The Four Sacrifices of Christ
GA 152
1 June 1914, Basel
Translated by May Laird-Brown and edited by Gilbert Church, Ph.D.
In our present civilization we need, above all, a new knowledge of Christ. This new Christ knowledge is to be gained increasingly through the effects upon us of the science of the spirit. Much, however, that today bears the official seal of Christianity is antagonistic to this new knowledge. It must come to be realized that a school of unselfishness is needed in our present culture. A renewing of responsibility, a deepening of man's moral life, can come only through a training in unselfishness, and under the conditions of the present age only those can go through this school who have won for themselves an understanding of real, all-pervading selflessness.
We can search through the entire evolution of the world without finding a deeper understanding of selflessness than that offered by Christ's appearance upon earth. To know Christ is to go through the school of unselfishness, and to become acquainted with all those incentives to human development that fall gently into our souls, warming and animating every unselfish inclination within us, arousing it from passive to active soul life.
Under the influence of materialism the natural unselfishness of mankind was lost to an extent that will be fully realized only in the distant future. But by contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha, by permeating our knowledge of it with all our feeling, we may acquire again, with our whole soul-being, an education in selflessness. We may say that what Christ did for earthly evolution was included in the fundamental impulse of selflessness, and what He may become for the conscious development of the human soul is the school of unselfishness. We shall best realize this if we consider the Mystery of Golgotha in its most inclusive connection.
This mystery, as we know it, took place once in the physical evolution of the earth. The Being whom we acknowledge as the Christ clothed Himself once in a human body, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But this act was preceded by three preparatory steps. Three times earlier something of a similar nature occurred, not as yet on earth but in the spiritual world, and we have in a sense, three Mysteries of Golgotha that had not yet been fulfilled upon the physical plane. Only the fourth took place in the physical realm, as related in the Gospels and in the Pauline Epistles. This greatest of earthly events was prepared for by three supramundane acts, one taking place in the old Lemurian period and two in the Atlantean. Although these three preparatory events occurred in the supramundane sphere, their power descended to the earth; we shall try to understand the effect of these forces upon human evolution.
In relation to our moral life, our understanding of the world, and in relation to all the activities of our consciousness soul, we must first become selfless. This is a duty of our present culture to the future. Mankind must become more and more selfless; therein lies the future of right living, and of all the deeds of love possible to earthly humanity. Our conscious life is and must be on its way to unselfishness. In a certain connection, essential unselfishness already exists in us, and it would be the greatest misfortune for earthly man if certain sections of his being were as self-seeking as he still is in his moral, intellectual and emotional life. If the same degree of selfishness could take over our senses, it would be a great misfortune because our senses now work in our bodies in a truly unselfish manner.
We have eyes in our body; through these eyes we see, but only because they are selfless and we do not feel them. We see things through them, but the eyes themselves are apart from our perception; it is the same with the other senses. Let us assume that our eyes were self-seeking. What would happen to men? We should approach the color blue, for example, and because our eyes would use up the color immediately within themselves instead of letting it pass through, we should feel a sort of suction in the eyes. If our eyes were as selfish as we are in our moral, intellectual and emotional life, and they wished to experience the effect of red in themselves, we should feel a sharp stab. If our eyes were self- seeking, all our impressions would give us sucking or stabbing pains. We should be painfully conscious that we have eyes. Today, however, humanity is aware of color and light without having to think of the seeing process. The eye is selflessly extinguished during perception. It is the same with the other senses.
In our senses unselfishness reigns, but they would never have reached this unselfishness if Lucifer, even in the old Lemurian age, had been left to his own devices. The spirit who said, as related in the Bible, “Your eyes shall be opened,” made it necessary to transfer man to a sphere of earthly life in which his eyes, if they had developed as they would have done under Lucifer's influence, would have become self-seeking. With every impression—and it would have been the same with the other senses—man would have cried out, “Oh, it stabs me here!” He would not have perceived red in his environment. Or he would have said, “Oh, something sucks in my eyes!” He would not have been aware of the color blue, but would have simply felt the suction. This danger to humanity was averted in the Lemurian age by a Being Who later, through the Mystery of Golgotha, incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In this earlier age, however, He ensouled Himself—I cannot say incarnated—in one of the archangels.
While the earth was working through the Lemurian age, a Being living in spiritual heights became manifest—one might say, as a sort of prophecy of John's baptism—in an archangel who offered up his soul powers, and was thus permeated by the Christ. Through this means a force was released that acted within human evolution upon earth. Its effect was a quieting and harmonizing of our senses so that today we can use them and find them selfless. If we, understanding this, have become grateful to the world order, we shall say, looking back to these ancient times, that what makes it possible for us as sensory beings to enjoy without pain all the splendor of surrounding nature is Christ's first sacrifice. By ensouling Himself in an archangel He brought forth the power to avert the danger of the selfish senses in man. That was the first step leading to the Mystery of Golgotha.
The human being will gradually learn to develop this deep, significant and religious feeling when he is confronted with the beauty of nature, when he looks up at the starry heavens and at all that the sun illumines in the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms. He will learn to say, “That I am so placed in the world that I can look at it around me, my senses being instruments for the perception of its splendor rather than sources of pain, I owe to Christ's first sacrifice in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha.” In perspective we see before us a time in which all observation and enjoyment of nature will be permeated by Christ; when men, refreshing themselves in an invigorating springtime, in the warmth of summer, or in any of the other delights of nature, will say to themselves, “In taking up all this beauty into ourselves, we must realize that it is not ourselves, but Christ within our senses Who enables us to experience it.”
In the first period of the Atlantean evolution selfishness tried—this time through Lucifer and Ahriman—to take possession of another part of the human organism; that is, the vital organs. With this in mind, let us consider what is intrinsic in our life-organism. What is its essential nature? You need only think what it is like when injured by organic disease. Then man begins to suffer from the self-seeking of heart, lungs, stomach or other organs, and the time comes when man knows that he has a heart or stomach, knows it by direct experience, because he has a pain. To be ill means that an organ has become selfish and is leading its own independent life within us. In ordinary normal conditions this is not the case. Then the single organs live selflessly within us. Our everyday constitution holds us up securely in the physical world only when we do not feel that we have stomach, lungs, etc., but have them without feeling them, when they do not demand our attention but remain unselfish servants of the body.
On some other occasion and at some other time we shall consider the reason why illness results from the selfishness of our organs. Today we will confine our discussion to normal conditions. Had it depended upon Lucifer and Ahriman, quite a different state would have existed as early as the Atlantean period. Every single human organ would have been self- seeking, and the results most extraordinary. Assume, for example, that the human being looked at a fruit or something else in the outer world that can be eaten, or that stands in some sort of relation to his vital organs. Someday these relations of the outer world with our organs will be the subject of genuine scientific study. If the other sciences allow themselves to be aligned with spiritual science, it will be known that when a human being gathers cherries from a tree and eats them, something enters with the cherries that is related to a particular organ; other fruits are related to other organs.
Everything that enters the human organism is in some way related to it. If Lucifer and Ahriman could have carried out their designs during the Atlantean period, then, when we picked cherries, for example, the related organ would have felt an inordinate greed. The human being would have felt, not the self-seeking organ only, but all the other organs also, striving against it with equal selfishness! Let us take a different case. Suppose something harmful were present, for while certain things in the world are related to humanity in a beneficial way, others affect it injuriously. Suppose someone were to approach a poisonous plant, or anything else harmful to this or that organ; he would then recognize that he was confronting something that gave a burnt out feeling to one of his organs.
Now let us consider not what we eat, but the air surrounding us. Every element of the atmosphere is related to our organs. If we had become what Lucifer and Ahriman intended and had been thrown upon our own resources, we should have been chased about the world by animal desires for what satisfied one organ or another, or by terrible disgust for all that was injurious. Just imagine how we could possibly develop ourselves in this world if we had such physical organs that we were tossed to and fro like a rubber ball, a plaything for every agreeable odor that we would run after, or were forced by nausea to flee from. That this did not happen, that our vital organs were subdued and harmonized resulted from the great event in the first Atlantean epoch when, in supramundane spheres, the second step was taken toward the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ Being ensouled Himself again in an archangel, and what was accomplished by this deed shone down into the earth's atmosphere. Then that harmonizing and balancing of the vital organs took place that rendered them selfless.
In our connection with the outer world we should be continuously exposed to severe illnesses and we could not be at all healthy but for this second Christ event. We see in perspective for the future that the human being will acquire, when he is able to imbue himself with a true understanding of the spiritual world, a feeling of gratitude toward the spiritual beings upon whom humanity depends. He will say in true piety, “I realize that I am able to exist as a physical man with unselfish organs because not I alone have developed myself in the world, but Christ in me, Who has so conditioned my organs that I can be a man!” Thus we come to learn so to regard all that makes us human, fundamentally and in the most comprehensive sense, that we say, “Not I, but Christ in me.” In His three preparatory steps, taken before the actual Mystery of Golgotha, Christ provided for the complete evolution of humanity.
In the last part of the Atlantean period humanity faced a third danger. Thinking, feeling and willing were threatened with disorder through the entrance of selfishness. What would have been the result of this? Well, the human being would have intended this or that, and followed this or that impulse of will, while his thinking would have impelled him in quite a different direction, and his feeling in still another. It was necessary for human evolution that thinking, feeling and willing should become unselfish members of the united soul. Under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman they could not have done this. Thought, feeling and will, becoming independently self-seeking, would have rent asunder the harmonious working of the Christ. In consequence, toward the end of the Atlantean evolution, the third Christ event occurred. Once more the Christ Being ensouled Himself in an archangel, and the power thus generated in the spiritual world made possible the harmonization of thinking, feeling and willing. Truly, as the rays of the physical sun must act upon earth to prevent the withering of plant life, so must the Sun Spirit be reflected upon earth from supramundane spheres as I have just explained.
What would have become of the human being without this third Christ event? As if by furies, he would have been seized by his unruly desires, by the activity of his will. He might have gone mad even though his self- seeking reason might have thought with scornful mockery about all that the raging will brought forth. This was averted by the third Christ event when Christ took for the third time the soul of an archangel as an outer vehicle.
Mankind has preserved some memory of how human passion and human thinking were harmonized at this period by forces that descended from supramundane worlds, but the sign of this memory is not rightly understood. St. George who conquers the dragon, or Michael who conquers the dragon, are symbols of the third Christ event, when Christ ensouled Himself in an archangel. It is the dragon, trodden under foot, that has brought thinking, feeling and willing into disorder. All who turn their gaze upon St. George or Michael with the dragon, or some similar episode, perceive, in reality, the third Christ event. The Greeks who in their wonderful mythology made copies of what happened in the spiritual world at the end of the Atlantean age, revered the Sun Spirit as the harmonizer of man's thinking, feeling and willing. “Thou Sun Spirit,” so said those who knew something about it, “Thou hast ensouled Thyself in an etheric spirit form,” for such is the form of those we call archangels today; “Thou has brought thinking, feeling and willing, which might otherwise rage through us in confusion, into order with Thy lyre, sounding upon it harmoniously the tones of the human soul!”
