The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] From the considerations of these last lectures, you have been able to gather that it will be of very special importance for the present, but especially for the future of humanity, to understand that Christ Jesus and everything connected with him as the Mystery of Golgotha does not depend on such an external consideration as is accepted today as historical consideration in external science; that, rather, other sources must open up to humanity for the conviction, the verification, the knowledge of Christ and the mystery of Golgotha, than historical observation in the present sense can offer from sources, even if these sources are the Gospels. I have mentioned this often, and anyone who familiarizes themselves with the relevant literature can verify this for themselves: the most diligent, most assiduous, most careful research of the nineteenth century has focused on Gospel criticism, on the examination of the Gospels; and it can be said that, taken purely as an external historical phenomenon, this Gospel criticism has basically produced a negative result, has actually become rather destructive, dissolving, annihilating for the idea of the Mystery of Golgotha, rather than affirmative, substantiating, or proving. We know that a large number of people today, not out of a spirit of contradiction, but because they believe they have no other choice, have decided, on the basis of historical research, to acknowledge that there is no justification for saying, in a purely historical sense, that the existence of Christ Jesus at the beginning of our era can be proven. However, it cannot be refuted either, but that does not mean anything special, of course.

[ 2 ] Now we will approach the question of how it is possible to find sources other than historical ones for understanding the mystery of Golgotha. We will approach the understanding of this question by presenting some occult history in the manner of what we have presented here in our last reflections.

[ 3 ] If one follows the first centuries of the development of Christianity and considers that this development can hardly be understood other than by deepening the purely historical view with Spiritual Science, if one takes this into account and, I would say, initially accepts the spiritual scientific view of this period as hypothetical, then a very strange picture emerges. For when we let our gaze wander over this development of the first Christian centuries, we are actually tempted to say that the mystery of Golgotha did not take place just once, individually, in a sense on Golgotha, but that it also took place a second time in a kind of figurative sense in the greater historical context. There are indeed countless strange things when one considers this historical period.

[ 4 ] Isn't it true that today, because this is an ongoing tradition, there is a Catholic church history that first talks about the founding of Christianity, about the first Church Fathers and Church teachers of the first Christian centuries, then the church teachers and church philosophers of the following centuries, the individual dogmatic definitions of the councils and the infallible popes, and so on. In a sense, a kind of historical thread is followed, which is presented as if history had continued in the same vein. Although there is much criticism of the older Church Fathers, on the whole one does not dare to reject them completely, because that would interrupt the continuous progression; one wants to tie in directly with the Council of Constantinople in 869, which I have already told you about. Yes, as I said, it is presented as if it were a continuous history. But if there is a radical leap anywhere in a seemingly continuous process, it is in this seemingly continuous history. If one considers the spirit of the matter, it is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that which prevails between the spirit of the early Christian teachers and the later Christian teachers and council decisions. There is a tremendous, radical difference, which is only being radically and continuously obscured because certain interests are at stake. And this makes it possible to keep the souls of the present, so to speak, in ignorance about the first Christian centuries and about what actually happened there. For example, there is hardly any tenable mental image today, even among the most learned people, about how what is commonly called Gnosticism was eradicated. There is just as much uncertainty about what spirits such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, his pupil, and others, even Tertullian, wanted, because the fragments that exist are largely such that we only have the writings of those who refuted these minds, at least for the most part, because it is impossible to obtain a true picture of these early Christian Church Fathers and teachers, and because the most fantastic theories are built on the fragmentary evidence that is available.

[ 5 ] If one wants to gain clarity in this matter, one must take a closer look at the reasons for this lack of clarity, that is, at everything that has happened in order to, I would say, have the mystery of Golgotha a second time in history.

[ 6 ] When the mystery of Golgotha had taken place, the old pagan cults, the old pagan mysteries, were still present to a large extent. They were present to such a degree that we see a figure emerge like Julian the Apostate, whom we spoke of last time, who was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. They were present to such an extent that, although in a peculiar way, a long line of Roman Caesars had received a kind of initiation. But in addition, all the things connected with the ancient pagan cult were present. And these things are usually dismissed today with a few words in a historically highly inappropriate manner. What happened is simply recounted in the most superficial way. Well, what happened in the most superficial way may be enough for some to speak, as it were, of a second mystery of Golgotha. But we do not know at all what happened inside.

