This Classic work is now copyright expired and therefore in the public domain.

An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE WORLD AND MAN

page 61 of 63 | page 1 | An Outline of Occult Science - home

And in Christ the lofty Sun-spirit appeared in human form as the great ideal for human life on earth. At His coming, all mystery-wisdom had in some respects to take a new form. Up to that time this wisdom had existed exclusively for the purpose of enabling man to put himself into such a condition of soul in which he would be able to view the kingdom of the Sun-spirit as something _outside_ of earthly evolution. Henceforth it was the mission of Mystery-wisdom to make man capable of recognizing in the incarnated Christ the Primordial Being. From this Primordial Being man was enabled to understand the natural and spiritual worlds.(24)

At the point in His life at which the astral body of Christ Jesus contained everything which it is possible for the Luciferian influence to conceal, He came forward as the Teacher of humanity. From that moment, the faculty was implanted in human earthly evolution for assimilating that wisdom whereby the physical goal of the earth may gradually be reached. At the moment when the Event of Golgotha was accomplished, human nature was endowed with another faculty, that by which Ahriman's influence may be turned into good. Henceforth man was able to take with him through the gate of death that which saves him from isolation in the spiritual world. What happened in Palestine was the central point, not only of human physical evolution but also of the other worlds to which man belongs; and when the "Mystery of Golgotha" had been accomplished, when the "death on the cross" had been suffered, Christ appeared in that world where souls sojourn after death, and set limits to the power of Ahriman. From that moment the region which the Greeks had called the "realm of shades" was illuminated by that flash of the Spirit indicating to its dwellers that light was to return. What had been gained for the physical world by the "Mystery of Golgotha" cast light also into the spiritual world.

Up to this event post-Atlantean human evolution had been a time of ascent in the physical sense-world, but of descent as far as the spiritual world was concerned. Everything which flowed into the sense-world proceeded from what had been in the spiritual world from remote ages. Since the coming of Christ, those who attain to the Mystery of Christ are able to take with them into the spiritual world what they have won in the physical. And from the spiritual world it then flows back again into the earthly sense-world, since reincarnated souls, on re-entering earth-life, bring with them what the Christ-impulse between death and a new birth, has bestowed.

What flowed into human evolution with the appearance of the Christ, acted in it like a seed. Only slowly can this seed mature. Only the smallest part of these profound new wisdom teachings, up to the present time, has reached down into physical existence. Christian evolution has just barely begun. During the successive periods of time following the appearance of the Christ, this Christian Evolution was able to reveal only so much of its inner essential nature as the humanity, the peoples of that time, were capable of receiving; only as much as they could grasp with their faculties of comprehension. The first form into which this essence of Christianity could be poured may be described as a comprehensive ideal of life. As such it was opposed to those forms of life which had been developed in post-Atlantean humanity. The conditions operating in human evolution since the repopulation of the earth in the Lemurian period have been described above. Accordingly, humanity can be traced back to different beings who, coming from other worlds, incarnated in the bodily descendants of the ancient Lemurians. The various races of man are a consequence of this, and the most diverse vital interests appeared in these reincarnated souls, as a result of their Karma. As long as all this was being worked out, there could be no ideal of "universal humanity." Human nature originated in unity, but earthly evolution up to the present time has led to division. In the figure of the Christ, we see an ideal which opposes all division, for in the man who bears the name of Christ there lives the lofty Sun-being from Whom every human ego is descended. The Hebrew nation still felt itself to be a nation, and each individual a member of that nation. When once the idea was grasped that in Christ-Jesus there lives the ideal Man who stands above all that tends to divide humanity, Christianity became the Ideal of an all-Embracing brotherhood. Above all individual interests and relations, the feeling arose in some that the innermost ego of all human beings is of the same origin. (In addition to all the earthly forefathers, the great common Father of all humanity appears. "I and the Father are one.")

Next