A New Experience of Christ

GA 69c — 22 February 1912, Stuttgart

2. Christ in the 20th Century

Dear attendees! The question of the Christ is arousing interest in the widest circles today. In our so enlightened age, this question is about to become one of the most significant. If one looks at the character of our entire culture, this interest is understandable. The figure of Christ was one that gave the deepest impulse to Western culture for many centuries. In the present time, in certain considerations, this figure seems to be disappearing, to be falling out of hands. Before the gaze of historical research, the figure of Christ is, as it were, dissolving. In contrast to this, there is the tendency to seek only a deeper understanding of the essence of Jesus of Nazareth. But this figure is even doubted in its historical existence. “Did Jesus live?” is a question often asked today. Such a question deeply affects all minds. As with all historical phenomena, one may ask whether the Christ Jesus was a historical being. But the Gospels are not documents like others, [like ordinary historical documents]. From the point of view of present-day historical research, there is a certain justification for the belief that the figure of Christ must be simply shattered in those who seek a historical basis. This is one reason why [in the past] the impulse had such a profound effect on people and why [today] such great interest must be shown in this research: precisely because of [people's] fear of losing a well-founded belief in the figure of Christ.

Now, from the spiritual scientific point of view, something, even if only a sketch, is to be said about this problem that has just been characterized. [But what this spiritual science has to say is that from it arises the well-founded hope that The Christ, who was irretrievably taken away from people outwardly, can be given back to them again.] The figure of Christ, as it emerges from spiritual science, is something that goes against the general convictions and judgments, it is downright repugnant to them. What is to be said this evening will not only meet with opposition, but it will also be taken as a flight of fancy, as a fantasy. It is not possible to gather everything on this question in the context of a single lecture, but by communicating what spiritual science has found, one or two things may come out afterwards. Actually, the question only becomes clear when we look back over the centuries at the different conceptions that people have had of the Christ.

It must be admitted: the Christ conception of the first centuries has something strange for present-day people; [this was already the case then, and to gain an understanding later on [in the course of time] is becoming more and more impossible. So the present point of view has developed: with regard to Christ, spiritual science comes to a similar conclusion as the Gnostic science of the first centuries. The Gnostics are often called sects, but they rose to the highest heights of human thought and feeling, which today's people cannot have much interest in. The followers of Gnosticism were far from adopting monistic views – a noble word for “materialistic”. The Gnostic does not find the original human being in the animal kingdom, but [for him] he is still a spiritual being; this being has not externally assumed a carnal body in the animal kingdom, but as a spiritual human being has brought himself more and more into alignment with the laws of the physical body. Incorporation has brought man to the situation in which he now is.

[And so the Gnostics asked:] How do we find the [original] human being? Each one [in] himself? On the one hand, we find what we have also become in terms of our soul life; on the other, we find a striving, a belief in a higher human nature. This enables the human being to unleash certain powers within himself so that he can uplift himself. He discovers [his] higher nature. Thus a sum of forces is hidden in the higher human nature. This is the view of the Gnostics: man is destined for a life in higher spheres; his life on earth is lower, lies below what he could be in spirit. Man's [physical] life does not correspond to his higher nature; but it is not lost; it is only important for physical progress [on earth]. The higher self has been preserved in the spiritual world. Eventually, this superhuman being was able to descend and work in human nature; at a certain point in time, a primeval human being, so to speak, was able to descend and work in human nature, who had been preserved in the spiritual world until then. This being is what Gnosticism conceived of as the Christ. He contains within himself the impulse to the highest that man can achieve. This moment [of descent] coincides, symbolically speaking, with the baptism of John.

[From the point of view of Gnosticism] people are sometimes more and sometimes less advanced. Gnosticism revered Jesus of Nazareth as the highest, most outstanding person in the development of the earth. We can characterize what happened to him at the age of thirty without shocking people: A person grows up, shows this or that development, until a certain point in life when a break occurs, something completely new enters the soul life, for which there seems to be no preparation at all. Some present this as something impossible, but there are upheavals, radical breaks in human life. Imagine such an upheaval - taken to the highest degree. Even if this turnaround is made on the smallest scale, the person feels like a new being, which he was not before. (The Gnostics assume such a turnaround when they speak of what occurred in Jesus of Nazareth at the age of thirty.)

