The Ancient Christmas Plays and a Forgotten Spiritual Current in Humanity

GA 165 — 28 December 1915, Dornach

Lecture Three

Yesterday I tried to point out an important fact in the context of the whole Christ problem, a fact that is undoubtedly surprising: the fact that a whole body of wisdom has actually disappeared, and is only known today in a few fragments, in a few remnants, some of which were presented here yesterday from one of the remnants, namely the beginning of the Book of Jeû. Now we must ask ourselves: can a body of wisdom that was available simply disappear without a trace? Can there only be external reasons for such a disappearance? I used a comparison: I said that it would be conceivable for everything that has now been printed and remains to be burned, leaving only the opposing writings, from which one could later reconstruct what we said. Now, certainly, the case could arise. But this hypothesis cannot really be put forward just like that. Because if you think that all the writings would really disappear, then many of us would still be around – at least one can assume that – who know what is in these writings and who, without needing the opposing writings, could pass on the matter further, and so the wisdom could well be passed on. For the matter to disappear completely, it would be necessary that in a certain way, little by little, the abilities to understand the matter and to pass it on from generation to generation would also disappear. But that must have happened in the past. In a certain way, it must have happened in the past that people lost the ability to understand something like the Gnosis of Valentinus, like the content of the Pistis Sophia writing, like the content of the Book of Jeû and so on. And that is really the case. We must absolutely imagine that on the broad basis of that old heritage, which was lived out in older times as the most primitive clairvoyance, then gradually petered out and faded away, but that higher knowledge, spiritual knowledge, was also developed. This was, of course, cultivated only by a few who were trained in the mysteries, but it was present in the wider community. And we must further imagine that through the gradual paralysis of the faculties to comprehend such things, the whole matter was not only forgotten but disappeared. People simply no longer had the ability to understand such things within Western culture. As a result, only what was wisdom could be lost. So we can truly say that by looking at the time immediately preceding and following the Mystery of Golgotha, we are looking at a time when, to a large extent, old abilities were disappearing and work was being done entirely from scratch, from the new. It can be said that as humanity developed towards the Mystery of Golgotha, there was a dimming out, a disappearance of a very special way of looking at things and thinking, which was of a spiritual nature and through which one could have understood the coming of the Christ into the world as a spiritual being.

Thus, precisely at the time when the Christ connects with the evolution on earth, the knowledge through which the nature and essence of this Christ could have been understood in the actual, deeper sense disappears. This is an important fact. I have already pointed out something very significant in various parts of our reflections. I said: the proclamation of Christ as such is not something that is so completely new, for example, with the event of Golgotha. No, the mysteries already spoke of the Christ as the Coming One. There were teachings in the mysteries that the Christ would come. This Christ Being was understood in the sense of the lost spiritual wisdom. But these mysteries had gradually fallen into disrepair, so that just as the Christ came, the time approached when people were least suited to speak about this Christ. This can be seen not only from everything I have already mentioned, but also from what remains with people who now want to form an idea of the Christ secret that is fresh and new.

In the first centuries of Christian development, we have such great minds as, for example, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, two eminent minds. If you want to characterize them from a certain point of view, this Clement of Alexandria, who thus followed the Gnostics, when Gnosticism had already dawned, as did Origen, then you have to say that they strive to recognize: What is the actual truth about this mystery of Golgotha? On the one hand, we are dealing with the Christ – they still knew that. This Christ can only be understood as a spiritual being that has to do with the spiritual, with the supersensible impulses. This Christ descends from cosmic spiritual regions. They no longer knew exactly how the old Gnosticism was able to understand the Christ, but they knew that He must be understood as a spiritual being with spiritual abilities. That they knew about the Christ. On the other hand, Jesus was an historical personality to them. The appearance of Jesus was an historical fact to them. They said to themselves, “So many years ago, in a certain part of the Near East, a personality was born, Jesus, who was the bearer of the Christ, a human being in whom God was present.” This became the riddle for them. They said to themselves, “We are dealing with an historical personality in the historical development, we are dealing with the Christ in the spiritual understanding.” How should one conceptualize the union of the two? And with such eminent, such great spirits as Clement of Alexandria and Origen are, we see a struggle, a fight with it: to be able to grasp how the Christ is in the Jesus, therein is.

