The Essence of Christianity

GA 68a — 20 November 1903, Weimar

5. The Pilgrimage of the Soul

I. Report in “Germany”, Zweites Blatt, November 22, 1903

Theosophical Lecture. On Friday evening at 8 o'clock in the large hall of the “Erholung”, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave his announced lecture on the “Pilgrimage of the Soul”. He began by saying that this time, unlike the three lectures he gave here last spring, which were based on knowledge of nature, he would speak directly in the language of Theosophy and present the facts as they appear to someone whose spiritual eye is open to supersensible realities. Man has three sources from which he originates. That which is eternal and everlasting in him, that which reappears in ever new embodiments, comes directly from the source of life, from that which the great sage and martyr Giordano Bruno called the world soul. Just as human thought is an emanation of the human soul, so the eternal human spirit is an emanation of the divine primal soul. And just as man, as he now lives, draws his perceptions through his senses from the external world, from sensual nature, and allows his will to be inspired by his feelings and passions, by the considerations of his mind, trained in the laws of nature, the eternal human spirit, before it embodied itself, drew all its thoughts and wills from the fountain of the eternal, from the divine primal soul. It waited in this form for its earthly embodiment. This became possible because on a world body that preceded our earth, the physicality was preparing, which provided the ground for external development. On this other world body, which is not known to any external science but is known to spiritual research, the sensual ancestors of man developed. These were beings that had sensation and feeling, drives and passions, but were still completely without the power of the mind, of rational reflection. They were very different from both present-day humans and present-day animals. These beings became germ-like when the task of the aforementioned world body was fulfilled. Just as the germ of a plant is in a state of slumber, awakening to new life when it is sunk into the ground, so these germs of being slumbered until they were taken up by our planet at the dawn of our earth development and called to new existence. Now a new state of preparation came for them. The ability developed in them to place the sensual drives, the sensations, feelings and passions at the service of a higher power. This power was the beginning of what later became the intellect, which enables the present human being to find his way in the outer world and to be a ruler over the lower natural forces. For long periods of time, the human dwellings that were later to become the dwellings of the human spirits lived in this preparatory stage. Then the time comes when they are ready to receive the young human spirit that has been described. This spirit embodies itself in such human bodies for the first time. It gradually learns to control the physical body, which is, as it were, wrapped around it. But it can learn only little in the first life. Again and again it must pass through the “gate of death” and attain a new embodiment. Then, between two embodiments, the human spirit passes through the higher worlds, where it brings the experiences of earthly development to maturity. It passes through the “Land of Desire” (Kamaloka), in order to bring its desires into right harmony with the whole world; it passes further through a purer spiritual world, in which it can bring to maturity the thinking ability it has developed in itself in the struggle with the world. Then it returns for a new incarnation, to undergo earthly change again for some time and to gather new experiences for its higher development. Thus the spiritual soul makes its pilgrimage through many embodiments until the earthly destiny is fulfilled and all human spirits are led over to a new, even higher existence in a world whose sublimity the present human being cannot imagine. II. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung” of November 22, 1903

“The pilgrimage of the soul,” as it takes place according to the theosophical view and assertion, was illustrated yesterday evening by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, in the “Erholung” to his audience, which consisted mostly of ladies. He took it as a given that an eternal soul dwells in the human body and explained that this eternal part of us has its origin in the “world soul”, the existence of which Giordano Bruno had already assumed. But according to Dr. Steiner's assertion, the human being does not consist only of soul and body; there is a third element, the spirit. This “young human spirit”, as the lecturer called it, has its source in God and is truly immortal. This trinity was not, however, present in one person from all eternity, but the “physical human being” developed out of another purely physical, instinctively acting human being, whose existence took place on an earlier existing world body, which has only now given birth to our Earth. Only when it came over to our planet, a mysterious process, did the soul, which also has a history of development behind it, descend into it. It took a long time before man was ready to receive the young human spirit. The spirit first had to get used to it, only gradually did it learn to perceive with human senses. But all this did not happen in one person. By embodying itself, the spirit became entwined with human desires and passions. It is difficult for it to detach itself from them, even when the “physical human being” has already died. Rather, it must purify itself at various stations in the beyond, after it has absorbed what it has learned in earthly life. For a short time, this spirit then submerges into a region where it can unfold and expand, then it descends again into a new body. This wandering continues until it reaches its predetermined goal, the theosophical “Nirvana”. But this is not the “nothing” as the ancient Indian sages (and Schopenhauer) called it, but a state of which we have no idea as yet. This is how the “pilgrimage of the soul” unfolds, as Dr. Steiner teaches it. He emphasized that these are truths, just as certain as the truth that electric arc lamps were lit in the recreation room. The nature of the lecture was also in line with this conviction. Dr. Steiner always used the phrase “this is so and so” to support his assertions. From this, one gained the conviction that he believed with certainty that he had the truth. (Not one or his truth.

In the next lecture, he will explain the “world soul and human destiny”.