Note by the translator: That this translation project begins with Ch. V from Valentin Tombergs Contemplations on the New Testament is occasioned by the fact that I only decided to start this study blog when I was editing my Dutch translation of this chapter for publication in book form. Back in 2014, a start was made in presenting this Bible trilogy in public by weekly readings of my working translation of the Contemplations of the Old Testament in the Chapel of the Castle in Oud-Zuylen near Utrecht under the title "The New Christianity - Towards the re-Christianization of the Low Lands" followed by weekly reading of the contemplations on the New Testament and the Apocalypse 2015 in the library of the Willehalm Institute in Amsterdam. On Easter Monday April 7 last, I celebrated this premiere by making a video in Oud-Zuylen (in Dutch) that it was exactly 12 years ago that it was, as far as I know, the first time that the New Christianity was under this term presented in the Low Lands, this New Christianity that was inaugurated during the refoundation of the Anthroposophical Society in 1923/24 by Rudolf Steiner as the heavenly ordained form in which anthroposophy was to be spread on earth. (See my many articles on this subject). Simultaneously with the weekly readings the texts of the working translations were put online and later as well the study by Valentin Tomberg on Rudolf Steiner's Foundation Stone Meditation. It is from these Dutch translations that the English translation of Ch. V presented here was made with the assistance of AI with cross-checks to the German original and the English translation "Christ and Sophia" published in 2006.
This translation project, as mentioned in the blog description, is part of the project "AGENDA 2033" to prepare the celebration in 2033 of the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Christ Jesus in the year 33 as the Spirit of the Earth and the "I-consciousness of Humanity and to further the calendar reform inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner. It arose after the English presentation in Amsterdam during Christmas time of my Dutch translation of "The Jesus Mysteries - Rudolf Steiner's Chronology of the Gospels and the Christ Prophecy of Zarathustra" from the third volume "Waking Up to Goethe" of Werner Greub's trilogy "How the Grail Sites Were Found - Wolfram von Eschenbach as a Historian", which can be seen on YouTube. Other works that are scheduled to be (re)translated and (re)published in the framework of AGENDA 2033 are, among others, those by the philosopher of the New Christianity Herbert Witzenmann and the seer of the New Christianity Are Thoresen. (See the many references to these authors on this blog). As an organ of AGENDA 2033 "The Vriend of God", based on a passage from C. 2 of these Anthroposophical Contemplations on the New Testament about the task of Vriend of God to realize the Kingdom of God, Heaven on earth.
INTRODUCTION
The nine Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount are not moral exhortations, nor poetic blessings, nor spiritual ideals. They are formulas of transformation — precise indications of how the human soul is reshaped when it allows the Christ‑impulse to enter its depths.
Chapter V of "Anthroposophical Contemplations on the New Testament" by Valentin Tomberg opens this hidden architecture. It shows how the Beatitudes unfold as a threefold path:
the first three: the trials of the whole human being,
the middle three: the metamorphoses of the soul,
the final three: the transformations of destiny itself.
Here the Beatitudes become transparent as initiatory stages, each revealing a different relation between the human being and the spiritual world. They illuminate how the Christ‑impulse works inwardly — in the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul — and outwardly, in the objective events of karma and world‑destiny.
This chapter asks for a reading that is not merely intellectual but participatory. For the Beatitudes are not doctrines to be understood; they are living forces that shape the soul according to the measure of its openness.
To enter this text is to step into the movement from the human being toward the Son, and through the Son toward the Father — the movement that stands at the heart of Christian esotericism.
* * *
1. Inner Transformations of the Soul‑Members of Man on the Path of Christian Spiritual Schooling
The two
preceding contemplations (III and IV) were devoted to the first three
Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount — as the formulae of the schooling of
human consciousness in the physical body, the astral body, and the etheric
body. The next three Beatitudes concern the purely soul transformations — as
this contemplation will attempt to show — which human consciousness can undergo
within itself on the path of realizing the Christ‑Impulse. The final three Beatitudes, however, refer to the objective
transformations of the events of destiny that prevail outside the soul. They
answer the question: how does the world (the supra‑human, the human, and the sub‑human) respond
to the fact that the soul and physical being becomes imbued by Christ? While the
middle three Beatitudes answer the question: how does the Christianization of
the soul‑members (the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul, and the Consciousness Soul) take place? the
first three Beatitudes shed light on the question through which trials and tribulations the whole human being must pass in order to reach the three stages of spiritual development in the sense of the Christ‑impulse.
