World Mysteries and Theosophy

GA 54 — 22 February 1906, Berlin

Lucifer

Persian legend tells of two opposing deities, Ormuzd, the good god, and Ahriman, the evil god. The two deities fight for humanity, for everything that unfolds here on Earth as life and striving. The prospect is that the good deity will one day triumph over the evil deity.

Whatever one may think of this legend, everyone can see a reflection of this legendary idea in nature, in the world around us. To give an example, consider fire on the one hand. We owe our culture, our comfort, and our progress in life to fire. On the other hand, consider the destructive power of forces that are also related to fire in some way, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In nature itself, therefore, there are benevolent, sustaining, life-promoting, and life-giving forces, and on the other hand, there are life-destroying and hostile forces. The arena in which the struggles between these two forces take place is not only the outer human being, but also the inner human being. The human soul is torn between hostile forces: on the one hand, pain, evil, and suffering, and on the other, the benevolent forces of existence, joy, sublimity, heart-lifting experiences, and that which points us toward the spiritual spheres of heaven. Deeper natures have always recognized the unity, and ultimately the harmony, between these two opposing forces. I need only recall something very familiar, and you will remember how an exquisite spirit of our own German culture expressed the unity and uniformity of the two opposing forces. Schiller's “Song of the Bell” contains the beautiful words in this regard:

The power of fire is beneficial,
When man tames it, guards it,
And what he forms, what he creates,
He thanks this heavenly power;
But terrible becomes the heavenly power,
When it breaks free from its chains,
And follows its own path,
The free daughter of nature.

One and the same thing from two different perspectives!

If we look at human beings externally and internally, we will see conflicting forces everywhere within them. One of these forces, which wise and unwise people have spoken of since ancient times, shall be the subject of our consideration today: the force that has always been referred to by the name Lucifer. — We will deal with this topic today not merely from the standpoint of scientific, historical observation, but from the standpoint of inner, so-called esoteric observation.

According to the word, Lucifer means: Lux — light, fer, ferre — to carry, the light bearer. When we consider this word, we must say to ourselves: those who gave this power its name cannot possibly have meant only what various positive religious beliefs summarize in the destructive, suffering and ruin-bringing power that they see symbolized in the serpent and the evil dragon. Nevertheless, the most well-known religious system in Europe, Christianity, resonates with what is commonly referred to as the devil, Satan, who is seen as a life-destroying or down-drawing force. The serpent is known to all of you as the tempter of mankind. This is how it is written at the beginning of Genesis, the Bible, and this is how it lives on in the consciousness of many. Not always and not in all religious denominations is the serpent considered the symbol of evil, the degrading and corrupting power. If we consider the Christian-Jewish myth itself, it may not appear quite so to us. For who today would want to count among the hostile powers the power that brought humans the knowledge of good and evil, the power that is said to have opened humans' eyes? A great change has taken place, especially in the last century.

We need only recall the name of the great genius Goethe to see what changes have taken place over the last few centuries. You all know that Goethe transformed the medieval Faust legend, not just reworked it. If you follow this medieval Faust legend, Faust stands there as the representative and archetype of human striving, striving based on freedom and independence and science, not on revelation and faith. In the 16th century, the popular spirit still portrayed this Faust, this genius of the liberal human striving for knowledge, in such a way that he must inevitably fall prey to the evil, life-hostile forces. Faust must perish because he has turned away from faith, from the tradition of millennia, from revelation. It is said of him that he no longer wanted to be a theologian, it is said of him that he put the Bible behind a bench and became a worldly man. A worldly man was understood to be someone who wanted to base his existence on freedom and independence, on his own knowledge and on his understanding of the forces at work. According to the views of the time, such a person was bound to fall prey to evil forces. Goethe presents this struggle to us anew. And how does he resolve this fate? “Whoever strives with all his might, we can redeem,” he has the choir of angels sing. Here, too, Faust enters into a pact with the powers associated with Mephistopheles, but he is redeemed despite basing his existence on freedom and self-determination. Faust achieves peace in his existence. This is a transformation of the soul that has taken place. Lucifer is no longer recognized in the old way as bringing utter ruin.