So the Sun Spirit became the guardian of the wild, stormy passions when they, as it sometimes happened, gushed forth in the fumes that rise from within the earth and break through its surface. If a human being should expose himself to them and allow only these vapors to work upon him, then thought, feeling and will would rage madly within him. The Greeks placed the Pythia over those vapors, which, in rising out of the earth, bring the passions into disorder through Lucifer and Ahriman. But Apollo shone upon the Pythia, conquered the unruly passions and she became a sibyl. For the Greeks, Apollo, the Sun Spirit, represented the Christ at the stage of His third sacrifice, and the results of Christ's deed were discerned in the attuning of men's passions under the power of the Pythia, conferred upon her by the god Apollo. In this connection Apollo was to the Greeks what is expressed in the victory of Michael or St. George over the dragon.
We see also the meaning of the extraordinary pronouncement of Justin Martyr, a saying which, since it emanated from him, we must regard as Christian, although many representatives of Christianity today would consider it heretical. Justin said, “Heraclites, Socrates and Plato were also Christians, the only kind of Christians possible before the actual consummation of the Mystery of Golgotha.” Theologians of today no longer realize it but in the first centuries of Christianity the Christian martyrs still knew that the old Greek sages, although they did not use the name of Christ, if asked about Apollo, would have answered out of their Mystery wisdom, “The great Sun Spirit, Who in the future will live as a man on earth, appears to us in Apollo as though ensouled in him in the form of an archangel.”
Then came the fourth, the earthly mystery, that of Golgotha. The same Christ Being Who had ensouled Himself three times in archangelic form incarnated through what we call the Baptism by John in the Jordan in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.
I admit that it may seem strange when I say that this great Being was ensouled three times in an archangelic form, and then incarnated in a human being. It would seem a more orderly progression if between His ensoulment as an archangel and His human incarnation He had taken an angelic form. So it may seem to us. Yet, even though it is claimed that the statements of spiritual science are fictitious, truly it is not so. You may gather this from corroborative evidence. If you ask me how it happens that Christ did not descend from hierarchy to hierarchy and only afterward to man—if you were to ask me that, I could only answer that I do not know, for I never make theoretical combinations. The facts adduced by spiritual research are that Christ chose three times an archangelic form, leaving out the angelic form, and then made use of a human body. I leave it to future research to determine the reason, which I do not yet know, though I do know that it is true.
Then came the fourth step in the Mystery of Golgotha, and this averted another danger, that of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences upon the human ego or I. In the Lemurian age the sense organs would have become disordered through Lucifer; in the first Atlantean period the vital organs were threatened with disorder and disharmony, and in the late Atlantean era the soul organs, the organs that underlie thinking, feeling and willing. In the post-Atlantean period the human ego itself was endangered.
Because the ego or I at this time was to take its place as a living factor in human evolution, an effort was made to establish harmony between this ego and the powers of the cosmos lest it become their plaything. This might have happened. The ego might have so developed that it could not keep a hold upon itself, and had it been delivered to these forces, everything that came from the soul would have been overpowered by all sorts of elemental forces that arise from wind, air or water. They would have driven the human being violently in all directions.
Michelangelo painted it. In the Sibyls he showed what had threatened mankind. With wonderful skill he made them express the human types of those who felt the coming derangement of the ego, so that although all possible wisdom might come forth, human beings could neither manage nor direct it. Look at the way in which Michelangelo has painted the different degrees of derangement in egos given over to elemental beings.
Upon the other side, however, he gives us something else. In the same space he has painted the musing figures of prophecy whose aspect shows the illumination of what preserves the integrity of the ego toward the cosmos. It touches us deeply when we see in the prophets the urgency, the pressure toward the ego and, on the other side, human beings suffering disorder through the ego itself. Then, standing in this space, is the Christ, incarnate in a human body, Who had to bring into order and harmony the ego that was to come into the world.
Yes, the science of the spirit will impress upon us ever more deeply that this human ego, through the fourth Christ event, the Mystery of Golgotha, can come to true unselfishness. The senses have said, “Not I, but Christ in us.” The vital organs have said, “Not I, but Christ in us.” In his moral and intellectual life man must learn to say, “Not I, but Christ in me.” Every step into the spiritual world shows us this.
I wished to explain this today in order that upon another occasion in the near future we may offer certain occult proofs of these facts in order to show that what we call spiritual science will pour itself into our moral and intellectual lives in such a way that human beings may become students of selflessness, that Christ may live within us so that we may feel Him vitally in every word that is uttered in discussions of spiritual science.
One more thing, my dear friends. You know that since 1909 we have been producing our Mystery Dramas in Munich. What we presented on the stage there may be considered good or bad; that is not the present question. What was done there, however, required a certain spiritual power, a power that does not approach the human being simply because of his existence upon earth. Since we can now work in Dornach and carve our different kinds of hard wood, we need muscular strength. We cannot say that we can give this strength to ourselves consciously. It comes from our bodies, from our souls' capacity; it is not under our control. Equally, we have not under our control all that we perform in the spirit and for which we need spiritual power. That is not entirely dependent upon our natural ability, just as what we do physically is not dependent alone upon our talents but also upon the muscular strength of our bodies. We need spiritual powers that are as much outside ourselves as our muscular strength is outside our souls. I know that superficial critics may say, “You are a fool; you believe that spiritual powers come to you from without, whereas they simply rise from your own inner being.” Let them think me a fool; I regard them as belonging to the clever men who cannot distinguish hunger from a piece of bread. I know how spiritual powers from without flow into human beings. The idea that hunger creates the bread that satisfies it—believed only by a crazy man—is as false as that the power of our own soul can create the forces needed for our spiritual activities. These forces must flow into us. Just as we know clearly that our hunger is within us, and that bread comes from without, does one who lives in spiritual worlds know what is within himself and what comes to him from without. Since 1909 I have felt personally, more and more, the spiritual power that came from without whenever there was occasion to develop, in stillness and calm, what was necessary for the Mystery Plays. I knew that a spiritual eye was resting upon what had been accomplished, and I relate this as a direct experience.
In the early days, when we were working at spiritual science in Germany, an acquaintance came to us who accepted with enthusiasm what we were able to give at that time. She accepted what it was possible to give out concerning human evolution, cosmic mysteries, reincarnation and karma, not only with devotion and enthusiasm but added to them a wonderful aesthetic sense. Every experience with this person, whether of teaching or conversation, was steeped in beauty. We were few at that time. We had no need to crowd ourselves into such a room as this, and what we now say to a large audience was then discussed by three people—two others and myself. One of these, the person mentioned above, left us upon the physical plane in 1904, and entered the spiritual world. Such people go through a development after death. When we produced Schuré's reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis at our Congress in 1907, no spiritual influence was perceptible. In 1909 it began, and has come more and more frequently since then. I have accurate knowledge that it was the individuality of our friend whom, objectively and because of her originality, we all loved. Removed to the spiritual world, she acted as a guardian angel to all that we accomplished in the combining of the aesthetic and esoteric elements in our Mysteries. We felt well protected, and looked gratefully upward, realizing that what penetrated us and flowed over into our earthly activities was an expression of the watchfulness of a spiritual personality. But then when it came to conversation with this personality—one may call it conversation since there was a certain reciprocal action—she asserted that she found the way to us easier the more we were permeated with the thought of Christ in the evolution of the earth. If I were to put into earthly words what she reiterated, I should say, expressing symbolically, of course, what is quite different in the spiritual world, “I find the way to you so easily because you are finding evermore the way to make spiritual science into an expression of the living Word of Christ.”
The Christ impulse will become for us the living bridge between earthly life and life in superphysical worlds. From the spiritual world Christ three times conditioned for the human being the spiritual constitution that he needed in order to live rightly. Christ intervened three times, making the human sense, life and psychic organs unselfish. It is now man's task to learn unselfishness in his moral and intellectual life through his understanding of the saying, “Not I, but Christ in me.”
The world will recognize that the message of the science of the spirit is the Word of Christ. He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” The mission of the science of the spirit in our age is to open doors to the living Christ. The dead, who know that Christ has found the passage from heaven to earthly activities, unite with the understanding of the living. If the dead, as their nearest protectors, bend to the earthly living, they will find those souls most intensive who are penetrated and spiritualized by the Christ impulse. Christ, as the great Sun Spirit, descended from superphysical worlds through the Mystery of Golgotha in order to find a dwelling in the souls of men. Spiritual science is to be the message, telling how Christ may find that dwelling in human souls. If Christ will find His abode in men's earthly souls, then the Christ power will stream back from the earth's aura into the worlds that He forsook for the salvation of mankind, and the whole cosmos will be permeated through and through by Him.
We can work up gradually to such a deep understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha as this by completely imbuing ourselves with spiritual science. If we thus consider this and, in addition, think of it as a school of unselfishness for the intellectual and moral life of future humanity, we shall realize the necessity of the spiritually scientific proclamation of the Mystery of Golgotha! Then we shall know the meaning of the spiritually scientific impulses that are striving to enter our present life. Then that Christ impulse will penetrate humanity that all men can, indeed, accept, for Christ did not appear to one nation only but, being the great Sun Spirit, He belongs to the whole earth and can enter all human souls, regardless of nation and religion. May many gradually find the way to such an understanding of the Christ impulse and of the Mystery of Golgotha! Then, perhaps, that will appear the most Christian that today is stamped as unchristian and heretical.
If we strive, not for a mere intellectual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, but for the ability to grasp it with our whole souls, we then need the science of the spirit and, as members of our spiritual stream, we shall belong to those souls who are permitted to know and understand the necessities of mankind now and in the immediate future.