Thus, one may characterize the first three Beatitudes as formulae of Christian‑oriented occultism; for the initiatory knowledge of occultism consists essentially in the fact that it embraces both the subjective, inner and the objective, outer — and embraces both under a cosmic viewpoint. This becomes especially clear in the Beatitude: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth,” where an inner condition of the soul is brought into connection with a cosmic future event.
The middle three Beatitudes may be characterized as psychosophical, for they concern the changes in the inner states of the human soul during the passage through the developmental stages indicated in the first three beatitudes.
The last three Beatitudes may be characterized as karmic, for they concern the changes in karma that are brought about by ascending those stages of development. At the same time, these Beatitudes refer to the working of the threefold spiritual being of the human being (Spirit‑Self, Life‑Spirit, and Spirit‑Man), which expresses itself directly in the transformations of destiny.
Only when the nine Beatitudes have become the object of a deeper knowledge in their totality can insight be gained into the nature of the human being of the future, who will have taken the Christ‑impulse into his whole being. Then one will also be able to confront sharply the anti‑Christian counter‑image of the ninefold human being — as he is intended to be brought forth from the nine spheres of the interior of the Earth — as the opposite of the first. For obscurity exists only as long as the object of contemplation remains in a mixed condition; once it becomes possible to separate one side and consider it on its own, a clear picture of the other side also arises.
After the inner composition and the resulting task of this contemplation have been outlined, we may now proceed with the continuation of the discussion of the Beatitudes. And we must indeed begin with the middle group, the psychosophical Beatitudes, since the first three Beatitudes were already the subject of the two preceding contemplations. Thus, the first task is to open a deeper understanding of the fourth Beatitude. To this end, several building‑stones necessary for this understanding must be gathered. One such building‑stone is found when one asks: What exactly is meant in the Beatitude by the 'hunger' and 'thirst' of the soul, and by its 'being satisfied'?
To answer this question, let us begin with the experience that physical existence offers through hunger and thirst. Through this ordinary experience one learns that quenching thirst and satisfying hunger are polar opposites. For in quenching thirst, one extinguishes the excessive fire of the metabolic activity of the body, whereas in satisfying hunger one adds fuel to this fire. In the first case the fire is limited; in the other it is stoked. The condition in which the body feels neither hunger nor thirst is the state of equilibrium between these two polarities — a harmonization of the bodily condition.
A similar polarity is also present in the soul experience of the human being. It consists in the fact that, on the one hand, impressions stream into the soul from the outer world, filling it with sensations and representations, and that, on the other hand, this stream from without encounters the stream of inner demands which the soul directs toward the world or toward the expectations it harbors regarding the world.
If the world conveys unsatisfying impressions to the soul, then the inner fire of desire is felt more strongly through the lack of fulfillment, and one may speak of a “thirsting” of the soul. If, on the other hand, the world brings no new desire‑awakening impressions to the soul, so that the life of desire finds fewer and fewer desirable things in the world and therefore turns inward upon the soul‑life itself, then a “hungering” of the soul arises.
But when it is a matter of deeper moral demands, expectations, and longings of the soul, then the soul experiences the balance between its inner appeal to the world and the inflow of impressions from without as justice. When the soul is primarily morally oriented, the relation between inner impulse and outer reality becomes the life‑question of justice. There the alternating “hungering” and “thirsting” of the soul becomes a “hungering and thirsting after justice.” For justice is the state of moral harmonization of the Sentient Soul, just as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst is the state of natural harmonization of the body. The sentient soul — that is, the soul‑being that lives in perceptions of outer impressions and perceptions of inner expressions of desire — is morally as dependent on justice as the body is dependent on food and drink.