If we look at the ancient religions, Lucifer was not always the bringer of ruin. In the ancient Indian religions, the wise men, the leaders, those who enlighten people with the spirit, are called serpents. This is the case in many religions. Why is this so? What does Lucifer represent in the sense of these ancient religions? What does he ultimately represent? This and similar questions will occupy us today. What does he represent in the sense of the occultists, the explorers of the forces of existence slumbering in nature, the deeper forces of nature, who in the sense of this knowledge speak of Lucifer as the one who is to bring light to human beings who rely on themselves, who build not on revelation and faith, but on knowledge and science? If we want to delve into this matter, we must touch upon something that leads us to the far reaches of human existence, to the starting point of human development, so to speak. The question, which can only be touched upon here at the outset, will only be fully addressed when we speak of planetary development. But we must take our starting point today from this moment in human development. Development is what appears to us today as a magic word and seeks to make human existence comprehensible, that which confronts us today in a certain perfection and completion and which we hope will tend toward ever greater degrees of perfection. We attribute everything that lives around us to a development from the most imperfect to the most perfect. And so it is with human beings, who, according to a deeper doctrine of development, came into existence in ancient times, when our Earth itself looked very different from today and when the natural forces and powers on it worked in a completely different way. In the sense of what is called theosophical or spiritual scientific worldview, we also speak of human development from this starting point, but we speak of a development that takes us back even further and to starting points that lie before the formation of our Earth itself. This can only be hinted at.

When human beings came into existence, they were beings who were, so to speak, alone in the world with and among the natural kingdoms. When we look at human beings in this way, they appear to us, in comparison with the other natural kingdoms, the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, as the highest link, the final link in the chain of development that runs through these natural kingdoms. But just as foolish as it would be for a plant, a stone, or an animal to say, “Evolution ends with me,” it would be just as foolish and nonsensical for humans to say, “Evolution ends with me; I am the highest of the beings that are possible here on Earth.” We must look up to other beings whom we cannot reach with our physical eyes, but whom we can reach when the deeper spiritual powers slumbering within us are awakened, when our spiritual eyes are opened. The theosophical or spiritual scientific worldview is one that aims to bring back awareness of these more highly developed beings, who stand to humans as humans stand to the lower kingdoms of nature. When humans came into existence here, they were not created out of nothing, but arose from earlier, much earlier stages of development. But other beings have also undergone such developments. They stood above human beings. Religion, including the Bible, speaks of these beings. It speaks of beings who, at the time when human beings began their development on earth, could feel about as perfect as human beings themselves will one day feel when they have reached the end of the phase of development in which they currently find themselves. In the spiritual scientific worldview, we say that a becoming God lives in the deepest inner being of the human being. And with the Christian mysteries of the Middle Ages, we say that the human being can rise to realms that stand above those in which he dwells today. The Christian mystic Angelus Silesius expresses this beautifully: “When you rise above yourself and let God reign, the Ascension will take place in your spirit.” Then he will not merely be among the powers that create, in the midst of the enjoyers as he is today, but man will stand as a creator, as a spiritualized and deified being.

And at the starting point, where the forces that have already reached certain degrees of perfection today were still in their infancy, there were beings beside him who had already gone through the stages that he has to complete today. If we understand the Bible correctly, they were the ancestors of the gods. Even the gods, in the sense of the Bible, have developed. The Elohim are not something that simply stands there, but they are something that has become and has developed to that height. In the past, they stood before the eyes of the searching human being at the height to which he himself will one day develop. These gods have achieved a certain perfection. But just as on the steps of our present existence, alongside perfectly developed human individuals, there are also those who have only achieved a lesser degree of perfection, who have lagged behind their fellow human beings, so too in those days there were beings between humans and gods who were higher than humans but lower than those who were called creative gods. I know how misleading such things are, even if they are taken seriously and understood seriously. I know that the materialistic worldview downright forbids speaking of stages of development in such beings because it considers it superstition. But that cannot prevent us from looking the truth in the face and speaking of stages of development beyond human beings. The gods were thus at a sublime height above human beings, and immediately above them were beings who stood between the gods and human beings in their development, but who did not complete it at that time and then underwent their development among human beings because they were closer to them. These beings made up for what they had previously missed in their development on our earth, so to speak. What is called secret doctrine, occultism, is in harmony with the ancient religions and the deeper wisdom of our time. There these powers are summarized under the name of Lucifer. And just as the theosophical worldview makes it clear that a God lives in human beings, who sustains and supports them and who expresses himself in their dormant faculties, which are, however, divine faculties that human beings will have developed at the end of their development, so too does the Luciferic principle live in human beings and belongs to their own soul, just as the soul belongs to the gods.

