World Mysteries and Theosophy
GA 54 — 14 December 1905, Berlin
Christmas as a Symbol of the Sun's Victory
Let us try to think about how many people today still know how to evoke a clear, somewhat deeper mental image in their souls when they walk through the streets and see the preparations for Christmas everywhere. How few clear mental images there are about this festival today, and how little they correspond to the intentions of those—we may speak thus as theosophists—who once established these great festivals as symbols of the infinite and imperishable in the world, can be sufficiently ascertained by glancing at the so-called Christmas reflections in our newspapers. There can hardly be anything more bleak and at the same time more alien to what it is all about than what is being sent out into the world through the printed paper at this time of year.
Let us today allow a kind of summary of what these various autumn lectures have brought us about the horizon of spiritual science to pass before our souls. This is not meant to be a pedantic, schoolmasterly summary, but rather a summary of the kind that can arise in our hearts when we approach Christmas from a spiritual science point of view, as it can present itself to us when we view the spiritual science view of life not as a gray theory, not as an outward confession, not as a philosophy, but as life itself pulsating directly through us. People today are alienated from immediate nature, much more alienated than they think, much more alienated than even in Goethe's time. Or who still feels the full depth of those words spoken by Goethe when he entered the circles of Weimar and at the same time began a period of life that was extremely important for him? At that time, he addressed nature with its mysterious powers in a hymn, a kind of Goethe prayer:
“Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her—unable to step out of her, and unable to penetrate deeper into her. Uninvited and unannounced, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries us along until we are weary and fall from her arms.”
She eternally creates new forms; what is there has never been before, what was will never return — everything is new and yet always the same.
We live in the midst of her and are strangers to her. She speaks to us incessantly and does not reveal her secret to us. We constantly influence her and yet have no power over her.
It seems to have designed everything for individuality and cares nothing for individuals. It is always building and always destroying, and its workshop is inaccessible.
It lives in a multitude of children, but where is the mother? — It is the only artist: from the simplest material to the greatest contrasts; without any apparent effort, to the greatest perfection—to the most precise certainty, always covered with something soft. Each of her works has its own essence, each of her appearances the most isolated concept, and yet everything forms a whole.
She plays a play: whether she sees it herself, we do not know, and yet she plays it for us, who stand in the corner.
There is eternal life, becoming and movement within her, and yet she does not move forward. She is constantly transforming and there is not a moment of stillness within her. She has no concept of staying put, and she has attached her curse to standing still. She is steadfast. Her steps are measured, her exceptions rare, her laws unchangeable ..."
We are all its children. And when we believe we are acting least according to its laws, we are perhaps acting most according to this great law that floods through nature and flows into us. And who still feels so deeply today the other significant words of Goethe, with which Goethe no less attempted to express empathy for the hidden forces common to nature and man, where Goethe addresses this nature not as a lifeless entity, as in today's materialistic thinking, but as a living spirit:
Sublime spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
Why I asked. You did not turn your face to me in vain
In the fire.
You gave me the glorious kingdom of nature,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
Cold, astonished visit only,
You grant me to look into its deep bosom
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the ranks of the living
Past me, and teach me to know my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce, falling, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks,
And the hill thunders with the dull hollow sound of its fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Me then to myself, and my own breast
Secret deep wonders open up.
This is the mood through which Goethe, out of his feeling for nature, sought to refresh something that flowed from both feeling and knowledge. This is the mood in times when wisdom itself still lived in harmony with nature, when those symbols of empathy with nature and the universe were created which we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, recognize as the great festivals. Something abstract, almost indifferent, has become such a festival for the soul and for the heart. Today, the word we can argue about, the word we can swear by, often means more to us than what that word was originally intended to mean. This word, this external, literal word, should be the representative, the announcement, the symbol of the great, creative word that lives in nature outside and in the whole universe, and that revives in us when we recognize ourselves correctly, and on those occasions that are particularly suitable for this according to the course of nature, should be brought to the consciousness of all humanity. That was the intention behind the establishment of the great festivals. Let us try to use our knowledge, that is, what we have endeavored to acquire in the course of the Spiritual Science lectures, to understand something of what the ancient sages expressed in the Christmas festival.