Now the Sentient Soul is that part of the total soul‑being of Man that expresses the condition of the entire soul‑life. The contents of knowledge of the Consciousness Soul and the judgments of the Intellectual Soul bring about a change in the condition of the soul‑life only when they have become living sensations. The Sentient Soul expresses the way in which the human soul‑life is placed in life; whether the human being stands harmoniously in life or not — of this the condition of his Sentient Soul bears witness. For this reason, justice is not only the moral life‑element of the Sentient Soul itself, but also the concrete life‑expression of the entire moral condition of the soul. The degree of justice that Man expresses in his relation to the world — not merely demands from the world — is not the criterion of what he will become morally, but of what he has become.
That justice is the summarizing expression of the entire moral condition of Man — this was already known in antiquity and was also taught in the mystery schools. Thus, the initiate of such mysteries, Plato, described the doctrine of the fundamental moral qualities of the friend of wisdom, the philosopher, in such a way that the threefold human being has three “virtues” to develop, which, however, find their harmony and their summarizing outward expression in their common fruit: justice. The wisdom (Sophia) that the head‑human has to develop becomes courage in the breast‑human and becomes temperance, the self‑mastery of the impulses, in the lower limbs‑human — but in the expression of the whole human being toward the surrounding world, wisdom, courage, and temperance reveal themselves together as justice Harmony of the thinking, feeling, and willing human being was therefore the meaning of dikaiosýnē. It was the condition of the entire soul‑life of Man in which the equilibrium between the soul‑life dedicated to the spirit, the soul‑life dedicated to the body, and the soul‑life proper had been brought into being.
This harmony is something toward which the most important representatives of the spiritual life have always striven. How it can be attained in the present, however, and what it signifies on the path of spiritual knowledge — concerning this, the most essential things have been said in Rudolf Steiner’s book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds (GA 10), in connection with the development of the six‑petaled lotus flower: “A free soul that stands in equilibrium between sensuality and spirituality” is precisely that for which Man hungers and thirsts when he has entered into a living relationship with the Christ‑impulse. And the power that the human I, through its union with the Christ‑impulse, is enabled to unfold — the power that brings about this harmonization of the soul‑condition — is what is meant in the Beatitude that says: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied” ). The 'satisfaction' of the striving for the harmonious condition of the soul is precisely that harmony which arises as the consequence of the Christianizing of the Sentient Soul.
If the Sentient Soul denotes the condition of the human soul in the way it is placed within life, then the Intellectual Soul denotes that in the human being which adds something of its own to life. The Sentient Soul enables - be it harmonious or disharmonious - participation in life; the Intellectual Soul judges this life and the participation in it. What Man experiences in the world is owed to the Sentient Soul; what he says out of himself about the experience is produced by the Intellectual Soul. For the Intellectual Soul is the speaking soul. Concerning experiences and sensations, it has something to say from within itself; as such, it rises above mere experience to its estimation, to its judgment.
Rendering judgment is therefore the essential active expression of the Intellectual Soul. If this activity of the Intellectual Soul is not mechanized but remains within the proper human‑moral realm, then every judgment contains, in essence, a moral pronouncement. The intellectual soul continually exercises a judging activity — whether the human being is aware of it or not. To apply the Intellectual Soul means to judge, whether concerning oneself, other human beings, nature, or the world. For one cannot judge without attributing or denying value.
If this judgment arises from a healthy, that is, harmonized Sentient Soul, it will be just. If the Christ‑Impulse is alive in the Sentient Soul, this becomes the condition for the Intellectual Soul — provided the human being is of good will — to judge justly. But if the Intellectual Soul itself receives the Christ‑impulse, then something enters its judging activity through which the 'I' manifests itself more strongly, for the Intellectual Soul stands closer to the revelation of the 'I' than the Sentient Soul. Something then enters judgment that surpasses justice. For ordinary justice judges on the basis of past and present; it rests upon what the judged has become. Goodness, mercy, however, surpass justice in that they do right not only to past and present but also to present and future. They judge not only on the basis of what has become, but also in trust toward the positive future possibilities that goodness takes into account. In this sense goodness, mercy, is more just than ordinary justice, for it also does right to the future.
When goodness enters the judging of the Intellectual Soul, rendering judgment becomes an activity according to the “New Law” of the Sermon on the Mount. It surpasses the Platonic dikaiosýnē and gradually grows into the new manner of rendering judgment that corresponds to the spirit of the New Testament.
