisdom. Just as one brings forth wisdom from physical reality here, one does the reverse there. From within wisdom, one has the task of creating realities, of living out in realities what exists there in wisdom. The end of the paths of the gods is formed reality.

[ 19 ] So we see, then, that what matters is feeling imbued with will, and will imbued with feeling, which transform into creative power—a power we must apply in the spiritual world just as we must exert ourselves here in the physical world through our inquiring thinking in order to attain wisdom in the physical world.

[ 20 ] The point is that we must properly develop our feelings and thoughts for this possibility in the spiritual world, and that we must prepare ourselves for it here on the physical plane in a way that is appropriate for the current cycle of time. For everything that happens in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is a consequence of what happens in the physical world between birth and death. Admittedly, as we have seen, what exists in the spiritual world is so different that we must acquire entirely new mental images and concepts if we are to understand the spiritual world. Yet, like cause and effect, the two are mutually connected. We understand the connections between the spiritual and the physical only when we truly recognize them as relationships of cause and effect. We must prepare ourselves in the physical world. That is why I would now like to consider the question a little: How do we prepare ourselves in the right way on the physical plane in the present cycle of time, so that we have sufficient inner impulses in the spiritual world, whether through initiation, or by passing through the gate of death, to truly possess the spiritual power to draw from the given wisdom what we need to transform realities out of the flowing, surging wisdom? Where does such power come from? It is essential that we answer such questions for our present cycle of time. In the times when people thought in such a way that the earliest, most primordial sources of the aforementioned mythic motifs were formed, things were different. But where does such soul power come from in the present cycle of time?

[ 21 ] To help us arrive at an answer, I would like to draw on the following. One can look at various philosophies and examine how philosophers arrive at their concept of God. Naturally, these must be philosophers who possess sufficient spiritual depth to allow themselves to be convinced by the world that one can speak of a divine presence that permeates the world. In the 19th century, one need only consider Lotze, who sought in his philosophy of religion to create something that was in harmony with the rest of his philosophy. But one could also consider other philosophers who were truly profound enough to have, so to speak, a philosophy of religion as well. One will find a peculiarity in all these philosophers, a very specific peculiarity. Indeed, these philosophers advance toward the divine through their reflections, thinking from the physical plane; they ponder, they investigate in a philosophical manner, and they arrive at the conclusion—as is the case with Lotze—that the phenomena and beings of the world are held together by a divine principle that permeates everything and brings everything into a certain harmony. But when one examines such religious philosophies more closely, they always have a peculiarity. One arrives at a divine being that permeates and pervades everything, and when one looks more closely at this divine being, this God of the philosophers, one realizes that it is roughly the God whom the Hebrew or, more specifically, the Christian religion calls the Father God, God the Father. Philosophy can arrive at this. It can observe nature and be profound enough not to deny all that is divine in a shallow, materialistic way; it can arrive at the divine, but then arrives at the Father God. If one follows the philosophers closely, one can show quite precisely that mere philosophy, as a philosophy of thought, cannot lead to anything other than a monotheistic Father God. When Christ appears in the works of individual philosophers—Fzege, for example, and others—he does not come from philosophy itself—this can be demonstrated—but is taken over from positive religion. People knew that positive religion had Christ, so they were able to discuss him. The difference is that one can find the Father God in philosophy; Christ cannot be found through any philosophy by means of thoughtful contemplation. That is entirely impossible.

[ 22 ] This is a statement that I would advise you to consider carefully and reflect on deeply. If understood correctly, it leads into the profound depths of human inquiry and the soul’s quest. However, it is connected to something that is expressed in the Christian religion in a very beautiful, symbolic, and figurative way: namely, that the relationship of this other God, Christ, to the Father God is understood as the relationship of the Son to the Father. This is very significant, even though it is only a symbol. It is interesting that Lotze, for example, cannot make any sense of this at all. It goes without saying that this symbol cannot be taken literally, says Lotze, for the one God cannot be the Son of the other God, he argues. Yet there is something very significant in this symbol. Between the Father and the Son there is something akin to the relationship of cause and effect. For in a certain sense, one can seek the cause of the Son in the Father. The Son would not exist if the Father did not exist. But one must note something peculiar: namely, that the person who might have a son also has the possibility of not having one; he can be childless. He would then be the same person. The cause is person A, the effect is person B, the son. But the effect need not occur; the effect is a free act; the effect follows from the cause as a free act. Therefore, when one studies a cause and considers it in connection with its effect, one must not merely ask about the nature of the cause—for that accomplishes nothing—but one must ask whether the cause actually causes, and that is what matters. Now, all philosophy has this peculiarity: it proceeds along the thread of thought, developing one link from the other, that is, seeking the subsequent in the preceding, as it were. In this way, they are correct as philosophies. But one never arrives at the relationship that arises when one takes into account that the cause does not need to cause at all. The cause can, by its very nature, be the same in its essence whether it causes something as a cause or not. This changes nothing in the nature of the cause. And this significant point is presented to us in the symbol of God the Father and God the Son: that Christ comes to the Father God as a free creation, as a creation that does not follow directly from him, but stands alongside the preceding creation as a free act; a creation that also has the possibility of not being; who is thus not given to the world because the Father had to give the Son to the world, but the Son is given to the world as a free act, through grace, through freedom, through love that freely gives itself in its creation. Therefore, one can never come to the Son of God, to Christ, through the same kind of truth by which one comes to God the Father, as the philosophers do. To come to Christ, it is necessary to add the truth of faith to philosophical truth, or—because the time of faith is diminishing more and more—to accept the other truth that comes through clairvoyant research, which, as a free act, must likewise first develop within the human soul.