Having brought this to mind, we may well speak of gods and Luciferic powers, of the divine and Luciferic principles within us, just as the physicist speaks of electricity and magnetism. The gods stood there as sublime beings. We must now understand both — gods and Luciferic powers — as the great law that lives and works in all development. Consider the nature around you. In a sequence of stages, we encounter first the lifeless world of minerals, then the plant kingdom, then the animal kingdom, and finally the human kingdom; and even higher still, the kingdoms of higher beings. If plants could open their eyes and look around with clear, bright awareness, they would say to themselves: I owe my existence to this mineral kingdom that lives around me; if it did not exist, I could never be. From it I draw my life force. This kingdom forms the soil from which my roots spring. Without this kingdom, I could never exist. — And again, if the animal could look at the lower kingdoms of nature in the same way, it would be the same. And it would have to look down into the lower plant kingdom and say: I have grown out of it, I owe my nourishment to it; if the plant kingdom did not exist, I would not exist. — And it is the same with human beings. They too must say to themselves: I have grown out of these lower natural kingdoms, I owe my existence to them; if they did not exist, I would not exist. Here again, the higher kingdom of nature stands opposite the lower and helps it, so to speak, to further its existence. Just imagine if only a mineral kingdom had developed on earth! What would have become of the earth? A rigid, lifeless body rushing through space. Life would have remained dormant in the mineral kingdom, as if in a grave. This life has now, so to speak, fled to a higher kingdom, the plant kingdom, and through the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom on earth is once again made alive. The mineral kingdom holds and supports the plant kingdom, and the plant kingdom continually transforms the mineral kingdom in the cycle of life. Consider what plants do with the mineral forces on earth! If there were no plants on earth, the substances of the mineral kingdom would remain in dead rock. But since there is a plant kingdom, it absorbs the substances, enlivens itself with them, and gives them back again. The lower kingdom provides the foundation and forces for the higher, and the higher kingdom in turn helps to maintain the existence of the lower. And so it is with each higher kingdom. The animal kingdom lives in harmony with the plant kingdom, breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide; the plant builds its body from carbon and releases oxygen in return. And man? He too lives through the lower kingdoms of nature. Here we are already gradually approaching the human being who is drawing closer to the spirit and nourishing himself from the spirit; and if we move on to the spiritual powers, there is roughly the same relationship between the gods and human beings as between the lower realms of the universe, a relationship similar to that between plants and minerals or between the other towering realms of the universe. If we know what plants do to form and enliven the mineral kingdom, what do the spiritual kingdoms do, what do the gods do with human beings at the starting point of their development and in the course of their progress? What did they do with the human kingdom?

The gods have completed their development. If we want to speak clearly, even if not entirely accurately, they have no direct interest in the human realm. But they have an indirect interest; they give it the powers to bring the dormant and frozen life in humans back to existence, just as plants give life to dead stones. Now look at the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom. How do they relate to each other? The occultist, that is, the one who explores the deeper forces of nature, says: The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms relate to each other as wisdom, life, and love. — Let us try to understand this!