The consequence is that the karmic judgment that approaches a judging human being also becomes merciful. Whoever judges the human being not only as one who has become but also as one who is becoming, thereby creates the condition to be judged likewise. This does not occur directly, but through the detour of karma — but occur it will. The healing and harmonizing of human relationships in the social sphere is the consequence of receiving the Christ‑impulse into the Intellectual Soul, just as the harmonizing of the inner soul‑condition is the consequence of receiving Him into the Sentient Soul. These fundamental truths concerning the inner transformation of the Intellectual Soul through the Christ‑Impulse, and its consequences are expressed in the fifth Beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
While the Intellectual Soul permeated by Christ thus becomes a 'Mercy Soul', the present consciousness finds it difficult to form any mental picture of a 'merciful intellect.' All experience seems to suggest that the intellect — usually associated with a 'sharp mind' — carries a heartless ruthlessness, even an inner cruelty of judgment. Even if one brackets out its hardness and coldness, one can scarcely imagine anything positive in a 'soft' or 'warm' intellect; and it becomes difficult to think of it as still sharp. Vagueness and subjectivity seem the inevitable consequences of a 'softened intellect.'Yet it is possible to judge with concepts of utmost clarity that are inwardly not only crystal‑clear but also sun-warm. To show the world that this is possible — as a social reality — that is the task entrusted to anthroposophical human beings in their way of judging one another and judging the world by Rudolf Steiner and by the spiritual world.
If it is thus not easy today to already form a mental picture of the intellectual soul permeated by the Christ‑impulse, it is even more difficult to form a picture of the Consciousness Soul as it reveals itself in the sense of the Christ‑Impulse. For the experience that present-day life offers of the Consciousness Soul is that of an unartistic, amoral, materialistic objectivity — the “no‑nonsense” attitude that dominates science and much else. Can this objectivity become creative, moral, spiritual? That is the question the present state of consciousness poses to humanity.
The transformation that must occur in the Consciousness Soul through the Christ‑Impulse consists essentially in this: just as the Sentient Soul must become a 'Justice Soul', and the Intellectual Soul a 'Mercy Soul', so must the Consciousness Soul become a 'Conscience Soul.' Not merely conscience in the narrow sense of personal right and wrong, but a conscience of responsibility toward nature and humanity. The objectivity of the Consciousness Soul must remain; but it must become the bearer of a conscience projected outward.
Modern science has gathered immense factual knowledge of the kingdoms of nature; what is now required is that this knowledge be taken up into conscience. Through knowledge, nature has been made serviceable Man; through conscience, Man will become her conscious servant — giving to nature the moral‑spiritual that she needs, as she gives to Man the physical‑material that he needs.
This expansion of conscience into the kingdoms of nature arises from a deepening of knowledge of nature. For when facts of nature are exactly and extensively investigated , what is actually investigated are the consequences of the Fall. The probing consciousness cannot avoid encountering, within the totality of natural phenomena, the fact of the Fall — that the whole of nature is decadent humanity. This fact will be' discovered' as surely as gravity was once discovered. And this discovery will demand that Man turn his heart toward nature. Then the great catharsis will occur: the purification of the heart. For the heart is purified when it ceases to be cramped in itself and opens to the world.
Once the fact of the 'Fall' of nature becomes content of consciousness, the image of the total being that lies fragmented and decadent within nature will on the other hand also arise. This primordial image of Man who bears the whole of nature within himself, the Adam Kadmon of tradition, who as the “image and likeness of God” is now the longing of all creatures — this archetype will rise before consciousness out of fallen nature. The "pure in heart," those who have turned their hearts toward the fallen kingdoms of nature, will behold their God, the ideal archetype. In His image God becomes visible to them, once they will have first purified their hearts by beholding the tragic distortion of that image. Thus, it is not a question of beholding the Father‑God of the world, wen in the sixth Beatitude it is said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” - but of beholding the divine archetype of the All‑Human, who in the elemental world will be beheld as the hope of the resurrection of nature in the age of the Consciousness Soul.
He will however only be capable of being beheld by those human beings vision who will have extended conscience beyond merely individual and merely human concerns into the kingdoms of nature. This expansion will awaken the new natural clairvoyance, the “etheric clairvoyance” of which Rudolf Steiner spoke. The light that will make the elemental world, the "Shamballa” of the oriental sagas — visible, is the light of the conscience of the katharoi tē kardia, the pure in heart.
