Unifying Humanity Spiritually E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Fundamentally, all of spiritual science ultimately aims to understand human beings in their essence, in their tasks and endeavours – in their necessary endeavours in the course of development.' – Rudolf Steiner. In the midst of the division and destruction of the Great War, Rudolf Steiner speaks of the spiritual unification of all human beings. Rather than preaching a traditional morality, however, he states esoteric facts as he perceives them, based on spiritual-scientific research. These observations relate to the powerful universal impulse of Christ – a healing spiritual force that works through the various nations and races, irrespective of creed or colour – as a source of potential unity. Rudolf Steiner describes this impulse as the central core of human evolution. It allows for a conscious and newly-acquired connection between all human beings, in the context of the continuing diversification and fragmentation of the human race. The central motif in these lectures relates to the appearance of Christ on earth – knowledge of his historical incarnation, as well as Christ's manifestation in the present and future periods of human development. Rudolf Steiner creates an arc from the pre-Christian mysteries through Gnosticism and the older studies of the early Church Fathers, to Scholasticism and neo-Scholasticism. After ancient faculties of clairvoyance had began to fade, he explains, human beings could no longer see beyond the world of outer appearances, and direct perceptions of Christ were therefore no longer possible. And so the question arose as to how limitations on human knowledge could be overcome – a question which remains pertinent in our time. Steiner asserts that only a transformation of thinking, enabling a living and conscious inner conceptual life, can allow for a true understanding of the relationship between the earthly Jesus and the cosmic Christ. Such living thinking leads in turn to direct experience. Other topics in this volume include the birth date of the 'two Jesus children'; the wisdom of Gnostic teachings; the provenance of the Cross; the mysteries of the Christmas festival; insights into ancient Christmas plays, and reflections on individual consciousness of karma in the future.

Leseprobe

UNIFYING HUMANITY SPIRITUALLYTHROUGH THE CHRIST IMPULSE

UNIFYING HUMANITY SPIRITUALLYTHROUGH THE CHRIST IMPULSE

Thirteen lectures held in Berlin, Dornach, Basel and Bern between 19 December 1915 and 16 January 1916

TRANSLATED BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM INTRODUCTION BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS CW 165

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of this publication by the estate of Dr Eva Frommer MD (1927–2004) and the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

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

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2014

Originally published in German under the title Die geistige Vereinigung der Menschheit durch den Christus-Impuls (volume 165 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on shorthand transcripts not reviewed by the speaker, and edited by Ulla Trapp and Urs Dietler. This authorized translation is based on the latest available edition (2006)

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2006

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2014

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 447 6

Cover by Mary Giddens Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan

CONTENTS

Editor's Preface

Introduction by Christian von Arnim

LECTURE 1

BERLIN, 19 DECEMBER 1915

The tree of the cross and the Golden Legend. The I remains ‘stationary’ in the spiritual world after the initial childhood years. The Christmas festival: recall of the childlike, the divine part of being human from which human beings have become distanced. The development of the manger and shepherds’ plays.

LECTURE 2

DORNACH, 26 DECEMBER 1915

Childlike naivety and occult wisdom in the Christmas plays. The gradual change in the popular representation of the birth of Jesus: a sense for the sanctity of the Christmas event develops from profane beginnings. Echoes of the feelings of early Christianity in the German Christmas songs of the Middle Ages.

LECTURE 3

DORNACH, 27 DECEMBER 1915

Rooting out of Gnostic writings by the Church Fathers. The remains of ancient knowledge in the Pistis Sophia and the Books of Jeu: they bear witness to the existence of spiritual sources which were buried for centuries and are being uncovered again by spiritual science. Haeckel as the successor of Irenaeus. 25 December as the birth date of the Jesus child from the line of Nathan, 6 January as the festival celebrating the birth of the Jesus child from the line of Solomon. Shepherds’ play and Three Kings play.

LECTURE 4

DORNACH, 28 DECEMBER 1915

Clement of Alexandria and Origen; their struggle with the question of how to combine the earthly historical person of Jesus with the cosmic spiritual being of Christ. The Gnostic teachings. Divergence of the understanding of Jesus and Christ in the post-Christian period and in modern theology. The phantom of Jesus on the cross and the legend about the Provenance of the Cross. The convergence of the Jesus idea and the Christ idea in a spiritual-scientific sense. Innkeeper and shepherd nature in human beings.

LECTURE 5

BASEL, 28 DECEMBER 1915

The tree of knowledge and the Christmas tree. The Christmas mood in Adalbert Stifter's novella Rock Crystal.