[ 7 ] Looking at the outward appearances, one must say: In the earliest centuries of Christianity, there was, to the greatest extent, an immense splendor and glory that we cannot even have a mental image of today, an immense splendor and glory of all kinds of pagan temples with their images of gods; with images of gods that, down to the details of their design, were an artistic representation of that what lived in the ancient mysteries. Not only was there no city or landscape that did not have an abundance of artistic and mystical elements in those ancient times, but out in the fields where the farmers grew their grain, there stood individual small temples, each with its own image of a god. And no agricultural work was carried out without bringing it into a living relationship with those forces that were thought to flow down from the universe with the help of the magical powers that lay in the special design of these images of the gods. The Roman Caesars, in conjunction with the bishops and priests, made it their business in these centuries — and we can trace this back to Emperor Justinian, that is, into the sixth century; we can prove, edict after edict, that almost every one of the Caesars made it their business in the most severe manner to destroy all these temples and small temples with their images from the ground up. A tremendous work of destruction swept across the world during these centuries, a work of destruction that is unique in the entire development of humanity; unique for the simple reason that one must look at what has been destroyed. Until the time when St. Benedict himself, with his own hands and with his workers, demolished the Temple of Apollo on Mount Cassino, razing it to the ground in order to establish the monastery dedicated to the Benedictine Order, and until the time of Emperor Justinian, one of the most important tasks of the Roman Caesarate was which, since Constantine, had appropriated Christianity in particular, was to destroy what remained from ancient times. There are also edicts that are apparently intended to put a stop to the destruction. But when one reads these edicts, one gets a strange impression. For example, there is an edict by one such Caesar which states that one should not destroy all pagan “temples at once, as this would make the population rebellious; rather, the matter should be carried out very slowly, so that the population would not become rebellious, but would put up with it if it were taken away from them little by little.”

[ 8 ] All the terrible measures associated with this work of destruction are very often glossed over, as so many things are. But that should not happen. For where the truth is clouded in any way, access to Christ Jesus is also completely clouded, and he cannot be found. And with regard to a serious love of truth, my dear friends, one can make very special discoveries. Let me cite a small symptom, which I mention because I experienced it in my relatively early childhood and it struck me at the time. But one cannot forget such a thing in life. Isn't it true that, unless you have your ears plugged, you hear in Roman Caesar history that Constantine, whom we have also spoken of, was not exactly a very good person? For a very good person is generally not someone who unjustifiably accused his own stepson of having an affair with his mother — it was unjust, it was invented in order to have a reason for murder—who had his stepson murdered for this invented reason, but then also had the mother, the stepmother, murdered. These are just the most common deeds of this Constantine. But since the external church owes him so much, the external church history is ashamed to characterize this Constantine in the right way. And so I would like to read to you a passage from my school textbook on religious history about this Constantine:

[ 9 ] “Constantine also showed his religious devotion in his private life.” — I have just told you how! — “If one accuses him of lust for power and anger, one must remember that faith does not protect one from every misstep, and that Christianity could not prove its full sanctifying power on him because he remained outside the sacraments until the end of his life.”

[ 10 ] But you can experience an enormous number of such things, and you can study from them the degree of love of truth that is very often present in history. With regard to more recent history, the situation is not much better, only it touches on other aspects, and it is not so easy to notice because other interests are at stake.

[ 11 ] Now, when these edicts are discussed, it is also mentioned that the Roman Caesars in particular opposed the bloody sacrifices, the animal sacrifices that were said to have been offered in such temples, and so on. Now, the intention here is neither to criticize nor to gloss over anything, but simply to recount the facts. What is necessary to know is this: what is referred to as the “fight against animal sacrifices,” from whose entrails, as is said, all kinds of futures were predicted, was indeed a decadent form of sacrifice, but it was not the trivial thing that is very often meant in history when people talk about these things. Rather, it was—but in a different way than it is today—a profound science. What they wanted to achieve through animal sacrifice was this: by performing animal sacrifices — it is difficult to talk about these things today because they are considered very offensive, so one can only characterize them in general terms — they wanted to use these animal sacrifices to stimulate something that could no longer be obtained directly at that time, because the era of ancient atavistic clairvoyance was over; they wanted these animal sacrifices to stimulate certain circles of priests, within the pagan priesthood, to revive — it was a kind of means — the ancient clairvoyant powers. And this attempt was cultivated in a better way, namely through the special form of sacrifice to revive the old clairvoyant power in order to reach back to primeval times, in the Mithras mysteries, and indeed, I would say, in the most spiritual way at that time. Things were practiced in a cruder, bloodier way in the Egyptian priestly mysteries and in the Egyptian temples. If one really studies the Mithras mysteries with occult means, one must say: They were a means, through all kinds of sacrificial rites — which were more than what we call sacrificial rites today, which were actually something that introduced one to the mysteries of nature in a much more intense way than today's dissection of corpses, autopsies, which do not actually introduce one to the mysteries, but only lead to the surface — they were a means of gaining an introduction to the mysteries of the forces at work in the universe. Those who performed these sacrifices in the right way became, in a certain sense, clairvoyant through these sacrifices, able to perceive certain forces that exist in the mysteries of nature. And this is also connected with the fact that the actual foundations of the mystery sacrifices were kept secret, that one was only allowed to access them when one was sufficiently prepared.