2. THE SPIRITUAL PATHS OF DESTINY ACCORDING TO THE LAST THREE BEATITUDES OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
The sixth Beatitude already led us beyond the boundaries of purely inner soul‑experience and placed us prophetically in an objective‑spiritual event concerning the destiny of humanity. The final three Beatitudes lead us still further into the realm of events of destiny.
Already in the sixth Beatitude, the matter at hand was not the Consciousness Soul alone, but the Consciousness soul oriented toward Spirit‑Self or Manas. For while it is the task of the Consciousness Soul to make nature into a matter of conscience, the subsequent task — the re‑harmonization of nature with the spiritual world — requires higher forces than those possessed by the Consciousness Soul. The Consciousness Soul can indeed recognize the fact of the Fall of nature, but to bridge the opposition between nature and spirit that arose through the Fall — for that, a higher element must enter. For the bridge must indeed be built from both sides: from the side of the spiritual world and from the side of the earthly.
If Man is to become this bridge, then the part Man that belongs to the spiritual world must enter into a connection with the part that belongs to the earthly world. The part that extends upward from below is the Consciousness Soul; the part that descends from above is the Spirit‑Self or Manas. When the Consciousness Soul fills itself with the awareness of the guilt and need of earthly life, it simultaneously lifts this awareness upward like a vessel — it then represents the need of the Earth. It can then meet a descending stream from above that receives the darkness of guilt and need, which the Consciousness Soul carried upward, into its own clear light. Then it can happen that the ascending darkness and the descending brightness form a unity — and then the rainbow of reconciliation between the two worlds arises.
The knowledge of this process of reconciliation, of the peace between the two worlds, bore for example Goethe in his soul. And this knowledge became for him the foundation of his theory of colors as well as of his fairy tale of The Beautiful Lily and the Green Snake. With this knowledge he approached the world of light‑phenomena and set himself the task of demonstrating that the great spiritual‑moral event of the reconciliation between the lower and the higher consciousness is, as it were, a reflection in the world of outer light‑phenomena. He was convinced that outer natural phenomena reveal the deepest secrets of inner life. Therefore, the world of colors was for him an ‘open secret’, and he opposed the Newtonian theory of light, because it threatened to banish from the world a great likeness of the path of reconciliation between the two worlds.
Human beings who bore such a vertically oriented ‘rainbow of reconciliation’ within their nature were also called “Knowers of the Seven Words” or also simply “Peacemakers.” To become a Peacemaker, the human being had to undergo two births: an earthly one, ‘out of earthly nature,’ and a heavenly one, “out of God.” The upper part of the human being had to be born into human consciousness in a karmically ordained way – without any involvement of arbitrary human will – just as the lower part of the human being is karmically ordained to be born through natural birth. And the “Rainbow of Peace” can only come about when both parts are present, which it has to connect. Therefore, the Peacemakers are not only children of a father and a mother, but also “Children of God.”
In this sense the seventh Beatitude may be understood: “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called Children of God.” (makárioi hoi eirēnopoioí, hóti autoì huioì Theoû klēthḗsontai)
Just as the Christ‑impulse brings about the inner harmonization of the Sentient Soul — Dikaiosynē (Justice) as an inner condition — so the human being who lives out of the Life‑Spirit (Buddhi) brings about an objective harmonization of the conditions of destiny of humanity. He not only “hungers and thirsts” after Justice, but co-creates it within humanity.
Acting in this way, he works as a representative not of the Luciferic‑human nor of the Ahrimanic‑human kingdom, but in the consciousness of a further kingdom — the Third Kingdom that is not of this world. Therefore, in the eyes of the representatives of both other kingdoms, he must appear strange; and by the representatives of that kingdom, whose victorious advance he has thwarted, also be hated. Thus, the destiny of the Life‑Spirit‑bearing human being among human beings will consist in his having to evoke much bewilderment and much hatred around himself. Yet he remains in steadfast, intuitive connection with the Third Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Life‑Spirit (Buddhi) is the permeation of the human being with the Christ‑impulse from the I downward into the Life‑Body.
