Christ as Sun Spirit: The Cosmic Life of Love

GA 266I — 24 September 1907, Hanover

Esoteric Lesson

Christ is a sun spirit, a fire spirit. It is his spirit that reveals itself to us in sunlight. It is his breath of life that surrounds the earth in the air and enters us with every breath we take. His body is the earth on which we live.

In fact, He nourishes us with His flesh and blood, for whatever we take in as food comes from the earth, taken from His body.

We breathe His breath of life, which He sends to us through the vegetation covering the earth.

We see in His light, for the light of the sun is the rays of His Spirit.

We live in His love, even physically, for what we receive from the sun as warmth is His spiritual power of love, which we perceive as warmth.

And our spirit is drawn to His spirit, just as our body is bound to His body.

That is why our body must be sanctified, because we walk on His body. The earth is His holy body, which we touch with our feet. And the sun is the manifestation of His holy spirit, to which we may look up. And the air is the manifestation of His holy life, which we are allowed to take into ourselves.

In order that we might become conscious of ourselves, of our spirit, in order that we might become spirit beings ourselves, this high Sun Spirit sacrificed Himself, left His royal dwelling, descended from the Sun, and took on physical form on Earth. Thus, He was physically crucified on Earth.

But He spiritually encompasses the earth with His light and His power of love, and everything that lives on it is His property. He is only waiting for us to want to be His own. If we give ourselves completely to Him, He will give us not only His physical life, but also His higher, spiritual sun life. Then He will fill us with His divine light spirit, with His warming rays of love, and with His creative divine will.

We can only be what He gives us, what He makes us. Everything in us that corresponds to the divine plan is His work. What can we do about it? Nothing, except let Him work in us. Only when we resist His love can He not work in us.

But how could we resist this love? He who says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness.”

He has loved us from the beginning of the earth. We must let His love become our essence.

Only this means real life; only there is true spirit, true bliss possible, where this life becomes an essential life for us, the life of Christ within us.

We cannot become pure and holy on our own, but only through this Christ life. All our striving and struggling is in vain as long as we are not filled with this higher life. Only this can wash away everything that is still impure from our being like a pure, clear stream.

It is from the depths of the soul that this purifying light-life can rise.

There we must seek our dwelling place, at His feet and in devotion to Him.

Then He Himself will transform us and fill us with His divine life of love until we become light and pure like Him, like Him. Until He can share His divine consciousness with us.

Through His light, the soul must become pure, i.e., wise; thus it can unite with His life. Then this is the union of Christ and Sophia, the union of the Christ life with the human soul purified by His light.