Die Vier Christus-Opfer
Die Drei Vorstufen Des Mysteriums Von Golgatha
Für unsere gegenwärtige Kultur ist vor allen Dingen nötig, daß wir immer mehr und mehr gewinnen, indem wir die Ergebnisse der Geisteswissenschaft auf uns wirken lassen, eine neue Christus-Erkenntnis. Und gerade dieser neuen Christus-Erkenntnis ist manches so feindlich, was heute das Amtssiegel des Christlichen trägt. Notwendig ist, daß immer mehr und mehr ein Verständnis erworben wird dafür, wie wir für unsere Kultur eine Schule der Selbstlosigkeit brauchen. Eine Erneuerung der Moral, eine Vertiefung des menschlichen sittlichen Lebens kann nur kommen durch die Schulung der Selbstlosigkeit. Diese Schule der Selbstlosigkeit kann der Mensch nach den Bedingungen des gegenwärtigen Zeitenzyklus nur durchmachen, wenn er sich ein Verständnis erwirbt für wirkliche Selbstlosigkeit, ein durchdringendes Verständnis sich erwirbt für wirkliche Selbstlosigkeit. Nun können wir, wenn wir die Weltenevolution, die Weltenentwickelung durchgehen, kein tieferes Verständnis finden für Selbstlosigkeit als dasjenige, was uns durch die Erscheinung des Christus auf Erden gegeben worden ist. Und den Christus erkennen, heißt die Schule der Selbstlosigkeit durchmachen. Christus erkennen, heißt sich bekanntmachen mit all denjenigen Impulsen der Menschheitsentwickelung, die so in unsere Seele hineinträufeln, daß sie alles, was in dieser Seele zur Selbstlosigkeit veranlagt ist, durchglühen, durchwärmen und aufrufen zum aktiven Seelensein, zur Selbstlosigkeit. Unter dem Einfluß des Materialismus ging die Selbstlosigkeit der Menschheit in einer Weise verloren, wie es in zukünftigen Zeiten der Menschheit erst erkannt werden wird. Aber durch die Vertiefung in das Mysterium von Golgatha, die Durchdringung der Erkenntnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha mit unserem ganzen Gefühl, unserem ganzen seelischen Wesen, können wir uns wiederum eine Kultur der Selbstlosigkeit aneignen. Und wir können sagen: Was Christus für die Erdenentwickelung getan hat, ist beschlossen in dem Grundimpuls der Selbstlosigkeit, und was er werden kann für die bewußte Entwickelung der menschlichen Seele, ist die Schule der Selbstlosigkeit! Das werden wir am besten gewahr, wenn wir das Mysterium von Golgatha in seinem großen Zusammenhang betrachten.
Dieses Mysterium von Golgatha ist so, wie wir es kennen, einmal verlaufen innerhalb der physischen Erdenentwickelung. Einmal verleiblichte sich diejenige Wesenheit, die wir als die Christus-Wesenheit anerkennen, in einem menschlichen Leibe, in dem Leibe des Jesus von Nazareth. Aber drei Vorstufen hat dieses Mysterium von Golgatha. Dreimal ist vorher etwas geschehen, allerdings noch nicht auf der Erde, aber in der geistigen Welt. Und gewissermaßen haben wir drei Mysterien von Golgatha, von denen wir sagen müssen, daß sie noch nicht auf dem physischen Plan sich vollzogen haben. Das vierte erst hat sich auf dem physischen Plan abgespielt und ist dasjenige, von dem uns die Evangelien und die Paulinischen Briefe Kunde geben. Vorbereitet ist dieses größte Erdenereignis durch drei überirdische Ereignisse. Diese überirdischen Ereignisse fielen so, daß das eine in der alten lemurischen Zeit liegt, zwei liegen in der atlantischen Zeit. Das vierte Ereignis liegt in der nachatlantischen Zeit und ist unser Mysterium von Golgatha.
Die drei vorhergehenden sind Ereignisse, die sich nicht auf der Erde abgespielt haben, sondern in der überirdischen Welt, aber die Kraft dieser Ereignisse ist auf die Erde heruntergedrungen. Wir wollen versuchen zu verstehen, wie die Kräfte der drei, das Mysterium von Golgatha vorbereitenden überirdischen Ereignisse in die Menschheitsentwickelung hereingewirkt haben.
In bezug auf unser sittliches Leben, unser Weltverständnis und in bezug auf dasjenige, was innerhalb unserer Bewußtseinsseele sich abspielt, müssen wir erst selbstlos werden. Das ist eine Aufgabe der jetzigen Kultur gegen die Zukunft hin. Die Menschheit muß immer selbstloser und selbstloser werden, darin liegt die Zukunft der richtigen sittlichen Lebenstaten, die Zukunft aller Liebestaten, die durch die Erdenmenschheit geschehen können. Unser bewußtes Leben ist auf dem Wege zur Selbstlosigkeit oder muß auf dem Wege zur Selbstlosigkeit sein. In einer gewissen Beziehung aber gibt es in uns schon wesenhaft Selbstloses. Und es wäre das größte Unglück des Erdenmenschen, wenn er mit Bezug auf gewisse Teile seines Wesens so selbstsüchtig sein müßte, wie er es in vieler Beziehung heute noch sein muß in bezug auf sein moralisches, intellektuelles und gefühlsmäßiges Leben. Wenn die Selbstsucht zum Beispiel in demselben Grad unsere Sinne ergreifen würde oder ergreifen könnte, wie sie unsere Moral ergreift, so wäre dies das größte Unglück für den Erdenmenschen. Denn unsere Sinne wirken an unserem Leibe so, daß in dieser Sinneswirkung sich Selbstlosigkeit ausspricht.
Wir haben Augen in unserm Leibe. Durch diese Augen sehen wir. Aber wir sehen nur dadurch, daß tatsächlich die Augen selbstlos sind, daß wir sie gar nicht spüren. Wir tragen sie in uns, wir sehen gleichsam durch die Augen hindurch die Dinge, aber die Augen selbst sind ausgelöscht als solche in unserem Wahrnehmen. So ist es auch mit den anderen Sinnen. Wir nehmen die Welt dadurch wahr, daß unser Sinnensystem selbstlos ist. Nehmen wir einmal an, unsere Augen wären selbstsüchtig. Was würde dann mit dem Menschen geschehen? Wir würden uns zum Beispiel einer blauen Farbe nähern, und indem wir uns ihr nähern, würde unser Auge, weil das Auge so wirken würde, daß es nicht die Farbe durchlassen, sondern sie unmittelbar im Auge selbst erschöpfen würde, von dem Blau, indem es sich ihm näherte, ausgesogen werden. Wie eine Saugkraft würde man es im Auge empfinden, wenn das Auge so selbstsüchtig werden könnte, wie wir in unserem moralischen, intellektuellen und Gefühlsleben sind. Wenn wir uns einer roten Farbe nähern und unser Auge sich nicht selbstlos verhalten würde, sondern Anspruch darauf machen würde, die Wirkung des Rot in sich zu erleben, so würde das Rot wie stechend auf unser Auge wirken. Und wenn unser Auge selbstsüchtig würde, so wäre es so, daß wir gegenüber allen Eindrücken einen Saug- oder Stechschmerz hätten. Wir wären uns bewußt, daß wir Augen haben, aber wir würden bloß Saug- oder Stechschmerzen wahrnehmen. In Wirklichkeit ist es für den heutigen Menschen so, daß er durch die Welt geht und weiß, daß Farben- und Lichtwirkungen da sind. Aber er braucht nicht an das Auge zu denken. Es löscht sich selbstlos aus während des Wahrnehmens. Und ebenso ist es mit den andern Sinnen.
In unseren Sinnen waltet Selbstlosigkeit. Aber zu dieser Selbstlosigkeit wären die Sinne nicht gekommen, schon in der lemurischen Zeit wäre ihnen die Selbstlosigkeit genommen worden, wenn Luzifer frei für sich hätte wirken können in dieser alten lemurischen Zeit. Der Geist, von dem mit Recht das biblische Wort gesagt wird: Euer Auge wird geöffnet sein -, dieser Geist hat notwendig gemacht, daß der Mensch in eine Sphäre des Erdenlebens versetzt worden ist, in welcher seine Augen, wenn sie sich so entwickelt hätten, wie sie sich unter dem Einflusse Luzifers hätten entwickeln müssen, selbstsüchtig geworden wären. Und bei jedem Eindruck - und so würde es auch für die andern Sinne sein — hätte der Mensch gerufen: Ach, hier sticht es! - und er hätte nicht die rote Farbe in seiner Umgebung wahrgenommen, oder er hätte gesagt: Ach, es saugt an mir — und hätte nicht die blaue Farbe wahrgenommen, sondern im Auge die saugende Wirkung. Abgewendet worden ist noch in der lemurischen Zeit diese Gefahr von der Menschheitsentwickelung dadurch, daß sich - aber jetzt nicht auf der Erde, sondern in den überirdischen Welten - diejenige Wesenheit, die später durch das Mysterium von Golgatha sich in dem Leib des Jesus von Nazareth verleiblicht hat, dazumal verseelt - ich kann nicht sagen verleiblicht — hat in ein Erzengelwesen, ein Wesen aus der Hierarchie der Archangeloi. So lebte, während die Erde ihr lemurisches Zeitalter durchmachte, in geistigen Höhen ein Wesen, welches - man möchte sagen, durch eine Art Vorbotschaft der Johannestaufe — dadurch entstanden ist, daß ein Erzengel seine Seelischheit hingeopfert hat und der Christus dieses Erzengelwesen durchdrang. Dadurch aber löste er eine Kraft aus, die in die menschliche Erdenentwickelung hereinwirkte. Und das Ergebnis dieser Einwirkung war eine Beruhigung der Sinne, ein Harmonischwerden der Sinne. Und wenn wir uns heute unserer Sinne so bedienen können, daß diese Sinne selbstlos sind, werden wir - wenn wir in bezug auf diese Tatsache verstanden haben und der Weltenordnung dankbar gemacht worden sind - hinschauen in alte Zeiten und werden sagen: Das, was wir als Sinnenmenschen sind, was möglich macht, daß wir nicht Schmerz durch unsere Sinne, sondern die herrliche Natur um uns herum empfinden, das rührt von dem ersten Christus-Opfer her. Dadurch, daß er sich verseelt hat in einem Erzengel, bringt er die Wirkung hervor, welche die Gefahr der Selbstsucht der Sinne von der Menschheitsentwickelung ablenkte. Das war die erste Vorstufe des Mystetiums von Golgatha.
Lernen wird der Mensch allmählich das tiefe, bedeutsame religiöse Gefühl entwickeln, wenn er hinschaut auf die Herrlichkeit der Natur, wenn er hinaufschaut zum Sternenhimmel, auf alles dasjenige, was das Sonnenlicht bescheint, was im tierischen, im mineralischen, im pflanzlichen Reich um uns herum ist, sagen lernen wird der Mensch: Daß ich so die Welt um mich herum schauen kann, daß ich so hineingestellt bin in diese Welt, daß meine Sinne nicht Quellen von Schmerzen sind, sondern das Werkzeug der Wahrnehmung der Herrlichkeit der Welt, das verdanke ich dem ersten Opfer, das von seiten des Christus als Vorbereitung vorangegangen ist dem Mysterium von Golgatha. Und vor uns erblicken wir perspektivisch eine Zeit, in der die Naturbetrachtung, der Naturgenuß durchchristet sein wird, wo die Menschen fühlen werden, sich sagen werden, wenn sie hinausgehen und sich erlaben an dem herrlichen Frühling, an den Schönheiten des Sommers oder an sonstigen Hertlichkeiten der Natur: Indem wir das alles aufnehmen können, was Herrliches die Natur um uns ausbreitet, müssen wir uns bewußt sein: Nicht wir, der Christus in unseren Sinnen Ist es, der uns geeignet macht, also die herrliche Natur zu empfinden.