[ 12 ] Now, when one studies the Mithras mysteries, one finds that these Mithras mysteries all go back to the third post-Atlantean period, and because of this they were in decline at that time, because in their better form they were suitable for the third period. In the third post-Atlantean period, they were actually, in their best times, something that, in a dangerous and mysterious way, nevertheless introduced one deeply into deep secrets of nature; they introduced them in that the rituals that were performed had an effect. So think: certain rituals were performed by the priests in the presence of the disciples, which were connected with the decomposition of the natural relationships, in order to arrive, through this decomposition, at an understanding of the composition of natural processes. And through the way in which they took place, how the water in the organisms interacted with the fire in these rituals, and how this interaction in turn stimulated those who were present at the sacrifice, a very special path was opened up to them for self-knowledge that penetrated to the innermost fibers of the human being and thus to knowledge of the world.

[ 13 ] So these sacrifices were a path to self-knowledge and knowledge of the world. When one was present at these sacrifices, one experienced oneself in a different way than one experiences oneself in outer life. But this experience was calculated to a high degree on the weakness of the human being. For self-knowledge is something extraordinarily difficult, and these sacrifices were a means of facilitating self-knowledge. Through these sacrifices, people were led to feel themselves inwardly, to experience themselves inwardly, but much more intensely than through the mere process of thought or imagination. One might say that the aim was a self-knowledge that went as far as physicality, as far as corporeality, a self-knowledge that can even be traced back to the minds of the great artists of antiquity, who owed their way of giving form in a certain sense to their experience of the movements and formations of nature in their own organism. For the further back one goes in art, in artistic creation, the more one comes to that time when creating according to a model becomes something completely incomprehensible. Having a model in front of you and copying it becomes something completely incomprehensible. More and more, one realizes that people had something alive within them, that lived, and that they embodied. Things have already faded so much today that it is hardly possible to talk about them anymore, because words only vaguely describe the things that one means quite realistically and truly when one speaks of these things. It is tremendous how different the times have become.

[ 14 ] Now, a real development of this kind of mystery, which had spread throughout the world at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, particularly in the Mithras mysteries, were the Greek Eleusinian mysteries. They were a development and at the same time, in a certain sense, a completely different aspect. While in the Mithras mysteries everything depended, one might say, on experiencing oneself in a physical way, in the Eleusinian mysteries everything depended on not experiencing oneself within oneself, but on experiencing oneself outside oneself. In the Eleusinian mysteries, events took place that were quite different from those in the Mithras mysteries. In the latter, the human being was, so to speak, pushed right into himself; in the Eleusinian Mysteries, they were drawn out of themselves spiritually, so that they experienced outside their bodies the mysterious impulses of nature and spiritual creation outside themselves. And if we now consider what actually happened to people in these mysteries, both in the Mithras mysteries, which were decadent, as well as in the Eleusinian mysteries, which were not decadent at that time but were even at their height a few centuries before the Christian era, rising to their peak in the fourth century BC, if one asks what was actually achieved for human beings in the mysteries, one must say: The answer was provided to the great Delphic challenge “Know thyself!” Everything actually boiled down to self-knowledge, self-knowledge in two different ways: self-knowledge through being stuffed into oneself, so that the etheric-astral in the human being was condensed, as it were, so that he bumped into himself inwardly, and through the inward bumping of his soul against the physical, he experiences: There you are something that you perceive when you push and bump yourself inwardly. — This happened through the Mithras mysteries. Through the Eleusinian mysteries, self-knowledge came to man by means of the soul being drawn out of the body through various actions that cannot be described here, and the human being came into contact outside the body with the mysterious power of the sun's influence, the sun's impulse on the earth, with the forces of the moon's impulse on the earth, with the forces of the stars' impulses, the impulses of the individual elemental forces, the forces of heat, air, fire, and so on. Then, in turn, the human soul, which had been taken out of the body, permeated the outer elements, the outer existence, and in this collision with the outer world, self-knowledge was achieved. And what the people who knew the true meaning of the mysteries knew was this: one can attain all soul experiences; only one cannot attain anything real connected with the concept of the “I” unless it comes from the mysteries. For otherwise, the I always remained something abstract for that time, if it did not come from the mysteries. One could experience the other spiritual-soul aspects, but the I had to be stimulated in this way; it needed this strong stimulation. People knew that. And that is the essential point here.

[ 15 ] Now, as you know, a kind of combination of Christian development and the Roman Empire came about. And I have described how this combination came about. As this combination came about, the desire arose to blur this past that I have just described as much as possible; to prevent any real image of this past from reaching posterity; to prevent posterity from learning what people had done for centuries of Christian time in order to come into contact with those divine forces, whether inside or outside the body, which bring human beings self-consciousness. And now, if one wants to study the development of Christianity in greater depth, one must look not only at the further development of dogmas, but above all at the further development of cults. From certain points of view, the further development of cults is even more important than the further development of dogmas. For dogmas are what caused disputes; dogmas are, in a sense, like the phoenix: they rise again from their own ashes; and no matter how thoroughly dogmas have been eradicated, there will always be someone, considered a contrarian, who comes along with the same view. Cults can be eradicated much more reliably. And these old cults, which were, in a sense, the external symbols, the real external symbols, the symbols for what goes on in the mysteries, eradicating these cults was essential in order to make it impossible to deduce from the existence of the cults how people tried to approach the divine-spiritual powers.