LECTURE 6

DORNACH, 31 DECEMBER 1915

The course of the year as a symbol of the great cosmic year. Mineral and plant consciousness of the earth and their spiritual interpenetration in the New Year period. The passage of the human soul through the astral world in the sixth millennium before Christ—a cosmic New Year of the earth—and the repetition of this passage at a higher level twelve millennia later, i.e. in the sixth millennium after Christ.

LECTURE 7

DORNACH, 1 JANUARY 1916

Disordered thinking as the signature of our time. Mauthner's theory of random senses and its philosophical consequences. An interest in the great questions of humanity must take precedence over personal interests.

LECTURE 8

DORNACH, 2 JANUARY 1916

The action of the light ether in the etheric body of the human being. The way memory is created: perception of the inner movement of the light ether. The chaining of the human light body to the physical body by Ahriman. A fragment of Gnostic wisdom. The claim to power of materialism.

LECTURE 9

DORNACH, 6 JANUARY 1916

The Tantalus myth as a textbook case of modern genetics. The revival of Greek culture in Goethe's Iphigenia.

LECTURE 10

DORNACH, 7 JANUARY 1916

The idea of destiny in Greek culture as tied to the succession of the generations and the individual karma consciousness of the future. The tendencies of the Darwinist world conception and the dangers if current materialistic theories are put into practice, particularly with regard to education. The division today between truth and art. The feeling of people today for the artistic element in music, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture. The necessity of revitalizing the arts.

LECTURE 11

BERN, 9 JANUARY 1916

The differences between people in respect of their physical shape. Earth forces cause the shape to be the same. Cosmic forces form the etheric body and lead to differences. Seven types of human etheric body and their influence on the formation of the physical body: seven different races. The parallel existence of the different races as the result of luciferic and ahrimanic influence. The risk of humanity splitting apart into seven groups which no longer understand one another; the entry of the Christ impulse into the etheric body of human beings to overcome this risk. The statue at the centre of the Dornach building points to the harmonizing representative human being of the future.

LECTURE 12

DORNACH, 15 JANUARY 1916

Scholasticism and neo-Scholasticism. Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, a searcher for the spirit of the nineteenth century. The recovery of a living conceptual life.

LECTURE 13

DORNACH, 16 JANUARY 1916

The luciferically infected concepts of gnosis and the way they are pushed back by Tertullian. How did the Gnostic Marcion and how did Tertullian see the connection between the divine being of Christ and the earthly human being of Jesus? The creed. The three principles of the Trinity and their separate continuation in the various streams of western culture.

Notes

Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

EDITOR'S PREFACE

The lectures of Rudolf Steiner collected in this volume were given in the second winter of the First World War. Rudolf Steiner had moved from Berlin to Dornach, Switzerland in 1914 where building work on the Goetheanum (called ‘Johannesbau’ at the time) had been in progress since the autumn of 1913. But several times a year he undertook lecture tours to various German cities. At the end of one such trip, he spoke in the Berlin branch at a pre-Christmas celebration on the fourth Sunday of Advent about the Provenance of the Cross—the first lecture in the present volume. The motif of the legend, according to which a seed from the tree of knowledge was laid in Adam's grave, continued to grow and propagate down the generations until its wood was used to make the cross on Golgotha, is inwardly connected with the Dornach lectures of 26, 27 and 28 December 1915 and with the Oberufer Christmas Plays which were performed for the first time in Dornach during these days.

This volume furthermore contains the lectures for members given in Dornach, Basel and Bern at the turn of 1915/1916. One motif that occurs as a linking element in these lectures is the question as to the quality of the knowledge about the mystery of the appearance of Christ on earth. Rudolf Steiner creates an arc from the pre-Christian mysteries through Gnosticism and the older patristics of the early Church Fathers to Scholasticism and neo-Scholasticism. After the old clairvoyance had faded, which was still able to perceive Christ as the coming one, the question arose as to how a transformation could be achieved of the qualitatively ever narrower range of knowledge which no longer reaches beyond our world of appearances. Only the transformation of thinking to produce a living inner conceptual life, which now however is also conscious, can obtain an understanding of the relationship between the earthly Jesus and the cosmic Christ which accords with reality—a question on which there continue to be differences. The single lecture in Bern, the title of which is also the title of this volume, furthermore indicates the power which lives in the Christ impulse as a source of unity; it is this which gives the continuing diversification and fragmentation of humanity the opportunity for a conscious and newly acquired connection between human beings.

There is little evidence in these lectures of the increasingly critical attitude towards Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy from certain quarters in Switzerland, which was on the rise from this time onwards. He did however respond to these criticisms in an important public lecture in Liestal on 11 January 1916—’The task of spiritual science and its building in Dornach’—which he had printed as a pamphlet in the same year (in GA 35).