If we first look at Clement of Alexandria, who headed the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where those who were to be trained and made into Christian teachers were trained, if we look at this significant personality, we find the following among the teachings of this personality. Clemens of Alexandria said to himself: The Christ belongs to those forces that were already active at the creation of the earth, of course he belongs to the spiritual world. He has entered into the evolution of the earth through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So Clemens of Alexandria first turned his gaze to the Christ as a spiritual being, seeking to understand him in spiritual regions. Now Clement of Alexandria also knew the following, which we have also emphasized several times before. He knew that the Christ was actually always there for people, but not in the earthly region. Only those who developed powers within themselves through the mysteries were able to reach him, by virtue of which they could leave the body. When they, the people, emerged from the body through the powers of the mysteries and entered into the spiritual regions, they recognized the Christ and felt that He was the One Who was to come. This was known to Clement of Alexandria. He knew that in the old mysteries there was mention of the Christ as the Coming One, Who had not yet been united with the evolution of the earth. He expressed it thus: “Certainly, people were inspired to expect the Christ.” And he went so far as to say: “Specifically at two points in the spiritual development of humanity, was there a cultivation of that which could prepare for the coming of the Christ.” Clement of Alexandria said: “On the one hand, it was cultivated by Moses and the prophets.” What came into the world through Moses and the prophets, he said, was a preparation. People should first experience what came through Moses and the prophets, so that with the help of their own intuition they could then have a feeling for it: We have the Christ. That is what they were supposed to imagine. So he knew nothing of the ancient Gnostic wisdom, or at least he did not apply it. But he said that what came through Moses and the prophets to human abilities was “preparation.” And then – this is very significant – as a second thing that was to prepare for the coming of Christ, besides Moses and the prophets, Clement of Alexandria mentioned Greek philosophy: Plato and Aristotle – Greek philosophy. He said, as it were, that Moses and the prophets and Greek philosophy were there to prepare people for the event, for the fact of the Mystery of Golgotha.

And again Origen said to himself: We are dealing with the Christ: with the Christ who, as a spiritual being, can be understood by spiritual powers, we are dealing with the historical Jesus, with that personality that once existed as a real personality belonging to the world of the senses. How do the two come together – the god with the human being? How is the God-man created? — And Origen came up with a theory. He said to himself: the God cannot simply dwell in the physical man, but there first had to be a special soul in Jesus, so that this soul can mediate between the God and the man, that is, the God as a pure spiritual being with the physical man. So he added the soul. And so he distinguished in Christ Jesus the God, the pure pneumatic being, the pure spiritual being, then the psyche, the soul, and the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He therefore tried to form a concept of how the Christ could be in Jesus of Nazareth. He no longer had the old gnosis to imagine the Christ's dwelling on earth and the Christ's connection with the evolution of the earth. One had to work from the fresh, from the new. One had to make an effort to achieve this. So just when the Christ as a real being had united with the evolution of the earth, people had the greatest difficulty in even understanding this fact. The abilities were present to the very least extent.

And why that was, Clement of Alexandria had at least some understanding of it. He said to himself: How then were these old mystery people inspired? It was through the Christ, said Clement of Alexandria to himself, that the Christ also worked through them, but supernaturally, when they came out of themselves. This happened, as Clement of Alexandria very clearly expresses it, because he sent them the angels. So that Clement of Alexandria said it outright: when the Old Testament speaks of the appearance of an angel, it means that the Christ sends that angel. Yes, Clement of Alexandria makes it expressly clear: When Yahweh appears to Moses in the burning bush, it is actually the Christ who appears, who appears through the earthly-soul-spiritual appearance. So that Clement of Alexandria expressly states: In ancient times, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ appeared to people through the angels. If they were able to perceive the message of the angels, then they actually stood face to face with Christ Himself as disembodied, initiated disembodied beings of the higher world.

