How Do I Find the Christ? E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

"Once one has passed through powerlessness and refinds oneself, one also finds Christ. Before we can gain access to the Christ Impulse we must plumb the depths of our own feelings of insignificance, and this can only happen when we view our strengths and capacities without any pride."How does one find the Christ today? Rudolf Steiner emphasizes the importance of striving for self-knowledge, the significance of experiencing powerlessness, and the eventual resurrection from powerlessness. In this important lecture he also speaks about the ancient Academy of Gondishapur, the significance of the year 666, the mission of Islam, as well as the crucial consequences of the Ecumenical Council of 869.

Leseprobe

About the Author

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6,000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

HOW DO I FIND THE CHRIST?

RUDOLF STEINER

Sophia Books

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

First published by Rudolf Steiner Press in 1997 as part of the collection entitled Evil

Originally published in German as part of the volume entitled Der Tod als Lebenswandlung (volume 182 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation revised by Matthew Barton This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 1997

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 322 6

Cover by Andrew Morgan Typeset by DP Photosetting, Aylesbury, Bucks.

Contents

HOW DO I FIND THE CHRIST?

Notes

Further Reading

Publisher’s Note on Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures

Last week we were speaking about the human soul’s participation in the world of spirit, about how this must be our endeavour as we move on into the future.1 I would now like to take this further by examining various things connected with the kind of experience of the Christ Mystery for which such ideals as I recently described, spiritual ideals, should prepare the way.

I beg you, firstly, simply to take as a statement of fact, though I will try to elaborate and clarify it in the course of this lecture, that the science of the spirit finds in the human soul’s relationship to the body on the one hand, and the spirit on the other, a threefold relationship and inclination to the world of spirit.

Those who have no desire whatever to acquaint themselves with this world of spirit must undermine and deny this threefold inclination. But it is nevertheless present in all of us, as an urge firstly to perceive the divine in general, then—we are speaking, of course, of human beings at our present evolutionary stage—to perceive the Christ, and thirdly to perceive what is usually called the spirit or the Holy Spirit.

You are, of course, aware that there are people who deny all three. During the course of the nineteenth century in particular, when things at least in Europe were taken to extremes, we have had ample opportunity to experience this wholesale rejection of the divine.

The science of the spirit, which cannot doubt the existence of divine, supersensible worlds, can ask why it is that people have come to deny the whole divine realm—the Father of the Trinity. It can show us that wherever people deny the Father—that is, the whole divine essence indwelling the world, the divine which is recognized, to give just one example, in the Hebrew religion—then a real physical defect, a physical ailment or disability, occurs in the human body. The scientist of the spirit regards atheism as a form of illness, though of course it is one which doctors cannot cure—they themselves are often afflicted by it. It is not one recognized as such by contemporary medicine. The science of the spirit diagnoses this illness wherever people deny or reject what their body, not their soul, must in the healthy and natural course of things impart to them—that the world is interwoven with the divine.

There is a further kind of denial to which many are prone, a denial of Christ. The science of the spirit must regard this as a matter of destiny, connected with the human soul. It is forced to consider it a kind of misfortune. To deny God is an illness, to deny Christ a misfortune. Whether people find their way to Christ or not is really a matter of personal destiny, something influenced by individual karma.

To deny the spirit or the Holy Spirit, finally, points to a dullness of one’s own spirit. We consist of body, soul and spirit. All three can suffer from a defect or disability. Atheism is an ailment that affects the physical body. Not to find our way to a connection with the world which Christ reveals to us is a misfortune. Not to find access to the spirit dwelling within us is a kind of dullness, a refined sort of idiocy, though not one usually recognized or understood.

But then we must ask how people can find their way to Christ. And that is the particular theme I would like to address today—how in the course of life the human soul can find its way to the Christ. This very question is often voiced by people who are genuinely and earnestly seeking an answer. But we cannot really get to grips with it without being aware of its broader historical context.

From a spiritual-scientific point of view, our present historical period began in the fifteenth century, in about the year 1413 in fact. The human soul at that time acquired the nature and constitution that it still has nowadays. Modern historical research does not perceive this, sees only outer facts. Its convenient fictions have no inkling of the fact that before the fifteenth century people thought, felt, acted in a different way, that their souls were quite differently constituted. The epoch that came to an end in 1413 had begun around 747 BC, in the eighth century BC. This is why the science of the spirit dates what it calls the Graeco-Latin cultural epoch from 747 BC to AD 1413. Roughly at the end of the first third of this epoch occurred the Mystery of Golgotha.

For centuries this Mystery of Golgotha was the focal point of many people’s feeling and thinking. In the times immediately preceding the advent of the new epoch that dawned in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the human soul grasped this event very strongly in the realm of feeling. Then, at the dawn of our modern times, the Gospels began to be read among broad sections of the populace. And soon disputes and disagreements started about whether they derived from true historical tradition. This sort of debate and argument has continued on into our own day, becoming more and more extreme. I don’t wish to examine the detailed process and phases of this debate about the Mystery of Golgotha, which was of particular importance in Protestant theological circles, but to draw your attention to what people were aiming to achieve by means of it.

In this materialistic age people have got used to expecting material proofs for everything. Historical research only regards as ‘proven’ anything that is substantiated by documents and records. If there are written records of a historical event people assume that it actually occurred. It is not really possible to attribute this sort of certainty to the Gospels. As I wrote in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact,2 the Gospels are not historical documents at all but books of inspiration and initiation. In fact, none of the records of which the Bible is composed are truly historical. An unjustifiably highly regarded theologian, Adolf Harnack,3 has stated that all the genuine historical knowledge we have about Jesus Christ could be written on the back of a postcard. He is wrong in this only to the extent that even a postcard’s-worth of substantiated evidence is not available. None of it is based on genuine, contemporary documentation! There are no accounts or records of the Mystery of Golgotha which could stand up to historical scrutiny. It is therefore impossible to ‘prove’ it by external means.