In mid-January 1916, Rudolf Steiner took leave from the members in Dornach ‘for a few weeks’ to embark on another lecture tour to Berlin and other German cities. His absence was to last for more than six months.

Ulla Trapp

Urs Dietler

INTRODUCTION

The lectures in this volume cover a wide range of subjects. Held in a number of different places over the Christmas and New Year period 1915/1916, they range from thoughts connected with the Oberufer Christmas Plays—which Rudolf Steiner and his audience had just watched—and ancient streams of wisdom, to New Year's reflections on the earthly and cosmic year and the transformation of the nature of thinking and the human soul life from ancient Greece to our time; and there is much else (as outlined in the Editor's Preface).

The question thus arises whether there are certain themes which underlie this series of lectures and give them a certain unity despite the diversity of the subjects which Steiner discussed.

Perhaps the first thing to note is that these lectures were held against the background of the First World War and its terrible slaughter. This explicitly comes to expression in the first lecture but it is something that can be felt in the mood of many of the others as well. The apparent meaninglessness of things in time of war, the senselessness of the sacrifices it demands, will only grow worse unless human beings begin to have a deeper understanding at a spiritual level of the forces driving the development of the earth and humanity. The light of spiritual life has to enter human development out of the winter darkness.

The birth of Jesus at Christmas can lead us to the thought that even out of suffering something can arise which will help human beings to develop. The hate and enmity with which human beings oppose one another on earth are tied to the earth. Christmas—understood as the profound event in earth development that it is—can serve to remind us that even souls which fight one another to the death, become united through something higher than anything that will ever be able to divide human hearts on earth as soon as they cross the threshold of death and the hatreds of earth fall away: namely the thought of Jesus Christ. But that thought needs to grow and become infinitely more powerful in human minds before humanity will be able to achieve those things by different means that are now still the subject of bloody conflict.

While humanity is splintering through the influence of the adversary powers of Lucifer and Ahriman, an awareness of the unifying power of Christ can introduce something to the warring groups which transcends conflict.

Another theme which in one form or another runs through these lectures deals with some of the streams in human history which have been a source of knowledge about spiritual matters. In this context it is the spiritual science established by Rudolf Steiner which can provide a balance for the materialism of his (and indeed our) time. Speaking against the background of conflict, Steiner argues that the prevalent materialism must lead to despair because it ultimately has no answer to those events and leads to an outlook which can only perceive life as futile. A deeper understanding which can give meaning to events is provided by spiritual science.

However, Steiner has no illusions about the immediate public impact of spiritual science. It may not be possible to do much at present against the prevailing materialistic mood, he says, but a first step would be if at least some people recognize it for what it is and the constraints it imposes. In this context he criticises the disordered thinking of modern times; we must stop what he describes as ‘flailing about’ in our thinking in the attempt to make sense of things. Different forms of thinking are required to understand the finite material world and the infinite world of the spirit.

That does not mean rejecting materialistic science and knowledge as such—although Steiner can be very critical about some of its representatives. It is neutral, he says, and can be used both to bring progress to humanity and to create the instruments of terrible destruction. But it is a matter of understanding its limits, and those limits are reached when we move from the material world into the world of the spirit. And if we see materialism as the only form of knowledge there is, then we are cutting ourselves off from a real understanding of existence. Steiner warns against a blind belief in the claim to ultimate authority asserted by materialist thinkers and thinking. He warns of a future in which nothing but the officially approved orthodoxies will be allowed in our places of learning and public institutions to the exclusion of everything else.

Much must be left unsaid or cannot yet be formulated in a straightforward way in the present time, Steiner tells his listeners, because we do not yet have the language to express it in the right way. Furthermore, people do not let the words reach their souls where they can be understood properly before rushing to judgement. And something of that can be felt in these lectures, too. There is a sense that Steiner expresses himself quite circumspectly, hinting at things rather than always stating them explicitly—which sometimes makes their language quite difficult to penetrate.

Steiner uses these lectures to discuss a variety of themes in the sacred mood which is part of the time of year they were given. In this sense the lectures cover many aspects of human development. But what also underlies them is that everything is connected on the micro- and macrocosmic level. Discussing the nature of mineral and plant consciousness in lecture six, he draws parallels between the passage from one earth year to the next every twelve months and the passage from one cosmic year to the next every twelve millennia.

Who better than Steiner himself to sum up this interconnectedness of all things:

And that is the secret of our existence. Everything is the same, both on the large scale and the small scale. And we will only understand the small scale, what happens in the course of the year, if we see it as a symbol of the great cosmic events, of what happens in the course of millennia. The year is the image of the aeons. And the aeons are the reality for those symbols which we encounter in the course of the year. If we understand the course of the year in the right way, then in this sacred night, when the new year starts its course, we will be imbued by the thought of the great cosmic secrets.

