Lectures on Christian Religious Work II

GA 343 — 9 October 1921, Dornach

Twenty-seventh Lecture

My dear friends! I have conducted the meditations for the course of the year up to the period that would fall approximately between July 21/23 and August 22/23, the period I have called the time of maturation. If we permeate ourselves with the world during this time, allow ourselves to be permeated by the world, then — after meditatively immersing ourselves in what I presented this morning — we feel not only how the spirit works in what is becoming and, in a sense, toward the light, but we feel the becoming of the outer world itself as spirit. And I can then say for this period, in the same sense as I said this morning for the other periods, that is, for the period from July 22 to August 23: First, becoming as spirit that fills. (This is written on the board:)

1. Becoming as spirit that fills.

Secondly, I will try to feel how the light not only continues to work as I said during the transition from the time of St. John to this time, but how the light is born, as it were, in the darkness. So: the effect of light in darkness. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Effect of light in darkness

And when I can feel this, I will sense all around me the calm of the spirit weaving in nature. This morning I already pointed out how the whole, which matures there, appears to me as poured out calm, in which the light of the sun blows spiritually. So: the calm of the spirit weaving. (It is written on the board:)

3. The tranquility of weaving the spirit.

And fourthly, I feel myself indistinctly in the outer spiritual, as part of the spiritual, thus: the co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit.

This would be meditation, which can be developed by watching nature mature in August, and we will find that it is precisely during this time that Paul's writings can have such an effect on us if we approach them with understanding. While in previous periods the contrast between John and Paul should be placed before our souls or by us before the soul of the community, it becomes particularly significant for this time if we place the full significance of Paul before ourselves or before the community.

Then we come to the time when summer draws to a close and autumn sets in, when nature gives us that mood that can be called the expectation of the gifts of ripening, when we expect how that which has first worked on us as ripening will then fall to us. This is therefore the time from August 23 to September 23. As this ripening process unfolds, we will look to the spirit, in the dying away of the outward budding of nature, in the dying away of nature itself. (The following is written on the board:)

1. Look to the spirit

Secondly, we will have confidence in the power of that which lives in dying, since we see how these gifts are, as it were, brought to us by nature as it fades away. So (it is written on the blackboard:)

2. Confidence in the spirit

We will learn to revere the power that reveals itself to us in withering nature, in nature that fades away for our senses, from which the spirit confronts us, especially in view of what becomes of us from nature, in view of the harvest. We will learn to revere the power of the world in this nature.

3. Worship of the Power of the World.

Now we are ready to feel how what comes to us as gifts of the harvest does not confront us in images of the external world, but how the external world itself becomes increasingly darker, and we feel ourselves surrendered to what comes to us as a gift as the gifts of nature come to meet us. We can then feel our own inner radiance in the darkening external world. (It is written on the board:)

4. Radiant interior in the darkening outer world

And we will now condense the feelings we used to have towards the maturing into a grateful look at the radiant maturing of our own becoming. (It is written on the board:)

5. Grateful regard for the ripening of our own radiance.

These are the feelings that, as you can see, are, to a certain extent, much more abstract when they are expressed than those we have developed for Advent, for Christmas, for Easter and so on; but that is the given.

And now we come to the time from September 23 to October 23, when we experience the gifts we can receive and the harvest of the world. In beholding what is taking place there, where the world literally imposes a moral relationship on us, our feeling spiritualizes in beholding. It is impossible for man, when he feels in a fully human way, not to experience with gratitude what he can feel at the time of the harvest. (It is written on the board:)

1. The feelings spiritualize in beholding.

Our whole relationship to the world, even as it is a relationship to nature, acquires a moral character; we develop a moral view of the world. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Moral world view

But just as we are morally perceiving the world, it is as if the world would be forgotten as such with the approach of the harvest and as if it would become dark. (It is written on the blackboard:)

3. The world is forgotten and darkens

It is precisely in this world that is eluding us and darkening that we are compelled to withdraw into our inner selves. The luminous inner self can best learn a prayerful mood in this autumn meditation, or rather, in the meditation of the world moving towards winter. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The luminous inner self learns to pray.