[ 16 ] If one wants to get to the bottom of the whole thing, one must take a closer look at Christian cults, for example the cult of the center, the sacrifice of the Mass, the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass. What is this Catholic sacrifice of the Mass with its enormously profound meaning? What is it? Yes, the Mass sacrifice with all that is connected with it is a continuous development of the Mithras mysteries, which in a certain way are combined with the Eleusinian mysteries. The Mass sacrifice and many of the ceremonies associated with it are nothing more than the further development of the ancient cults, only developed further. The matter was not left as it was; in particular, the bloody character that the Mithras mysteries had gradually assumed was mitigated; it underwent a real mitigation. But the infinite similarity of the basic spirit can only be appreciated by those who know how to evaluate certain details in the right way. The fact that the priest, like those who otherwise receive communion, takes the body of the Lord after having fasted for a certain period of time — as they say: on an empty stomach — is much more important for understanding the matter than many other things, especially some of the things that were fiercely debated in the Middle Ages. For that, for example, is what matters. And if any priest, as indeed happens, transgresses this commandment to perform transubstantiation and communion on an empty stomach, then it has absolutely none of the meaning, significance, the effect it is supposed to have. However, in most cases it does not have the effect because those concerned are not properly instructed. For the effect can only be there if appropriate instruction has taken place about what is experienced immediately after receiving the bloodless body of the Lord. But you yourself may know how little attention is paid to these subtleties today; how little attention is paid to the fact that this is supposed to bring about an experience that represents a certain inner feeling, a kind of modern renewal of what took place as inspiration in the Mithras mysteries. So there really are mysterious things behind the cult, so to speak. They are already behind it. And with the ordination of priests, the Church also wanted to create a kind of continuation of the old principle of initiation, but in many respects it forgot that the principle of initiation consisted in teaching certain doctrines about how things should be lived through.

[ 17 ] Now, you see, it was part of Julian the Apostate's ideal to discover how the Eleusinian mysteries, into which he had been initiated, were connected with the mysteries of the third post-Atlantean epoch. For what could he learn in the Eleusinian mysteries? What Julian the Apostate could learn in the Eleusinian mysteries is not taught to people today. But if you were to really engage in studying how someone like Clement of Alexandria, his student Origen, even Tertullian, even Irenaeus, not to mention even older church teachers, how they largely started from the pagan principle of initiation and then found their way to Christianity in their own way — if you look at these minds, you will find that a very special kind of inner movement of concepts and mental images lives in them; a very different spirit lived in them than later lived in humanity. The spirit that lived in them is necessary if one wants to approach the mystery of Golgotha. Approaching this spirit is the main thing!

[ 18 ] You see, people sleep so much — I really mean that — with regard to the great cultural phenomena. People really imagine the world as if they were experiencing it in a dream. We can see this for ourselves in our own time. I have often spoken to you about Herman Grimm. I must confess that it is quite different for me now when I speak of Herman Grimm than it was four or five years ago. What we have experienced in the nearly three years of this war means that when you look at things, what immediately preceded it, what preceded it in the decades before, really seems like a kind of fairy tale time; it could just as well have been centuries ago. One has the feeling that time has stretched out, so strange have things become, in a sense. — And so, I would say, the most important things in the world are basically overlooked by people.

[ 19 ] If one tries today to understand ancient writers with the ordinary means of the intellect, of concepts, with ordinary means — certainly, if one is a university scholar in the ordinary sense, one understands everything that has come down to posterity, but if one is not such an enlightened mind, one may come to the following conclusion, for example. One might say to oneself: with ordinary intellect, if one does not employ occult means, the ancient Greek philosophers Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, who are not so far removed from us, really cannot be understood. Even if one delves into Greek, they really speak a different language; they speak a different conceptual language than the one in which we ourselves can speak with our ordinary human intellect. And this applies, for example, even with regard to Plato. I have mentioned this many times before: Hebbel felt this when he thought about it — he wrote down a draft of a play in his diary — to present the reincarnated Plato as a high school student who has to read Plato with his high school teacher and cannot cope with Plato at all, even though he is the reincarnated Plato. Hebbel wanted to carry this out. He didn't get around to it, but he wrote it down in his diary, how it would be if the reincarnated Plato were a high school student today and had to read Plato and couldn't understand him. But Hebbel felt that even Plato cannot be understood so easily. Understanding what can truly be called understanding when examining concepts only really began for human thought with Aristotle. It does not go back any further; it only began with Aristotle in the fourth century BC. What came before that cannot be understood with ordinary human understanding. And so people have repeatedly tried to understand Aristotle, because on the one hand he is understandable, but on the other hand, with regard to certain concepts, we have not progressed any further than Aristotle did, because these concepts were appropriate for the time in which he lived. And actually, to think in the same way, as another age thought, to want that, means for people who live in the concrete world, basically the same as when you turn 56 and you want to be 26 for a quarter of an hour to experience what you experienced when you were 26. A certain way of thinking is only suitable for a very specific era; what is unique about that way of thinking is that it is simply thought about again and again. But it is interesting how Aristotle lived in the Middle Ages, I would say, as the ruler of thought, and how he reappeared in the work of Franz Brentano, who has been mentioned here several times, and is reappearing again right now. In 1911, Franz Brentano wrote a beautiful, wonderful book about Aristotle, in which he dealt with the mental images and concepts that should be brought particularly close to the present day. It is a strange karma of the times that this Franz Brentano has written a comprehensive book about Aristotle just now, which everyone who considers it important to come into contact with a certain way of thinking should actually read. It is also a very easy book to read, the one by Brentano about Aristotle.