Christian von Arnim, May 2014

LECTURE 1

BERLIN, 19 DECEMBER 1915

LET us this day begin once again with particular strength of devotion in our hearts by thinking of those who are posted out in the fields where the events are happening and who today have to devote their life and soul to the great tasks of our time:

Spirits of your souls, active guardians,

May your wings bear

The beseeching love of our souls

To the human beings on earth committed to your keeping,

That, united with your power,

Our prayer may radiate in help

To the souls it lovingly seeks.1

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in this time of grave human duties as a result of the great demands of the present, let us say these words once more in the following form:

Spirits of your souls, active guardians,

May your wings bear

The beseeching love of our souls

To the human beings in the spheres committed to your keeping,

That, united with your power,

Our prayer may radiate in help

To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And the spirit we seek through our spiritual striving, the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the salvation of the earth, for the freedom and progress of humanity, the spirit whom we should particularly remember today—that spirit be with you and your grave duties!

Let our thoughts turn to the verse ringing forth out of the profound secrets of earth development:

Revelation of the divine in the heights of existence

And peace on earth to human beings

Who are filled with good will.

And as Christmas approaches, there is something we must particularly reflect on this year. What sentiments unite us with this verse and its deep cosmic meaning? The deep cosmic meaning which many people feel in such a way that the word peace rings and sounds through it at a time in which peace avoids earth existence to the greatest extent. How can we reflect in this time on the Christmas verse?

But there is one thought which might touch us even more deeply at the present time than at other times in connection with this verse resounding through the world. One thought! Nations are facing one another in hostility. Our earth is soaked in blood, much blood. We have been forced to see, forced to feel many deaths around us. The atmosphere of sentiments and feelings weaves unending suffering around us. Hate and dislike flock through spiritual space and can easily show how far, far removed the people of our time still are from that love which the one whose birth is celebrated at Christmas wanted to proclaim. But there is one thought which particularly comes to the fore: we imagine how enemy can face enemy, opponent can face opponent, how people can bring death to one another and how they can pass through the same portal of death with the thought of the divine light-bearer, Jesus Christ. We reflect how across the earth, throughout which war and pain and disunity are spreading, those who are otherwise so disunited can be in unity because they bear in the deepest depths of their heart their connection with the one who entered the world on the day we celebrate at Christmas. We think how despite all hostility, all dislike, despite all the hate, a sentiment can penetrate human souls in these times, penetrate out of the midst of all the blood and hate: the thought of the intimate connection with the One, with Him who has united hearts with something that is higher than anything that can ever separate human beings on earth. And so this is a thought of infinite magnitude, a thought of infinite depth of feeling, the thought of Jesus Christ uniting human beings however much they may be disunited in all matters concerning the world.

If we grasp the thought in this way, then we will want to grasp it all the more deeply in our present time in particular. Because then we will have a notion of how much is connected with this thought in terms of the things that must become large and strong and powerful within human development so that much can be obtained in different ways by human hearts, by human souls which at present must still be obtained in such a blood-soaked way.

That He make us strong, that He vitalize us, that He teach us across the earth to feel in the truest sense of the word the consecrated words of Christmas despite all that separates us: that is what those who truly feel united with Jesus Christ must vow to themselves on Christmas Eve.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which keeps recurring in later times and which over centuries became a custom in certain regions. In ancient times already, believers in various regions had presented to them the mystery of Christmas, mostly by the Christian churches. In these most ancient times, in particular, this presentation of the Christmas mystery began with a reading, sometimes even a presentation of the creation story as it is set out at the beginning of the Bible. The first thing to be presented, particularly in the Christmas period, was how the cosmic Word sounded from the depths of the cosmos, how creation gradually came about out of the cosmic Word, how Lucifer approached the human being and how as a result human beings started earth existence in a different way from the existence that was intended for them before Lucifer approached them. The whole story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was performed and then it was shown how the human being was incorporated, as it were, into the whole of ancient pre-Testament history. Only then, in the further course of events, were the things added in plays in greater or lesser detail which then in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries developed into the plays of which we saw a little one just now.2

Little remains of that which, in an infinitely great thought, linked the start of the Old Testament with the secret story of the Mystery of Golgotha in the Christmas festival, which combined those two stories in that thought. The only thing left today in that respect is that the feast day of Adam and Eve occurs in the calendar on the day before Christmas Day. That has its origin in the same thought. But in more ancient times a great, a comprehensively symbolic thought was presented to those who through their teachers and out of deeper thoughts, deeper feelings or a deeper knowledge were to grasp the secret of Christmas and the secret of Golgotha: the thought of the origin of the cross.3 The god who is presented to human beings in the Old Testament instructs the human beings represented by Adam and Eve that they may eat of all the fruits in the garden except the fruit on the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They were driven out of the original setting of their existence because they ate of it.