When you look at the mineral kingdom as it appears to us in nature, you seek to understand it everywhere with your mind and human wisdom. You explore the stars in their orbits, what lives as natural law in the mineral world. Plants draw wisdom and the laws of the world from the mineral world. We therefore say: wisdom and lawfulness rest in the mineral kingdom; this mineral kingdom is embodied wisdom. But this mineral kingdom with its wisdom would be poor, sober, and dead if the plant world had not joined it and awakened the animating principle, the sprouting and budding life, in this slumbering wisdom. Love and wisdom exchange their powers with each other as plants and minerals interact. It is similar between the gods and humans. Just as humans were when they began their development on Earth, life initially rested within them; the gods rekindled it for a new earthly development. What is this earthly development connected to? Once again, when we compare the human realm and the divine realm, they relate to each other like wisdom and love. That is why occultism and all deeper religious beliefs — including Christianity — speak of God or the gods as love, the animating, sprouting principle. First, the sprouting and sprouting principle brings forth the sense organs. That is why in the Jewish religion of the Old Testament, Jehovah is presented as the giver of sensual desire, as the giver of growth and fertility. In sensual desire lies the principle of further development, which drives from the imperfect to the perfect, which is the development from animality up to where love establishes states. In this love, which, so to speak, calls forth communities in human beings, which permeates that which is hardened in human beings with sprouting and budding life, just as the plant calls forth the stone to life, we have, first of all, the revealing, original deity. This is so in all religions and also in what we call secret science. And now we must be clear that here, in human development, we must see the divine driving forces, the divine power. Human beings have always had to regard that which drives them forward, that which lifts them up, as a gift, as a revelation of a divine principle.

The Luciferic principle intervenes between them and the gods. This enables him to take into his own hands that which lives unconsciously in him as a divine principle, in his unconscious urge to reproduce and develop. In this way he will ascend to independence and freedom in his development. And why is that? Because that which lives in Lucifer is closer to him, is, so to speak, a younger brother of the divine principle. Back when development was still in an earlier phase, the gods themselves were at the level of humanity, seeking their own development independently within the human level. But now that they have developed, man is a creature among them; now they rule over man and work in man. The Luciferic now comes into play. And this has an even more familiar and intimate relationship with man; it has not yet completely outgrown the stage that is called humanity. It is something that rises above the present standpoint of humanity, but is intimately connected with it, so that it merges more with human beings and works as a separate impulse within them to propel them forward. These are the three stages that work within human beings themselves as their forces of development: their humanity, the Luciferic principle, and the divine. If we want to understand human beings as they stand before us at their present stage of development, then we must see, in the sense of the spiritual scientific worldview, that they have developed the so-called four lower principles. In doing so, I am assuming something of what the theosophical worldview teaches. I will give only a brief explanation of this.

First, we have the physical body of the human being, then the principle of the etheric body, the animating, the forming, then his instincts, desires, and passions, the animalistic in him; which has awakened to independence through the fourth principle, through the actual I of the human being, through which he has grown beyond the animal. It is this I of the human being that actually develops further. This I lives in the three lower principles. It is the fourth. And within this fourth principle, the divine powers are at work, which in their development have already transcended the fourth principle and rule over it from above. Still half within it, still connected with the fourth principle, we have the Luciferic powers. The gods have ascended from egoism to selflessness, to devotion, and to the overcoming of all separate existence. The Luciferic in man is still enclosed within the ego with the greater part of his being; it still lies within human interests themselves. Thus we see that everything that lives in man as selflessness and willingness to sacrifice is a divine principle in man, and that alongside this divine principle there is another driving force in him. Those who practice true self-observation learn to recognize the other principle. It is the Luciferic. It is that which does not strive for divinity solely through complete devotion and self-sacrifice, but which, with enthusiasm, yet out of the deepest interest of the self, strives upward to the high stages of perfection, saying: Not merely because I love it, but because higher perfection coincides with what I must love, I want to strive for it as a human being in divine freedom. The divine powers do not seek this perfection. But through Luciferic striving, I make divine perfection my very own being.

