Christ's Victory Over Destructive Forces and Cosmic Redemption

GA 266II — 16 December 1911, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

In our meditations, we will soon notice how something opposes us like an inhibiting force. We must thoroughly familiarize ourselves with it and recognize that it is related to the entire destructive power of the Earth. The Earth is in a destructive process. Even external science recognizes the changes on the earth's surface as products of destructive forces. Since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, these destructive forces have been increasing (having been prepared earlier) through what human beings have created as karma. Unbalanced karma is what strengthens the destructive forces of the earth, and the earth has already become a physical corpse that would have to fall out completely, especially from the earth's development plan, if a strong power had not intervened. Everything connected with the earth's development is permeated by these destructive forces, which are the Luciferic beings that remained behind on the moon. One of them recognized this from his world wisdom and remained behind even earlier in the development of the moon—even on the sun, but we are now talking about the moon—in order to be able to add something virgin to the development of the earth that was not affected by the destructive forces. Until the middle of the Atlantean epoch, constructive forces were at work. Man saw them behind the Maya. Through their unbalanced karma, human beings increasingly strengthened the weight of the destructive forces, so that at the Mystery of Golgotha on April 3, 33, the crossbeam of the scales was balanced, and the deed of Christ was placed in the other pan. He connected himself with the earth so that every human being can now find Christ in the deepest inner soul. Human beings would drown in the Maya that surrounds them; Christ connected himself with the earth's development so that human beings could find him again behind Maya.

We know why this Maya was woven by the gods: so that human beings would not have to live in it, bound by the glory of the world of truthfulness, but could turn to it in freedom. We know what our states of waking and sleeping are. In ancient times, at the moment of awakening, human beings still saw the divine beings through the veil of Maya, but at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, they saw only the demonic beings. Then the gate closed completely, and human beings had to drown in Maya. In ancient times, Elijah's cloak—his power—had to be given to Elisha so that he could part the Jordan and cross it safely; the forerunner of Christ immersed people in the Jordan. Man had to pass through the waters, but he was given a material from which he could build a bridge for himself to cross them instead of drowning in them. Christ himself gives himself as this material.

Now, man might see an impairment of his freedom in the fact that he is to join this victorious Christ force, but Christ leaves him so free with regard to the acceptance of his essence that he cannot be found in anything earthly, not even in the intellect or reason, because these are coercive for man. For intellect and reason are permeated by the forces of Lucifer, and before these intervened, Christ remained behind and is therefore found by man in the mystical depths of his being. Earlier religions were an expression of the respective state of science, and Christianity is accused of being completely disconnected from external science. In the coming times, it will go beyond everything that can be found and recognized externally, and even today it can only be found in inner experience. It has already been pointed out many times how the revelation of Christ will take place in the coming times.

Surrounded by maya, wherever we look, something true sounds out of us: the strong longing that lives in every human soul; for we are born of God. And we will not drown in the further maya, for in Christ we die; in the divine I-ness, the killing individuality perishes. And we will rise again, healed, powerful and free; we will rise from the Holy Spirit. So much has been inspired in these words, which you are to open up to yourselves in meditation, that you will have work with them for far more decades than the rest of this incarnation encompasses. Place these facts in your souls, shut out the turmoil of Maya, and they will become living forces within you.

Record B

When we place the content of our meditation at the center of our consciousness, we feel forces at work that form an obstacle preventing us from surrendering ourselves completely. These forces that we encounter in our souls are, when we recognize them clearly, destructive forces, the same destructive forces that are at work in the earth, causing our earth to be doomed, causing it to cut itself off from the cosmos. These destructive forces began in the middle of Atlantis and, at the time of the event on Golgotha, had reached the point where they exactly balanced the constructive forces. This was on April 3 of the thirty-third year of our calendar (or on the 14th [Nisan] of the calendar at that time). Then Christ brought a new force into the earth and into humanity that counteracts these destructive forces. In order to bring this in, the Christ Being remained behind in an early stage of the moon's development, when the earth still showed its virgin state of forces—even before the Luciferic beings remained behind to oppose development. We must connect ourselves with this Christ force that lies dormant in every soul; it frees us from the destructive forces that our karma has planted in us during the course of our incarnations and in which we would drown as in a deep stream. We must pass through this stream of existence. Before the event at Golgotha, it was the old gods of other religions who offered human souls a chariot or a ship to cross over; now we must seize the power that Christ offers us and build a bridge across. Elisha still experienced Elijah leaving behind his cloak, with which Elisha divided the Jordan to cross over. Now it is different. When the ancient peoples looked at the outer maya upon awakening, they found the spiritual world shining through it; we find nothing divine in the present maya. It is a corpse; only in our soul does longing arise, and this is the divine that shows us the way to the spiritual world. We do not find Christ outside, as Zarathustra still did, but within ourselves, within our earth. In ancient times, religion and science were united, but today's reason cannot find Christ; until now, Christ could only be found through faith, and only the new soul forces will restore this union.

Record C

Esotericism tells us that April 3, 33, is the Friday on which the mystery of Golgotha took place. When we seriously immerse ourselves in meditation, we can perceive within ourselves that counterforces are emerging from all sides of our soul, surrounding us and gradually forming a very strange counter-image. What are these forces? They are the karma we have created for ourselves over time. Human beings will come to recognize that these forces are related to them, closely related to cosmic forces in the universe, that they are the same forces within them that are destroying the planets outside.

And if only these forces were at work, the Earth would fall out of the overall development as a planet and become desolate.

The more human beings succeed in connecting themselves with the forces coming from the other side, with the forces of Christ, the more they create ascending forces within themselves and for the Earth. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ has been connected with the Earth, but this Mystery had been prepared for a long time (it should actually have happened in the middle of the Atlantean epoch).

If human beings now decide to follow the path with the help of Christ, but still in freedom, they will also recognize that in doing so they are serving themselves and humanity. As an image for this path, it is said that one has the experience of water that one must cross and a bridge that one must use to do so.

It is the guardian of karma who appears in the image of the water; it is the karma created by man himself that he must cross over, and he will soon recognize that it is closely connected with the whole of humanity and that man must improve it. If he does so, it will benefit the whole of humanity.

Man must learn to merge with the cosmos.

Record D

Of the two forces that are [active] in humanity. One part is doomed to destruction, the other part can still be raised to life.
Of the forces that have entered into the processes of life and have corrupted them.
Of the destruction that threatens these beings and forces.
Of baptism in the Jordan, the complete immersion.
Of the life that was able to take hold through immersion in the Men.
Of the rising again from being engulfed by these forces doomed to death.
The forces of a corrupt nature are in man and have the upper hand.
How the forces of life were implanted into these perishable forces. The coming of Christ, who had stored up forces from the Sun period.
Of the ejection, the earth, the matter that had to be thrown out of the system of life as useless.
What it is that now had to be imprinted on human beings through Christ.
Of the overcoming of death, the transformation of matter into spirit.
How evil is enclosed in the human body, working destructively within it.
How man is bound to evil, but Christ built a bridge over the river, the Jordan, to escape it.
Of the baptism of Christ and the disciples. How, through complete immersion in water, terror was brought about in the disciples in order to work into the physical body.
How the entire cosmos works through Christ, ... he is one with the Father and thereby reestablishes a relationship with the living.
The connection between this living being working through Christ and the earth was made possible by the death of Christ Jesus.
This happened on 3. 4. 33, on the 14th.¹ At that moment, the life of the cosmos reconnected with the earth.

Long form, not clearly decipherable: “Nianth ... (?)” [Nisan]. ↩