Und es war in den ersten Zeiten der atlantischen Entwickelung, da wollte sich - jetzt durch Luzifer und Ahriman bewirkt — die Selbstsucht eines andern Systems der menschlichen Organisation bemächtigen, nämlich der Lebensorgane. Versuchen wir einmal, uns das Wesentliche unserer Lebensorganisation von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus vor Augen zu führen. Was ist denn dieses Wesentliche? Man braucht nur zu denken, wie es dem Menschen ergeht, wenn dieses Wesentliche der Lebensorgane beeinträchtigt ist. Und es ist beeinträchtigt, wenn organische Erkrankungen der Lebensorgane auftreten. Da beginnt der Mensch zu erleben die Selbstsucht seiner Lunge, seines Herzens, Magens und anderer Organe. Da beginnen die Zeiten, wo der Mensch, erst indem er den Schmerz fühlt, weiß, er hat einen Magen, ein Herz, wo er es weiß im unmittelbaren Bewußtsein: Kranksein heißt, ein Organ ist selbstsüchtig geworden, führt ein eigenes Leben in unserem Organismus. In dem gewöhnlichen normalen Menschenleben ist das nicht der Fall. Da leben in der Gesamtorganisation des Menschen die einzelnen Organe des Menschen selbstlos. Und unsere alltägliche Verfassung hält uns nur dann sicher in der Welt aufrecht, wenn wir mit selbstlosen Organen durch die Welt gehen können, wenn wir nicht spüren, daß wir Magen, Lunge und so weiter haben, sondern wenn wir sie haben, ohne sie zu spüren, wenn sie nicht selbst sich gleich geltend machen, sondern wenn sie im ganzen Organismus dienende Glieder sind.
Bei anderer Gelegenheit, ein andermal werden wir davon sprechen, warum Krankheit durch die Selbstsucht der Organe bewirkt wird, heute soll nur auf den normalen Zustand hingewiesen werden. Wäre es nur auf Ahriman und Luzifer angekommen, so wären ganz andere Zustände eingetreten schon in der atlantischen Entwickelung. Jedes einzelne menschliche Organ wäre selbstsüchtig geworden und etwas ganz Merkwürdiges hätte sich ereignet. Nehmen wir an, der Mensch näherte sich irgendeiner Frucht, also etwas, was in der Außenwelt ist und was von uns genossen werden kann oder was in irgendeiner Beziehung zu unserer Leibesorganisation steht. Es wird einmal gerade diese Beziehung zu unseren Lebensorganen ein Gegenstand des medizinischen Studiums sein, wenn die Wissenschaft sich wird anregen lassen von der Geisteswissenschaft. Dann wird man wissen, daß, wenn der Mensch zum Beispiel sich Kirschen pflückt vom Baum und sie ißt, gerade das, was mit den Kirschen in die Organisation übergeht, eine besondere Beziehung zu gewissen Organen hat, andere Früchte haben andere Beziehungen zu andern Organen. Alles was in die menschliche Organisation hineinkommt, hat gewisse Beziehungen zu dieser Organisation. Wenn das erfüllt worden wäre, was durch Ahriman und Luzifer hätte geschehen sollen in der atlantischen Zeit, dann hätten wir zum Beispiel Kirschen gepflückt, und im höchsten Maße hätte das Organ, das zu den Kirschen Beziehung hat, eine Gier gehabt. Eine unendliche Gier wäre da zum Ausdruck gekommen, und der Mensch hätte gespürt das betreffende Organ, das selbstsüchtig sich herausstellen würde aus dem Gesamtorganismus, aber die andern Organe würden dafür ebenso selbstsüchtig dagegen streiten in seinem Organismus. Oder nehmen wir einen andern Fall: es sei irgend etwas da, was dem Menschen schädlich ist. Geradeso wie die Dinge der Außenwelt gewisse Beziehungen zum Menschen haben im guten Sinn, so haben andere Dinge der Außenwelt nachteilige Beziehungen. Wenn der Mensch sich irgendeiner giftigen Pflanze näherte oder etwas anderem, was nur nachteilige Beziehungen zu diesem oder jenem Organ hätte, so würde er diese Beziehung durch die innere Tätigkeit des Organes spüren, und dies würde sich ausdrücken in einem furchtbaren, quälenden Angstgefühl. Der Mensch würde fühlen: vor ihm ist etwas, was da auf sein Organ so wirkt, daß es sich gleichsam ausgebrannt fühlt.
Nehmen wir jetzt nicht dasjenige, was der Mensch ißt, nehmen wir die Luft, die uns umgibt. Alles was in der Luft auftritt, hat Beziehung zu unseren Organen. Wenn das in Erfüllung gegangen wäre, was Ahriman und Luzifer gewollt haben, wenn der Mensch nur so auf sich angewiesen wäre, so würde er gejagt werden durch die Welt zwischen tierischster Begierde nach dem, was dem einen oder andern Organ zuträglich ist, und furchtbarem Ekel vor dem, was dem einen oder andern Organ schädlich ist. Stellen wir uns vor, wenn wir so hineingestellt wären in die Welt, mit solchen Leibesorganen, daß wir im höchsten Maße ein Spielball wären für jedes angenehme Aroma, dem wir, wennschon es eine Stunde entfernt ist, nachlaufen würden, oder ein Ekelgefühl nötigte uns schon von weither, daß wir entflöhen. Wenn wir so wie ein Kautschukball hin- und hergeworfen würden, denken Sie sich, wie könnten wir uns da entwickeln in der Welt? Daß das nicht so kam, daß unsere Lebensorgane abgedämpft worden sind, daß sie harmonisiert worden sind, ist die Folge davon, daß sich in der Zeit, in der der Mensch die erste atlantische Entwickelung durchmachte, in überirdischen Sphären die zweite Vorstufe des Mysteriums von Golgatha ereignete. Wieder verseelte sich die Christus-Wesenheit in einer Erzengelwesenheit, und das, was dadurch bewirkt wurde, das strahlte in die Erdenatmosphäre herunter. Da entstand jene Harmonisierung, jene Abdämpfung der Lebensorgane, die die Organe im Menschen selbstlos macht. In unserem Zusammensein mit der Außenwelt würden wir fortwährend die Ursache haben von den schlimmsten Erkrankungen, wir könnten gar nicht gesund sein, wenn nicht dieses zweite Christus-Ereignis eingetreten wäre. Und wiederum wird sich — das tritt uns als eine Perspektive für die Zukunft entgegen - die Menschheit, wenn sie sich wird durchdringen können mit einem wirklichen Verständnis von der geistigen Welt, ein Dankbarkeitsgefühl aneignen gegenüber den geistigen Wesenheiten, von denen der Mensch abhängt. Es wird sich die Menschheit erfüllen mit jenem wahren Frommsein, durch das sie sagen wird: Ich empfinde es, daß ich ein physischer Mensch mit der Selbstlosigkeit der Organe nur sein kann dadurch, daß nicht ich allein in der Welt mich entwickelt habe, sondern der Christus in mir, der mir meine Organe so gestaltet hat, daß ich Mensch sein kann! - So lernen wir immer mehr und mehr, daß wir im Grunde genommen alles dasjenige, was uns zum Menschen macht, im allerumfassendsten Sinne so auffassen müssen, daß wir sagen: Nicht ich, der Christus in mir. -Der Christus hat gesorgt für die ganze Menschheitsentwickelung in den drei Vorstufen des Mysteriums von Golgatha, die er verrichtet hat vor dem eigentlichen Mysterium von Golgatha.
Es war in den letzten Zeiten der atlantischen Entwickelung, da stand die Menschheit vor einer dritten Gefahr. Da sollte in Unordnung kommen Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Die Selbstsucht sollte einziehen in Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Was würde dadurch entstanden sein? Nun, der Mensch würde dieses oder jenes gewollt haben, würde diesen oder jenen Willensimpulsen nachgegangen sein, einem andern Impuls würde sein Denken, wieder einem andern sein Fühlen nachgegangen sein. Notwendig war es für die Menschheitsentwickelung, daß Denken, Fühlen und Wollen sich als selbstlose Dinge der Gesamtheit der Seele einfügten. Unter dem bloßen Einfluß von Luzifer und Ahriman würden sie das nicht gekonnt haben. Da würden Denken, Fühlen, Wollen selbstsüchtig geworden sein, sie hätten gleichsam das harmonische Wirken der Seele zerrissen. Da trat dann, gegen Ende der atlantischen Entwickelung, das dritte Christus-Ereignis ein. Wiederum verseelte sich die Christus-Wesenheit in einem Erzengelwesen, und die Kraft, die in der überirdischen Welt dadurch entstand, daß der Christus ein Erzengelwesen durchdrang, die ermöglichte die Harmonisierung von Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Wahrhaftig, so wie die physischen Sonnenstrahlen auf die Erde wirken müssen, damit nicht alles Pflanzenleben verdorrt, so muß von überirdischen Welten der Sonnengeist spiegelnd auf die Erde herein wirken, wie ich es jetzt geschildert habe. Auf der dritten Stufe hat er harmonisiert Denken, Fühlen und Wollen, so wie sie für das normale Menschenleben harmonisiert werden mußten.
Was wäre aus dem Menschen geworden, wenn dieses dritte ChristusEreignis nicht eingetreten wäre? Furienhaft würde er erfaßt worden sein von seinen wilden Begierden, von seinem Willensleben. Rasend hätte er werden können, trotzdem auf der andern Seite wiederum sein Verstand selbstsüchtig höhnisch gedacht hätte über dasjenige, was rasend der Wille vollbringt. Das ist abgewendet worden durch das dritte Christus-Ereignis, da der Christus zum dritten Mal als ChristusWesenheit in der äußeren Seele eines Erzengels war, eines Wesens aus der Hierarchie der Archangeloi.
