X. The Effect of the Christ Impulse Within Mankind

This can be very easily proven historically, and light could be thrown into every corner were there time to point out much that might come into question. At that time a very definite concept was implanted in mankind, the concept of individual freedom, of individual ego-capacity. If you consider the early part of the Middle Ages, you will still find everywhere that the value of the individual, in a certain sense, depended upon his position in the community. A person inherited his standing, his rank and position from his father and his kinsmen, and in accordance with these impersonal things, which are not consciously connected with the ego, he acted and worked in the world. Only later, when commerce expanded and inventions and modern discoveries were made, did the ego-consciousness begin to extend itself, and we can see arising everywhere in the European world the external reflection of this Consciousness Soul in very definite forms of municipal government, municipal constitution, etc. From the history of this city of Hamburg, for example, it can easily be proven how these things have developed historically. What in the Middle Ages was called the “free city” is the external counterpart of this breathing of the ego-conscious soul through humanity. And if we now allow our glance to sweep into the future, we may say: We are now about to develop this personal consciousness within the Consciousness Soul. All the demands of the modern age are nothing but the demands of the Consciousness Soul which mankind is unconsciously expressing. But when we look still further into the future, we see spiritually something else. The human being then rises in the next cultural epoch, to Manas or Spirit-Self. That will be a time when men will possess a common Wisdom in a very much greater degree than at present; they will be, as it were, immersed in a common Wisdom. This will be the beginning of the feeling that the innermost kernel of the human being is at the same time the most universal. What is looked upon as the possession of the individual, in the present sense of the word, is not yet so on a higher plane. At present there is a notion, closely linked with the individuality, with the human personality, that human beings must contend with one another, must have different opinions. Men say: if we could not have different opinions we would not be independent human beings. Just because they wish to be independent, they must hold different opinions. That, however, is an inferior point of view. Men will be most peaceful and harmonious when they, as separate persons, become most individualized. As long as men are not yet fully overshadowed by Spirit-Self there will be opinions which differ from each other. These opinions are not yet experienced in the true, innermost part of their being. At present there are only a few forerunners of things experienced in the depths of the soul, and these are mathematical and geometrical truths. These cannot be put to the vote. If a million people were to say to you that 2x2=5 and you perceive in your inner being that it is 4, you know that this is true and that the others must be wrong. It is as though someone were to maintain that the sum of the three angles of a triangle does not amount to 18o degrees.