[ 23 ] Therefore, one must say: Just as one proves from the order of natural processes that God exists at all, so one can never prove from the external chain of causes and effects that Christ exists. Christ was there and can pass by human souls if they do not find the strength within themselves to say: Yes, that is Christ. It requires an active effort to rise to the impulse of truth in order to recognize the Christ in the one who was there as the Christ. We can be compelled to accept the other truths that lie within the realm of the Father God if we merely engage in thinking and apply it consistently, for to be a materialist and at the same time deny God is to be illogical. Philosophy of religion in Lotze’s sense—and indeed, any philosophy of religion—arises in such a way that we can be compelled through thought to this divine aspect of the philosophy of religion. But we can never be led in the same way by mere philosophy to acknowledge Christ. That must be our free act. Then only two things are possible: either one draws the ultimate conclusion of faith, or one begins to explore the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. One draws the ultimate consequence of faith when one says, as the Russian philosopher Soloviev does: Yes, with regard to all the philosophical truths that human beings gain about the world, such that they allow themselves to be compelled by their logic, human beings stand in no free truth. That is precisely the higher truth that does not compel us, that is our free act: the highest truth of faith. In this, the highest dignity is fulfilled for Soloviev, for he says: The higher truth that acknowledges Christ is the truth that creates as a free act, that cannot be compelled. — For the spiritual researcher and for those who understand Spiritual Science, knowledge arises anew. But this is an active knowledge that rises from thinking to imagination, inspiration, and intuition; that becomes inwardly creative; that, through creative activity, immerses itself in the spiritual worlds and thereby becomes akin to that which we must develop, whether we enter the spiritual world through initiation or through death.

[ 24 ] The wisdom that imposes itself upon us here on Earth is found in abundance in the spiritual world, just as we have natural phenomena here on the physical plane. What matters in the spiritual world is that we have the impulse, the power, to create something out of this wisdom, to create reality through it. Free creation out of wisdom, spiritual activity as ‘action’—that is what must live within us as an impulse. We can only have this if we find the right relationship to the Christ. Christ is the Being who cannot be proven through the external logic of the intellect, which is bound to the brain, but who reveals Himself, who actualizes Himself within us as we acquire spiritual knowledge. Just as Spiritual Science joins the other sciences as a free act, so does the knowledge of Christ come into play as soon as we approach that world into which we enter through spiritual research, or which we enter by passing through the gate of death. At the moment when, in the present cycle of time, we wish to enter the spiritual world in a blessed way—that is, when we wish to die to the physical world—we need a relationship to the world such as we gain when we relate to Christ in the right way. A God who is, so to speak, like the Father God of the Christian religion—we can attain him through the contemplation of nature; we can attain him through the contemplation that arises for us as we live in the physical body. To understand Christ correctly without tradition, without the handed-down teachings, purely out of knowledge itself, is possible only through Spiritual Science. It leads into the realms that human beings enter through dying, whether it be that dying which is a symbolic dying—the stepping out of the physical body to know oneself in the soul outside the body—or the other kind of dying, through the gate of ‘death.’ We truly equip ourselves with the impulses we need by passing through the gate of ‘death’ when we find the right relationship to Christ. At the moment when it comes to leaving the physical body, whether by entering into Spiritual Science development, or by truly passing through the gate of death—at the moment when it comes to dying, to leaving the physical body, it is essential that we face, in the present cycle of time, the right kind of that Being who has come into the world, so that we may find the relationship to her. We can find God the Father while we are still alive. We find Christ when we understand the entry into the spirit, when we understand dying in the right way. In Christ we die.

[ 25 ] In Christo morimur.