3. Rhythm in Breathing and Cognition

Many secrets are connected with an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. People often ask: How can I find a relationship to Christ? Certainly it is a question that is justified. But anyone with insight will know that it is a question that cannot be answered just like that. Let me make a comparison: we see objects by means of our eyes, but the eyes we do not see. For the eyes to be able to see they must be unable to see themselves. They see mirror images but not themselves. That which does the seeing cannot itself be seen. Since the Mystery of Golgotha man must see the spiritual world through the impulse coming from Christ just as he sees external colors through his eyes. We do not see the eyes through which the colors, etc. are seen, nor do we see the Christ impulse through which we see the spiritual world. This is why the Mystery of Golgotha is veiled in mystery and the history of the event is also veiled. Since the Mystery of Golgotha the historical event associated with it cannot be discovered by historic means. To seek for Christ historically like any other event in history would be like trying to induce the eye to see itself. It is inherent in the Mystery of Golgotha that Christ Jesus cannot be found like Plato, Socrates or any other historical personality, through historical documents. It lies in its very nature that accounts of it are not historical, they were given by human beings who were inspired. Accounts of the Mystery of Golgotha can always be proved not to be historical records in the usual sense. We would become spiritually ill in the course of human evolution in the moment it became possible to include the Mystery of Golgotha among other historical events. Nor in that case would we be able to see it rightly; if we saw it historically it would be like an injured eye seeing itself. A healthy eye sees objects but not itself. If a chip has become embedded in the eye it will see a dark space before it and begin to perceive itself; but that is abnormal perception. Similarly an abnormal perception of the Mystery of Golgotha would come about if it did not have an aspect which externally is imperceptible and therefore enables man to perceive spiritually. This is a secret connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. The remarkable thing is that this strange situation did not exist for man before the Mystery of Golgotha. In ancient times before Christ had descended to the earth man knew, through his atavistic clairvoyance, that Christ was there above in the spiritual world and that He would come. Hence there is remarkable prophetic evidence which shows there were human beings who were conscious, through direct personal experience, of the Christ who was to come. It is a paradox that man could know of Christ as long as He had not yet come to the earth. From the moment He had come man could no longer know of Him in the same way. Just as one experiences the eye when one perceives, so the Christ-event had to be experienced in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha, and not known historically.