So far went Clement of Alexandria. And then he said – and this is again contained in his work –: In the progress of time development, Christ has passed from the nature of an angel to the nature of a son. He has become a son. He could manifest Himself earlier, reveal Himself through the angels or as an angel, as a multitude of angels, as many angels. When He wanted to appear to one as an angel, when He wanted to appear to another as another angel, He appeared through many forms. Then He appeared through the one form: the Son.

Here a very important element comes into play. Please pay attention to this, it is extremely important! Clement of Alexandria still takes the view that the Christ was already present in the spiritual regions before the Mystery of Golgotha. He had reached the point where he could make himself known through angels, through messengers. But he progressed further, he came to be able to express himself as the Son. This is extremely important.

What is it that actually enters into human understanding? — If we go through all this old Gnosticism, it has a peculiarity. If, for example, I wanted to draw you a diagram of this Gnosticism, I could say the following: This Gnosticism imagines a person of evolution who emanated from the Father, the Primordial Father, from the so-called Silence or “iyn, from the Primordial Spirit. These ancient Gnostics indicated thirty different levels. They called them eons. So I could mention thirty here. Now, to some extent, a second stream; while the first stream is spiritual, they indicated a second stream that is soul-related. Within this stream, they recognized the two main eons of origin in Christ and Sophia. Then a number of eons came again. And they indicated a third current: the demiurge with matter. And these came together and formed the human being.

You can make such schematics from the way these Gnostics thought. These ideas are not entirely unreal, not entirely imaginary, because the human being is a complex creature. When I once explained how many seven-part aspects there are in the human being – you included it in one of the Norwegian cycles, I believe it is called “Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy” – our dear friends were quite amazed at how many, many differences actually have to be looked for in the human being. These differences are reminiscent of what the Gnostics already knew from their point of view. But when one approaches this Gnosis, one thing is always the same: the concept of time plays little role in it. One can express the Gnostic through spatial schematics. The concept of time does not play a special role, at least one does not penetrate it with understanding. And in this respect there is progress from Gnosis to Clement of Alexandria. Even if the entire comprehensive wealth of spiritual wisdom was lost, there was still progress in that Clement of Alexandria brought the concept of time into the development of the Christ and said: The Christ revealed Himself earlier, could make Himself known earlier through angels, then as a son, because He Himself had progressed. Development came into it, that is the significant thing. It cannot be emphasized often enough that the Western cultural development was there to then bring the concept of time into the world view in the right way, to understand the idea of development in the right way. This is so important, this is of far-reaching significance, to look at the development and to see how Christ originally could only make himself known through the angels, and then, after he has gone through the mystery of Golgotha, appears as the Son. Through the angels he is the messenger of something that is outside the world and indeed permeates the world, but which, if it is to be recognized, must be recognized from outside the world: Messenger, later, when he appears as a son, he permeates everything. Just as the son of a blood is one with the father within the physical world, so the spirit-son of a being is to be imagined with the father in the spiritual world. Being a son is different from simply being an angel. So when this entity reveals itself as a son, it is an advance over the earlier revelation, where it could only reveal itself as an angel, as a messenger.

So in Christianity there was a kind of more advanced understanding than there was within the old Gnosticism. But I would say that the after-effects of Gnosticism were still needed in order to say what Clement of Alexandria said. When Gnosticism gradually disappeared altogether, one could no longer even say what Clement and Origen said. People increasingly came to identify with those impulses that were the impulses of later times, the purely materialistic impulses. And so it came about that Origen's teaching was condemned. It was declared heretical. The element that caused it to be declared heretical consists in particular in the fact that one wanted to renounce such an understanding of the matter, coming from man himself and his powers. One felt: that can no longer be there. But how does the matter appear to us now? How must it appear to us? We see, after all, that an old spiritual wisdom had spread on the basis of old clairvoyance. That was there, it is gradually disappearing. Within this spiritual wisdom, even if it related to an extraterrestrial being, there was a wisdom about the Christ. Just when the Christ descended to Earth, this had disappeared. The real Christ was connected with the earth. The knowledge of the Christ had disappeared in time. There you have another case on a large scale, which I ask you to look at properly. We can look beyond the then known earth, beyond the earth before the mystery of Golgotha. The further back we go, the more knowledge of the Christ we find, even if it is the Christ who must be thought of in supersensible regions. But it is a knowledge that can only be imparted by angels. This is evolution. This knowledge, this idea of the Christ is distributed among many people. The Christ lived as the inspirer of many people: evolution.