But this tree—this was now represented in a great variety of ways— in some way came into the possession of the generations which were then also the original lineage from which the physical body of Jesus Christ emerged. And it happened—this is how it was presented at certain times—that when Adam was buried as a sinful human being this tree, which had been removed from paradise, grew out of his grave. Thus we see the thought suggested: Adam rests in his grave; he, the human being who passed through sin, he, the human being who was seduced by Lucifer, rests in his grave and has united himself with the body of the earth. But the tree grows out of his grave—the tree which can now grow out of the earth with which Adam's body has been united. The tree of this wood continues down the generations, including Abraham, including David. And the wood of this tree, which stood in paradise and which grew again out of Adam's grave, the wood of this tree was used to make the cross on which Jesus Christ hung.

This was the thought which was made clear by their teachers to those who were to understand out of deeper foundations the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. There is a deep meaning in the fact that in more ancient times—and we will shortly see in this meaning that it still holds good also in the present time—profound thoughts came to expression in such images.

We have acquainted ourselves with the thought about the Mystery of Golgotha which tells us: the Being who passed through the body of Jesus distributed across the earth what He can bring to it, distributed it into the earth's aura. What Christ brought into the earth has since then been combined with the complete corporeality of the earth. The earth has turned into something else since the Mystery of Golgotha. That which Christ brought down to earth from heavenly heights lives in the earth's aura. If together with that we cast our mind's eye on that ancient image of the tree, this image shows us the complete context from a higher vantage point: the luciferic principle entered human beings as they started their earth existence. Human beings as they now are in their association with the luciferic principle belong to the earth, are part of the earth. And when we place their bodies into the earth, then that body is not just the thing that anatomy sees, but this body is at the same time the external cast of what is also contained inside physical human beings. It can be clear to us through spiritual science that it is not only what goes through the portal of death into the spiritual world that belongs to the nature of the human being but that human beings are united with the earth through all that they do, through all their deeds on earth—that they are truly united with it in the same way that those events are united with the earth which geologists, mineralogists, zoologists and so on find connected with the earth. When human beings pass through the portal of death, the only thing that is closed off to the human individuality to begin with is what ties them to the earth. But we consign our outer form in some way to the earth; it enters the body of the earth. It carries within it the manifestation of what the earth has become because Lucifer entered earth development. What human beings do on earth bears the luciferic principle within it—human beings introduce this luciferic principle into the earth's aura. It is not just what was originally intended with the human being that arises or blossoms from human deeds, from human activity; human deeds give rise to what was mixed in with the luciferic element. That is contained in the earth's aura. And when on the grave of Adam, the human being seduced by Lucifer, we now see the tree which has become something different from what it was at the beginning because of Lucifer's seduction, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then we see everything that human beings have provoked because they left their original position, because they turned into something else through Lucifer's seduction and therefore introduced something to earth evolution that was not previously intended for them.

We see the tree growing out of what the physical body is for the earth, what has been stamped into its earthly form, what makes human beings on earth appear in a lower sphere than what they would have become if they had not passed through the luciferic seduction. Something grows out of the human being's whole earthly existence which has entered into human development through the luciferic seduction, temptation. By seeking knowledge, we seek it in a different way to the one originally intended for us. But that means that what grows out of our deeds on earth is different from what it could be in accordance with the original decision of the gods. We shape an existence on earth that is not the same as the one determined for us by the original decision of the gods. We mix something else into it which we have to think of in a very specific way if we want to understand it properly. We have to tell ourselves: I have been placed in earth development. That which I contribute to earth development through my deeds bears fruit. It bears fruits of knowledge which I have obtained because I have been given knowledge of good and evil on earth. This knowledge lives in the development of the earth, this knowledge is there. But in looking at this knowledge it turns into something else for me from what it should originally have been. It turns into something else for me which I must change if the goal of the earth and the task of the earth is to be achieved. I see something grow out of my deeds on earth which must change. The tree grows which becomes the cross of earth existence, the tree which becomes the thing to which human beings must develop a new relationship—because it is the old relationship which makes the tree grow. The tree of the cross, that cross which grows out of luciferically tinged earth development, grows out of Adam's grave, out of the kind of human nature which Adam has become after the temptation. The tree of knowledge must become the trunk of the cross because human beings must unite with the properly perceived tree of knowledge, as it is now, in order to achieve the goal of the earth, the task of the earth.