Here meditation takes on the character that it very often, I might say as if by instinct, takes on in the case of deeper philosophical natures. By contemplating the world for a long time and forming their ideas, deeper philosophical natures very often have the feeling that all existence is only provisional because, as it presents itself to us, it does not contain seeds for the future, but because it fades away. In this mood, the mood for prayer best develops for meditation. In this mood, I would say, in this helpless mood, where the world has disappeared from our radiant inner being, it is also where we begin to pray while meditating, that is, we begin to turn to something. Here we best learn the necessity of the commandment or law. (It is written on the board:)

5. Feeling the necessity of the law.

But just by seeing the approach of the spirit, by experiencing the approach of the spirit inwardly in meditation, one feels something like a faintness in the spirit. We can say that the overabundance of the spirit can be felt there, this almost nightmare-like feeling of the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard)

6. The overabundance of the spirit is felt.

It is indeed an absolutely self-evident process that from St. John's Day — where we saw how only three stages of our inner meditative experience can arise — through the following months, four stages arise in August, then five stages, then six stages. This emerges as something entirely necessary. As we approach the Christmas season, the inner life of the spirit becomes more differentiated again; we live ourselves into a more differentiated state.

And now we come to the time from October 23 to about November 23 or 24. This is the time when everything can guide us through the following meditation: We have empathized deeply with the growth and maturation, but then also with what the decline of growth and maturation is and the approach of the gifts out of the decline. We have learned to apply all this to our own inner life. We are, to a certain extent, living with nature and can now, first of all, have the feeling of how a power such as that which brings us the harvest gifts wants to stir in us as well. But precisely now, when we still have a vivid echo, we can feel towards nature in decline how our will is without drive. (It is written on the blackboard:)

1. The will without impulse.

One feels that the moral should enter into the will. (It is written on the board:)

2. The moral wants to seize the will.

Now one can prepare oneself for the mood in which one actually finds Christ's will for the first time. You can say to yourself: I see the world around me, but what I see is not the world. I am seeking a real world. The world is a decayed world; what I see is not the world. You must have already mustered the courage to find the world somewhere else than in what you see and hear and perceive with the other senses. (It is written on the board:)

3. What I see is not the world.

You have to have the courage not to want to see the sun where it was in April, not to perceive the spirit where it sprouts and sprouts, but in the darkness, in death I must seek the sun. (It is written on the board:)

4. In darkness, in death, I must seek the sun.

But through this one will be able to feel oneself in darkness, (it is written on the board:)

5. Man is himself in darkness.

One feels, while one used to feel with the world, now the world is dying. (It is written on the board:)

6. In man the world dies

Everything can now come together in the question (it is written on the board:)

7. How does the world live again in man?

Then the Advent mood can come, which I characterized in the morning as the first one, which begins with the sensation of the Word, with the sensation of the Logos. We have truly come through the moods of the year to be able to feel what the Logos is, and we can now develop the mood in the Advent season that is to lead up to the Christmas season.

May I read to you the experiment that I began this morning, such as how, by meditatively surrendering to what I have written on the board here, the meditation can be experienced inwardly in these words, how these words can be experienced in a breviary-like manner.

For the Advent season:

The Word flows through heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, through itself to the hidden It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now the Christmas season:

In the earthly man, He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him, He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him, He speaks the Word about his own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens. In Him a new ancestor has appeared for man
Through Him reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him matter reveals Spirit, Spirit creates matter.

And in the time following Christmas, when we reflect for ourselves and with the community on those parts of the Gospel that deal with Jesus' youth until his preparation for death, when we meditate ourselves in the way I showed you this morning, we can summarize this meditation in the words:

And walking on earth, the power of Wisdom grew in Him
And He could not be reached by the tempter
The Son of the lost human being
The healing power of the world
The disciple finds in his Being
From it He taught
And founded the Kingdom of the Spirit in the sphere of the senses.