This knowledge slowly recedes, disappears, fades away, and in the one being, in Jesus of Nazareth, everything that was once distributed is concentrated. Imagine a drop of Christ-inner-self within evolution in one of the mystery priests, a second, third, fourth and so on, in each of the mystery initiates one would find: he has something of the Christ in him when he leaves his body with his spirit. The Christ is multiplied in them. All this disappears. And in a single point, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, all that was distributed contracts: involution.

Precisely that which had been withdrawn from all others appeared in the one body. And so we see that what was distributed, what lived in evolution, must disappear from the earth by concentrating on the one point, on the body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is this important fact. Within the most significant involution, evolution ceases. So now the time is coming when the Christ lives with the earth, but the Christ-knowledge does not live in the earth, the Christ-knowledge must first develop again.

Now the great difficulties are there, we have already hinted at them: on the one hand you have the Jesus, on the other hand you have the Christ. And do you think that the old wisdom of the connection in man has been lost at all? All this time, nothing has been known about what it is all about with man. Only now are we again dividing the human being into physical body, etheric body, sentient soul and so on. We are only just beginning to do this again. In the individual human being, we now distinguish again the physical-earthly, which continues in the line of inheritance, and the higher spiritual, which descended again from spiritual worlds. Origen did not know this, nor did Clement of Alexandria. They did not know enough about the spiritual and soul life and the physical life of the individual human being walking on earth. That is why they had difficulty understanding the individual aspects of the essence of Christ Jesus. Knowledge about the human being had been lost, hence this difficulty in understanding the God-man. And so the knowledge about Jesus and the knowledge about the Christ became more and more divergent. And it is of infinite importance for our time that we understand how this, as it were, affects the time again, inasmuch as that which our spiritual science contains must appear in it. It is tremendously important to look precisely at this falling apart of the Jesus and the Christ. This is an extremely serious, an extremely important matter. And it confronts us in so many ways.

We have seen these Christmas plays pass before us. In the second play, we felt something of the Christ; in the first, the pure figure of Jesus in the second, the simple and primitive. One can say that gradually the Jesus-child, that is, the starting point of Jesus, has conquered the minds of people. Only in the Middle Ages does one begin to look towards the child. Before that, Christians took part in the sacrifice of the Mass, they heard about the mystery that the Christ had gone through death, the Pauline doctrine and so on. But the Bible was not popular, the Bible was only in the hands of the priests. The faithful had to take part in the sacrifice of the Mass, which was offered to them in Latin. But there was no participation in the proceedings of the sacred action. And that which is contained in the Gospels only gradually conquered minds and souls. And so it was only really from the middle of the Middle Ages that such plays, such representations of the appearance of Jesus and so on, could be offered to people. Today one actually has the idea: The Mystery of Golgotha was, and from then on people would have known something of this Mystery of Golgotha. Yes, what they knew was that the Christ had died on the cross. People were especially aware of the Easter event. But the Christmas event was completely unknown, it crept into people's minds and hearts only very slowly and gradually. That was the external side, how people learned about what had happened in Palestine in pictures. Only gradually, through the dramatic presentation, did people begin to imagine what had happened in Palestine. It was the side of the mystery of Jesus. It was at the same time, just think, it was at the same time when, on the other hand, in mysticism, Tauler, Meister Eckhart and the others were again seeking the Christ through mysticism. So on the one hand we have the first emergence of Christmas plays: Jesus is sought as externally as possible, namely in direct external representation – Jesus is sought – and the mystics seek the Christ, they seek to develop the soul to such an extent that they see the Christ emerging in them, they seek to experience the completely transformed, completely unworldly, purely spiritual Christ in the soul. Mysticism on the one hand, Christmas plays on the other — the Jesus and the Christ are sought at the same time on two different, far-removed paths! What was a theoretical difficulty for Origen, the inability to reconcile the Christ with the Jesus, is encountered in the villages outside. Among the people, Jesus is shown in the form of a child. The deep mystics seek the Christ by wanting to lead their own soul to an inner feeling, almost to an inner sensing of the Christ. But where is the connection? Where is it, this connection? Things go side by side. Think how far apart what the simple person, the simple eye, sees in the Christmas plays is from the deep mysticism of a Meister Eckhart or a Johannes Tauler. But the beginnings of the Christmas plays fall into the time. Mysticism also lives on.