Let us ask ourselves (and here we touch on an important secret of spiritual science): how is it with regard to the components which we have come to know as the elements of our human nature? Well, we know that our I is the initially highest component of human nature. We learn to say I to ourselves at a certain time during childhood. We enter into a relationship with this I from the time onwards to which we can remember back in later years. We know from various spiritual-scientific observations that up to that time the I itself acts in a formative and creative way in us, up to the moment that we acquire a conscious relationship with our I. This I is also present in the child but it is at work in us; it first forms the body in us. To begin with it works with supersensory forces from the spiritual world. Once we have passed through conception and birth, it continues to work for some time, which may be years, on our body until we have our body as a tool so that we can consciously grasp ourselves as an I. A profound secret is associated with this entry of the I into human physical nature. We ask a person when we met him: how old are you? He tells us his age as the years which have passed since he was born. As I said, we touch on a certain secret of spiritual science here which will become increasingly transparent to us in the coming time but which I only want to raise, to tell you about today. What a person tells us about his age at a certain time of his life only relates to his physical body. It tells us no more than that his physical body has developed for the period since his birth. The I is not involved in this development of the physical body; it remains stationary.

And this is the secret which is so difficult to understand, that the I remains stationary at the point to which we can remember back. It does not change with the body; it remains stationary. That, precisely, is the reason why we always have it before us, why it reflects our experiences back to us when we look into it. The I does not join us on our earthly journey. Only when we have passed through the portal of death do we have to take the return path we call kamaloka to our birth to meet our I again and take it with us on our further journey. The body takes precedence during these years—the I is left behind, the I remains stationary. This is difficult to understand because we cannot imagine that something remains stationary in time while time progresses. But that is how it is. The I remains stationary, and it remains stationary because it does not actually unite with what approaches human beings during their earth existence but remains united with those forces which we call ours in the spiritual world. The I remains, the I basically retains the form in which it was given to us, as we know, by the spirits of form. This I is kept in the spiritual world. It must be kept in the spiritual world because otherwise we would never as human beings during our earth development be able to achieve the original task and original goal of the earth. Everything that human beings go through because of the Adam part of their nature, of which they carry an imprint into the grave when they die as Adam, that adheres to the physical body, etheric body and astral body, emanates from them. The I waits, waits with everything it contains, for the whole time that the human being spends on earth, only looking towards the future development of the human being—until human beings pick it up again when they take the return path after they have passed through the portal of death. In other words, we remain—I mean that in a specific sense—with our I in the spiritual world, as it were. Humanity should develop an awareness of that. And it could only become aware of that because at a certain time Christ came down from the worlds to which human beings belong, the spiritual worlds, and, as we know, prepared in the body of Jesus in dual form4 which was to serve Him as a body on earth.

If we understand ourselves in the right way, we will always look back to our childhood for the whole of our life on earth—because the spiritual part of us was left behind in childhood. We will always look back at that if we have understood the matter in the right way. And humanity should be educated to look at the thing to which the spirit from the heights can say, ‘Let the little children come unto me’,5 not the human being who is linked with the earth but the little children. Humanity was to be educated in this respect by being given the festival of Christmas which was added to the Mystery of Golgotha. Otherwise the latter would only have been needed to be given to humanity in respect of the last three years of Christ's life when Christ occupied the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This festival shows how Christ prepared the human body in childhood. That is what should underlie what we feel about Christmas: knowing how human beings have actually always remained connected through what remains behind as they grow up, what remains in the heavenly heights, with what is now entering. The form of the child is there to remind human beings of the divine part of being human from which they have become separated by descending to earth but which in turn has come to them; this childlike element is what human beings were to be reminded of. It was not particularly easy, but precisely the way in which this cosmic festival of the child, the Christmas festival, came to appearance in the regions of central Europe illustrates its wonderfully supportive power.

What we saw today was only a small one of the many Christmas plays. Of the kind of Christmas plays from ancient times which I spoke about, a number of the so-called paradise plays have remained which are put on at Christmas and where the story of the creation is performed. The connection with the shepherds’ play and the Three Kings play bringing their gifts has remained. Very many of these things were alive in many different plays. Most of them have now been lost.