This Christmas festival is not merely a Christian festival. It has existed everywhere where religious feeling has been expressed. If you look around in ancient Egypt, thousands and thousands of years before our era, if you go over to Asia, even if you go up to our regions, again long before our era, everywhere you will find this same festival in the days when the birth of Christ is also celebrated by Christianity.
What was this festival that has been celebrated all over the world since ancient times during these days? — Today we want to refer to nothing other than those wonderful fire festivals that were celebrated in the regions of northern and central Europe in ancient times. It was during these days that this festival was celebrated in our regions, in Scandinavia, Scotland, England, within the circles of the ancient Celts by their priests, the so-called Druids. And what was celebrated there?
The end of winter and the gradual return of spring were celebrated. Of course, as we approach Christmas, we are still heading towards winter. But in nature, a victory is already announcing itself, which for humans can be the symbol of a festival of hope, or rather — if we use the word that exists for this festival in almost all languages — the symbol of a festival of confidence, a festival of trust and faith. The victory of the sun over the opposing forces of nature: that is the symbol. We have felt it, the days getting shorter and shorter. And this shortening of the days is for us an expression of a dying, or rather a falling asleep of the forces of nature until the day on which we celebrate Christmas and on which our ancestors celebrated the same festival. On this day, the days themselves begin to grow longer and longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Today, with our materialistic thinking, this seems to us, much more than we realize, to be an event that we no longer think about particularly. To those who had a lively feeling and a wisdom connected with that feeling, it appeared as a living expression of a spiritual experience, of an experience of the deity itself that guides our lives. Just as when an important event takes place in an individual's personal life that decides something, so in those days such a solstice was felt to be something important in the life of a higher being. Even more than that: people did not merely perceive this shortening and lengthening of the days as an expression of such a life event of a higher being, but even more as a reminder of something much greater, something unique. And this brings us to the great fundamental idea of Christmas as a world festival, a festival of humanity of the highest order.
In times when there was a real secret teaching — not as today, where it is denied by the external materialistic worldview, but in the sense that it acted as the lifeblood of all folk life — in those times, at Christmas, people saw something happening in nature that was regarded as a milestone, as a reminder of a great event that once took place on this earth. And the priests, who gathered their most faithful followers, those who were the teachers of the people, around them at midnight on these days, sought to reveal a great secret to their faithful followers and said something like the following to them. I am not telling you anything sophisticated here, nothing found through abstract science, but I am telling you something that lived in the mysteries, in secret places of worship, in the times indicated, when the priests gathered their faithful to give them strength for their teachings through what they told them.
Today, they said, we see the victory of the sun over darkness being announced. It was once like this on this earth. Then the sun celebrated its great victory over darkness. This is how it happened: Until then, all physical, all bodily life on our earth had developed almost only to the level of animality. What lived on our earth as the highest realm was only at the stage of preparing to receive the immortal human soul. Then, in those ancient times, there came a moment, a great moment in human development, when the immortal, imperishable human soul descended from divine heights. By that time, the wave of life had developed to such an extent that the human body had become capable of receiving the imperishable soul. This human ancestor stood higher than the materialistic natural scientists believe. But the spiritual part, the immortal part, was not yet within him. It first descended from another, higher planet to our Earth, which was now to become the scene of its activity, the abode of what is now inseparable from us, our soul.
We call these ancestors of humanity the Lemurian race. They were followed by the Atlantean race and then by our own, which we call the Aryan race. Within this Lemurian race, human bodies were fertilized by the higher human soul. Spiritual Science calls this great moment in human development the “descent of the divine sons of the spirit.” Since that time, this human soul has been forming and working in the human body for its higher development. Contrary to what materialistic natural science imagines — today I can only hint at this, but I have spoken about it in detail in other lectures, and those who are here for the first time and might consider what I am saying to be fantasy should take this into account — it was at this point in time that the human body was fertilized by the imperishable soul. Contrary to the view of materialistic natural scientists, something happened in the great universe at that time that is one of the most important events in the development of humanity.