Therefore, we can say: If this Luciferic principle were not in man, man would be carried by the gods in a certain passivity, in a certain inactivity, and led to perfection. He would be, so to speak, completely devoted to the sonship of God. His being would strive for perfection, but it would not be he who strove, but the God in him. — Added to this is the other force, which we regard as Luciferic. This makes this striving an entirely personal matter. It sets itself this goal of perfection. This is also wonderfully depicted in the biblical myth. Adam and Eve emerged from the hand of the gods, destined to be led to divine perfection by divine powers without their own intervention, because the God within them guides them. But now the serpent comes, bringing knowledge and freedom, and with it the prospect and possibility of perfection, but also the possibility of evil. Now that the decision between good and evil is placed in man's own hands and his own knowledge, the instinct, love, becomes the bearer of an unconscious but divine striving for perfection. Everything that is to live and sprout in this striving for perfection is to be imbued with this love, with what is revealed to man in this love. On the other hand, there is the power that guides human beings by taking possession of this fourth principle, the ego, awakening it to its own choice, giving it light for its own knowledge, so that it walks in the light toward perfection. Thus we have the bearer of love and the bearer of light as the two real forces at work in human beings.

This is, expressed in a modern form, what is found in all religious creeds and occult worldviews as the principle of God and the principle of Lucifer. Only those religious creeds that have increasingly come to be based solely on revelation, solely on faith, have perceived that which works in human beings and lives as their own principle of perfection as the bearer of evil. Thus it comes about that Lucifer, the light-bearer, has become, from that which calls human beings to freedom, to independence, to bright, clear knowledge, that which seduces them. That is one side of the coin. All those religions that have departed from their starting point — for all of them have the correct view of God and Lucifer at their starting point — which seek only on the one hand the God who leads human beings in unconsciousness to bliss, all perceive at the same time that in which God himself works as something pernicious. They perceive nature as sin; they perceive the spirit, the bright, light, clear knowledge, as the corrupting Lucifer. Goethe expressed this beautifully: “Nature is sin, spirit is devil, between them they cherish doubt, their misshapen hermaphrodite child.” Yes, it is true, absolutely true, that doubt stands in the middle between what is divine revelation and what is the striving for freedom. But it is also true that this doubt is necessary for man if he really wants to strive out of his own self toward godliness through his own merit. We must go through doubt, and only when we can doubt all truths are we able to truly make the truth our own. Those who have never doubted do not know how man is connected to the truth. But those who overcome doubt have gained a higher knowledge than if it had become their possession through blind revelation. That is the educational value of doubt. That is why it rightly stands between what is divine, what cannot be separated from nature and is made into sin, between what is devilish, Luciferic, and the stage of perfection.

Viewed in this way, human development appears to us as if illuminated by a certain light. The entire Old Testament development appears to us as one in which God reigns as love in the progress of the human race, in sensual love and in all that it establishes: blood relations, family, tribe, and so on. We find the most perfect example of this in the Jewish people in Jehovah. He is nothing other than the personified force of nature, if we consider how he reigns in the mineral kingdom, in the sprouting plant kingdom, in the animal kingdom that feels pleasure and pain, and in human beings themselves. It is the human-God, the Christ influence, that causes the mineral to open up into crystal, that causes the plant to sprout and the animals to go through their instinctive life, and also leads man from the imperfect to the perfect. Even if man ascended to the higher realms, he would remain a mere natural being if it were not for the other spirit, the spirit beneficial to man, Lucifer, who reigns within him, who awakens selfishness, but also independence and freedom, who makes man his own, a special being, but who also elevates him above mere natural forces. As true as it is for the Jehovah's servants to feel that Jehovah himself is the foundation of the human world, the deity, so true is it that Lucifer is the one who rebels, revolts against this force of nature, who leads man into knowledge, calls him to a clear consciousness.