The mid-eighteenth century is the period when they begin to disappear in rural areas. But it is wonderful to see how they were alive. Karl Julius Schröer,6 whom I have told you about many times, collected such Christmas plays in the 1850s in the western regions of Hungary, in the area around Bratislava and from Bratislava down towards Hungary. Others collected such Christmas plays in other regions, but what Karl Julius Schröer discovered at the time about the traditions associated with the performance of these Christmas plays can touch our hearts particularly deeply. Handwritten versions of these Christmas plays were kept by certain families in the village and were considered to be something particularly sacred. They were put on in such a way that, as October approached, thought began to be given as to how to prepare for their performance in front of the farmers of the village at Christmas. Then the most courageous lads and lasses were selected and during this period, as they began to prepare themselves, they stopped drinking wine, drinking alcohol. They were not allowed to engage in fighting on a Sunday, which was otherwise permitted in these places, or engage in other excesses. They really had to live a ‘chaste life’ as they say. And so an awareness was created that a certain moral mood of soul was required in those who were engaged in the performance of such plays during Christmas. Such plays should not be performed with a normal worldly consciousness.

Then they were performed in all the naivety with which farmers can perform such things, but the whole performance was governed by a profoundly serious attitude, an infinitely serious attitude. The plays which Karl Julius Schröer in his time and, before him, Weinhold7 and others collected in various regions all have this profoundly serious attitude with which the mystery of Christmas was approached. But it was not always like that. And we need go no further back than a few hundred years to find that things were different and to come across something very remarkable. Particularly the way in which the Christmas plays established themselves in central European regions, how they arose and gradually developed, can show us the overwhelming effect of the Christmas idea. They were not always received in the way I have just described: that they were approached with awe and reverence, with great seriousness, with an awareness of the significance of the events which lived in the feelings. Oh no! In many regions it started, for example, by a manger being set up in front of a side altar in some church—that still happened in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries but it also goes back to earlier times. A manger was set up; that is, a stable with an ox and ass inside and the child and two puppets representing Joseph and Mary. So it was first done with a naive set of figures. Then greater life was to be introduced, but at first by the clergy. Priests dressed up as Joseph and Mary and they acted out a performance instead of the puppets. At the beginning they even performed it in Latin; this was considered very important in the ancient church because it appears that a very deep meaning was attached to those watching or listening understanding as little as possible of the matter but only observing the outward gestures. But they soon got fed up with that; they also wanted to understand something of what was being performed for them. So a start was made in putting some sections into the local language. Then, finally, a feeling awoke in people that they wanted to be involved and experience it themselves. But the whole thing was still quite alien to them. We have to remember that as late as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was no familiarity with the holy secrets—of Christmas for example—which we so much take for granted today. We have to remember that the people heard the mass year after year, at Christmas also the mass at midnight, but they did not hear the Bible—that was only available for the priests to read. They only knew individual bits of Holy Scripture. And it was really also to acquaint the people with what had happened long ago that it was performed as a drama by the priests to begin with. They only became familiar with it in this way.

Now I have to say something which I have to request very much that it should not be misunderstood. But it can be said because it corresponds to pure historical truth. The involvement in these Christmas plays did not immediately result from some kind of mystery mood or something like that—that's not what it was like. It was the desire to take part in what was being presented to them, to be involved, to act which brought the people to the plays. And in the end they had to be permitted to be involved. The plays had to be made more comprehensible to the people. Making them more comprehensible was a gradual process. For example, the people did not understand to begin with that the baby lay in the manger. They had never seen that, a baby in a manger. Previously, when they were not allowed to understand anything, they had accepted it. But now, when they were to be involved, the whole thing had to be comprehensible for them. So only a cradle was put there for them. And the people became involved as they walked past the cradle; everyone stood next to it and rocked the baby for a while and so this kind of involvement developed. There were even regions in which things started seriously but once the child was there everyone became very boisterous and shouted and indicated with dancing and shouting the joy which they felt now that the child was born. It was received in a mood that arose from the desire to be in motion, the desire to experience a story. But the story contains such great, such mighty things that a very profane mood—it was a profane mood at the beginning—gradually developed into the sacred mood which I have just spoken about. The subject itself spread its sanctity over a reception which could not at the beginning be described as holy. It was particularly in the Middle Ages that the holy Christmas story first had to take hold of the people. And it took hold of them to the extent that they wanted to prepare themselves morally in a very intensive way as they were performing their plays.

What was it that captured human feelings, the human soul? The sight of the child, the sight of those things which remain holy in human beings while their other three bodies unite with earth development. Even if in certain regions and at certain times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, it lay in human nature to develop this holy view of the child's nature, a view which is connected with the aspect which entered Christian development right from the beginning: an awareness of how that which remains at rest in human beings when they start on their earth development has to enter into a new connection with that which has combined with the earthly human being. So that human beings give to the earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which they must enter into a new connection.

In the more ancient periods of central European Christian development it was actually only the idea of Easter which was widespread among the populace. And the idea of Christmas supplemented that gradually in the way I have described. Because what is written in the Heliand8 and similar works is the work of individual people but it was certainly not widespread.