Thus, the eighth Beatitude may be understood as the karma of those who represent the Life‑Spirit: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” (makárioi hoi dediōgménoi héneken dikaiosýnēs, hóti autoì estin hē basileía tōn ouranōn)
The final (ninth) Beatitude likewise speaks of persecutions of the bearers of the Christ‑impulse, but of persecutions, insults, and slander that arise not because of the balancing of justice, but because of the very being of Christ Himself. It is no longer merely human one‑sidedness and narrow‑mindedness that become militant, but something else. For no human being, as a human being, can consciously hate the being of Christ — this is possible only for entities belonging to the hierarchies of evil. Human beings can indeed become instruments of such entities when they take up the weapons of slander and persecution — but the hatred behind it, the hatred directed toward Christ, comes from another world. It comes from a world into whose depths no human being nor any being of the Hierarchies of Good has ever descended as deeply as the being of Christ Himself. It is the world of the layers of the interior of the Earth, which hates Christ as an individual being because He is the only being from above who has met the entities of the interior of the Earth face to face in their own realm — and whom they therefore recognized as their greatest enemy.
The karma of those human beings who stand in so intimate a bond with the Christ‑Being that they, working as it were as bearers of Christ, also call forth the hatred that is destined for Christ Himself — their karma consists in this: that as human beings, in their human destiny, they are placed in the midst of the polarity between the world of Evil and the Christ‑Being. Then their karma has become one with the cosmic karma of the Christ‑Impulse. This is the revelation of the ‘Eternal cosmic‑karmic Name’ or of the ‘Star’ of the human being — that is to say, of the Spirit‑Man (Atma). For then the true eternal destiny of the human being reveals itself, as it stands inscribed as the primal thought of the Father in the ‘Fixed Star‑Heaven’ of determinations of existence. And that the human being becomes conscious of his eternal star, that his fixed star begins to shine within its constellation — this is the ‘great reward in the heavens’ of which the final Beatitude speaks. For the highest blessedness intended for human beings by God the Father shines forth in those heavenly regions that correspond to the spheres of the fixed stars.
Thus, the culmination of the nine Beatitudes streams into the mysterious vastness of the starry heavens and commands a breathless stillness of the soul on the threshold of the secrets of the Father.
The ninth Beatitude: “Blessed are you when they revile you and persecute you, and when they speak all manner of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in the heavens” (makárioi este hotan oneidísōsin hymas kai diṓxōsin kai eípōsin pan ponērón rhēma kath’ hymōn pseudómenoi héneken emoû; chaírete kai agalliâsthe, hóti ho misthós hymōn polýs en toîs ouranoîs) —refers therefore to the karma that expresses itself in an elevation of the forces of the sub‑earthly layers. It is the karma of the relation to the sub‑human and sub‑natural world, which works from below upward (from the interior of the Earth into the sphere of the fixed stars), just as the eighth Beatitude referred to the karma of the human and natural world — in the horizontal direction from right to left (the Ahrimanic and Luciferic in the human being) — and the seventh Beatitude to the karma of the supra‑human and supra‑natural world — in the direction from above downward.
3. THE COSMIC MEANING OF THE BEATITUDES OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
The nine Beatitudes have thus far been considered in their meaning for the karma of humanity, now the question naturally arises: what do they mean for the karma of the world? For such a meaning they must have, since humanity is indeed an essential part of world‑events, and the Christ‑Impulse concerns not only the history of humanity but also its karma. - An answer to this question can be found when one considers the text of the Sermon on the Mount that immediately follows the ninth Beatitude (as given in the Gospel of Matthew). This text, which forms a kind of summarizing epilogue to the Beatitudes, culminates in two sentences:“Ye are the light of the world.” (Matt. 5:14)
These two sentences express what human beings who have taken up the Christ‑Impulse are to mean for the Earth and for the world.
