Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 12 September 1906

18. The Meaning of Christ-Jesus

Only after the world-life had descended to the lowest point, into physical existence, into each individual physically embodied human being, only then could humanity evolve upward. Historically this descent of the world life took place in the appearance of the Christ in a personality. There the life of the world stood before the eyes of man in person. God Himself had descended into man and lived the divine life in a physical existence before all men.

Before mankind also spiritually completely merged into the material life, there had to appear a personal incarnation of the life of God on earth. If mankind had made the passage through materialism without the world life incarnating itself in the personality of the Christ Jesus, it would have completely lost the consciousness of its divine origin, its divinity would have sunk and been submerged forever in the life of the senses. But indelibly it impressed itself on the consciousness of mankind that Christ lived, that a divine being dwelt among men and gave the visible proof that there is a divine life in the world and in man. Even the greatest doubts through which individuals had to pass could not destroy the memory that God's Son had walked among men. That was the light that had shone on man, that was the word of God that had reached man's ear. That could not be forgotten forever.

But it had to fade from memory for a time. Even the last external support had to be snatched away from man. He had to be put completely on his own feet. The world life eluded for a time the looks of the people. Man had not only to get to know death at the end of each life through many incarnations, but he had to learn to understand once what death has to mean for the whole world at all. He did not live the real life for a while. His going up in the material was a continued dying.

But through the descent of the Son of God, a seed of new life had been planted in humanity, and after passing through the death of materialism, this seed was able to sprout again. For a time mankind had to forget what power had been embodied in the Christ Jesus, but then it was to come fully to its consciousness. Only the life of the world had veiled itself from the eyes of men, in order then, when men had become independent, to arise anew before them.

It was with us all the days, only we did not see it; but it will arise anew and be with us until the end of the world. The appearance of the Christ life in a personality first led men to the proper appreciation of the personal life in physical existence. In order that this appreciation of the personality could occur, the highest had to live once in a personality among the people. In the Christ Jesus people had to learn that the physical body is a temple of the Godhead. This impressed itself so deeply on mankind that the consciousness of the value of the personality finally led to an overestimation of the physical, and that over it the higher worlds were forgotten. Man worshipped only the physical atoms, but no longer saw the world life animating them. Great personalities emerged, but they no longer recognized the higher life.

The sun was hidden behind clouds, and without spiritual light mankind had to walk its way for a time. God-forsaken it was and completely on itself. Outside it found no more help and looked now for the strength to the life only in itself. Self-reliant people had to become, in order to recognize thereby that the divinity, which works outside in the world, which had withdrawn itself from their looks for a time, works also in them in each individual.

This transition from the belief in the outer God to the recognition of the inner God, all mankind has to go through, and gradually all will pass again from the darkness of doubt and not knowing God into the clear recognition of the Divine in their own breast, And this inner Divine then leads them back along the same path, through the physical, to the recognition of the spiritual. The physical is that which leads man down, but also that which leads him up. Through the physical personality goes the way to the eternal. As man enters the body from the outside, this is a process of darkening, a turning away from the spirit, a sinking down into the condensation of physical matter, a darkening, similar to when one enters from the bright sunlight into a dark room. But in the darkness of this physical body man found the greatest treasure, a treasure he had to lift; he found himself; there his I had moved in, the germ of God, slumbering there under the cover of the physical body. With this I his consciousness had to connect. Then, with this I and in this I, he could look out again through the physical shell into the environment. Through the physical body he could now look out. And now he learned that seen from the inside, the physical body is not the same as seen from the outside. He first learned the true value of the physical condensation. It gave his ego a shell in which it could manifest itself, but at the same time it became the means by which the ego could enter into conscious connection with the physical and with the higher worlds. And just the physical body, which darkened the spiritual world for him during the descent, now became illuminated and bright and the passage point for the light and the higher life. Thus, on the one hand, the physical body became a shell for the ego, which closed it off from the environment; just as the body of Jesus of Nazareth became a shell for the world life, in which it could dwell for a time; but on the other hand, the physical body became the threshold to the higher existence, the organ for recognizing the spirit of the world in the world of forms around us and for receiving the light of the spirit of God. It had to become a temple in which the divine I dwells consciously.

Christ had to die because of this, because the I entered the darkening by moving into the physical body. This meant a crucifixion. And in the physical body the I remained at first as if imprisoned, as if buried; through two and a half days until the third day the body of Jesus, the personality, was without life. Thus the meaning of the Christ's life remained hidden behind the personal appearance of Jesus of Nazareth for the whole mankind during two thousand years. Only in the third millennium - corresponding to the third day after the death of Christ - mankind will realize the full meaning of Christianity. Then Christ will be resurrected in mankind; and consciously the individual human beings will become partakers of the Christ-life. All mankind together will then form a temple in which Christ dwells.

So, on the one hand, physical existence stands as a partition separating us from the spiritual, but on the other hand, it also stands as the bridge to the spiritual. Up to the physical existence the I, the germ of God was sunk. The appearance of the Christ Jesus proved this to mankind. But this physical existence leads over to the spiritual. As a seed is placed in the earth, so the I was sunk into the physical existence. As the seed sprouts in spring, so must the I sprout out of the physical, it must illuminate the physical shell from within. Then there is repeated in the individual human being what Christ always means in the world, the sprouting of all living things out of physical matter, and what he has once portrayed in a human being, the coming forth of the life of God out of a personality. When the I has reached maturity, in the physical shell, then it can be born out into the environment and enrich the environment by a new divine power, just as at every physical birth the environment is enriched by a new physical form. The birth of the Christ represents the becoming conscious of the I in the physical human being - the death and the burial are the going up of the I in the physical; the resurrection means the conscious coming out of the physical. When Christ was born into the world, the I in man first began to develop into self-consciousness. Then for a time it confused itself with the personality, and finally, when it had reached maturity, it stepped beyond the threshold of the personality and united itself with the life of the world and rose as a new, greater, spiritual thing.