The Esoteric Path to Christ

In the future human nature will develop certain powers which will have the effect that the individual, as soon as he has reached a certain age and has become properly conscious of himself, will have the feeling: ‘There is something in me which I must understand.’ This feeling will take hold of men more and more. In past times, even when human beings were fully aware of themselves, the consciousness which is now to come did not exist. It will express itself somewhat as follows: ‘I feel something within me which is connected with my personal ego. Strangely, it will not fit in with all that I have come to know since birth.’ One man will understand what is at work here; another will not. A man will understand it if he has carried the teachings of Spiritual Science into his life. Then he will know: ‘What I am now feeling is foreign to me, because it is the ego that has come over from earlier lives.’ This will oppress the heart, will cause fear and anxiety, in those who cannot explain it by repeated earth-lives. These feelings, which are not merely a theoretical uncertainty but a starving, a cramping, of life, will disappear through the perceptions given to us by Spiritual Science, which tell us: ‘You must think of your life as extended over earlier earth-lives.’ Then men will see what it means for them to experience the connection with the Christ-Impulse. For it is the Christ-Impulse which will give life to the whole retrospective view, the whole perspective of the past. A man will feel: ‘Here was this incarnation; there, that one.’ Then he will come to a time beyond which he will be unable to go without clearly understanding: ‘The Christ-Impulse was then on earth!’ Incarnations will be followed further back to a time when the Christ-Event was not yet there. This illumination of the retrospective view through the Christ-Impulse will be needed by men for their assurance in the future, as a necessity and a help which can flow into later incarnations.