Die Menschheit hat sich eine Erinnerung erhalten daran, wie die menschliche Leidenschaft und das menschliche Denken harmonisiert worden sind durch die Kräfte, die damals herunterwirkten aus den überirdischen Welten. Und dieses Erinnerungszeichen ist vorhanden, wird nur nicht in richtiger Weise verstanden. St. Georg, der den Drachen besiegt, oder Michael, der den Drachen besiegt, ist das Zeichen, das gebildet worden ist für das dritte Christus-Ereignis, da in Erzengelgestalt sich verseelt hat der Christus. Und der Drache, den er zertritt, ist derjenige, der in Unordnung gebracht hat das menschliche Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. Alle, die auf St. Georg mit dem Drachen oder auf Michael mit dem Drachen oder auf ähnliche Angelegenheiten hinblicken, sprechen in Wahrheit von dem dritten Christus-Ereignis. Und die Griechen, welche in ihrer wunderbaren Mythologie etwas geschaffen haben wie Nachbilder desjenigen, was sich am Ende der atlantischen Zeit in der geistigen Welt zugetragen hat, verehrten den Sonnengeist als den Harmonisator von Denken, Fühlen und Wollen in den Menschen. Du Sonnengeist — so sagten sich diejenigen Menschen in Griechenland, die etwas davon gewußt haben -, du hast dich in ätherischer Geistgestalt - denn so ist die Gestalt derer, die wir heute Archangeloi nennen — verseelt. Da hast du dasjenige, was sonst wild und unbeherrscht in der menschlichen Seele als Denken, Fühlen und Wollen durcheinanderrasen würde, zur Harmonie entfaltet auf deiner wunderbaren Leier, auf der du die Töne der menschlichen Seele harmonisch erklingen läßt! - Da wurde der Sonnengeist der Schutzgeist der im Menschen wild stürmenden Leidenschaften, wenn sie, wie es geschehen konnte, auflebten in den wilden Dämpfen, die aus dem Innern der Erde aufsteigen, die durch die Erde brechen. Und wenn nun ein Mensch sich ihnen aussetzen würde und nur diese Dämpfe auf sich wirken ließe, er würde wild durcheinanderrasen haben in sich Denken, Fühlen und Wollen. So setzte der Grieche die Pythia über solche, die Leidenschaften von der Erde aus durch Luzifer und Ahriman in Unordnung bringenden Dämpfe, aber Apollo überleuchtete die Pythia, besiegte die Wildheit der Leidenschaften - und sie wurde zur Weissagerin. In dem Sonnengeist des Apollo empfand der Grieche den Christus des dritten Christus-Ereignisses. Und in dem Verhältnis dazu der die Leidenschaften beherrschenden Stimmung der Pythia, in diesem Schutz, den der Gott Apollo der Pythia angedeihen ließ, in ihm sah der Grieche die Wirkung des dritten Christus-Opfers: die Harmonisierung der in Unordnung kommenden menschlichen Leidenschaften durch das dritte Christus-Ereignis. Der Sonnengeist Apoll aber ist im Grunde genommen dasselbe für die Griechen, was im Bild dargestellt wurde als Michael oder St.Georg, der den Drachen besiegt.
So schen wir, daß es einen Sinn hatte, wenn Justin, der Märtyrer, einen merkwürdigen Ausspruch tut. Einen Ausspruch, der, da ihn der Märtyrer getan hat, doch auch als christlich angesehen werden darf, trotzdem verschiedene heutige Vertreter des Christentums ihn verketzern würden. Justin sagte: Heraklit und Sokrates und Plato waren auch Christen, aber nur solche, wie man Christ sein konnte bevor eben das Mysterium von Golgatha sich vollzogen hatte. Die Theologen von heute wissen nichts mehr davon, aber die ersten Zeiten des Christentums, die christlichen Märtyrer wußten es noch, daß die alten griechischen Weisen, wenn sie auch vielleicht nicht den Namen des Christus angewandt haben, doch, wenn man gefragt hätte: Wer war Apollo? aus ihrem Mysterienwissen heraus geantwortet hätten: Der große Sonnengeist, der später in einem Menschen leben wird, der tritt in Apollo uns so entgegen, daß er wie in einer Erzengelgestalt in ihm verseelt ist.
Und dann kam das vierte, das irdische Mysterium, das von Golgatha. Dieselbe Christus-Wesenheit, die sich dreimal in Erzengelgestalt verseelt hat, dieselbe Christus-Gestalt verleiblicht sich dann durch das Ereignis, das wir die Johannestaufe im Jordan nennen, in dem Leibe des Jesus von Nazareth.
Ich gebe zu, daß es Ihnen sonderbar erscheinen wird, wenn ich sage: Dreimal hat sich diese Wesenheit in Erzengelgestalt verseelt und dann in Menschengestalt verleiblicht. Denn schematischer wäre es, zu sagen, zwischen der Verseelung in einer Erzengelgestalt und der Verleiblichung läge eine Verseelung in einer Engelgestalt, das heißt es würde sich der Christus auf einer der Stufen in einer Engelgestalt verseelt haben. So kommt es einem vor. Aber wenn die Menschen einem auch unterstellen, daß die Dinge, die aus der Geisteswissenschaft kommen, erdichtet sind, wahrhaftig, es ist nicht so. Das können Sie ja auch aus andern Dingen entnehmen. Und wenn Sie mich fragen: Wie kommt es, da der Christus nicht herunterstieg von Hierarchie zu Hierarchie und dann erst zum Menschen herunterstieg —, wenn Sie mich heute darum fragen, so muß ich Ihnen antworten: Das weiß ich nicht, weil ich überhaupt nicht kombiniere. Sondern die Tatsachenforschung ergibt, daß der Christus sich dreimal einer Erzengelgestalt - die Engelgestalt wurde ausgelassen - und dann einer Menschengestalt bediente. Ich überlasse es späterer Forschung, festzustellen, warum das so ist. Heute weiß ich es noch nicht, aber es ist so. Wenn man erdichten wollte, würde man es - das können Sie aus dem eben Gesagten entnehmen — ganz anders machen.
Es trat also die vierte Stufe des Mysteriums von Golgatha ein. Dieses Mysterium von Golgatha hat eine andere Gefahr abgewendet, die Gefahr, die darin bestanden hätte, daß durch den Einfluß Luzifers und Ahrimans das Ich des Menschen in Unordnung gekommen wäre. Die Sinnesorgane wären in Unordnung gekommen durch Luzifer in der lemurischen Zeit; in der ersten atlantischen Zeit drohte den Lebensorganen Unordnung und Disharmonie; in den letzten atlantischen Zeiten den Gemütsorganen, denjenigen Organen, die dem Denken, Fühlen und Wollen zugrunde liegen. Und in der nachatlantischen Zeit drohte dem Ich selber Unordnung. Weil das Ich in dieser Zeit Platz greifen sollte in der menschlichen Entwickelung, suchte man die Harmonie herzustellen zwischen diesem Ich und den Kräften des Kosmos, so daß das Ich nicht ein Spielball werde der Kräfte des Kosmos. Es hätte ein Spielball werden können zwischen diesen Kräften. Es wäre so ausgebildet worden, daß es sein Selbst nicht hätte bei sich behalten können, und wenn man es diesen Kräften überliefert hätte, so wäre das, was von der Seele kommt, hingerissen worden von allen elementarischen Kräften, die von Wind, Luft, Wellengang abstammen. Sie hätten den Menschen überall hingerissen.
Michelangelo hat es gemalt. Sehen Sie sich die Bilder an, die Michelangelo gemalt hat. Er hat das gemalt, was dem Menschen gedroht hat. Es trat hervor in den Sibyllen. Wunderbar hat er es gemalt, wie sie denjenigen Menschentypus darstellen, der sein Ich in Unordnung kommen fühlt, so daß, wenn dieses Ich in Unordnung kommt, alle möglichen wunderbaren Weisheiten hervorkommen können, aber so, daß der Mensch sie nicht dirigieren kann. Sehen Sie sich an, wie Michelangelo sie gemalt hat. Sie stellen dar die verschiedenen Stufen des durch Unordnung des Ich an die Elementarwesen Hingegebenen. Auf der andern Seite aber kommt auch anderes auf. In denselben Raum hat er hineingemalt die sinnenden Gestalten des Prophetismus, denen man es ansieht, daß sie dasjenige aufleuchten lassen, was die Ordnung des Ich gegenüber dem Kosmos erhält. Es ergreift uns wunderbar, wenn wir den Drang nach dem Ich sehen in den Propheten, und auf der andern Seite die menschlichen Wesen sehen, die durch das Ich selber in Unordnung gekommen sind, und dann den Christus selber in diesem Raume sehen, den Christus, der sich in einem menschlichen Leibe verleiblicht, und der das Ich, das in die Welt kommen sollte, in Ordnung zu bringen hat.
Ja, Geisteswissenschaft wird uns gerade tiefer und immer tiefer zeigen, wie dieses Ich des Menschen durch das vierte Christus-Ereignis, das Mysterium von Golgatha, zur Selbstlosigkeit kommen kann. Die Sinne haben gesagt: Nicht ich, der Christus in uns. Die Lebensorgane haben gesagt: Nicht ich, der Christus in uns. Die Gemütsorgane haben gesagt: Nicht ich, der Christus in uns. Des Menschen moralisches und intellektuelles Leben muß lernen zu sagen: Nicht ich, der Christus in mir. — Jeder Schritt in die geistige Welt hinein zeigt uns dieses.
Ich wollte heute dieses auseinandersetzen, damit wir bei einer andern Gelegenheit, die wir hoffentlich recht bald haben werden, einzelne okkulte Belege für diese Tatsachen liefern können und damit wir zeigen können, wie das, was wir da Geisteswissenschaft nennen, in unser moralisches und intellektuelles Leben so sich hineinergießen wird, daß der Mensch ein Schüler der Selbstlosigkeit wird, daß der Christus in uns lebt, daß wir den Christus lebendig fühlen in jedem Worte, das über Geisteswissenschaft gesprochen wird.
Nur eines sei noch angeführt. Sie wissen, daß wir seit dem Jahre 1909 in München unsere Mysteriendramen aufgeführt haben. Man mag das, was wir zur Darstellung auf der Mysterienbühne gebracht haben, gut oder schlecht finden, darum kann es sich jetzt nicht handeln. Aber dasjenige, was getan worden ist, brauchte eine gewisse Kraft, eine Kraft, welche an den Menschen nicht so ohne weiteres herankommt dadurch, daß er Mensch auf Erden ist. Sehen Sie, wenn wir jetzt in Dornach arbeiten können, wenn wit unsere verschiedenen Arten von Harthölzern verarbeiten wollen, brauchen wir Muskelkraft. Wir können nicht sagen, daß wir diese Muskelkraft uns bewußt geben können. Sie kommt von unserem Leibe, von dem, was wir in der Seele können. Wir haben sie nicht in der Hand. Auch das haben wir nicht alles in der Hand, was wit im Geistigen verrichten und wozu wir spirituelle Kraft brauchen. Das hängt nicht allein ab von unsern Talenten als Mensch, so wie es nicht von unsern Talenten abhängt, ob wir etwas tun können, sondern auch von der Muskelkraft unseres Leibes. So brauchen wir spirituelle Kräfte, die ebenso außer uns sind wie die Muskelkräfte außer unserer Seele sind. Ich weiß, daß Flachlinge kommen und sagen können: Du bist ein Tor, du glaubst, daß dir spirituelle Kräfte von außen kommen, während sie nur aufsteigen aus dem eigenen Innern. —- Mögen sie mich für einen Toren halten. Ich finde sie gerade von der Gescheitheit der Menschen, die nicht den Hunger von einem Stück Brot unterscheiden können. Ich weiß, wie spirituelle Kräfte von außen in den Menschen einfließen. So wie man, nur wenn man verrückt ist, glauben kann, daß der Hunger selber das Brot erzeugt, das ihn stillt, so wenig wie das der Fall ist, so wenig erzeugt die Kraft unserer Seele diejenigen Kräfte, die wir zum spirituellen Wirken brauchen: sie müssen in uns hereinfließen, müssen uns zufließen. Und ebenso wie wir ganz genau wissen, daß der Hunger in uns ist und das Brot von außen kommt, wenn wir nicht verrückt sind, ebenso weiß derjenige, der in geistigen Welten lebt, was in ihm ist und was von außen kommt. Und ich für meine Person fühlte seit dem Jahre 1909 immer mehr und mehr, wenn es sich darum handelte, in aller Stille und Ruhe dasjenige zu entwickeln, was für die Mysterienspiele notwendig war, ich fühlte die spirituelle Kraft, die von außen kam. Ich wußte ruhen das geistige Auge einer spirituellen Wesenheit auf demjenigen, was getan worden ist. Und ich spreche es aus als ein unmittelbares Erlebnis.