Thus, man rises to independence. He breaks free from the bonds of blood kinship, from the bonds of tribe and people. He gradually becomes a personality, albeit a selfish one. Then, out of the same spirit, Jehovah, the organizer of higher life, confronts him, regulating development only through law, through commandment. If in nature we have God acting through sensual love with necessity, we now have him in the lawgiver, in the God of the Ten Commandments. In him we have Jehovah, who gives humans a law to which they must submit, which is to bring order into the awakening personality, which is to bring them together in harmony and balance. What is sensual love below is the commandment of morality above, it is law, it is commandment. That which acts not only as a force of nature, as a commandment, that which strives not only from divinity toward perfection, is also to be elevated, but the human self is also to be elevated. So it is — call it, if you will, with a more or less apt expression — by the general laws of nature, by the necessity that the mere force of love be transformed into the principle of spiritual love, that the sensual Jehovah become Christ, the ennobled, spiritualized love that no longer acts merely as a natural instinct, but permeates and spiritualizes life, which formerly could only be ruled by law. Thus Christ becomes the founder of the law, which does not approach man from outside, as ordinary law does, but which, like the innermost instinct, becomes a force of the soul itself. When Jehovah gives a commandment, Christ gives the power to act. When the God Jehovah determines what is good, the Christ ruling in man gives birth to the good from the power within man himself. The forces of nature are elevated to the soul; what was sensual love becomes spiritual love, what Christ has made. The law itself is imbued with the divine; it works in the world itself as something divine, as grace, as it is called in Christian terms.

Thus, with the great progress at the turn of our time, we see that sensual love, the principle of the merely divinely conceived force of nature, is ennobled and spiritualized into soul love, into the power that no longer works on the natural plane, but on the moral plane. Thus, Christian charity, Christian love, is the ennobled power, the power that creates among human beings a moral bond that glows through them, that regards human beings strictly as human beings, that makes all human beings equal in the face of the highest perfection, that allows morality to be immersed in love, just as naturalness was once immersed in love. That is the first period of Christianity. Christian virtue thus became the virtues of community, the virtues of harmony between human souls. The God who brings people together wanted to be one who works in spiritual love, and this is the principle of the Christian religion. Just as body found body in the natural principle in earlier times, so in Christianity soul finds soul through the Christ principle in higher love. Just as the Jehovah principle created human communities on the basis of blood, on the basis of family, tribe, and people, so Christ was called to bring about a situation in which souls could find each other without the mediation of blood. Sensual love is ennobled into self-sacrificing devotion, the force of nature is ennobled into a moral act of God. Just as in the course of the Old Testament the other principle, the Luciferic principle, worked as a divine force of nature permeating human beings, bringing them independence and freedom, so in more recent times this principle has permeated human development as the bearer of light, as the bearer of freedom. It is not the opponent, it is the necessary complement to the Christ principle. It is connected with this Christ principle in a unity, just as all the seemingly contradictory forces of nature are thought of as connected in a unity by those who have penetrated nature and the universe. As Schiller says: “The power of fire is beneficial when man tames and guards it, ... but the power of heaven becomes terrible when it breaks free from its bonds.” The same is true here. On the one hand, Christian charity, love, the divine, which leads soul to soul, reigns as a unity, and on the other hand, the bearer of light, the bearer of independence and freedom.

Even through the love of the soul, humanity would only live in a more or less unconscious state of perfection. But through the soul being saturated and transfigured, illuminated by bright, clear knowledge, transfigured by the light of the spirit, through the bearer of light living and working in human beings, Christian love will continue to work for the free development of human beings in the future. Thus the two powers — revealed wisdom and humanly acquired science — stand opposite each other. Soul and consciousness stand opposite each other in this way: the soul glows with spiritual love, and consciousness illuminates and illuminates this spiritual love with the principle of clarity and freedom. Thus, human beings live between these two poles of their being; thus, they work and live between these two forces in the midst of them. Thus, for those who look more deeply into things, Lucifer, the light-bearer, is not a hostile force; even if he were to break his chains and go his own way, as the free will of universal power, he would still, in Goethe's words, be able to create good, even if he wanted evil. Lucifer "thus presents himself to us as that which must necessarily complement another principle in man. He proves to be man's trusted friend, standing before him as a brother, while on the other hand man looks up to the sublime gods, to whom he submits himself in silent devotion, who carry him in their love. Thus, life truly appears as a struggle between light and love. And that is what it is at its present stage of development. Just as physicists present positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism as the two poles that necessarily belong together, so light and love belong together in the higher realm of human life as the two poles of human existence. Never does only one kind of electricity arise; when you rub a glass rod, it becomes positively electric, while the rubbing material becomes negatively electric. It is the same everywhere. Never in the development of life can only one act; the other must always come as a necessary complement. And in human life, the two poles are love and light. One is not possible without the other.