[ 20 ] You see, Aristotle has also, in a certain sense, fallen victim to fate in that he has been mutilated, albeit not in a very direct way, by the Church, not by Christianity, so that important things are missing from his work. $o that, in fact, I would say that what has been mutilated in his work must also be supplemented in an occult way. And the most important things relate precisely to the human soul. And here, following on from Aristotle, I come to something that must be said to people of the present day when they ask the question: How can I, through inner soul experiences, safely direct my meditative life towards these mysteries, as described in our writings: “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?” and so on, how can I find a sure way to open up within myself the sources of the mystery of Golgotha? For Aristotle tries, as it were, to activate within himself the inner experience that the person who raises such a question would have to imitate. Only where Aristotle would come to describe this, to describe his own path of meditation, there — say the commentators on Aristotle — there Aristotle becomes taciturn. But this reticence does not consist in Aristotle not having described these things, but in the fact that later writers did not copy them down, that they have not been handed down to posterity. Aristotle had already embarked on a very peculiar inner, let us say mystical, path. Aristotle wanted to find in the soul that which gives inner certainty that the soul is immortal.

[ 21 ] Now, if someone honestly and sincerely does inner meditative work for a while, does exercises, then they will inevitably come to experience the power of the soul's immortality within themselves by opening up to that which is immortal within. It was also very clear to Aristotle, absolutely clear, that one can experience something within oneself that tells one: I experience something within myself that is independent of the body, that has nothing to do with the death of the body. That is quite clear to Aristotle. Now he goes further and tries to experience very intensely within himself that which, when one experiences it, one knows does not belong to the body. And there he experiences very clearly — only the passage is corrupted, mutilated — there he experiences very clearly what I have often referred to, what one must have experienced in order to understand the mystery of Golgotha: inner loneliness. Loneliness! With the mystical experience, there is no other way than to come to this loneliness, to go through the pain of this loneliness, so to speak. And when one has really experienced this feeling of loneliness to such an extent that one asks oneself the question: What have you actually left behind by becoming so lonely? — then you will have to answer this: Now you have left your father, mother, brothers, sisters, and the whole rest of the world with its institutions, basically with your soul, with the best part of your being. — Aristotle knew this too. You can have the inner experience; you can bring it about. In this feeling of loneliness, one becomes very clear that there is something inside that transcends death, but that has no connection other than to one's own self, which has no contact with the outside world. One comes to the same conclusion that Aristotle came to: that contact with the outside world is mediated by the organs of the body. One can experience oneself in other ways — but you need the organs of the body to experience the outside world. Hence the loneliness that sets in. And now Aristotle said to himself what everyone who imitates Aristotle should say to themselves: So I have experienced the soul, experienced that which death cannot destroy. But at the same time, everything that connects me to the outside world is gone. I am only within myself. I cannot progress in my understanding of immortality — so Aristotle says — beyond realizing that after death I will experience myself in absolute solitude, having nothing else before me for all eternity but what I have gone through in life as good or evil, which I will contemplate eternally. You attain this through your own power, says Aristotle. If you want to know anything else about the spiritual world, you cannot rely on your own power; you must either be initiated or listen to what the initiates say.

[ 22 ] This was already stated by Aristotle, but others did not pass it on. And by seeing through this, Aristotle became, in a sense, a kind of prophet, the prophet for the other, which was not possible in Aristotle's time, which is different today than in Aristotle's . But you don't need to look back on history; you experience within yourself that it is different. For let us look back once more at this absolute solitude that one has attained, at this mystical experience that is quite different from how mystical experiences are very often described. They are very often described in a complacent manner, as if that one experiences God within oneself. But that is not the complete mystical experience. The complete mystical experience is that one experiences God in the most complete solitude, in the most absolute solitude. Alone with God, one experiences oneself. And then it is only a matter of having the necessary strength and endurance to continue living in this solitude. For this solitude is a force, it is a powerful force! If you do not allow yourself to be oppressed by it, but allow it to live within you as a force, this solitude, then another experience is added — of course, such things can only be described, but everyone can experience them — then the immediate inner certainty is added: this solitude that you are experiencing is brought about by yourself, you have brought it about. It was not born with you. The God you experience there is what you were born from, but this loneliness was not born with you; this loneliness comes from within you. You are to blame for this loneliness. — That is the second experience.