And in our time today - think of what the whole mystery of Golgotha has become for many theologians! Suppose: Those who are the most advanced theologians, what do they actually look at? They see that once at the beginning of our era in Nazareth or Bethlehem or somewhere, a chosen person was born, chosen especially to gradually feel within himself the connection between man and the spiritual world, a noble person - the noblest person, so noble that one can already say that he was almost - and even - not true, because the story is a bit patchy! One does not know how to find one's way around, what more can be said about the fact that in the course of Christianity he was after all conceived entirely as a god. And so one twists and turns, and there come all the Euckenisms and Harnackisms, which are so — yes, one cannot grasp it, but one wants in some way to be clever and yet have a way to understand Jesus as something, Christ as some kind of Christ. Well, and so one takes up the Gospels. Of course, as a modern person, one is embarrassed to admit the miracles. So one deletes what one can delete and constructs something highly natural out of it, something that can have happened for reasonable reasons. And then it goes to the event of Jerusalem, to the crucifixion. Up to the point of dying, that is still possible. But after the resurrection, that is no longer possible, and one then ventures into such things as Harnack, for example, ventures into saying: Yes, this resurrection, this grave from which Christ Jesus is said to have risen – the Easter mystery, yes, yes, the Easter mystery: one must indeed to the realization that from the Garden at the Skull this Easter secret has gone forth; the Easter secret has risen there – the thought of the resurrection has come from there, and to that we must cling and look no further for what has actually happened there; the idea of the resurrection has gone forth from there.

Now, isn't that something! Read “The Essence of Christianity” by Harnack, and you will find this peculiar resurrection idea! I once pointed this out at a meeting of the Giordano Bruno Society in a town and said: It is a strange idea that people want to deal with the resurrection in such a way that they say they do not want to touch what actually happened, but want to point out that the belief in the resurrection, the belief in the Easter mystery, has risen from that grave. — Then someone said to me: That can't stand with Harnack! That's almost Catholic, that's Catholic superstition. It's as if one should still believe that the Holy Shroud of Trier means something! That's superstition, that can't stand with Harnack. Yes, it is in Harnack after all, and I could do nothing else – I did not have the book at hand – than write a card to the gentleman in question the next day, saying that it was on page so and so. These are things that lead into difficulties. You can't get past them if you are to find the way from Jesus to the Christ. Someone once said to me: We modern theologians can no longer do anything with Christology, we can only use a Jesusology. — He said it, not me: It's a shame that the name Jesuit is already taken, because actually the confessors of modern theology should be called “Jesuits”. — Please, I didn't say it, but a confessor of modern theology!

Yes, well, that is one side of the story. The other side is that a number of modern theologians, in turn, adhere more to the Christ. They take the Gospels as their starting point. They do not take certain sayings in the Gospels in the same way as those I have just mentioned take what a reasonable person in the world can believe of a person even if he is a divine person. But when someone is called a “divine man,” it is not clear how far one should go in applying the divine: “Noble man, but more than Socrates” — but, well, it is not right. Now, there are those who are Jesusologists, for theologians, that is a word that is difficult to apply to them. Theology would mean divine wisdom. But the “divine” is to be deleted here. Then there are the others; they take the sayings a little more seriously. With certain sayings, they find: It is not right that the one who said them should be understood only as an ordinary human being. There are sayings in the Gospels that simply cannot be put into the mouth of a human being, a mere human being, in an honest way. And besides, they take the resurrection story seriously and so on. They now turn into Christologists as opposed to Jesus-ologists.