The original man has found his way into the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. He was like an outer vessel; in the sense of the Gnostics, he is seen as the bearer of Christ. Thus, one cannot say that the Christ is identical with Jesus of Nazareth. But there was no new developmental epoch in the life of Jesus of Nazareth: that which had always been there in the heights of heaven, which had been preserved from the beginning, descended to earth and lived in the body of Jesus for three years. This is the infinite spiritual depth of the thought: the development of humanity has ascended to the Most High with God, has been saturated with the power of the Most High. A small circle of Gnostics could grasp the great significance of what had been given back to humanity.

We cannot go through all the individual stages of the Christ-ideas, but we can name a few, for example, in the case of the deep thinkers of the Middle Ages. They had the most intense faith, but it was not possible for them to elevate it to Gnostic ideas. It was impossible to think about Christian Gnosticism in the Middle Ages. Such thinking would have appeared to be fantasy. In the Middle Ages, the view was limited to what lies below the sphere of the Gnostics. They drew from Aristotle, [from the world of thought created by him] four hundred years before Christ; Aristotle was then the “tone-setter”. Spiritual flight was attributed to [the realm of] faith. Aristotle said: Everything that underlies the realms of nature is spiritual; only he did not accept the reincarnation of the human soul. He was interested in what can be recognized according to law, he was only interested in a unified God. [According to his view] the human soul separates from the unified divine substance with every birth. But after death, the soul does not return to the divine, but remains in the spiritual world as an individual human being. For Aristotle, the entire transcendental world is purely cognitive. Man looks back on his life on earth [after his death] and then finds his reward or his torment, eternal punishment and reward. This is related to the science of Aristotle – Franz Brentano, [a great connoisseur of Aristotle, has commented on it at length in his works]. The medieval scholars did point to a knowledge of the spiritual world, but for them [the cognitive approach to the spiritual] was excluded – that is the realm of gnosis, which is attained through knowledge.

[And so one can ask:] What is missing from the faith of medieval man? Well, what he lacks is the awareness, the conscious realization that man has also fallen intellectually. From this unconscious, spiritual science wants to raise him; this is then a new Christ consciousness, apart from all mythological and legendary aspects. The penetration of the ruling spirit into Jesus of Nazareth was only faith, but not knowledge. Thus humanity came to no longer be able to imagine what it means when the Christ takes possession of Jesus; it is nonsense for the materialistic thinking of the new age that from spiritual heights [the Christ presence as] something real descended to men. Only Jesus of Nazareth remains as an excellent human being.

Now, contradictions arose with ease when one sought clarification in the four documents [the gospels] and found differences. It is really child's play to show that they [in many ways] do not agree. [And one wonders:] Didn't they notice that earlier? It is easy to ascribe any folly to our ancestors, [as if] they had never read the Gospels. Thus Jesus of Nazareth became more and more blurred, [for many in modern times] he is only an exceptionally good person. That is flattering for the modern person; for him, Jesus of Nazareth is a person like all the others, only a little higher: like Plato, Socrates. Thus Jesus became the “simple man of Nazareth.” The simpler, the more general [his image became], the more people liked it, the more they believed that it corresponded to the historical truth. That is called “impartial research.” Only what is recognized as objective is objective. The greatest theologians believed that one should approach the subject without prejudice, assuming nothing to be true, but [what do they do?] They go and simply cross out [what is not apparent to them in the gospels]. Hence the question arises: “Did Jesus live?” No other result was possible [with such a way of thinking]. Outwardly, historically, the existence of Jesus cannot be proven. [Professor] Drews cum suis is absolutely right in the way he presents it. [He is consistent in his thinking]. Anything else would be like struggling for something that cannot be proven.

Spiritual science places itself in the context of culture; [it uses certain methods to gain insights into the spiritual course of human development], as discussed in the book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. This title was not chosen at random: it is not Christian mysticism that is meant, but rather that the Christ impulse is to be understood as the driving force of that which is found in external, physical reality. The most important impulse in the development of the earth is the Christ impulse; it is the center of gravity of this entire historical development. Spiritual science ties in again with what Gnosis wanted, but it does so from its own resources, quite independently. In pre-Christian times, the human soul functioned quite differently than it does today. It is a bad habit not to want to recognize that the human soul was different. [...] In the past, dream-like clairvoyance was a third state between sleeping and waking. Man knew then that there are spiritual beings, just as he knows today that there are plants and animals. The old legends and myths are images of what man has seen. The myths are transposed old clairvoyant experiences. But this clairvoyance had to be lost, because it was a prelude to the development of the ego in human evolution, to the development of the full ego of man in the physical world, of man's self-built existence.

This is the course of human development: from dim clairvoyance, it is to come to clear, conscious clairvoyance, firmly grounded in the future. In ancient times, there was no knowledge of the reasons for existence that was acquired other than through clairvoyance. [Although] Deussen [claims the opposite, it must be said] that only since the Greek period did [intellectual] knowledge of the external world emerge, actually only with Thales; Thales was the first. What comes from atavistic clairvoyance is not [philosophy]. In ancient times, the places where man rose above the ordinary state were the mystery schools, [from today's perspective, something between a university and a church. In these mystery sites, people could gain initiation]. The initiates recognized: the spirit reveals itself only in the ego, not in the powers of the soul; the ego is the center of the soul's being. But at first the spirit revealed itself only as God, who lived in all the people, as with the ancient Hebrews. Man's deepest being is directly divine; body and soul are only indirectly so. Through certain practices and exercises, the soul life can become independent of the body. The divine lives in the ordinary human being as he is in life; it reveals itself from the core of his being, the I. There were various initiation instructions, essentially four. The mysteries become an historical fact in the mystery of Golgotha - that was the Christ impulse! The Christ is the universal spirit; his life took place on the physical plane before all humanity, and is not lived out in a small way - as insignificant, before individuals, before the apostles and others - but representatively before all humanity. Thus there was a replacement of the old mysteries by the One. In the I, in the innermost being of the soul, lies the highest power of humanity. So we can rise again from the Fall.

The time since the I has been dependent on itself was preceded by the Christ impulse by only six hundred years. From this point on, man is completely placed in the world, which is perceived only through the outer senses. In natural development, we are dealing with leaps everywhere, and this also applies to the development of humanity. Thus, every time is a time of transition and our time is very special.

Some old forms are fading away, both moral and intellectual. Man is placed at the pinnacle of his own personality. Until today it was a time of preparation, [you could take it to heart or not]; but now increased powers must play in human nature. Souls are experiencing an increase of their powers. The last time this happened was in Greek times, six hundred years before Christ; then [this impulse] entered into human development [as the beginning of independent thinking]. Today we are at a similar point in time as six hundred years before Christ. But then the human soul was guided outwards into the physical world, now its only support is the ego; and in this ego of man the Christ consciousness must be established. It is a kind of repetition, but now inwards, internalized.

The center of the world is in this I. With our internalization, the highest impulses that can live in a person at all will arise - [it is] a spiritual return of the Christ within; [soul powers are developed] that can grasp the Christ in a new form; [can be experienced] by spiritual perception, not in the physical world. [This experience is not identical with the experience of the inner, mystical Christ, that is, with something that was already there.] Spiritual science shows us the inner, mystical Christ and the historical Christ. Anyone who only wants to believe in the inner, mystical Christ, not in the historical Christ, is mistaken. One also needs the historical Christ, because there would be no inner, mystical Christ without the historical Christ. The Christ-feeling in us depends on the spiritual sun as the eye depends on the light: it depends on the historical Christ. Without the latter there is no possibility of the inner Christ – it is the historical Christ who created the organ for the Christ-experience in the hearts of men.