[ 23 ] Having this experience immediately leads to feeling complicit in the killing of that which came forth from God. At this point, where the loneliness of the soul has had a sufficiently long effect, it becomes clear: something happened in time — it was not always there, otherwise there would have been no development; there must have been a time when this feeling was not there — something happened in time where the divine was killed by the human. At this point, one begins to feel complicit in the killing of God. And if I had time, we could also come to a further definition of the killing of the Son of God. The mystical experience must not be a single, nebulous, blurred one, but proceeds in stages. The death of Christ can be experienced.

[ 24 ] And then this experience only needs to become a powerful force, then — yes, I cannot say it any other way: then Christ is there, and indeed the risen Christ! For he is there first of all as an inner mystical experience, the risen one, the one who has passed through death. And the motivation for death is experienced in the manner described.

[ 25 ] A three-stage mystical experience, one can have it. Then it may not yet be enough to find the way to the sources of the mystery of Golgotha, but then something else should be added, something that today is tremendously misplaced, virtually buried. The only person who pointed out strongly enough how something has been buried in an incredibly powerful way for humanity, precisely through nineteenth-century education, was Friedrich Nietzsche, in his essay “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.” For nothing drives the knowledge of Christ out of us more thoroughly than what is called history today. Therefore, nothing has refuted the mystery of Golgotha as thoroughly as the faithful history of the nineteenth century. Certainly, I know that today one is a fool if one speaks against faithful history, and nothing should be said against all the careful, philological, and scholarly work that goes into the creation of history. But no matter how scholarly history may be, no matter how faithful it may be, man dies spiritually from it as it is today. It is precisely from history that man dies most surely spiritually. The most important things are not known in the lives of individuals and humanity. The most important things are not known!

[ 26 ] Perhaps one may speak personally in this area, because these things may be linked to personal matters. I have been continuously engaged with Goethe since I was eighteen or nineteen, but I have never felt the temptation to write or even portray anything about Goethe that is historically accurate in a philological sense, never, for the simple reason that from the very beginning I was convinced that the essential thing is that Goethe lives! It is not a question of looking at Goethe, who was born in 1749 died in 1832, but that the important thing is that when Goethe died in 1832, something lived on not only in his individuality, but something lived on that is around us like the air, but spiritual, not merely in what people say—not much intelligent is being said about Goethe today—but something spiritual is around us. The spiritual is around us, as it was not yet spiritually around the people of antiquity. The etheric body is separated from the soul as a kind of second corpse, but it is preserved in a certain way by the Christ impulse that has remained from the Mystery of Golgotha; it does not dissolve purely, it is preserved. And if — let me now use the word “faith” as I defined it at the beginning of these lectures — if one has the faith that Goethe has risen as an etheric body, and then sets about studying him, his concepts and mental images come alive within oneself, and one describes him not as he was, but as he is today. Then you have transferred the concept of resurrection into life. Then you believe in resurrection. Then you can say that you do not merely believe in dead mental images, but in the living continuation of mental images. For this is connected with a deep mystery of modern times. We may think what we want — what I say does not apply to our feelings and desires, but it does apply to our thinking and imagining — we may think what we want: as long as we are in the physical body, there is an obstacle to the mental images being able to live out in the right way. However great Goethe may have been, his mental images were even greater than he himself. For the fact that they could be as great as they were, and not greater, was due to his physical body. The moment they were able to separate from the physical body — I mean the mental images that live on in a certain way in the etheric body, not his feelings and desires — and where they can be taken up by someone who receives them with love and thinks them further, then they become something else, they gain a new life. Believe that the first form in which mental images can appear in someone is by no means the last form of these mental images; but believe in a resurrection of mental images! And believe in this so firmly that you gladly connect, not only in your blood with your ancestors, but with your spiritual soul ancestors, and find them; they need not be Goethes, but can be the next best Miller or Schulze. Fulfill the saying of Christ: not only to connect with bodies through blood, but to connect with souls through the spirit, then you will make effective, immediately effective in life, the idea of resurrection. Then believe in resurrection in life. For it is not important to always say “Lord, Lord!” but that one grasps Christianity in its living spirit, that one holds fast to the most important concept of resurrection as something living. And whoever leans on the past in this sense learns to experience the continuation of the past within themselves. And then it is only a matter of time before the moment arrives when Christ is there, when Christ is with you. Everything depends on clinging to the risen Christ and the resurrection and saying to yourself: A spiritual world surrounds us, and the resurrection has had an effect!

[ 27 ] You may say: At first, this is just a hypothesis. Fine, let it be a hypothesis! Once you have had the experience: you have connected with some thought of a person who has already passed through death, whose physical body has been incorporated into the earth, and that thought lives on with you, then one day it will dawn on you that you say to yourself: Just as the thought lives, as it is now alive in me, so it is alive through Christ, and could never have become so alive before Christ was on earth.