In den ersten Zeiten, als wir in Deutschland arbeiteten auf dem Felde unserer Geisteswissenschaft, kam zu uns eine befreundete Persönlichkeit, die mit einem wunderbaren Enthusiasmus aufnahm, was wir damals geben konnten. Aber nicht nur mit einem wunderbaren hingebenden Enthusiasmus nahm sie auf, was dazumal möglich war zu geben über Menschheitsentwickelung, kosmische Geheimnisse, über Reinkarnation und Karma, sondern sie verband damit zugleich einen wunderbaren ästhetischen Sinn. In Schönheit getaucht war alles, was man lehrend und unterredend mit dieser Persönlichkeit durchging. Wir waren damals noch wenige. In solchem Raum uns zu drükken, wie das heute der Fall ist, hatten wir noch nicht nötig. Und die Dinge, die wir heute vor großem Zuhörerkreis sprechen, bei deren Besprechung waren wir nur drei: ich mit zwei andern Personen. Die eine dieser Personen verließ uns schon 1904 auf dem physischen Plan, ging in die geistige Welt. Wie es so ist: solche Personen machen eine Entwickelung durch nach dem Tode. Im Jahre 1907, als wir zu unserem Kongreß die Schurésche Rekonstruktion des Mysteriums von Eleusis aufführten, war noch nichts von solchem Einfluß wahrnehmbar. 1909 fing es an, und immer mehr kam es in den letzten Jahren. Genau wußte ich, das ist die Individualität jener uns so befreundeten Persönlichkeit, die man wahrhaftig objektiv, rein wegen solcher Eigenart, lieb haben konnte. Entrückt in die geistige Welt wirkte sie wie ein Schutzengel für das, was wir zu leisten hatten zur Vermählung des Ästhetischen mit dem Esoterischen in unsern Mysterien. Und gut behütet fühlte man so von dieser Persönlichkeit, die 1904 entrückt war in die geistige Welt, dasjenige, was dann übergegangen ist in unsere irdische Wirksamkeit, was hereingeflossen ist in Erdenwirksamkeit und was uns durchdrungen hat, zu dem wir dankbar emporblicken, indem es durch das Ruhen des Seelenauges einer geistigen Persönlichkeit auf unseren Taten zum Ausdruck kam.
Aber dann, wenn es sich darum handelte, dasjenige mit der Persönlichkeit zu pflegen, was man nennen kann: Zwiesprache - man kann es Ziwiesprache nennen, weil es eine Art von Wechselwirkung ist —, wenn das eintreten sollte, war es immer wiederum so, daß jene Persönlichkeit offenbarte: sie könne um so besser den Weg finden zu unserer Erdenwirksamkeit, je mehr wir uns durchdringen mit dem Gedanken des Christus in der Erdenentwickelung. Würde ich in Erdenworte dasjenige kleiden, was diese Individualität immer wiederum sprach, so würde ich sagen —- ich muß aber selbstverständlich nur symbolisch ausdrücken das, was in der geistigen Welt anders ist: Ich finde so gut den Weg zu euch, weil ihr immer mehr und mehr den Weg findet, eure Geisteswissenschaft zu einem Ausdruck dessen zu machen, was das lebendige Wort des Christus selber ist.
Das wird uns der Christus-Impuls werden: die lebendige Brücke zwischen dem Leben der Erde und dem Leben in überirdischen Welten. Dreimal hat der Christus aus überirdischen Welten herein dem Menschen jene Wesenheit veranlagt, die er braucht, damit er recht leben kann. Dreimal hat der Christus des Menschen Sinnes-, Lebens- und Gemütsorgane selbstlos gemacht. Jetzt ist es an dem Menschen, selbstlos zu werden in intellektueller und moralischer Beziehung dadurch, daß er für dieses intellektuelle und moralische Leben verstehen lernt das Wort: Nicht ich, der Christus in mir.
Das wird die Welt erkennen, daß das, was wir als Geisteswissenschaft verkündigen, das Wort Christi ist. Er hat gesagt: Ich bin bei euch alle Tage bis an das Ende der Erde. - Die Mission der Geisteswissenschaft in unserer Zeit ist, zu eröffnen die Tore zu dem lebendigen Christus. Mit dem Verständnis der Lebenden vereinigen sich die Toten, die wissen, daß der Christus den Übergang gefunden hat vom Himmel zur Erdenwirksamkeit. Und wenn die Toten sich neigen wie die nächsten Schutzgötter den irdisch Lebenden, dann finden sie die Seelen der irdisch Lebendigen um so intensiver, um so mehr, je mehr diese Seelen selber von dem Christus-Impuls durchdrungen und durchgeistigt sind. Der Christus, er stieg als der hohe Sonnengeist aus den überirdischen Welten durch das Mysterium von Golgatha herab, damit er Wohnung finde in den Menschenseelen. Geisteswissenschaft soll werden die Botschaft davon, wie der Christus Wohnung finden kann in den Menschenseelen. Wenn der Christus in den MenschenErdenseelen Wohnung finden wird, dann wird von der Erdenaura die Christus-Kraft wiederum zurückstrahlen in diejenigen Welten, die der Christus verlassen hat zum Heil der Erdenmenschen, und der ganze Kosmos wird durchchristet sein.
Zu solch tiefem Verständnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha schwingen wir uns allmählich auf durch wirkliches Durchdringen mit Geisteswissenschaft. Wenn wir das so bedenken, und dazu bedenken, wie sie sein muß eine Schule der Selbstlosigkeit für das intellektuelle und moralische Leben der Menschheit in die Zukunft hinein, dann werden wir so intensiv durchdrungen werden von der Notwendigkeit der geisteswissenschaftlichen Verkündigung des Mysteriums von Golgatha! Dann werden wir wissen, was gemeint ist mit den geisteswissenschaftlichen Impulsen, die hereinkommen wollen in die Gegenwart. Dann wird jener Christus-Impuls die Menschheit durchdringen, den wahrhaftig alle Menschen annehmen können, weil der Christus nicht einer Nation erschienen ist, sondern weil er das hohe Sonnenwesen ist, das der ganzen Erde angehört und das in alle Menschenseelen eindringen kann, gleichgültig welcher Nation und Religion sie angehören. Mögen nach und nach recht viele Menschen den Weg finden zu solchem Verständnis des Christus-Impulses und zu solchem Verständnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha, dann wird vielleicht dasjenige als das christlichste erscheinen, was heute von vielen, die sich christlich abgestempelt wähnen, unchristlich genannt und verketzert wird.
Versuchen wir nicht bloß ein verstandesmäßiges Begreifen des Mysteriums von Golgatha, versuchen wir ein Ergreifen dieses Mysteriums von Golgatha mit unserer ganzen Seele, dann brauchen wir dazu die Geisteswissenschaft. Dann aber auch werden wir uns als Zugehörige unserer spirituellen Strömung, als jene Seelen wissen dürfen, welche verstehen, was der Menschheit jetzt und in der nächsten Zukunft nötig ist.
Das waren die Dinge, über die ich heute mit Ihnen sprechen wollte. Hoffentlich gelingt es in nicht allzuferner Zeit, Betrachtungen, die sich unmittelbar an diese anschließen können, wiederum in dieser Stadt pflegen zu können.
The Four Sacrifices of Christ
The Three Preludes to the Mystery of Golgotha
For our present culture, it is above all necessary that we gain more and more by allowing the results of spiritual science to work upon us, a new knowledge of Christ. And it is precisely this new knowledge of Christ that is so hostile to many things that today bear the official seal of Christianity. It is necessary that we gain more and more understanding of how we need a school of selflessness for our culture. A renewal of morality, a deepening of human moral life, can only come through the training of selflessness. Under the conditions of the present cycle of time, human beings can only go through this school of selflessness if they acquire an understanding of real selflessness, a penetrating understanding of real selflessness. Now, when we go through world evolution, world development, we cannot find a deeper understanding of selflessness than that which has been given to us through the appearance of Christ on earth. And to recognize Christ means to go through the school of selflessness. To recognize Christ means to become acquainted with all those impulses of human evolution that flow into our souls in such a way that they glow through everything in the soul that is predisposed to selflessness, warming it and calling it to active soul-being, to selflessness. Under the influence of materialism, the selflessness of humanity was lost in a way that will only be recognized in future times. But by delving into the mystery of Golgotha, by permeating the knowledge of the mystery of Golgotha with our whole feeling, our whole soul being, we can once again acquire a culture of selflessness. And we can say: What Christ did for the development of the earth is contained in the fundamental impulse of selflessness, and what he can become for the conscious development of the human soul is the school of selflessness! We become most aware of this when we consider the mystery of Golgotha in its great context.
This mystery of Golgotha, as we know it, took place once within the physical evolution of the earth. Once, the being whom we recognize as the Christ being incarnated in a human body, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. But this mystery of Golgotha has three preliminary stages. Something happened three times before, though not yet on Earth, but in the spiritual world. And in a sense, we have three mysteries of Golgotha, of which we must say that they have not yet been accomplished on the physical plane. Only the fourth took place on the physical plane, and it is the one about which the Gospels and the Pauline epistles tell us. This greatest event on earth was prepared by three super-earthly events. These super-earthly events occurred in such a way that one took place in the ancient Lemurian epoch, two in the Atlantean epoch. The fourth event took place in the post-Atlantean epoch and is our mystery of Golgotha.