At that time, the constellation, the mutual position of the Earth, Moon, and Sun, which made the descent of souls possible, gradually came into being. At that time, the sun acquired the significance for human beings that it has for their growth and prosperity on earth, and at the same time the significance that it has for the other creatures that belong to them, for plants and animals. Only those who understand spiritually the whole development of humanity and the earth will correctly understand this connection between the sun, moon, and earth and the human beings living on earth. There was a time, as was taught in those ancient days, when the earth was still one with the sun and moon. They were still one body. The beings were also of a different form and appearance than those living on earth today, for they were then adapted to that world body which consisted jointly of the sun, moon, and earth. Everything that lives on this Earth received its essence through the separation of first the Sun and then the Moon, and through these two heavenly bodies entering into an external relationship with our Earth. And in this relationship lies the secret of the unity of the human spirit with the whole universal spirit, which in Spiritual Science is called the Logos, and which encompasses the sun, the moon, and the earth at the same time. Within it we live, weave, and are.
Just as the Earth was born out of the body that encompassed both the Sun and the Moon, so human beings are born out of a spirit, out of a soul that belongs to the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon at the same time. When human beings look up at the Sun, look up at the Moon, they should not only see these outer physical bodies, but should see in them the outer bodies of spiritual beings. Of course, today's materialism has forgotten this. But those who can no longer see the bodies of spirits in the sun and moon cannot recognize the body of a spirit in the human body either. Just as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, so too are the heavenly bodies the bearers of spiritual beings.
Human beings also belong to these spiritual beings. Just as their bodies are separated from the forces that rule in the sun and moon, and just as their outer physical bodies nevertheless harbor forces that are active in the sun and moon, so too is the same spirituality that rules in the sun and moon active in their souls. And by becoming this being on earth, man has become dependent on the mode of action of the sun, which has entered into it as a special body certifying the earth.
Thus our ancestors felt themselves to be spiritual children of the entire universe, and they said to themselves: Through what the spirit of the sun has brought forth in us, we have become human beings. The victory of the sun over darkness also reminds us of the victory that our soul achieved in those times when the sun first shone as it now shines on Earth. It was a victory of the sun when the immortal soul entered the physical body under the sign of the sun, sinking into the darkness of desires, instincts, and passions.
Let us imagine the life of the spirit. Darkness precedes the victory of the sun. And this darkness followed only an earlier solar era. So it was with the human soul. This human soul emerges from the original divinity. But it had to submerge itself for a time into unconsciousness in order to build up the lower human nature within this unconsciousness; for this human soul itself gradually built up the lower human nature in order to then inhabit this dwelling it had built for itself. If you form the mental image of a builder constructing a dwelling house to the best of his ability and later moving into it, you have a true parable for the entry of the immortal human soul into the human body. But at that time, the human soul could only work on its own dwelling unconsciously. This unconscious work is expressed in the parable by the darkness. And the becoming conscious, the shining forth of the conscious human soul, is expressed in the parable by the victory of the sun.
Thus, for those who still had a vivid sense of the connection between human beings and the universe, this victory of the sun signified the moment when they had received the most important thing for their earthly existence. This great moment was captured in that celebration.
Now, at all times, the passage of human beings through earthly existence was imagined in such a way that these human beings became more and more similar to the regular rhythmic passage of nature itself. If we look up from the human soul to that in which its life is now enclosed, if we look up to the course of the sun in the universe and to everything with which this course of the sun is connected, then something becomes clear to us that is infinitely important to feel and sense: the great rhythm, the great harmony in contrast to the chaotic, the disharmonious in our own human nature. Look up at the sun, follow it on its path, and you will see how rhythmically, how regularly its appearances recur in the course of the year and the course of the day. And you will see how regularly and rhythmically everything is connected under the sun's course in what we call nature.
I have often emphasized that everything is rhythmic in the beings below human beings. Imagine the sun moving out of its orbit for a moment, just a fraction of a second, and form in your mind the mental image of the incredible, indescribable disorder that would be caused in our universe. Only through this great, powerful harmony in the sun's course is our universe possible. The rhythmic life processes of all beings that depend on the sun are connected with this harmony. Imagine the sun in its annual cycle, how it brings forth the beings of nature in spring; imagine how little you are able to conceive of the violet blooming at any other time than the one you are accustomed to. Imagine that seeds could be sown at a different time and that the harvest could take place at a different time than it does. Up to the level of animal life, everything appears to you to be dependent on the rhythmic course of the sun. Even in humans, everything is rhythmic, regular, and harmonious, insofar as it is not subject to human passions, instincts, or even the human mind. Observe your pulse, the course of digestion, and admire the great rhythm and feel the great, infinite wisdom that floods through all of nature, and then compare it with the irregularity, the chaos that reigns in human passions, drives, and desires, and especially in the human mind and thinking. Try to let the regularity of your pulse and your breath pass through your mind, and compare it with the irregularity of thinking, feeling, and willing. It is a will-o'-the-wisp.