And the time of Lent:

The earth sinks from its original state
An abyss is destined for the good sense
Earthly man has lost the heritage of eternity
The sick require healing
A leader must arise for the directionless
The light must shine for him in the darkness
The power of the senses must turn spiritually.

And so, in the spirit of the meditations and Easter Gospels mentioned this morning, we come to the following Easter saying:

I see heaven's radiance
I feel the grave as a spiritual effect
Death comes to me as a physical fall
The resurrection is placed before my spirit
The resurrection lives in my prayers
The Risen One lives in me
My mind is directed towards Him.

Now the walk on earth after the resurrection, the time that follows Easter, before the time of Pentecost:

The supersensible has revealed itself
The meaning of good is the germ of existence
The sensory sphere is only appearance
Truth secretly rules being
I permeate myself with the power of the Risen One
I want to be a disciple of the Risen One
With Him, I want to be a being of another world.

Whitsun time, June:

Insight in the spirit can live,
In a new world, the meaning of good will take effect
In the Spirit, Truth carries itself
In the image of the mind, it reveals itself
It loosens my tongue
It frees my soul
It unites the divine with the human.

And we come to the time of St. John:

In the becoming of space and time, the Spirit weaves
In the darkness of matter, the Spirit is powerfully active, forming images
A being awakens in the sleep of the sensory world.

We come to the time of Paul, the time of ripening, July to August, the time after John:

The Spirit rises from the world of becoming
In the darkness, light is born
The Spirit rests in the web of the senses
The Spirit lives in my life.

Toward September 23, in anticipation of the gifts of maturity:

My soul's eye looks at the Spirit
And trust weaves into the gaze
Providence escapes the law of nature
What seems dark on the outside shines brightly on the inside
My gratitude flows to the peaceful Spirit.

Now at the harvest of nature's gifts:

I look at the world with a Spirit-filled feeling
The Spirit feels my way of thinking
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the Spiritual Being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the Spirit takes a level head.

Now in the time leading up to November 23:

I lack the strength of my will
The sense of good wants to work
I see a world that destroys itself
In the destruction I must seek the light of becoming for myself
Darkness spreads in me
dying in the world in being human
How do I find the world in my darkness?

Next month, Advent will answer that.

In this way, we actually get the twelve stations of the breviary if we really get involved in the whole thing. And at the same time, you see something in what I have developed for you that is like an inner call for religious renewal. If you take the church year as it is in the traditional churches, once you have found your way through what has, of course, been corrupted in some ways, to the beauty of this church year, you have the significance of the Advent season, the wonderfully sweet intimacy of the Christmas season, and you can also shape all of this for the congregation in the sense of the Gospels. We then have everything we can do for ourselves and for the community in relation to Jesus, who in his youth grows ever wiser, develops until he cannot be tempted, and develops until he can appear as a teacher. We then have Lent, into which we can place everything that human self-knowledge can become so that the Easter event can be experienced in a dignified way. We also have the Gospel accounts, and these are particularly magnificent, of the events surrounding Easter; we also have the walk of the risen Christ with one or other of his apostles, which we can also gain from the Gospel; we then have the time of Pentecost with everything that follows the Feast of Ascension. But by developing the year in this way, we now lose touch with the world. The Old Catholic Church has now inserted the work of the apostles at this point, the feasts of the apostles, the feasts of the saints up to the feast of the dead for All Souls' Day and so on. But with that, the Pauline task in inner experience has actually been dropped. According to his commission, Paul had to go to those who had previously experienced the divine only as pagans in their souls. This mood, which we particularly need in the present time, which has taken away the religious from us – while we should give it back to the world – must also be in the human being. In this time, the religious feeling must find its way into nature, just as we have found it in the John mood, in the Paul mood of maturation. In the September mood, where we will see that we can very well experience what is given to us in the letters of Peter, we will be able to carry what we have developed in the harvest mood as the meditative life into the feeling of the [... gap in the postscript], without it falling prey to fantastic mysticism. During the time leading up to Advent, which I have just characterized as the time between now and November 23, we will be able to incorporate everything we have to say to the community and to ourselves, from the time of the Apostle's disciples, from the time of the Church Fathers.