The three preceding events did not take place on earth, but in the super-earthly world, yet the power of these events has descended to earth. Let us try to understand how the forces of the three super-earthly events that prepared the mystery of Golgotha have worked into human evolution.
In relation to our moral life, our understanding of the world, and in relation to what takes place within our consciousness soul, we must first become selfless. This is a task for the present culture in relation to the future. Humanity must become more and more selfless; therein lies the future of right moral deeds, the future of all acts of love that can be accomplished through the human race on Earth. Our conscious life is on the path to selflessness, or must be on the path to selflessness. In a certain sense, however, there is already something essentially selfless within us. And it would be the greatest misfortune for earthly human beings if they had to be as selfish with regard to certain parts of their nature as they still have to be in many respects today with regard to their moral, intellectual, and emotional life. If, for example, selfishness were to or could take hold of our senses to the same degree as it takes hold of our morals, this would be the greatest misfortune for human beings on earth. For our senses act on our bodies in such a way that selflessness is expressed in this sensory activity.
We have eyes in our bodies. Through these eyes we see. But we see only because the eyes themselves are selfless, because we do not feel them at all. We carry them within us, we see things as it were through the eyes, but the eyes themselves are extinguished as such in our perception. It is the same with the other senses. We perceive the world because our sensory system is selfless. Let us assume for a moment that our eyes were selfish. What would happen to us then? For example, we would approach a blue color, and as we approached it, our eye, because it would act in such a way that it would not let the color pass through but would exhaust it immediately in the eye itself, would be sucked out of the blue as it approached it. It would feel like a suction force in the eye if the eye could become as selfish as we are in our moral, intellectual, and emotional lives. If we approached a red color and our eye did not behave selflessly but claimed the right to experience the effect of the red within itself, the red would have a stinging effect on our eye. And if our eye became selfish, we would experience a sucking or stinging pain in response to all impressions. We would be aware that we have eyes, but we would perceive only sucking or stinging pains. In reality, modern human beings go through life knowing that colors and light effects exist. But they do not need to think about their eyes. They selflessly efface themselves during perception. And it is the same with the other senses.
Selflessness reigns in our senses. But the senses would not have attained this selflessness; it would have been taken from them in the Lemurian epoch if Lucifer had been able to work freely in that ancient Lemurian time. The spirit of which the biblical word is rightly said, “Your eyes will be opened,” this spirit made it necessary for man to be placed in a sphere of earthly life in which his eyes, if they had developed as they would have had to develop under the influence of Lucifer, would have become selfish. And with every impression — and this would also have been the case with the other senses — man would have cried out: “Oh, it stings!” — and he would not have perceived the red color in his surroundings, or he would have said: “Oh, it sucks at me” — and would not have perceived the blue color, but rather the sucking effect in his eye. This danger was averted from human evolution in the Lemurian epoch by the fact that that — but now not on Earth, but in the super-earthly worlds — the entity that later, through the Mystery of Golgotha, incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, at that time ensouled — I cannot say incarnated — itself in an archangelic being, a being from the hierarchy of the Archangels. Thus, while the Earth was going through its Lemurian epoch, there lived in spiritual heights a being who — one might say, through a kind of forewarning of the baptism of John — came into being through the sacrifice of an archangel's soul, and Christ permeated this archangel being. In doing so, however, he released a force that had an effect on human evolution on Earth. And the result of this influence was a calming of the senses, a harmonization of the senses. And if we can use our senses today in such a way that they are selfless, we will — once we have understood this fact and have been made grateful for the world order — look back to ancient times and say: What we are as sensory beings, what makes it possible for us to perceive not pain through our senses but the glorious nature around us, stems from the first sacrifice of Christ. By enlivening himself in an archangel, he brought about the effect that diverted the danger of selfishness of the senses from human evolution. That was the first preliminary stage of the mystery of Golgotha.
Human beings will gradually develop a deep, meaningful religious feeling when they look at the glory of nature, when they look up at the starry sky, at everything that is illuminated by the sunlight, at everything in the animal, mineral, and plant kingdoms around us. Human beings will learn to say: That I can see the world around me in this way, that I am placed in this world in this way, that my senses are not sources of pain but instruments for perceiving the glory of the world, I owe to the first sacrifice made by Christ in preparation for the mystery of Golgotha. And before us we see the prospect of a time when the observation of nature, the enjoyment of nature, will be permeated by Christ, when people will feel and say to themselves when they go out and enjoy the glorious spring, the beauties of summer, or other delights of nature: “In being able to take in all the splendor that nature spreads around us, we must be aware that it is not we ourselves, but Christ in our senses who makes us capable of perceiving the glorious nature.”
And it was in the early days of the Atlantean evolution that the selfishness of another system of human organization, namely that of the life organs, wanted to gain the upper hand, now brought about by Lucifer and Ahriman. Let us try to visualize the essence of our life organization from this point of view. What is this essential element? One need only think of what happens to a person when this essential element of the organs of life is impaired. And it is impaired when organic diseases of the organs of life occur. Then the person begins to experience the selfishness of their lungs, heart, stomach, and other organs. This is when people first realize, through feeling pain, that they have a stomach or a heart, and they know in their immediate consciousness that being sick means that an organ has become selfish and is leading its own life within our organism. This is not the case in normal human life. In the overall organization of the human being, the individual organs live selflessly. And our everyday constitution only keeps us safe in the world if we can go through life with selfless organs, if we do not feel that we have a stomach, lungs, and so on, but if we have them without feeling them, if they do not assert themselves, but are serving members of the whole organism.
On another occasion, we will talk about why illness is caused by the selfishness of the organs; today we will only refer to the normal state. If it had been solely up to Ahriman and Lucifer, completely different conditions would have arisen already in the Atlantean evolution. Every single human organ would have become selfish and something very strange would have happened. Let us assume that a human being approached a piece of fruit, something that is in the external world and can be enjoyed by us or is related in some way to our physical organization. This relationship to our life organs will one day be the subject of medical study when science is inspired by spiritual science. Then we will know that when a person picks cherries from a tree and eats them, for example, what passes into the organism from the cherries has a special relationship to certain organs, while other fruits have other relationships to other organs. Everything that enters the human organism has certain relationships to that organism. If what should have happened through Ahriman and Lucifer in the Atlantean epoch had been fulfilled, then we would have picked cherries, for example, and the organ related to cherries would have felt a craving to the highest degree. An infinite greed would have been expressed, and the human being would have felt the organ in question, which would have selfishly emerged from the whole organism, but the other organs would have fought just as selfishly against it in his organism. Or let us take another case: suppose there is something that is harmful to human beings. Just as things in the external world have certain relationships with humans in a good sense, so other things in the external world have harmful relationships. If a person approached a poisonous plant or something else that had only harmful relationships with this or that organ, they would feel this relationship through the internal activity of the organ, and this would express itself in a terrible, agonizing feeling of fear. The person would feel that there is something in front of them that is affecting their organ in such a way that it feels as if it were being burned out.
Let us now take not what a person eats, but the air that surrounds us. Everything that occurs in the air has a relationship to our organs. If what Ahriman and Lucifer wanted had come to pass, if human beings were dependent only on themselves, they would be driven through the world between the most animalistic desire for what is beneficial to one organ or another and a terrible disgust for what is harmful to one organ or another. Let us imagine that we were placed in the world with such bodily organs that we would be completely at the mercy of every pleasant aroma, which we would pursue even if it were an hour away, or that a feeling of disgust would compel us to flee from afar. If we were tossed back and forth like a rubber ball, how do you think we could develop in the world? The fact that this did not happen, that our life organs were dampened and harmonized, is the result of the second preliminary stage of the mystery of Golgotha taking place in the super-earthly spheres during the time when human beings underwent their first Atlantic development. Once again, the Christ being became incarnated in an archangelic being, and what this brought about radiated down into the Earth's atmosphere. This gave rise to that harmonization, that dampening of the life organs, which makes the organs in the human being selfless. In our interaction with the outside world, we would constantly be exposed to the causes of the worst diseases; we could not be healthy at all if this second Christ event had not taken place. And again, as a prospect for the future, when humanity is able to permeate itself with a real understanding of the spiritual world, it will acquire a feeling of gratitude toward the spiritual beings on whom human beings depend. Humanity will be filled with that true piety through which it will say: I feel that I can only be a physical human being with the selflessness of my organs because I did not develop alone in the world, but Christ in me, who formed my organs in such a way that I can be human! - In this way we learn more and more that, in the most comprehensive sense, we must understand everything that makes us human in such a way that we say: Not I, but Christ in me. -Christ has cared for the entire development of humanity in the three preliminary stages of the mystery of Golgotha, which he accomplished before the actual mystery of Golgotha.
It was in the last stages of the Atlantean evolution that humanity faced a third danger. Thinking, feeling, and willing were to fall into disorder. Selfishness was to enter into thinking, feeling, and willing. What would have resulted from this? Well, human beings would have wanted this or that, would have followed this or that impulse of the will, their thinking would have followed one impulse, their feeling another. It was necessary for human development that thinking, feeling, and willing become selfless aspects of the whole soul. Under the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman alone, they would not have been able to do this. Thinking, feeling, and willing would have become selfish and would have torn apart the harmonious workings of the soul. Then, toward the end of the Atlantean evolution, the third Christ event occurred. Once again, the Christ being entered into an archangelic being, and the power that arose in the super-earthly world through Christ's penetration of an archangelic being made it possible to harmonize thinking, feeling, and willing. Truly, just as the physical rays of the sun must act upon the earth so that all plant life does not wither away, so must the spirit of the sun act upon the earth from the super-earthly worlds, as I have now described. On the third stage, it harmonized thinking, feeling, and willing, just as they had to be harmonized for normal human life.
What would have become of human beings if this third Christ event had not occurred? They would have been seized by their wild desires, by their will life. They could have become frenzied, even though, on the other hand, their intellect would have thought selfishly and scornfully about what the will was accomplishing in its frenzy. This was averted by the third Christ event, when Christ was present for the third time as the Christ Being in the outer soul of an archangel, a being from the hierarchy of the Archangels.