[ 28 ] There is a path to the mystery of Golgotha that can be taken inwardly. But above all, one must say goodbye to so-called objective history, which is entirely subjective because it only clings to the outer surface, because it erases the spirit. For you see, many biographies of Goethe have been written. These Goethe biographies that have been written very often aim to portray Goethe's life as faithfully as possible. Every time one does that, one kills something within oneself; inevitably, one kills something within oneself. For the thought, as it was in Goethe's time, has passed through death and lives on in a different way. It is important to grasp Christianity in this way in the spirit.

[ 29 ] In short, mystically — now understood in the true sense of the word — it is possible to experience the mystery of Golgotha; but one must not remain at the level of abstractions, one must go through the inner experiences that have just been described. And anyone who asks the question: How can I myself approach Christ? — must be clear that they must approach the risen Christ, and that if they have the patience and perseverance to follow the path that has just been described, they will then approach Christ at the right time, that they can then be sure of encountering Christ. One must only be careful not to overlook the most important thing in this encounter.

[ 30 ] I said: Aristotle was in a certain sense a prophet, and Julian the Apostate took up something of this prophetic quality. But he could no longer really understand it from the form that the Eleusinian mysteries had taken at that time; he wanted to find a connection in the Mithras mysteries. Hence his journey to Persia. He wanted to understand the whole continuity, he wanted to know the whole context. That could not be allowed — hence the murder of Julian the Apostate.

[ 31 ] But to experience Christ himself, in a manner of speaking, in the manner of the Eleusinian mysteries, that was the aspiration of the early Church Fathers. And whether one wants to call them Gnostics or not — those who were actually Gnostics were not accepted by the Church, but one could just as well call Clement of Alexandria a Gnostic — they dealt with Christ in a completely different way because they wanted to approach Christ through the Eleusinian mysteries, as one later dealt with him. They dealt with him in such a way that they took him above all as a cosmic event. For example, the question was raised again and again: How does the Logos work purely in the spiritual world? And: What was actually characteristic of the being that encountered man in paradise? How was it connected with the Logos? Such questions, which could only be answered through purely mental images, occupied these people. And it must be said that when we look at the Eleusinian and Mithraic mysteries, which were eradicated root and branch, in the first centuries after the mystery of Golgotha, the risen Christ himself went around the mysteries to reform them. Therefore, in a truly profound sense, one can say that Julian the Apostate was perhaps a better Christian than Constantine. Constantine was not initiated, and then he accepted Christianity in a very superficial way. But Julian the Apostate had an inkling of it: if you want to find Christ, you must find him through the mysteries; you must find Christ precisely through the mysteries, then he will give you the I that could not yet be given in Aristotle's time.

[ 32 ] This is of course connected with the deeper historical necessities that, instead of seeking the way to Christ through the mysteries, these mysteries were eradicated root and branch. But the path to Hellenism must be taken again, must be taken without documents. Hellenism must be resurrected. Of course, not as it was, otherwise one ends up with those affairs that arise from imitating the Olympic Games here and there; it is not important to imitate Greek culture. I do not mean that kind of imitation. Greek culture must be resurrected from within, and it will be resurrected, and people must find the path to the mysteries, only it will be a very inner one. Then they will also find Christ in the appropriate way.

[ 33 ] But just as the first mystery of Golgotha was accomplished in Palestine, so the second was accomplished through Constantinianism. For by eradicating the mysteries, Christ was crucified and killed a second time as a historical phenomenon. For that terrible destruction, which took place over centuries, was such that, above all, it was not only — which truly cannot be underestimated — a destruction of the greatest artistic and mystical achievements, but also a destruction of the most important human experiences. Only, people did not understand what they had actually destroyed with what had disappeared outwardly, because they had already completely lost the depth of the concepts. When the Temple of Serapis and the Temple of Zeus with their magnificent images were destroyed, people said: Yes, if this is destroyed, then the destroyers are right; for ancient legends have told us: When the Temple of Serapis is destroyed, the heavens will collapse and the earth will become chaos! But the heavens did not collapse, and the earth did not become chaos, even though the Roman Christians razed the Temple of Serapis to the ground, — said the people. Certainly, the stars did not fall, the outer, physical ones; the earth did not descend into chaos, but in human experience, that which was previously known through solar initiation disappeared. All the immense wisdom that towered more powerfully than the physical heavens in the view of the ancients collapsed along with the Temple of Serapis. And this ancient wisdom, of which Julian the Apostate still felt an echo in the Eleusinian mysteries, where the spiritual sun and the spiritual moon stretched out above him, sending down their impulses, collapsed. And what the ancients experienced in the Mithras mysteries and in the Egyptian mysteries when, through the sacrificial service, they inwardly relived the mysteries of the moon and the mysteries of the earth as they unfold in the human being himself when, as I described earlier with a trivial expression, he comes to the knowledge of himself, as it were, by shoveling together his soul within himself. Spiritually, it was as if the heavens collapsed and the earth became chaos: for what disappeared in those centuries can be compared to what would disappear if we suddenly lost our senses, where, at least for us, there would no longer be heaven above and no longer be earth below. The old world did not simply disappear in the trivial way depicted there, but in a much deeper sense. And we must believe in the resurrection if we do not want to believe that what has disappeared is completely lost. We must believe in the resurrection. But for this to happen, it is necessary for people to take in strong and courageous concepts. Above all, it is necessary for people to realize that the impulse that has been referred to so often here is necessary today.

