Christ Spirit and Rosicrucian Meditation: Earth's Transformation

GA 266II — 19 May 1910, Hamburg

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Before we begin our esoteric contemplation today, let us address the prayer to the spirit of Thursday. For the esotericist should increasingly acquire true higher modesty and humility, so that he does not turn to the highest deity with his affairs, but considers that between it—which we cannot even begin to comprehend with our highest human understanding—and us there exist all the great hierarchies:

Great comprehensive spirit,
in your light the earth shines with life ...

Today we want to look at our meditations from a different angle. Through meditation, the esotericist wants to draw closer to the Christ Spirit and try to connect with it more deeply than he could through exoteric Christianity. The event of the Christ principle entering our earthly development was so significant, even for external history, that we calculate our time according to it. At the time when Zoroaster saw the figure of the approaching Sun Spirit in the sun, he gathered disciples around him to make them servants of the great Ahura Mazdao, and he prepared himself more and more to receive this Sun Spirit into himself.

When the Earth with all its beings looks up at the Sun, it must say to itself that it cannot do what the Sun can do: emit light. It would be a dark, black body if the light of the Sun did not penetrate it and if it could not reflect it back. Since Christ became the planetary spirit of the Earth through the event at Golgotha, he has the power to cause the green plant cover of the Earth to sprout.

The masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings give us the great truths of the world in symbols, and it is above all the Rosicrucians who, reflecting themselves in us, can awaken and strengthen the power of the Christ spirit within us. In our last esoteric lesson, we saw that the red rose expresses the feeling of shame. Now we know that all colors produce their opposite color within us, red therefore producing green (compare “Child Education”). Thus, the sight of the black cross awakens the white, radiant sunlight of Christ within us, and through the red roses the power is stimulated so that green life can spring forth from the bright light of the Christ power. If we imagine the Rosicrucian cross with this feeling and let it live within us, we become part of our earthly power, our earthly spirit, the Christ spirit.

As esotericists, we must always strive to counteract things that appear to us as maya with good thoughts. We must be imbued with the feeling that in everything there is a spark of this power that can one day burst forth and outshine all evil. We must also carry within us the complete confidence that all that is good on earth, all that is positive, will and must prevail.

Record B

It is not possible for human beings to approach the divine directly, and therefore it is better to try to approach the spirit of the day by invoking it reverently with appropriate expressions (the spirit of Jupiter is invoked). The highest of all symbols is the cross. From it, the entire history of the world can be drawn, and even natural science could be constructed from it. If we consider how colors have their complementary colors, which are well known in natural science, then we will also understand that the special colors used for the Rosicrucians have a specific effect that we can experience as complementary colors in the soul. It has already been pointed out in the little book “The Education of the Child” how the color red has an inner calming effect. At the same time, one can see that the soul is then bathed in green; it produces the complementary color. When we look at the black cross with the red roses, the black, which is otherwise darkness for us, becomes like white light in the soul. Thus, we can understand that by meditating on the black cross, light arises in our soul that can bring us to enlightenment. The red of the roses produces green in the soul as a reflection and brings us to a very sublime feeling when we imagine the effect of the power of Christ.

Zarathustra or Zoroaster watched as Christ, who was still connected to the sun for him, was to descend to earth. And when this took place, the earth was fertilized, filled with the Christ spirit, and this spirit became the spirit of the earth at that time. The earth, which had been dark until then, was filled with light, and the effect of this light is evident in the green that covers the earth. The living, sprouting, budding green is the effect of the Christ spirit in the earth. The earth is, as it were, saturated with it, and it is literally true that we walk on the earth on the body of Christ. And the green is his etheric body.

Through meditation on the Rosicrucians, light also becomes light within us, and the effect of the green will awaken in our souls the Christ force that was also awakened in the earth by this same force. And when this power works within us, we will feel a great confidence growing within us that pure love must overcome all evil and that truth can be found. For us, this is expressed in the words:

In the pure rays of light ...