If you take this concise month, August, you will be able to sense in its fourfold structure the indication of the structure of the month in weeks, while for the other months the weeks are effaced in their conciseness. A complete breviary will now have to be compiled in such a way that the fourfold division of the month and the twelvefold division of the year are included in meditations, or that the weekly meditations are included in the annual meditations. Then one can also proceed to the daily meditation in such a way that the meditation expressed in the breviary is a threefold one for each day. The weekly verses would follow on from the annual verses, which I have shared with you as they have emerged for me. However, the weekly verses would be repeated in each month, and these would be followed by the daily verses, which run each week from Saturday to the following Sunday. So we would have year-month verses, month-week verses, week-day verses, 21 lines, three times seven lines, except for the middle months, where we have four lines in August, three lines in the St. John season, five lines in the September season, and so on. Thus the breviary is also structured inwardly according to number, and one really experiences that into which we are subconsciously placed in the world. We bring the spirit up into consciousness in the experience of the year. I will speak more about this tomorrow. So tomorrow the formation of the breviary will take us a short time and then we will move on to discussing community building.

(The following is a response to questions submitted in writing by Rudolf Steiner) Question: When it comes to the content of the breviary, should we also consider similar methods to those used in the Catholic breviary? Days of the Saints? Examination of Conscience?

Rudolf Steiner: I have tried to develop for you, as it were, the principle of the breviary as it arises directly out of the present time, and I cannot see that a religious renewal could be possible if a renewal of breviary prayer does not take place in this direction. The hours can be taken in such a way that we have the opportunity to delve into the content of the breviary meditation three times a day, in the morning, at noon and in the evening.

Question: What is the connection between the calendar of the soul and the weekly sayings of the breviary?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the weekly sayings refer to the moods that are in the calendar of the soul. Isn't that right? The one who seeks these things out of the spirit, out of real supersensible experience, always has the very concrete situation before him; and in trying to research for your breviary, I had your minds before my soul. When I once formulated the twelve seasonal verses and the weekly verses, I had before me the very different moods of an anthroposophical context, within which no one could yet know that knowledge would arise somewhere, that a religious renewal was necessary. But you will feel that if you compare what we have in mind here with the moods of the annual week proverbs, the two will complement each other perfectly, and each will support and illuminate the other.

I will have to talk about the question of the consecration of holy water and the ordination of priests tomorrow when we come to the topic of community building. All of this is part of it. I will also talk about the place of the sermon in the service tomorrow.

Question: Should the traditional names or new names be used for the prayers and rituals? Wouldn't the latter be better?

Rudolf Steiner: I cannot understand what is meant by the question. So far I have spoken about the baptismal ritual and I do not know why this should not be mentioned by that name.

Questioner: With this question, I am mainly concerned about the names that could arouse suspicion on the part of the outside world, as if Catholicism were to be represented here, for example, the name for the new ritual, “Mass,” or here, “Breviary.” For us, these names are perfectly understandable, but I mean to the outside world.

Rudolf Steiner: I must confess that I am now using words that can make the matter understandable to you, and that will probably have been achieved. But everything that now has to do with putting it into the world should be done by you. Of course, this or that can be guessed here or there, but it is not really the anthroposophical task to intervene in the reality of community and church building.

Question: What is the significance of celibacy in the past and in the present?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I have spoken about celibacy in relation to the Catholic Church. It serves the aims of the Catholic Church in a very consistent way, as we have seen in the context of the lectures. But now the question is that today, people must rather more strongly ask the question, that is, answer the question: How does the pastor achieve the mood that can sustain pastoral care, even though he is not subject to celibacy rules or at least cannot be required to observe them? In the time in which we live, the important thing is not to alienate ourselves from the world with religion, but to penetrate the world with religion; that is the important thing.