Imagine, on the other hand, how wisely the forces of life are arranged, how the rhythmic prevails over the chaotic. What damage human passion and hedonism do to the rhythm of the human body! I have often mentioned here how wonderful it is for those who, through anatomical science, learn about the heart, this wonderfully arranged organ of the human body, and then have to tell themselves what it has to endure as a result of humans influencing the rhythmic, harmonious beating of the heart through the consumption of tea, coffee, and so on. So it is with the whole rhythmic, divine, wise nature that was admired by our ancestors, whose soul is the sun with its regular course.
As the wise men and their followers looked up at the sun, they said to themselves: You are the image of what this soul, born with you, is not yet, but what it is to become. The divine order of the world opened up to these sages in all its glory. This is also expressed in the Christian worldview, which states that glory should be in the divine heights. The word “glory” means revelation, not honor. One should not say: Glory be to God in the highest — but rather: Today is the revelation of God in the heavens. — That is the truth of the statement. And in this statement one can fully feel the glory that floods the world. In earlier times, people felt that this harmony of the worlds was a great ideal for those who were to be leaders for the rest of humanity. That is why, at all times and wherever there was an awareness of these things, people spoke of the “sun hero.”
In the temple sites where the initiation was performed, there were seven degrees of initiation. I will present them to you with their Persian names. The first degree is that in which the human being went beyond everyday feeling, then attained a higher soul feeling and knowledge of the spirit. Such a person was called a “raven.” That is why ravens are the ones who announce to the initiates in the temples what is happening outside in the world. When medieval wisdom poetry wanted to portray an initiate in the person of a medieval ruler who was to wait inside the earth, among the treasures of wisdom, for that great moment when Christianity, newly deepened, would rejuvenate humanity, when this medieval wisdom poetry formed the figure of Barbarossa, it again let the ravens be the heralds. Even the Old Testament speaks of the ravens with Elijah.
Those initiated in the second degree are the “occultists,” those initiated in the third degree are the “warriors,” and those in the fourth degree are the “lions.” Those in the fifth degree are designated by the name of their own people: Persians or Indians and so on, for only the initiate of the fifth degree is the true representative of his people. The initiate of the sixth degree was called “Sun Hero” or “Sun Runner.” The initiate of the seventh degree had the name “Father.”
Why was the initiate of the sixth degree called Sun Hero? Anyone who had climbed so high on the ladder of spiritual knowledge must have developed an inner life that followed the pattern of the divine rhythm throughout the entire universe. He had to feel, sense, and think in such a way that nothing chaotic, nothing unrhythmic, nothing disharmonious remained in him, but that he was filled with an inner harmony of the soul that was in tune with the outer harmony of the sun. That was the requirement placed on those initiated into the sixth degree. They were held up as holy people, as models, as ideals, and it was said of them: As great as the misfortune would be for the universe if it were possible for the sun to stray from its path for a quarter of a minute, it would be an equally great misfortune if it were possible for a sun hero to deviate even for a moment from the path of great morality, from the path of soul rhythm, from spiritual harmony. Those who had found in their spirit a path as sure as that of the sun out in the universe were called solar heroes. And all peoples had such solar heroes.
Our scholars know so little about these things. They do notice that solar myths crystallized around the lives of all the great founders of religions. But they do not know that during initiation ceremonies, the leading heroes were made into sun heroes, and that it is therefore not at all surprising when what the ancients tried to instill is rediscovered by materialistic research. Such sun myths have been sought and found in Buddha and even in Christ. Here you have the reason why they could be found in them. They were first placed in them, so that they represented a direct imprint of the solar rhythm. These sun heroes were then the great model that one should emulate.
What did people think was happening in the soul of such a hero who had found such inner harmony? — It was imagined that no longer did a single individual human soul live within him, but that something of the universal soul that permeates the entire universe had dawned within him. This universal soul that permeates the entire universe was called Chrestòs in Greece, and is known as Buddhi among the most exalted sages of the East. When a person has ceased to feel themselves as merely the bearer of their individual soul and experiences something of the universal within themselves, then they have created within themselves an image of what was once connected to the human body as the soul of the sun; then they have achieved something tremendously significant on the path of humanity.