And just as the old law, the commandments of Jehovah, symbolically given on Sinai, were transformed by the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, so too is love transformed. Love is a spiritual thing, as it appeared as a higher stage of natural force in sensual love. And so it is also possible that something clearer, knowledge, appears at the higher stage. What was knowledge? Looking back, it was something similar to the law of Jehovah, the Ten Commandments, and it must be remelted. Just as Christ's suffering and death remolded love from the sensual level to the soul level, so too must the principle of mere knowledge, the knowledge of Lucifer, be transformed into something higher. We are in the midst of this transformation today. And in a certain sense, we are experiencing a renewal of what took place in Christianity. Just as the law has been transformed into grace, so science will have to be transformed into wisdom. Just as grace must be born of one's own soul, so wisdom will have to be born of man's own soul. Just as Christ is the God who can also reign in man and enable man to become his own lawgiver in grace, so wisdom is born of human science. And just as our science as science is built on external experience, which is given from outside, as the commandment was given to the Jews on Sinai, so this science will be born in wisdom, just as the law was born anew through and in Christ. That is the striving of Spiritual Science. Science given from outside, given through the senses, is what we have had up to now, and in a certain sense it has reached the highest level in our cultural life. This science, born from within as man's most intimate possession, making Lucifer what works and lives out of man, is what the future must bring. Spiritual Science wants nothing other than such a deepening of knowledge, such a deepening of insight. Just as the law or commandment has become internalized in Christian virtue, and just as human development in love progresses in the soul realm through Christ's virtue, so our material science will progress spiritually when it is reborn from the soul. And it is this rebirth that Spiritual Science should strive for.

Christianity has hitherto set a completely analogous event for human development: moral virtue instead of mere natural force in love. Inner virtue — through the awakening of inner, hidden powers in human beings — will bring about the development of the future. Just as we look back on a development that has brought internalization and spiritualization, on a law, so we look back on external scientific activity, on a scientific endeavor that will bring internalization. Just as the law has been deepened into grace, so science will be deepened into wisdom. But that means seeking inner development. Transformed in the soul, remolded, the law became Christian grace. Our science will be remolded from the power of our own soul into human ability and achievement. The awakening of inner, dormant abilities is sought through Spiritual Science.

If the Christian acts out of the love of his soul toward the old servant of Jehovah, then in the future the knower will act out of the wisdom of his heart and thus achieve an even greater deepening of human development. Christianity also promises the development of the outer soul life. A citizen of the spirit, who connects people externally without distinction of race or gender, is what Christianity promises. Future striving will make people such citizens in the higher spiritual worlds through inner occult development.

This is the relationship between Spiritual Science and external Christianity: external Christianity seeks external virtue in order to attain the spiritual; the occultist awakens inner virtues, the abilities that lie dormant in human beings, in order to attain the even deeper meaning of the higher spiritual worlds. What we are talking about here is only a deepening of Christianity itself. The law was deepened by the Christian principle, and science will be deepened by the spiritual-scientific principle.

