107. Christmas Day 1918

Jesus seen as earthly king.

My kingdom is not of this world. — Jerusalem = temple = destruction of the temple =

The human being is born in the sign of equality; it veils itself in the world order present in the sensual world; freedom develops within, in death the human being is free in the external; during life, fraternity should prevail, which has its culmination point in the middle of life.

Thus, in the course of life, man goes from the spirit through the body to the soul – for the spiritual in the earthly belongs to the earth: the talents are Luciferic; the body is of the earth: the habits are Ahrimanic –: the “human being” is to rise above both.

Greek attempts at justification, etc. Roman body.

Jesus' birth – this thought leads to it.

The characteristic peculiarities and deeds of the peoples are the after-image of past spiritual processes — what appears as the mission of a people is only the living out of the spiritual past; and in this there is nothing that has any other significance for people of the present than that in it the germs of the individual human beings develop for their abilities in the future.

Everything that lives in such historical events is Ahrimanic: war, material progress. Sleeping man is led out of the luciferic sphere, so that Jahve can work on the luciferic during sleep.

The working person is led out of the Ahrimanic, so that the “Holy Spirit” may work in him. Insofar as a person lives spiritually with other people.

Christmas: a festival of childhood - reminding us of spiritual equality.

Christ has nothing to do with processes of destruction; these are processes on the physical plane - man participates in them through selfishness, untruth and illness (death); the contemplation of Christ is a contemplation of supersensible truth - it invigorates (makes one newly born) the power of imagination; it destroys appearances by impressing upon it the revealing essence; it dispels selfishness by presenting a matter of concern to all mankind; in Christ men might understand each other if they would take him supersensibly — if they would regard him as the sun, which has different reflections in the nations, but can be regarded in itself as it moves. The differences should be recognized; but “man is not of this earth,” the nations are. Through ordinary judgment and conclusion, man reaches only to the “spirits of personality”; but they already escape this ordinary conclusion — and man would be condemned to worship a mere folk spirit as “God” if he did not ascend to imaginative knowledge. Man is seen to be slipping away from himself – how he becomes incomprehensible –: –

In social life: one treats labor as a commodity; one should recognize the unchristian aspect of this – one turns a part of the human being into a machine –; how did slaves come about? Through conquest. Christ overcame that. He equalized the difference before men through equality before God. What one has made should be judged according to the value of consumption.

The concept of value cannot be applied to nations in the same way as to people.