Question: How are the triangle and the square related to baptism?

Rudolf Steiner: The triangle and the square are only the preliminary stages of the cross. The cross is the one that underlies the whole of human development. Although the cross on Golgotha is thoroughly historical – the external reality, as it is often disputed, cannot be disputed in this way – on the other hand, in the sign of the cross we have the sign for the physical and etheric human being. But before we come to the sign of the cross, we have that which lives in the human being as an astral being. Isn't it true that what lives in the sign of the cross, the physical and etheric human being, is completely unconscious? What lives in the astral body is semi-conscious; it is best expressed in the square. It is truly expressed in the square, and what lives in the I is in the triangle. So we see: I – triangle, astral body – square, the whole human being as he lives as I and astral body in the physical and ether bodies – the cross. This is entirely connected with the feeling one has towards I and astral body and towards physical and ether body. (See Chart 18 above)

Question: What is the basis for the symbols of the lamb and the dove?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that would lead extremely far if it were to be fully developed. It is absolutely the case that there is also a spiritual natural history, if I may use the paradoxical expression. Those who look at the world of birds with a spiritual eye see in the world of birds something in which, albeit in its Ahrimanic ramification, the spirit has worked more than, for example, in the human form. The being is not formed from the inside out, but from the outside in. We have here a formation out of the cosmos in the formation of the feathers, in the whole formation of the bird, which should not simply be represented as it is represented by our sensory natural science today, but should be represented in such a way that its bone structure corresponds to a reproduction of the human head, so that the bird is actually a head with the mouth, because the bird's head is merely a complicated mouth. One must learn to understand this whole design, and when one learns to understand it, then one already gets the necessity, not just the possibility, to see that which one wants to express as the healing spirit in the dove, and to see that which the sacrifice offers in the shape of the lamb. In the time when such symbols were conceived, the lamb or the ram was usually depicted as a recumbent lamb, looking backwards with its head. This form is even something essential; it means that one does not turn one's gaze towards the world, but turns one's gaze away from the world, so to speak, one tries to look into oneself.

Question: What is the Christ experience in the Gospels besides the Father experience? And to what extent does the Christ experience or the Christ mystery in the Mass seem to be only a Christ experience compared to, for example, Paul's Christ experience?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the thing is that in the newer human being, the Christ experience and the Father experience cannot be distinguished from one another, because the newer human being perceives in nature only what grows and sprouts, and thus in nature actually perceives only that which does not carry death within itself, because the human being does not perceive the fruitfulness of death. The Christ experience only comes into confrontation with the Father experience when we can feel, for instance, that we – adding the experience of the Holy Spirit – make the negations [of the Christ experience and the Father experience] clear to ourselves in the following way. The Father-experience simply arises as the summary of the whole human nature out of the consciousness of the healthy human being. The healthy human being is organized in such a way that just as he must see and hear, so he must have the Father-experience. That is why I always said to my listeners when discussing these things: Not to have the Father-experience is an illness. Not to have the Christ-experience is a fate, because it cannot be acquired through what is merely in the blood, but because, as it were, through self-education, the encounter with the Christ in the outer world and within the human being must be experienced. That is an essential difference. And because today we cannot have the Father-experience as we did in pre-Christian times, arising from a healthy organism – I have discussed this – we have to have an inadequate Father-experience today. With our organism, which has now become such that it can no longer grasp the spiritual, we have to have the Father-experience as a memory. The Christ-experience must be a present experience. We must be able to make this clear distinction. If we wrestle with the question, where is the Father? —, then we are too weak with our present organism to find him. And if we then go to the Christ because we cannot find the Father and seek the Christ through the inner in the outer, then we experience the Christ-experience as a destiny, while one can experience the Father-experience as health. And when we wrestle with the questions: Does the Christ also give us what the Father has given? Is the Christ in what He gives us only similar to the Father or is He equal to Him? — when these questions of Arianism, of Athanasianism, take on a living form again, as we still see, for example, in Eastern philosophers such as Solowjow, then the differentiation between the experience of the Father and the experience of Christ and also the experience of the Holy Spirit in man comes to life again quite clearly, because not to recognize the Spirit is folly. Not recognizing the Father is illness, not recognizing the Christ is fate, not recognizing the Spirit is folly. And we must fight our illness in order to come to the Father, we must bring about our fate in order to come to the Christ, we must fight our 'folly' in order to come to the Spirit. This, of course, only hints at the beginning; what is at issue here is the extraordinarily differentiated experience of the Father and of the Christ. I cannot find that these two experiences are differentiated in the modern Protestant feeling; there is even something strongly Theistic or Deistic about it. One could say that one person feels more what can be achieved in the mind, he feels more Christ, but it is just only an undifferentiated feeling, and the other feels more the Father, but here too it is undifferentiated again; no Christianity comes out of this experience.

Question: What is the position of anthroposophy regarding the supersensible of the universe outside our solar system, including Uranus and Neptune? Are there beings outside the earth that are similar to humanity, and is there also a Christ impulse for them? Do they also need to be redeemed?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, why should we concern ourselves with this question? We get to know the world as a sensual world, and we arrive at the supersensible insofar as our own being is placed in this supersensible. Such questions do not actually arise in this abstraction for the spiritual researcher, because he stands in concrete life. I am often asked what the ultimate goal of the world is, because: If I do not know the ultimate goal, some people say, then I will not set myself in motion with regard to the course of the world and its development. — I always had to answer: If I want to go to Rome and someone only knows the timetable to Bern, there is bound to be someone who knows the route to Ticino and there will be someone else who knows the route to Milan and so on. So I can rest assured with my timetable to Bern. Likewise, I can be reassured if I know the present and what the near future holds, because I will first have to perfect myself in order to recognize the path to the next stage at the next stage. So it is really a matter of seeking living knowledge, knowledge that one can experience, and not of pushing intellectualism to its very limits. In doing so, we lose ourselves completely in the formless.

Question: How can we explain cruelty in the animal kingdom?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could answer such questions, but one is misunderstood if one answers them in short sentences. One has to go into everything that is a real force in nature. One has to start at a seemingly completely different end to arrive at an explanation of these things. Start where you are confronted with the spawning of fish, with the release of milt into the sea, and how countless of them perish and only a few become fish. But this is only an outward appearance, because it is actually not known what happens to the undeveloped fish spawn from the aspect of a world that lies immediately behind our sensory world, which is also there. It also undergoes its development. That which is deprived of development in the sense undergoes development in the spiritual. It is destroyed in appearance, but it is preserved in its inner becoming. And in the situation of this fish spawn, which becomes a fish, are also all those wheat grains in the field that are used for sowing again, that is, that turn into wheat again. But all the grains you consume with the bread are capable of becoming fish spawn, because they do not reach the goal that is set for them in the sense world. Just ask what would become of the world if all those beings who do not achieve their goal in the sense world were to withdraw from their other goal, which is not similar to the goal that can be seen in the sense world. The world is indeed very complicated. It is certainly deeply true that the lamb and the one who feels with the lamb must find it cruel when the lamb is eaten by the wolf, but it would be terribly cruel for the wolf if there were no lambs. It is just that what the wolf feels is important for a completely different world than the one in which we live with our senses. One must already have a sense of the world's unfathomability and of the possibility that the world presents itself quite differently from other sides than from the side from which we look at it here. Therefore, our combinative mind, which is actually only intended for the sensory world, fails when faced with some questions, and if we want to use it to explain cruelty in the animal kingdom or other things in the way we are accustomed to explaining [with the combinative mind], we cannot understand these things.

Well, that's what I can answer today. I'll maybe prepare the next two questions, including the one about holy water, for tomorrow.