The popular aspect of Christmas arose in the way I have just described; it shows in a truly magnificent way how the idea of the connection with the childlike aspect, the pure, true childlike aspect which appeared in a new form in Child Jesus, took hold of people. If we combine the power of this idea with the thought that this idea in the souls is the only one which to begin with can live in our earth existence, then it is the right Christ idea. And thus the Christ idea grows in us, thus the Christ idea turns into what must gradually grow strong in us if the further development of the earth is to happen in the right way. Just consider how far human beings are still removed in our present existence on earth from what is concealed in the depths of the Christ idea.

A book by Ernst Haeckel9—you might have read about it—is being published in these days: Ewigkeit. Weltkriegsgedanken über Leben und Tod, Religion und Entwicklungslehre (Eternity. Thoughts in a Time of World War about Life and Death, Religion and Evolutionary Theory). A book by Ernst Haeckel is undoubtedly a book that is the result of a serious love of truth, is undoubtedly a book that most earnestly seeks the truth. The book is said to be roughly about the following. It aims to describe what is currently happening on earth, how the nations are living in war, how they are living in hate with one another, how there are innumerable deaths each day. All these thoughts which impose themselves on human beings in such a painful way are also mentioned by Ernst Haeckel, always against the background of a view of the world as it is seen by him from his perspective—we have often spoken about it, because we can recognize Haeckel as a great scientist even if we are scientists of the spirit. That is, from the perspective which, as we know, can also lead to other things but which leads to what we can observe in the more recent phases of Haeckel's development. Now Haeckel is reflecting on the World War. He too thinks of the blood that is flowing, of the many deaths that surround us. And he poses the question: can religious thought persist in the face of these things? Is it possible to believe in any way—Haeckel asks—that some wise providence, a benevolent God governs the world when we see that the lives of so many people are cut short, that they are dying daily by pure chance—as he puts it—through no cause which could in any way be shown to be connected with any wise cosmic governance but through the chance—as he says—that one might be hit by a bullet or have an accident? Do all these thoughts of wisdom, of providence have any meaning in the face of these things? Is it not precisely events such as these which prove that human beings simply have to accept that they are nothing more than what externally, materialistically conceived evolutionary history shows us, and that basically it is not wise providence but chance which governs all earth existence? Is it possible to have any other religious thought—Haeckel thinks—than to resign oneself, to tell oneself that we simply give up our lives and are absorbed into the great universe? But if this universe—we can ask further, Haeckel does not go on to do so—is nothing more than the interplay of atoms, does this life of human beings really give meaning to earth existence? As I said, Haeckel does not go on to ask this question but he gives the answer in his Christmas book: it is precisely events of the kind which touch us so painfully now, it is precisely such events which show that we have no right to believe that benevolent providence or wise cosmic governance or anything of the kind is interwoven with and living in the world. So, resignation and acceptance that this is simply how things are!

Also a Christmas book! A Christmas book which has very honest and sincere intentions. But this book will be based on a significant pre-conception. It will be based on the preconception that we must not seek meaning in the world by spiritual means, that humanity is prohibited from searching for meaning by spiritual means. If we only look at the external course of events, we will not see any meaning. Then it is as Haeckel thinks. And we would have to accept that life has no meaning—Haeckel thinks. We should not look for meaning!

In contrast, could not another person come and say: ‘If we only keep looking at current events in such an external way, if we only ever keep pointing out the countless bullets that strike people at this time, if we only look at these things and they seem to be senseless, that precisely shows us that we have to seek their meaning at a deeper level. They show us that we cannot simply seek their meaning in what is happening on earth right now and believe that these human souls will pass away with their bodies, but that we have to search for what they embark on once they have passed through the portal of death.’ In short, someone else may come who says: ‘It is precisely because no meaning can be found in external events that such meaning must be sought elsewhere, must be sought in the supersensory sphere.’

Is this any different from the same situation in quite another field? Haeckel's science can lead anyone who thinks as Haeckel does today to deny that our existence on earth has any meaning at all. It can lead people to want to prove on the basis of what is happening to such great sorrow today that our life on earth has no meaning as such. But if we interpret it in our way—we have, after all, done that quite often—then that same science becomes the starting point for showing the profound, immense meaning in world events which can be deciphered by us. But the spiritual must be at work in the world for that to happen. We must be able to unite with the spiritual. Because people do not yet understand in the fields of scholarship how they can allow the power to act on them which has so wonderfully conquered hearts and souls that a holy perception could arise out of a downright profane one when we look at the Christmas mystery, because scholars have not been able to grasp that, because they cannot yet combine the Christ impulse with what they see in the outside world, it is impossible for them to find any meaning, any real meaning, with regard to the earth.