Lecture I

It is just as if the Christ had said; ‘I will be such an ideal for you human beings that, when it is raised to a spiritual level, you will be shown that which is fulfilled in each human body.’ In his early childhood man learns from the spirit how to walk; he is shown by the spirit his way through earthly life. From the spirit he learns to speak, to form truth; in other words, be develops the essence of truth out of sound during the first three years of his life. And the life too, which man lives on earth as an ego-being, obtains its vital organ through what is formed in the first three years of childhood. Thus man learns to walk, to find ‘the way’; he learns to present ‘truth’ through his physical organism; and he learns to bring ‘life’ from the spirit into expression in his body. No more significant interpretation seems possible of the words ‘Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ And momentous is that saying in which the ego-being of the Christ comes into expression thus, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ Just as, unknown to a child, the higher spirit-forces are fashioning its organism to become the bodily expression of the way, the truth, and the life, so the spirit of man, through being interpenetrated with the Christ, gradually becomes the conscious vehicle of the way, the truth, and the life. He is thereby making himself, in the course of his earthly development, into that force which bears sway within him as a child, when he is not consciously its vehicle.