Christ and the Human Soul III

There is no one upon whom such a picture as ‘Christ, as Judge at the Last Day’ (by Michelangelo) in the Sistine chapel can fail to make a deep impression. What really underlies such a picture? Let us take, not the deep esoteric fact, but the picture that is here presented to our soul. We see the righteous and the sinners. It is possible to present this picture differently from the way in which Michelangelo, as a Christian, has done. There is the possibility that at the end of the earth, men, seeing their Karma might say to themselves: ‘Yes, I have indeed wiped off my Karma, but everywhere in the spiritual there stand, written on tablets of brass, my guilt and sin, and these are of serious import for the earth; they must destroy the earth. As far as I am concerned, I have made compensation, but there the guilt stands, everywhere.’ That would not, however, be the truth; it might be there, but it would not be the truth. For through the fact of Christ's death upon Golgotha, man will not see the tables of his guilt and sin, but he will see Him Who has taken them upon Himself; he will see, atoned in the Being of Christ, all that would otherwise be spread out in the Akashic Record. In place of the Akashic Record, the Christ stands before him, having taken all upon himself.