[ 34 ] For people should feel that, although centuries have been lived in vain from certain points of view due to a karmic, world-karmic necessity — of course, it is only a necessity from a certain point of view — that they have been lived in vain so that the Christ impulse can be rediscovered, indeed found, out of a strong inner urge for freedom; but people must move away from the complacency in which they often find themselves today.

[ 35 ] Sometimes this complacency is very strange. A Benedictine priest, Krauer, gave lectures in Vienna in the 1980s. I would like to read you a passage from these lectures. The lecture from which I would like to read you a very small excerpt is about the Stoics. The most important representatives of these Stoics were: Zeno (342–270), Cleanthes, who lived 200 years before Christ, and Chrysippus (282–209); so we are centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. What can those who know the Stoics say about them? So we are centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 36 ] “Finally, to say something in praise of Stoicism, it should be mentioned that it strove for a league of nations encompassing the entire human race, which would be capable of putting an end to all racial hatred and war. It goes without saying that Stoicism thus stood far above the often inhuman prejudices of its time and even of the most distant generations of future times.”

[ 37 ] A League of Nations! I had to repeat this lecture because one might think that one had not heard correctly when one now hears Wilson and other statesmen of the present talking about a League of Nations — one would have heard incorrectly; one would think one was hearing the voice of the ancient Stoics from the third century BC! For they said it all much better. They really said it much better, because behind them stood the power of the ancient mysteries. They said it with an inner power that has now disappeared, and only the shell remains, step by step, only the shell remains. Only historians who are not historians in the ordinary, trivial sense sometimes see historical phenomena differently.

[ 38 ] And Knauer continues — I do not need to take back what I said recently about Immanuel Kant, but it is nevertheless remarkable that a good philosopher like Knauer said the following words about the Stoics in the 1880s —:

[ 39 ] “Among the more recent philosophers, this idea” — he means the idea of the League of Nations — “was taken up again and declared feasible by none other than Immanuel Kant in his much too little-noticed work ”Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch.“ Kant's underlying idea is certainly a very correct and practical one. He argues that eternal peace must come about when the most powerful states on earth have a truly representative constitution.” Yes, now it is called reorientation in a shadowy attenuation. Kant's version is already very watered down, but now it has been watered down even further; now it is called reorientation. But as he continues to examine Kant, Knauer finds: "In such a constitution, the wealthy and educated, who are most harmed by war, will be in a position to decide on war and peace. However, Kant does not consider our constitutions, which are modeled on the English, to be such representative constitutions. In most cases, they are dominated by party passion and cliqueism, which is greatly encouraged by the electoral system based almost exclusively on arithmetic and statistical principles. The crux of these remarks, however, is: “International law should be based on a federalism of free states.”

[ 40 ] Are we listening to Kant or are we hearing things about the reorientation? With Kant, the matter is even more powerful, based on much better foundations. Well, I certainly don't want to read out what follows, otherwise good old Kant might get into an unpleasant conflict with the censors.

[ 41 ] You see, what I have discussed here has led a writer I have often mentioned, Brooks Adams, in America, as a kind of solitary thinker, to examine the course of human development. To examine what significance it had when certain peoples repeatedly refreshed the aging aspects of human development, such as the Germanic peoples did with the Roman Empire. Now Brooks Adams looks around and finds many similarities with the Roman Empire, but nowhere does he find those who are supposed to come and refresh it. He does not consider the Americans to be those people — he wrote in America — and he has good reason for this. For this renewal will not come from outside, it must come from within; it must come through the enlivening of the spirit. No renewal will come from the bodies; the renewal must now come from the souls. But this can only come if the Christ impulse is grasped in its liveliness. And all the stupid sayings that are so common today apply to the past, but not to the present and future, the stupid sayings that always repeat: Yes, the proverb is true: Minerva's owl can only spread its wings at dusk. — That was true in earlier times, when one could say: when the peoples had grown old, they founded schools of philosophy; they looked back, as it were, in spirit on what instinct had accomplished. — In the future, things will be different. For this instinct will no longer come; but the spirit itself must become instinctive again, and the possibility of creation must arise from the spirit itself.

[ 42 ] This is a weighty statement. Think about these words: the possibility of creation must arise from the spirit itself! The power of the spirit must become instinctive! It all depends on the idea of resurrection. That which has been crucified must rise again. This will not be brought about by history, but only by our making alive within ourselves the effective forces of the spirit.

[ 43 ] This is what I wanted to say at this time in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha.