The Life of Man on Earth and the Essence of Christianity

GA 349 — 7 May 1923, Dornach

XII. Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer

Good morning, gentlemen! Did you come up with anything that needs to be discussed today?

Question: Perhaps Dr. Steiner would say something about the essence of Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer in relation to man.

Dr. Steiner: To do that, we have to approach the nature of the human being from a completely different angle, otherwise it will naturally seem to you to be a kind of superstition. Based on what we have already discussed, I would like to say the following to you.

You see, gentlemen, today we have the notion that human beings are thoroughly homogeneous creatures. He is not; but man is actually constantly in a state in which he revives and dies again. One does not merely live at birth and does not merely die with death, but - as I have often explained to you - one dies continually and revives again.

Now, if we look at our head, for example, the head is actually entirely composed of what is called nervous substance. You know, nerves usually run through the organism only as threads, but the head is entirely made of nerves on the inside. If you draw it, it actually looks like this (drawing $. 220): the head, the forehead; the head is entirely made of nerves on the inside, a strong nerve mass; then some of this nerve mass goes through the spinal cord. But then the nerve threads go through the whole body. So what only goes through the whole body in threads is present in the head as a unified mass. That is the nerve mass.

If you now look at the inside of the human abdomen, for example, you will also see a great many nerves inside. There is the so-called solar plexus. There are a lot of nerves in there. But in the arms and hands and in the legs and feet, the nerves just run out in a thread-like manner.

If you now look again for something else, for the blood vessels, then you will find: in the head, the blood vessels are quite fine. In contrast, the blood vessels are particularly strong in the heart area; and then there are thick blood vessels in the limbs. So you can say: on the one hand we have the nervous system, on the other hand we have the blood system.

Now the thing is that we are born again and again from the blood, every day, every hour. Blood always signifies renewal. If we only had blood in us, we would be like beings that are constantly growing, getting bigger, fresh and so on. But, you see, gentlemen, if we were only nerves, if we were only made of nerves, we would be constantly exhausted, tired, we would actually be constantly dying. So we have two opposing principles in us, the nervous system, which makes us continually grow old, continually at the mercy of death, and the blood system, which is connected to the nutritional system, which makes us continually grow young and so forth.

The matter that I have explained to you now can also be further expanded. You know, in old age, some people become so that one has to say that they are calcified. Calcification occurs, sclerosis. It is very easy for people to no longer be able to move properly when their veins, as one says, calcify, that is, when the walls of their blood vessels calcify. And when the calcification is particularly severe, then the person is struck by a stroke, as they say. They get a stroke. The stroke that a person gets is only because their blood vessels have calcified and can no longer hold.

What actually happens to a person when their blood vessels calcify, when they become sclerotic? You see, it is as if the walls of their blood vessels want to become nerves. That is the strange thing. Nerves must constantly die off. Throughout our entire lives, nerves must be in the same state that blood vessels must not be in. Blood vessels must be fresh. The nerves must constantly tend to die off. If, on the other hand, a person develops nerves that are too soft, that are not sufficiently, if I may put it this way, calcified, that are too soft, then he goes crazy. So you see, the nerves must not be like the blood vessels and the blood vessels not like the nerves.

This is precisely what forces us to say that man has two principles within him. One is the nervous principle. This causes him to actually grow old all the time. From morning till evening, we actually get a little older each day. During the night, the blood renews itself. It goes like the pendulum of a clock: getting old, getting young, getting old, getting young. Of course, if we are awake from morning till night, we just get older, and if we sleep from night till morning, we get younger again; but a little something always remains. So the night makes up for it; but a little remains from each day of aging. And when that adds up to a sufficiently large sum in a person, then he really does die. That is the story. We therefore have two things in man that work against each other, growing old and growing young.

Now we can also look at it from a psychological point of view. I have explained it to you physically now. You see, when growing young takes hold too strongly in a person, then he gets pleurisy or pneumonia. It is namely the case that the things that are quite good, that are excellent when they remain within their limits, then, when they get out of hand, become illness. In a human being, illness is nothing more than an excess of something that he always needs. Fever comes from the fact that the process of growing young becomes much too strong in us. We can no longer tolerate it. We start to become too fresh with our whole body. Then we have a fever or pleurisy, which is a inflammation of the pleura, or pneumonia.

Now, the whole thing can also be looked at from a spiritual point of view. You see, a person can also dry up spiritually, or he can become as he otherwise becomes physically in a fever. There are certain qualities in a person - one does not like to hear them because so many people have them, especially today - and these are: one becomes pedantic, one becomes a Philistine. You know that there are Philistines today, after all. Philistines already exist. You become a philistine, you become a pedant. You become, while you should actually be a schoolmaster as a fresh guy, just dried up as a schoolmaster. Yes, that is again the same as when our blood vessels calcify, dry up. We can also dry up mentally. And then again we can also soften mentally. That is when you become a dreamer, a mystic or a theosophist. Yes, what do you want there? You don't want to think properly there. You want to reach out with your imagination into all the worlds without thinking properly. It's the same as when you get a physical fever. Becoming a mystic, becoming a theosophist, means becoming mentally feverish.

But we must always have both conditions within us. We cannot recognize anything if we cannot use our imagination, and we cannot work together in any way if we are not a little pedantic, if we do not register all sorts of things and so on. If you do it too much, you are a pedant, a philistine. If you do it just in the right measure, you are a real soul.

That is it, that one always has something that must be in the right measure in man, but which, if it gets out of hand, makes one physically or mentally ill.

The spiritual is the same, gentlemen. We cannot always sleep, we also have to wake up sometimes. Imagine what a jolt it is when you wake up! Just imagine what it is like when you are asleep: you lie there, you know nothing of your surroundings. If you have a good sleep, someone can even tickle you and you won't even wake up. Think what a difference that makes! Afterwards you wake up, you see everything around you, you hear everything around you. That is a big difference. Now when you wake up – yes, we must have this power to wake up in us; but if it is too strong, if one always wakes up, if one cannot sleep at all, for example, then the power to wake up is just too strong in us.

On the other hand, there are people who cannot wake up properly at all. There are people who doze and dream their whole lives, who might as well be asleep all the time. Yes, these people cannot wake up. We need to have the ability to fall asleep properly; but we must not have this ability to fall asleep properly too strongly. Otherwise we will sleep forever and never wake up again.

So we can say: we can distinguish certain conditions in people in three ways. Firstly, physically. On the one hand, we have the nervous system. This is constantly subject to hardening, to calcification. So we say:

You see, you are all already so old, with the exception of the only one sitting among you, that you must have calcified your nervous system a little. Because if you still had your nervous system today as you had it when you were six months old, you would all be crazy. You can no longer have such a soft nervous system. Those people who are crazy have a childlike nervous system. So we have to have the power of hardening, of calcification within us. And on the other hand, we have to have the power of softening, of rejuvenation. These two forces must maintain a balance.

If we look at the matter psychically, we can say that hardening corresponds to mental pedantry, philistinism, materialism, dry intellect.

We have to be able to see beyond all this. We have to be a little bit of a Philistine, otherwise we would be a Springing-ear. We have to be a little bit of a pedant, otherwise we would not even pick up our things properly. Instead of hanging our coat in the right closet, we would hang it in the stove or in the chimney. So being a little bit of a Philistine and a little bit of a pedant is all well and good, but it must not be too strong. Then we also have the strength in our souls for fantasy, for enthusiasm, for mysticism, for theosophy. If all these powers become too strong, then we become a fantasist, an enthusiast. We must not become that. But we must not lose all imagination either.

I once knew a person who hated all imagination, and he never went to the theater, for example, certainly not to the opera, because he said, “It's all not true.” He just had no imagination at all. Yes, but if you have no imagination at all, then you become a very dry subject, then you slink through life, not a real, true human being. So that must not degenerate again.

If we now look at it spiritually, we have the strength to harden when we wake up. When we wake up, we take our body firmly in hand and use our limbs. And the strength that is otherwise in the body in softening, in rejuvenation, we have in falling asleep. Then we sink into dreams. There we no longer have our body in hand.

You could say that people are actually constantly exposed to the danger of falling into one or the other, either into excessive softening or excessive hardening.

If you have a magnet, you know that the magnet attracts the iron. We say that we have two types of magnetism in the magnet. We also have positive magnetism and negative magnetism. One attracts the magnetic needle, the other repels it. They are opposite.

Not so in the physical, in the bodily, where we are not at all embarrassed about giving things names. We need names. I have now described something to you, physically, mentally and spiritually, that each of you can always perceive, always see, and be clear about. But we need names. When we have positive magnetism, we have to be clear that this is not the iron; this is inside the iron. Something invisible is inside the iron.

Anyone who does not admit that there is something invisible in the iron will say: “You are a foolish fellow! There should be magnetism in the iron inside? This is a horseshoe. I use it to shoe my horse. — Not true, such a person is an idiot who does not admit that there is something invisible in the iron inside, who shoes his horse with it. You can use this horseshoe for something completely different than for shoeing, if there is magnetism inside.

Now, in the same way, you see, there is something invisible, supersensory, in the hardening. And this invisible, supersensory, entity, which can be observed if one has the gift for it, is called ahrimanic. Ahrimanic are therefore the forces that would continually turn a person into a kind of corpse. If only ahrimanic forces were present, we would continually become corpses, and we would become pedants, completely petrified people. We would wake up all the time, we would not be able to sleep.

The forces that now soften us, rejuvenate us, bring us to fantasy, are the luciferic forces, these are the forces we need to avoid becoming a living corpse. But if only the luciferic forces were there, yes, we would remain children all our lives. So in the world we need the luciferic forces so that we are not already old at the age of three. In the world we need the ahrimanic forces so that we do not remain children all the time. These two opposing forces must be in man.

Now it is a matter of these two opposing forces having to be balanced. Where, then, does the balance lie? Neither of these forces should prevail.

You see, we are now writing, aren't we, 1923. The whole period from the turn of time until 1923 is actually such that humanity is in danger of falling prey to the forces of Ahriman. You only have to consider that today, wherever there is no spiritual science, people are educated in an Ahrimanic way. Just think, our children start school and have to learn things that seem very strange to them – I have already hinted at them – that they cannot possibly be interested in. I told you that they have always seen the father; yes, he looks like this, has hair, ears, eyes, and then they are supposed to learn that this (written): Father, is the father. It is completely foreign to them. They have no interest in it. And so it is with everything that children are supposed to learn in elementary school. They have no interest in it.

And this is the reason why we need to establish sensible schools where children can learn things that interest them. If teaching were to continue as it is today, then people would grow old very early, become old, because it is Ahrimanic. It makes people old. The way children are educated in school today is all Ahrimanic. It has been like this for nineteen hundred years, that the whole development of humanity is Ahrimanic. Before that it was different.

If you now go back, say, from the year 8000 to the turn of the century, it was different, people were exposed to the danger of not being able to grow old. There were no schools in the modern sense in those ancient times. There were only schools for those people who had already reached a respectable age and who were then to become real scholars. There were schools for them. In the old days there were no schools for children. They just learned by living. They learned from what they saw. So there were no schools, nor did anyone endeavor to teach children anything that was foreign to them. There was a danger that people would become completely Luciferian, that they would become fanatical, that is, Luciferian. And it was so. In those ancient times, there was much wisdom available, I have already told you that. But of course, this Luciferic had to be restrained, otherwise they would have wanted to tell ghost stories all day long! That was what people particularly loved.

So that one can say: from very ancient times, from about 8000 BC to the turn of time, was a Luciferic age, and then came an Ahrimanic age.

Let us now take a look at the Luciferian Age. You see, those who were scholars in those ancient times had certain concerns. Those who were scholars at that time lived in tower-shaped buildings. The Babylonian Tower, which is told to you in the Bible, is just one of these buildings. These scholars lived there. These scholars said: Well, we have it good here. We also want our imagination to run away with us. We always want to go into the ghostly, always into the Luciferian. But we have our instruments. We look out at the stars and see how the stars move. That reins in our imagination. Because if I look at a star and want it to go like that, it just doesn't go like that. So our own imagination is reined in.

So the scholars knew that they could let their imagination be tamed by the phenomena of the world. Or they had physical instruments. They knew: If I imagine that I have a very small piece of wood, heat it up a little, there will be a huge fire – I can say that in my imagination, but if I really do it, the small piece of wood will become a small fire.

So that was actually the purpose of these old educational institutions, to rein in the rampant imagination of these people. And the concern that these people had was that they said, “Yes, there are all the others now, but not all of them can become scholars!” And so they came up with the teachings, which were sometimes honest and sometimes dishonest. These are the old religious teachings, which are based entirely on science. Of course, the priests also went astray. And so the dishonest teachings - the honest ones have been partially, mostly lost - have come down to posterity. That was the restraint of the Luciferic.

And you know what the Ahrimanic element is. Today's science is moving more and more towards the Ahrimanic. In fact, all our science is something that makes us dry up today. Because this science, it only knows the physical, that is, the calcified, the material. And that is what is Ahrimanic in our whole civilization.

Between the two stands that which in the real sense we call the Christian. You see, gentlemen, the real Christian is too little known in the world. If one calls that Christian which is known in the world, then one would naturally have to fight the Christian, that is self-evident.

But the being of whom I also spoke to you last time, who was born at the turn of an era and lived for thirty-three years, this personality was not as people describe him, but he actually had the intention of giving such teachings to all people that would make possible a balance, an equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. And being Christian means seeking this balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. You cannot really be a Christian in the way that people often call it today.

What does it mean, for example, to be Christian in the physical sense? To be Christian in the physical sense means that I acquire knowledge about the human being. The human being can also become ill. The human being gets pleurisy. What does it mean when he gets pleurisy? It means that there is too much of the Luciferic in him. If I know that there is too much of the Luciferic in him – if he gets pleurisy, then there is too much of the Luciferic in him – then I must say: if I have a balance (drawing $. 230) and it rises too sharply here, then I must take away the weights. If it sinks too low, I have to add weights. Now I say to myself: if a person has pleurisy, the Luciferic is too strong and the Ahrimanic too weak. I have to add something Ahrimanic, then it balances out again.

Let us assume, then, that I am saying to myself quite correctly: this person has pleurisy; how can I help him? I take, say, a piece of birch wood. Birch wood grows strongly in spring. Birch wood in particular is very good, especially when it is towards the bark; there are very good growth forces in the bark. I kill them, that is, I char the birch wood. Then I have birch charcoal. What have I made out of the fresh, ever-rejuvenating birch wood? I have made birch charcoal out of it; I have made Ahrimanic out of it. And now I make a powder out of this birch charcoal and give it to the person who has too much of the Luciferic in his pleurisy. Then I have added the Ahrimanic to what he has too much of the Luciferic.

You see, I have then created the balance. Just as I have to add something to the scales when they swing up too high on one side, so too have I added birch charcoal when there is too much of the Luciferic in the pleurisy. I have mineralized the birch wood by charring it. It has been made Ahrimanic.

Or suppose a person takes on such a tired, paralyzed appearance that I can say to myself: this person will be struck down soon. There is too much Ahrimanic in him. Now I have to give him something Luciferic to balance it out. What do I do in such a case?

You see, when I have a plant: there is the root. You know, the root is hard. It contains a lot of salts. That is not luciferic. The trunk and the leaves are not luciferic either. But I go further up, and there I have a smelling, a strong-smelling flower. It wants to get away, just as fantasy wants to get away, otherwise I would not be able to smell it at all. Now I take the juice from the flower. That is luciferic. Then I administer it in the right way, thus balancing out the ahrimanic, and I can heal him.

What does today's medicine do? Today's medicine, yes, it tries things out. A chemist comes up with the discovery of phenacetin. I don't need to explain to you what that is; it is a complicated substance. Now one takes that into a hospital. There are thirty patients for my sake. You give all thirty patients phenacetin, take the clinical thermometer, measure, note, and if something comes out, you consider it a cure.

But we have no conception of how things actually work in the human body. We cannot look inside the human body. Only when we know: in pleurisy there is too much of the Luciferic, so we must add the Ahrimanic; in apoplexy there is too much of the Ahrimanic, so we must add the Luciferic — then we have the right thing. That is what humanity lacks today. In this sense humanity is insufficiently Christian, because the Christian element is the element of balance. You see, I will show you what the Christian element consists of in the sphere of physical healing. The Christian element consists of seeking balance.

You see, that is what I wanted to show in this wooden figure, which is supposed to be under construction. At the top is Lucifer, the Luciferic, that is everything in man that is feverish, imaginative, asleep; and below is everything that wants to harden, the Ahrimanic. And in between is the Christ.

That is what brings one to what one should do in medicine, in natural science, in sociology, what one should do everywhere. And today it is just part of being human to understand how Luciferic and Ahrimanic is in human nature.

But what do people understand of these things? Once upon a time a very famous pastor in Basel, and even beyond, by the name of Frohnmeyer, a very famous pastor, presented a paper. He did not take the trouble to look at this figure, but he read in another paper, which perhaps had not been looked at either, but copied out, that there is a figure here, Luciferic at the top, Christ in the middle, and Ahrimanic at the bottom. There are three figures, one above the other, and, aren't there even more, Ahriman twice, Lucifer twice as well. But now this Frohnmeyer knew so well that he wrote: Steiner is doing something quite terrible out there in Dornach, a Christ figure that has Luciferian features at the top and animal characteristics at the bottom.

Now, the Christ-Figure has no Luciferic features at all, but a quite human head. But he has confused the two. He has believed, a Christ-Figure, which has Luciferic features above and animalistic ones below. — Now the Christ below is not finished at all, but is still a wooden block!

This is how this Christian pastor, who was striving for truth, described the matter, and now the whole world says that it must be true, because it is a pastor who wrote it! It is difficult to counter this when people do not want to understand. They always turn to the pastors because they believe what the pastors say. But here you have an example of slander that is so pathetic that you can't imagine anything worse than that.

And these people have strange views. Pastor Frohnmeyer wrote this. At the time he wrote this, Dr. Boos was still here at the Goetheanum. You know, Dr. Boos has a tendency to lash out. You may have your own opinion about whether you should lash out with a club or with a whisk. The whisk is softer, more luciferic, the mace is hard, more ahrimanic. So it depends on what you are supposed to hit. But now that he has told Frohnmeyer the truth, told the truth with the mace. Who gets a letter from Frohnmeyer? Me! I get a long letter from Dr. Frohnmeyer telling me to get Dr. Boos not to be so naughty to Dr. Frohnmeyer.

Just imagine what these people are capable of. It's unbelievable what they are capable of. They slander someone, as I told you, and then they turn to someone and say that action should be taken against the person who corrects the untruth!

That is precisely the difficulty, that the public, namely the bourgeois public, does not somehow make it convenient to see for themselves in these matters, but it is just accepted; because they are officially set up by the people concerned, it is right. That is why our civilization is so tremendously frivolous, so mean in many ways.

The point is that today's entire way of thinking must be brought into such a channel that one realizes again: with all this talk of Christianity, it is nothing, but one must take it factually. One must therefore know that medicine can become Christian if one knows, for example, the following. Let us say that someone shows very clearly that if a person has regularly eaten sugar, perhaps even as a child, they will develop liver cancer – this is the liver becoming Ahrimanic – and now one must know what to use against it: the corresponding Luciferic. Just as a person differentiates between warmth and cold, one must differentiate between becoming Luciferic and becoming Ahrimanic. If your limbs are numb, then you have become Ahrimanic. If you now apply warm compresses, warm cloths, then that is the Luciferic that counteracts it. And so, in all areas and under all circumstances, one must know what the human being is like. Then the medicine will become Christian.

In the same way, education and the school system must become Christian. This means that children must be educated in such a way that they do not become decrepit from an early age. So they must be introduced at school to things that are close to them, that they are interested in, and so on.

You see, if we look at it this way, then there is nothing superstitious about the use of the terms ahrimanic, luciferic, Christian. Rather than being something superstitious, it is something completely scientific. And that is what it is.

So how did this develop historically? Yes, it is true that from the earliest Christian times until the 12th, 13th century, even into the 14th century, Christians were forbidden to read the Bible. It was forbidden to read the New Testament. Only the priests were allowed to read it. The general believers were not allowed to read the Bible. Why? Yes, because the clergy knew that the Bible had to be read correctly. The Bible was written at a time when people did not think as they do today, but rather in images. So you have to read the Bible correctly. If people were to read the Bible without being properly prepared, they would notice that the Bible has four testaments: the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the Gospel of John. Now, they contradict each other. Why do they contradict each other? Yes, gentlemen, you just have to understand it correctly. Even in the 4th or 5th century, a person who was not half-witted could see that they contradict each other.

But imagine that I have photographed Mr. Burle from the front and show you all the picture. Now, from the picture, you know Mr. Burle. Now someone comes along and takes a picture of him from the side, so that you see the profile, right? I show you this, and you would all say: “That's not Mr. Burle, he looks quite different; you have to look at him from the front, that's how he looks. But what you show me from the side, that's not Mr. Burle!” Yes, that is also Mr. Burle, but only from two different sides! And if I were to photograph him from behind, you would say, “But he also has a nose, not just hair!” But that is from different sides!

If you now “photograph” spiritual events from different sides, they will also look different. You just have to know that the Gospels describe from four different sides. Therefore, they must contradict each other, just as a picture of Mr. Burle from the front, from the side, from behind differs from each other.

But now the times have come when people have said: It is inconceivable that people should first have to prepare themselves in order to read the Gospels. Nowadays we prepare ourselves for nothing at all. We allow ourselves to be prepared at school, we allow ourselves to be trained; but once we have progressed beyond this training, after fourteen or fifteen years, there is nothing more to prepare, we must understand everything. Well, that is the normal view today.

Why should that not lead to people seeing that the Goetheanum is a place where not children are involved in preparation, but old, balding guys who still want to be prepared? Yes, a school that is not attended by children but only by old people must be a madhouse! — You see, that is what they say because they cannot imagine that people still want to learn something. And that is what we must realize: in order to read something like the Gospels, one must first be properly prepared for it, because it is meant to be pictorial. Just as if someone today wanted to read a Chinese document, he would first have to learn the letters. If you wanted to take the Gospels as they are written, it would of course be nonsense, just as Chinese writing is a scribble if you do not look at it properly. But if you understand things correctly, you realize that everything in Christianity is about learning to balance the Ahrimanic with the Luciferic in the right way, so that one does not dominate the other.

And that is why anthroposophy does not hesitate to speak of Christianity in this sense. It emphasizes that Christianity is not just about constantly mentioning the name of Christ and so on. That is what people criticize about anthroposophy: that it speaks so little of Christ. Well, I always say: Yes, you see, anthroposophy does not talk much about Christ because it knows the Ten Commandments. And you talk so much about Christ because you don't even know the commandment: You shall not speak the name of the Lord your God in vain.

If a Christian pastor preaches today, the name of Christ is uttered continually. One should only speak it when one really understands what it means! That is it, isn't it, that distinguishes anthroposophy from it, which really wants to be Christian in the right sense, but without superstition, without being sanctimonious, just really scientific, in this sense really only wants to be scientific. And in this way it also regards what took place between the old time, which was Luciferic, and the new time, which is Ahrimanic, it regards this event in Palestine as the decisive one for world history.

And when people will once again understand what actually happened on Earth, then I would venture to say that they will truly come to themselves. People are now beside themselves with their entirely external science. We will continue to talk about this next Wednesday at nine o'clock. That is what I wanted to say in response to the question. I believe that one can understand the whole thing.