But now they arrive at something else. Read the book “Ecce Deus” and other books, and you will come to the conclusion that if you read the Gospels honestly, you cannot say that the Gospels are about a man. It is about a God, a real, true God. These people, in turn, lose Jesus. And they lose him very strongly, because they now say: the Gospels are all about a God; but the God cannot have existed, he cannot have existed, so we have to keep the Christ. The Christ is something that people talked about, but it did not live on earth. Christology without Jesus-ology, that is the other direction. But the two directions cannot come together. And so it is already really the case today: those who speak of the Christ have lost the Jesus, and those who speak of the Jesus have lost the Christ. The Christ has become an unreal god, and the Jesus has become an unreal man. It is imperative that we continue on this path, if nothing is added.

That which is added must be spiritual science, which in turn can comprehend how the Christ lived in Jesus. And that is basically one of the most important points of spiritual science teaching, that it can lead to an understanding of how the Christ, through the detour of the two Jesuses, could really become the being that placed itself at the center of the evolution of mankind on earth, because this spiritual science in turn has a view of what man is, how the spiritual, the soul and the physical are combined in man. And so, building on this, one can also understand how the Christ comes together with the Jesus. Of course, it is complicated and not easy to understand, but it can be understood. And so you see how, from the original, that which has been lost for humanity must be restored through spiritual science, also in relation to the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. When the Christ appeared in the world, it was not possible to understand Him. This understanding must be acquired little by little. What He has worked, He has worked in actuality. But the starting points are there everywhere. And starting points can be found even in the simplest Christmas play.

What is presented? It becomes particularly clear where the Paradiesspiele are still considered, how a person enters the world, from whom it becomes clear only through what happens incidentally that it is Jesus. The human being enters the world as a child. I said: the Paradiesspiel was connected with it - the beginning of the development of the earth - with the Mystery of Golgotha. Why is that? We must take into account the fact that at the beginning of the evolution of the earth, man was exposed to the Luciferic temptation. As a result, he became a different being than he would have become in the regular process of evolution. So when we have Adam, symbolically speaking, outside of paradise, he is a different being than he was destined to be before the Luciferic temptation. How does that come to light? Imagine: Lucifer had not approached the human being, the human being would live without the Luciferic impulse, then he would live quite differently in the etheric body. When the human being passes through the gate of death and still has his etheric body, and then sheds it, that etheric body remains, but in this etheric body is imprinted what the human being does and thinks through the Luciferic seduction. The human being dies, passes through the gate of death. The physical body is given over to the elements. After a few days, the etheric body detaches itself from the human being. The person then goes his or her own way. But in this ethereal body is contained that which this etheric body has become through the fact that the person thinks and feels and acts as he must think and feel and act after the Luciferic temptation. So now imagine the earth. The human physical body goes into the earth, it is handed over to the elements of the earth. But his ether body remains connected to the earth. There we have the ether bodies of human beings, which are now in the earth's atmosphere. They are different from what they would be if the Luciferic temptation had not come. Of course, everything I have said about the ether bodies refers to these ether bodies. But what I am hinting at today also relates to this, so that we can say: A human being is embedded in the earth. That which he leaves behind on earth, what his etheric body has become during his life, is drier, more woody than it would be if the Luciferic temptation had not come. Woody, dry — this difference really exists. Imagine that the temptation of Lucifer had never occurred. In that case, at his death man would leave behind a much more “young” etheric body, as it were a much greener etheric body. He leaves behind a much more withered, dried-up etheric body through the temptation of Lucifer than he would have left behind without the temptation of Lucifer. It is already expressed in the legend that the lignified Paradise Tree grows out of Adam's grave. But that which lives in the earth lived before the Mystery of Golgotha in the Luciferically infected etheric body. That was precisely the element into which the body of Jesus of Nazareth entered in a redeeming way, as a phantom, as I once indicated in the Karlsruhe lectures. Now then, imagine Adam's grave: Adam's physical body consigned to the elements of the earth, emerging from the grave with the sclerotic etheric body, which is the representative of that which is infected with Lucifer in the human being and remains after death. At the same time, this is the wood on which the human being can be crucified. And this crucifixion arises in the lingering of the phantom of Jesus of Nazareth after the Mystery of Golgotha, which connects with the earth precisely with the help of the latter. This is expressed in the legend by saying: This wood passed from generation to generation and formed the wood of the cross of Golgotha. This image is the image that corresponds to a real fact, namely that through the crucifixion the phantom of Jesus of Nazareth united with what lived ethereally in the earth from all the etheric bodies infected by Lucifer, which had naturally scattered and thinned and dissolved, but were still there in their powers. The fact that we have to face here is a very significant and infinitely profound one, shedding light on the secrets of the earth.