If we consider this human being with such a refined soul, we will be able to envision the future of the human race and the entire relationship of this human future to the idea, the mental image of humanity itself. As humanity stands before us today, one cannot imagine anything other than a mental image of certain things being decided by people, so to speak, in strife and discord, through a kind of majority, through a majority decision. Where such majority decisions are still regarded as something truly ideal, there is still no understanding of what truth really is. Where does real truth live in us? Truth lives in us when we set out to think logically. Or would it not be nonsense to decide by majority vote whether two times two equals four or three times four equals twelve? Once a person has recognized what is true, millions may come and say that it is otherwise, but he will still have certainty within himself.
This is how far we have come in terms of scientific thinking, in terms of thinking that is no longer influenced by human passions, drives, and instincts. Wherever passions, drives, and instincts are at work, people are still in conflict and strife, in a confused mess, just as the life of drives and instincts generally forms a wild chaos. But once the drives, instincts, and passions have been purified, pure and ideal, becoming what is called Buddhi, what is called Chrestos, when they are developed to the level at which logical, dispassionate thinking stands today, then what shines forth in the ancient wisdom religions, in Christianity, in anthroposophical Spiritual Science as the true ideal of humanity will be achieved. When our thinking and feeling are so purified that what one feels harmonizes with what others feel, when the same epoch has come on this human earth for feeling and sensation as has come for the uniforming intellect, when Buddhi on this earth, Chrestos, is embodied in the human race, then the ideal of the ancient wisdom teachers, of Christianity, of anthroposophy, will be fulfilled. Then there will be just as little need to vote on what one considers good, noble, and right as there is to vote on what one has recognized as logically right and logically wrong. Everyone can set this ideal before their soul, and when they do so, they have before them the ideal of the Sun Hero, the same ideal that all secret teachers who are initiated into the sixth degree also have.
Even our German mystics in the Middle Ages felt this when they uttered a word with a deep meaning, the word Vergottung or Vergöttlichung (deification or divinization). This word existed in all wisdom religions. What does it mean? It means the following: Once upon a time, those whom we now regard as the spirits of the universe also passed through a stage where humanity stands today, through chaos. And these leading spirits of the universe struggled their way up to their divine level, where their expressions of life harmoniously resound throughout the universe. What appears to us today as the harmonious course of the sun throughout the year, in the growth of plants, in the life of animals, was once chaotic and has only now struggled its way to this great harmony. Where these spirits once stood, humanity stands today. It will develop from its chaos to a future harmony that will be modeled on today's sun, today's universal harmony.
This, not as a theory, not as a doctrine, but as a living feeling sunk into our souls, is what gives us the anthroposophical Christmas feeling. If we truly feel that the glory, the revelation of divine harmony, appears in the heights of heaven, and if we know that the revelation of this harmony will one day resound from our own souls, then we feel the other thing that will happen within humanity through this harmony, then we feel the peace of those who are of good will. Thus the two feelings come together as Christmas feelings. When we look into the divine world order, into the revelation, into its glory in the heights of heaven, and look out into the human future from this great perspective, we can already sense today the harmony that will take hold on earth in the future in those people who have the feeling and the sense for it. The more we internalize what we feel as harmony in the outside world, the more peace and harmony there will be on this earth.
Thus, the great ideal of peace presents itself to our soul as a natural feeling of the highest order when we feel and sense the course of the sun in nature in the right way during the Christmas season. When we feel the victory of sunlight over darkness during these days, we draw from it the great confidence, the great trust that connects our own developing soul with this world harmony, and then we will not let what lives in this world harmony flow into our soul in vain. Then something harmonious will flood and live within us, then the seed that brings peace to this earth will sink into the soul, in the sense of peace among religions. Those who feel such peace are of good will, a peace such as will come upon the earth when that higher level of harmony for the feelings and the mind is reached, which today is only reached for the uniforming intellect. Then, in place of strife and discord, there will be the love that floods everything, of which Goethe says in the same hymn I quoted that a few sips from this cup of love will compensate us for a life full of toil.