Thus, throughout human development, we have presented the Luciferic principle not as an enemy, but as a pole that is necessarily connected to another. We have placed it alongside Christianity as it has been up to now. But it is precisely there that we have recognized that the principle of the light-bearer will unite with the principle of love to form a higher unity. When inner spiritual abilities emerge through the development of merely external Christian virtues, then we will have an even deeper Christianity, a Christianity that cannot be prescribed by the church, but which everyone will develop through the abilities that still lie dormant within them today. Each person will develop God through their own power, and all souls will work together in completely free striving. Lucifer will have added freedom, science, and independence to love and goodness. Only those who want to remain stuck in one epoch of human development can bring themselves to turn their gaze away from what is promising in this future perspective. Every past would be fruitless if it did not carry within it a new, higher future. This is what must make the heart beat faster in the truly correctly understood Spiritual Science of man, what must fill the human heart with a completely different enthusiasm. What has been achieved through external institutions to this day, what has been imposed on human beings in a noble but nevertheless external way, will one day be born from the power of the human soul itself, will be brought forth from within. There will be an inner church, an inner temple, which will bring the outer one to true transfiguration, to true spiritualization. Everyone will be a Christian because Christ will awaken in them, because the inner Christ will live in them and will join the Christ who has redeemed humanity as a whole. Christ has redeemed humanity as a whole; people will understand this when they are inwardly free and redeemed, when they not only believe in redemption but live out this redemption themselves.

Those who want to point us to Christianity always remind us: You strive for self-redemption, but you misunderstand what Christ has done. — What is said about Spiritual Science is not correct. Spiritual Science is not an opponent, but a friend and co-worker of Christianity; not of the Christianity of the past, but of the Christianity that knows what Jesus said: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” the Christianity that develops toward higher and higher perfection. Spiritual Science is not hostile to the principle of redemption of Christ, because it does not take the one-sided standpoint that every human being should only do something for himself. That would be the most desolate egoism, even if the human being only wanted to strive for the noblest forces within himself. Humanity is a whole, and when an individual — Christ — accomplishes death, the death of redemption, this is the death of redemption for all humanity. But this must be permeated by consciousness; it must be lived out by the individual. Redemption must itself be reborn in freedom. Here, too, the principle of the Gospel of John applies, concerning the new rebirth of the human being. He is not a true human being who has not been reborn in spirit and in truth. This was said by Christ Jesus. And today, as he still lives according to his saying, he says clearly and distinctly in relation to his own death of redemption: I once died for all humanity in order to bring humanity the certainty that death can be conquered by life, but this death must be reborn in the soul of each individual human being. The redeemed human being is only truly redeemed when he has also reborn redemption within himself.

This is the living Christ principle, the Christ principle deepened by Spiritual Science. Thus, within each individual human being is the soul, which unfolds love with the noblest ideals of humanity, this love, which joins mere sensuality as spiritual love and leads human beings to divine perfection; On the other hand, there is the Lucifer principle, which is illuminated by science, freedom, and independence. Love in bright clarity, consciousness joins the soul. The soul brings the power of love, and consciousness radiates and illuminates this power of love with bright, light clarity. And through the soul and consciousness, man himself progresses toward perfection. To pass through a state that is not clear to him, he would ascend to divinity if he were merely a feeling soul; he would ascend to cold, merely rational perfection if he were merely consciousness. But the soul and consciousness will always have to interpenetrate each other there. That is why the spiritual science seeker looks back and also looks forward. He looks at the soul with its feelings and sensations, and he looks at consciousness with its light and wisdom, and says to himself: It is not the human being living in dullness, but the human being thriving in bright, clear light who should be striven for. — And to all other virtues must be added the virtues that lie in science, in freedom, and in independence. But freedom must be deepened by love, otherwise it becomes arbitrariness and only brings man closer to his instincts. On the other hand, science must be deepened by love: then it becomes wisdom, true spirituality supported by action. Otherwise it becomes cold, barren, and abstract. And independence must also be combined with love, otherwise it becomes blind egoism, otherwise it leads to hardening within oneself. This is the deeper truth of life in a worldview and way of life based on Spiritual Science: that the three great virtues—science, freedom, and independence—must be completely reshaped as the necessary principles of the human soul, but that these three virtues must be deepened through the power of love. And then this will transform science into wisdom, freedom into willingness to sacrifice, devotion and reverence for the divine, and independence into selflessness, into that principle in human beings that overcomes separateness, that merges into the universe and in this way attains divinity in freedom.