But how does man become related to this ethereal body infected by Lucifer? By becoming immersed in the physical world, where he becomes a child. It is not yet natural there, where he becomes a child. Therefore, if you look at the child with the right feeling when it enters the world, you really see the man who is free of Lucifer. And if you are able to look at the child with the right feeling as it enters the world, you will already see the man with his relationship to Christ. This is the feeling that should be achieved in those to whom Jesus was handed over in the Christmas play: to feel what I have indicated on the very first pages of the little writing about the progress of people and humanity, where I spoke of the first three years, of this entering. For if what is permeating the human being could penetrate him in the middle of his life – I have hinted at it in it – then one would have an idea of the way in which the Christ lived in Jesus. This ability to look at what is not yet infected by Lucifer in the child is what can happen in the Christmas play.

And think what all this ultimately is. It is actually something tremendous when you look at the child in this way. In this little writing, I have pointed out how we are wiser in our youth, even if unconsciously wiser, because we have to build up our body little by little, which we cannot do later. One is cleverer, one is much wiser than one is later, in the inner penetration of the human being, of the human entity, but one does not yet have anything Luciferic. By working inwardly in this way when one is a child, up to the point in time to which one later remembers, one works on the fine chiseling of one's body. One works there according to infinitely wise laws, of which one can never get an inkling later on in the luciferic-ahrimanic permeated knowledge. When one works in this essence, one is still free from everything one later enters into by experiencing the world together with the body. One is free from all differences, even from the great difference of male and female. As a child, one is not yet living in the masculine and feminine. One is not yet in a class, racial or national difference in it. One is human, a mere human being. One is really in it, in which even those who now face each other in war through hatred, through what they only experience externally, have once lived. That people face each other in the world hating as belonging to different nations, that is only developed through those forces in which one lives together with the physical body. Before the child has lived together with the physical body, it still lives in the 'in-between', which is beyond national and class differences. It lives in the in-between, in which souls can truly live, wherever they are born on earth. Just think, people can face each other in terrible fighting, angry fighting, shoot each other dead – and those who shoot each other dead can pass through the gate of death in the community of Christ, in that in which they are when they are not yet afflicted with the differences of people. What faces each other hating, that the human being acquires only in the physical body, that has nothing to do with what is outside of the physical body. The present has much to learn, especially the present, by finding its way back to the worship of Jesus in time, when he is presented as a child, since he has not yet entered into that which differentiates people and causes them to quarrel and fight with each other. It is only through what a person experiences when he becomes something other than the child spoken of at Christmas that war and strife arise. What is played at Christmas is the human being, truly in connection with the cosmic powers, but in such a way that what does not enter into conflict, what those in their hearts can carry in the same way, is revealed externally on the physical plane in a unique form, even though they fight each other to the death.

There is an enormous depth to the fact that it is precisely in connection with the Nathanian Jesus-child that this side is presented to humanity, so that the human being touches himself with that side through which he enters the world without the shadow of differentiation, before he has entered into nations, into other differences, into those differences that he enters only through living together with the body. On the one hand, the idea of Jesus touches the idea of Christ, which can only be fully realized in the child Jesus; on the other hand, the idea of Christ comes into being when one can grasp purely, in the Jesus between the ages of thirty and thirty-three, what is now also spiritual, the being of Christ. In a twofold way, through the Nathanic and the Solomonic Jesus, a body has been prepared that can now stand apart from all that differentiates itself through human beings. And only in such a body can the Christ reveal Himself.