That is why this Christmas has been a festival of confidence, a festival of trust and hope in all wisdom religions, because during these days we feel that light must prevail. The seed, placed in the earth, will sprout something from within itself that seeks the light and must flourish again in the light of the new year. Just as the seed of the plant is lowered into the earth and matures in the light of the sun, so the divine truth, the divine and true soul, is lowered into the depths of the life of passion and instinct. Down there in the darkness, the divine sun soul is to mature. And just as the seed matures in the earth, and just as the seed in the earth is enabled to mature through the victory of light over darkness, so too, through the continuous victory of light over the darkness of the soul, the victory of the light of the soul is made possible. And just as there can only be strife in darkness and peace in light, so too, with the right understanding, will world harmony and world peace come about. This is the profound, true message of Christianity: Glory in these days, revelation in these days of the divine powers on high, in the heavens, and peace to people of good will.
Out of this great world perception, the Christian Church decided in the 4th century to move the celebration of the birth of the Savior of the world to the same days on which all the great wisdom religions celebrated the victory of light over darkness. Until the 4th century, Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Christ, was completely variable. It was not until the 4th century that it was decided to have the Christian Savior born on the day on which this victory of light over darkness had always been celebrated.
We cannot deal with the wisdom teachings of Christianity itself today, which will be the subject of a lecture next year. But one thing should and must be said today, namely that nothing more appropriate could have happened than to transfer the celebration of the birth of that divine individuality to this time, which offers Christians the assurance and confidence that their soul, their divinity, will triumph over all that is darkness in their merely external world.
In this way, Christianity is in harmony with all the great world religions. And when the Christian Christmas bells ring, people may well remember that this festival was celebrated all over the world during these days. It was celebrated everywhere where people understood the true great progress of the human soul on this earth, where they knew something of what spirit and spiritual life mean, where they tried to practice self-knowledge in a practical sense.
What we have spoken of today is not an indefinite, abstract feeling for nature, but a feeling for nature in all its living spirituality. If we take up Goethe's words: “Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by it” and so on, then we must be clear that we do not interpret nature in a materialistic sense, but that we see in it the outer expression and physiognomy of the divine world spirit. And just as the physical is born of the physical, the soul and spirit of the divine soul and divine spirit, and just as the physical, the bodily, connects with purely material forces, so the soul connects with the spirit.
To feel and sense this in connection with the whole universe, to use our knowledge and our thinking to feel at one with the whole universe, not in an indefinite way, but in the most definite way, that is what the great festivals are there for, as symbols for humanity. And when we feel this again, these festivals will be something different from what they are today; they will once more take root in our souls and hearts, and they will be what they really should be: junctures in the year that connect us with the spirit of the universe.
When we have fulfilled our duties and tasks for everyday life throughout the year, at these points in the year we look to what connects us with the eternal. And even though we know that we have had to fight for many things during the year, on these days we get a feeling that above all struggle and chaos there is peace and harmony. That is why these festivals are festivals of great ideals; and Christmas is the festival of the birth of humanity's greatest ideal, the ideal that humanity must achieve if it is to fulfill its destiny at all. The festival of the birth of what human beings can feel, sense, and will is Christmas, when it is properly understood.
Anthroposophical Spiritual Science wants to contribute to this holiday being understood in this way again. We do not want to send a dogma, a mere doctrine, or a philosophy into the world, but life. It is our ideal that everything we say and teach, everything contained in our writings and our science, should be translated into life. It will overflow into life if people practice Spiritual Science everywhere in their everyday lives, so that we no longer need to speak of Spiritual Science when spiritual scientific life resounds from all pulpits through the words spoken to the faithful, without the words “theosophy” or “Spiritual Science” being uttered. When in all courts of law the deeds of human beings are viewed with spiritual scientific sensitivity, when at the sickbed the doctor feels spiritually and heals spiritually, when in school the teacher develops Spiritual Science for the growing child, when on all streets people think, feel, and act spiritually, so that spiritual scientific teaching has become superfluous — then our ideal will have been achieved, then Spiritual Science will be an everyday occurrence. But then Spiritual Science will also be present at the great festive turning points of the year. And human beings will connect their everyday lives with the spiritual through Spiritual Science thinking, feeling, and willing. In this way, on the other hand, they will allow the eternal and imperishable, the spiritual sun, to shine into their souls on the great feast days, which will remind them that within them there is a true, higher self, a divine, sun-like, light-filled being that will always triumph over all darkness, over all chaos, giving them a peace of mind that will always counterbalance all strife, all war, and all discord in the world.