Humanity has retained a memory of how human passion and human thinking were harmonized by the forces that worked down from the super-earthly worlds at that time. And this sign of remembrance is present, but it is not understood in the right way. St. George defeating the dragon, or Michael defeating the dragon, is the sign that was formed for the third Christ event, since Christ became ensouled in the form of an archangel. And the dragon he tramples underfoot is the one who has brought disorder into human thinking, feeling, and willing. All who look at St. George with the dragon, or Michael with the dragon, or similar matters, are in truth speaking of the third Christ event. And the Greeks, who in their wonderful mythology created something like afterimages of what happened in the spiritual world at the end of the Atlantean epoch, worshipped the Sun Spirit as the harmonizer of thinking, feeling, and willing in human beings. You, Sun Spirit — so said those people in Greece who knew something about it — you have become ensouled in an etheric spirit form, for such is the form of those whom we today call Archangels. There you unfolded into harmony on your wonderful lyre, on which you make the tones of the human soul sound harmoniously, that which would otherwise rush wildly and uncontrolled through the human soul as thinking, feeling, and willing! The sun spirit became the guardian spirit of the passions raging wildly in human beings when they were revived, as could happen, in the wild vapors rising from the interior of the earth and breaking through the earth. And if a human being were to expose himself to them and allow only these vapors to affect him, he would have wild confusion in his thinking, feeling, and willing. Thus the Greeks placed the Pythia over those whose passions were thrown into disorder by the vapors coming from the earth through Lucifer and Ahriman, but Apollo illuminated the Pythia, defeated the wildness of the passions, and she became a prophetess. In the sun spirit of Apollo, the Greeks perceived the Christ of the third Christ event. And in relation to this, in the mood of the Pythia, who controlled the passions, in this protection that the god Apollo granted to the Pythia, the Greeks saw the effect of the third Christ sacrifice: the harmonization of the disordered human passions through the third Christ event. The sun spirit Apollo is basically the same thing for the Greeks as what was depicted in the image as Michael or St. George defeating the dragon.
So we see that it made sense when Justin the Martyr made a remarkable statement. A statement which, since it was made by the martyr, may be regarded as Christian, even though various representatives of Christianity today would condemn it. Justin said: Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato were also Christians, but only in the way that one could be a Christian before the mystery of Golgotha had been accomplished. Today's theologians know nothing more about this, but in the early days of Christianity, the Christian martyrs still knew that the ancient Greek sages, even if they did not use the name of Christ, would have answered the question: Who was Apollo? they would have answered from their knowledge of the mysteries: The great sun spirit who will later live in a human being, who appears to us in Apollo in such a way that he is ensouled in him as in the form of an archangel.
And then came the fourth, the earthly mystery, that of Golgotha. The same Christ being who had incarnated three times in the form of an archangel, the same Christ figure then incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth through the event we call the baptism of John in the Jordan.
I admit that it will seem strange to you when I say that this being incarnated three times in the form of an archangel and then became embodied in human form. For it would be more schematic to say that between the incarnation in the form of an archangel and the incarnation in human form there was an incarnation in the form of an angel, that is, Christ would have incarnated on one of the stages in the form of an angel. That is how it appears. But even if people accuse you of inventing things that come from spiritual science, it is truly not so. You can see that from other things as well. And if you ask me, “How is it that Christ did not descend from hierarchy to hierarchy and only then descended to humanity?” — if you ask me that today, I must answer: I do not know, because I do not speculate at all. Rather, factual research shows that Christ three times took on the form of an archangel — the angelic form was omitted — and then took on human form. I leave it to later research to determine why this is so. Today I do not yet know, but it is so. If one wanted to invent something, one would do it quite differently, as you can see from what I have just said.
So the fourth stage of the mystery of Golgotha began. This mystery of Golgotha averted another danger, the danger that the ego of the human being would have been thrown into disorder through the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman. The sense organs would have been thrown into disorder by Lucifer in the Lemurian epoch; in the first Atlantean epoch, disorder and disharmony threatened the life organs; in the last Atlantean epoch, they threatened the organs of the soul, those organs that underlie thinking, feeling, and willing. And in the post-Atlantean epoch, disorder threatened the ego itself. Because the ego was supposed to take its place in human development during this period, attempts were made to establish harmony between the ego and the forces of the cosmos so that the ego would not become a plaything of the forces of the cosmos. It could have become a plaything between these forces. It would have been formed in such a way that it would not have been able to retain its self, and if it had been surrendered to these forces, what comes from the soul would have been carried away by all the elemental forces that originate from wind, air, and waves. They would have carried human beings away everywhere.
Michelangelo painted it. Look at the pictures Michelangelo painted. He painted what threatened human beings. It emerged in the Sibyls. He painted it wonderfully, how they represent the type of person who feels his ego falling into disorder, so that when this ego falls into disorder, all kinds of wonderful wisdom can emerge, but in such a way that the person cannot control it. Look at how Michelangelo painted them. They represent the various stages of what is surrendered to the elemental beings through the disorder of the ego. On the other hand, something else also emerges. In the same space, he painted the contemplative figures of the prophets, who can be seen to illuminate what maintains the order of the ego in relation to the cosmos. It is wonderful to see the urge for the ego in the prophets, and on the other hand to see human beings who have been thrown into disorder by the ego itself, and then to see Christ himself in this space, Christ who has incarnated himself in a human body and who has to bring order to the ego that was to come into the world.
Yes, spiritual science will show us more and more deeply how this human ego can come to selflessness through the fourth Christ event, the mystery of Golgotha. The senses have said: Not I, but Christ in us. The life organs have said: Not I, but Christ in us. The soul organs have said: Not I, but Christ in us. The moral and intellectual life of the human being must learn to say: Not I, but Christ in me. Every step into the spiritual world shows us this.
I wanted to discuss this today so that on another occasion, which I hope will come soon, we can provide individual occult evidence for these facts and show how what we call spiritual science will pour into our moral and intellectual life in such a way that human beings will become disciples of selflessness, that Christ will live in us, that we will feel Christ alive in every word spoken about spiritual science.
Only one more thing needs to be mentioned. You know that we have been performing our Mystery Dramas in Munich since 1909. One may find what we have presented on the mystery stage good or bad; that is not the issue here. But what has been done required a certain power, a power that does not come easily to human beings simply because they are human beings on earth. You see, when we work here in Dornach, when we want to process our various types of hardwood, we need physical strength. We cannot say that we consciously give ourselves this physical strength. It comes from our bodies, from what we are capable of in our souls. We do not have it in our hands. Nor do we have everything in our hands that we do in the spiritual realm and for which we need spiritual strength. This does not depend solely on our talents as human beings, just as it does not depend on our talents whether we can do something, but also on the muscular strength of our bodies. So we need spiritual forces that are just as outside of us as the muscular forces are outside of our souls. I know that shallow people will come and say: You are a fool, you believe that spiritual powers come from outside, when they only arise from within yourself. — Let them think I am a fool. I find them lacking in intelligence, unable to distinguish between hunger and a piece of bread. I know how spiritual powers flow into people from outside. Just as only a madman can believe that hunger itself produces the bread that satisfies it, so the power of our soul does not produce the powers we need for spiritual activity: they must flow into us, must flow to us. And just as we know very well that hunger is within us and bread comes from outside, unless we are insane, so too does the person who lives in spiritual worlds know what is within him and what comes from outside. And for my part, since 1909, when it came to developing in silence and peace what was necessary for the Mystery Dramas, I felt more and more the spiritual power coming from outside. I knew that the spiritual eye of a spiritual being was resting on what had been done. And I say this as a direct experience.
In the early days, when we were working in Germany in the field of spiritual science, a friend came to us who received what we were able to give at that time with wonderful enthusiasm. But she not only accepted with wonderful, devoted enthusiasm what could be given at that time about human evolution, cosmic mysteries, reincarnation, and karma, she also combined this with a wonderful aesthetic sense. Everything that was taught and discussed with this personality was bathed in beauty. We were still few in number at that time. We did not yet need to crowd into a room as we do today. And the things we speak about today before a large audience were discussed by only three of us: myself and two other people. One of these people left us on the physical plane in 1904 and went into the spiritual world. As is the case with such individuals, they undergo a development after death. In 1907, when we performed Schuré's reconstruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries at our congress, nothing of this influence was yet perceptible. It began in 1909 and became increasingly apparent in recent years. I knew exactly that this was the individuality of that personality who was so dear to us, whom one could truly love objectively, purely because of such a characteristic. Transported to the spiritual world, she acted as a guardian angel for what we had to accomplish in order to marry the aesthetic with the esoteric in our mysteries. And so we felt well protected by this personality, who had been taken into the spiritual world in 1904, by that which then passed into our earthly activity, which flowed into earthly activity and permeated us, to which we look up gratefully, as it was expressed through the resting of the soul's eye of a spiritual personality on our deeds.
But then, when it came to cultivating with the personality what one might call dialogue — one can call it dialogue because it is a kind of interaction — when that happened, it was always the case that the personality revealed that the more we permeated ourselves with the idea of Christ in earthly development, the better it could find its way to our earthly activity. If I were to clothe in earthly words what this individuality always said, I would say — but of course I must express symbolically what is different in the spiritual world: I find the way to you so easily because you are increasingly finding the way to make your spiritual science an expression of what is the living word of Christ himself.
This will become the Christ impulse for us: the living bridge between life on earth and life in super-earthly worlds. Three times Christ from super-earthly worlds has given human beings the essence they need in order to live rightly. Three times Christ has made man's sense, life, and soul organs selfless. Now it is up to man to become selfless in intellectual and moral relationships by learning to understand the words: Not I, but Christ in me.
The world will recognize that what we proclaim as spiritual science is the word of Christ. He said, “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” The mission of spiritual science in our time is to open the gates to the living Christ. With the understanding of the living, the dead unite who know that Christ has found the transition from heaven to earthly activity. And when the dead incline themselves like guardian angels toward those living on earth, they find the souls of the earthly living all the more intensely, all the more, the more these souls themselves are permeated and spiritualized by the Christ impulse. Christ descended from the super-earthly worlds as the high Sun Spirit through the Mystery of Golgotha in order to find a dwelling place in human souls. Spiritual science is to become the message of how Christ can find a dwelling place in human souls. When Christ finds a dwelling place in human souls, the Christ force will radiate back from the Earth's aura into those worlds which Christ left for the salvation of human beings on Earth, and the entire cosmos will be permeated by Christ.
We are gradually rising to such a deep understanding of the mystery of Golgotha through genuine penetration with spiritual science. When we consider this, and consider what a school of selflessness for the intellectual and moral life of humanity must be like in the future, then we will be so intensely imbued with the necessity of spiritual scientific proclamation of the mystery of Golgotha! Then we will know what is meant by the spiritual scientific impulses that want to enter into the present. Then that Christ impulse will permeate humanity, which all people can truly accept, because Christ did not appear to one nation, but because he is the high sun being that belongs to the whole earth and can penetrate into all human souls, regardless of their nation or religion. May many people gradually find their way to such an understanding of the Christ impulse and to such an understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, then perhaps that which is called unchristian by many who consider themselves Christian will appear to be the most Christian thing of all.
Let us not merely try to understand the mystery of Golgotha with our intellect, but let us try to grasp this mystery of Golgotha with our whole soul. To do this, we need spiritual science. Then we will be able to know ourselves as members of our spiritual stream, as souls who understand what is necessary for humanity now and in the near future.
These were the things I wanted to talk to you about today. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, we will be able to cultivate further reflections on these topics in this city.