Thus, in our spiritual scientific sense, we see, as I have indicated in the booklet on the progress of man and humanity, the Jesus idea and the Christ idea growing together. This is the greatest and most significant need of our time. So far, people have had only one Christmas and only one Easter, but these do not belong together. For Easter is a Christ festival, while Christmas is a Jesus festival. Easter and Christmas will only lead the way together if one can understand how Christ and Jesus belong together. And spiritual science will build the bridge between Christmas and Easter. And from the simple play of the shepherds, a bridge is built to the finest understanding that can be gained when we pursue spiritual science to the point where we find the Christ through it. We must only have the ability to go with the attitude of the shepherds, not with the attitude of the landlords. The contrast between materialism and spiritualism is wonderfully contrasted in the “landlords” and the “shepherds”. And basically, that is the big question of our time: whether people want to be hosts or shepherds. A great deal of the events of our time stem from the fact that people are hosts. Being a host is widespread in the world. To be shepherds, we must again try to become shepherds. There will certainly still be many doubters among the shepherds, and when one says, “I think I see a glow there, that is, I perceive something spiritual,” the other will still say for a long time, “That's just fantasy.” But if the human being can only now develop the sides in himself that are not based on what has been acquired on earth, but can find the connection with what the human being has brought out of the spiritual, heavenly in his inner being, then he will be able to be a shepherd. Today people are too absorbed with the house they live in and the possessions they own, the things they have brought in from the earth. This can only be measured in terms of earthly values. But those who still have a certain connection with the spiritual forces that surge through the world, who still have the nature of a shepherd within them, they should be able to find the way to realize that, basically, external knowledge only reveals appearances. We will gradually begin to understand Christmas when we learn to distinguish between the host nature and the shepherd nature, and when we know how much of the host nature there is in our time. But there is one small problem that needs to be overcome. Of course we have to distinguish between the innkeeper and shepherd natures, since we are surrounded by innkeepers, and wherever we go we are surrounded by innkeepers and feel very much like a shepherd. Of course we always feel like a shepherd! One must get over that, at least to do a little research into the innkeeper element that one carries within oneself, and not to see oneself as a shepherd at all. One will sometimes have to ask oneself: Do I already see the light that is to come and announce what is to come through the new spiritual science? — We will have to cultivate everything that can awaken in us the feelings: to be able to celebrate Christmas in our hearts in this new spiritual direction, to seek the light out of the darkness, but to seek within ourselves and really want to seek, really want to seek, and by really feel that it is not over at once, and that you have to keep coming back, like the shepherds did, who also promise to come back; they don't want to leave it over at once.

Yes, there is still much to be learned from this simple Christmas play, and so I think it is good that we cultivate this simplest way of experiencing the Christmas mystery in these simple forms among ourselves for a while. For many difficult struggles will confront spiritual striving in the coming time, and only those who have truly learned to become shepherds in the spiritual grasp of the Christmas mystery with all the humility of shepherds, but also with all the wise searching of the shepherd who is faithfully united with the world, will find the way. Let us inscribe this in our hearts and souls this Christmas season, so that we may become more and more seeking shepherds and learn in time to seek the sacred in the innermost soul mood of man, as it has been found out of the profane mood, as I have characterized it to you, as more out of a carnival, not a sacred conversation, the most solemn form of the Christmas play also gradually arose.

If we try to seek the spiritual in the context of what the Christmas plays showed us, then we will find it in the right sense as shepherds, not as innkeepers, who have already lost — as the Christmas play symbolically suggests — the connection with the Christmas child. And our time has a great need of it, a very great need of it, our time in which materialism has acquired such wide, wide areas of the outer world, of inner human feeling, and in which it is so difficult for a spiritual world view to even find the right words to express what the right words are, given the misused words with which one expresses oneself.