What happens to these human beings themselves — that is what the sayings of the Beatitudes reveal; what effect upon the objective world‑process is through them made possible — that is what these sentences reveal. And they speak of the working of the humanized Christ‑Impulse in two directions: the direction of permeating of what is below, and in the direction of shining upwards. For the ‘salt’ is that which has permeated the Earth to give it its moral ‘flavor’; the ‘light,’ however, is that which shines forth from the Earth into the cosmos and transforms it — from the cosmic viewpoint — from a dark into a luminous heavenly body. In these two directions lies the objective destiny of humanity as such: on the one hand, to make the Earth visible to heaven; on the other, to permeate it inwardly with morality. The first part of this task can come to be understood when one considers that the Earth, when seen from the spiritual world, is a dark spot in space. It gleams only at those places where there are human beings who harbor thoughts and feelings of an unselfish nature, freed from the heaviness of the Earth and directed toward the spirit. Such spirit‑directed thoughts and feelings create the moral‑spiritual ‘illumination’, in which earthly matters can be seen from the spiritual world. This latter is a difficult process of knowledge for the beings of the spiritual world. It is just as difficult for them as for human beings on Earth is knowledge of the spiritual world. And if there were no selfless spirituality on Earth, a present‑day knowledge of both worlds would be rendered impossible by an abyss.
This abyss — which selfless spirituality on Earth continually bridges — is created by Lucifer. The ‘cloud‑layer’ of the Luciferic sphere that envelops the Earth creates the dark shadow that the Earth casts into the cosmos. And only those spiritual thoughts and feelings that are cultivated for unselfish reasons can break through this Luciferic cloud‑layer. Spiritual thoughts that are cultivated for selfish reasons can reach only the Luciferic layer and are held back there. If one considers the great number of people who practice religion, mysticism, and various forms of occultism, the Earth ought to shine brightly at almost every point. That this is not the case is due to the fact that such practices are not carried out in an unselfish way.
In the saying of the Sermon on the Mount, which was addressed indeed to the intimate disciples of Christ Jesus — “You are the light of the world” — the reference is but to the radiance that is to shine outward from the Earth into the cosmos by overcoming the Luciferic layer. It concerns a spirituality practiced in a selfless way. Such selfless spirituality is possible however only when it is not pursued out of personal interest or for the special interests of a group, but for the sake of humanity. This is expressed in the words of Christ Jesus: “One does not place one’s light under a bushel, but on a stand, and it shines for all who are in the house.”
Because spiritual life cultivated in the sense of the Christ‑impulse cannot serve special purposes, it is always a matter of community. It brings people together and unites them organically. But such a community must not set itself ‘goals’ and ‘purposes’ that dominate the general human striving. It must attain a level which, in relation to the level of ordinary habits, stands as a mountain stands to a valley.
The spiritual community formed by the Christ‑Impulse must be a ‘city on a hill.’ And it is precisely this difference that must make it visible in the world. Its justification lies in the fact that it is there for everyone, yet rises above the level of ordinary practices of power, struggle, and rivalry. The mere fact that it distinguishes itself from the general by the absence of the premises of power, struggle, and rivalry makes it as clearly visible as a city situated on a hill.
In the image of the city on a hill, which “cannot remain hidden” precisely because it lies on the hill, the solution to the question of the “exoteric and esoteric” nature of a spiritual community is given. What makes a community esoteric is the fact of its level — that level must not be betrayed, for it is the justification of such a community. And this level is at the same time what makes such a community exoterically fruitful. For if, for example, the unselfish cultivated spiritual community stands for the world as spiritual knowledge — that is, as pure spiritual science — without resorting to other methods of ‘proof,’ ‘scientific justification,’ and the like, then it will obtain its full justification as a guiding and inspiring presence. Indeed, it will prove itself all the more fruitful in other fields of life and research if it remains true to itself, uninfluenced by those fields. If, on the other hand, it is pursued for its own sake — that is, not out of love for the light, but in order to gain an advantage over others in scientific, social, aesthetic, or other domains — then its activity is no longer selfless, and such groups of human beings do not create light that makes the Earth visible to the spiritual world.
The ‘Moral Ether’ is destined to be the organ of the constructive activity of the Good in nature, just as salt can serve as an organ for the constructive I‑activity that normally works through the blood within the human organization. Through deeds that express the morally awakened will, human beings will permeate the events of nature with flashes of ‘Moral Ether’. And the beings of nature will orient themselves toward these streams of ‘Moral Ether’; these streams will represent the conscience of nature. Then nature will follow Man out of free affection — not as an enslaved servant, but as the soul of Kundry, who may now entrust herself to those who have become worthy of her trust. For then Kundry will be freed from the curse of double service — to Klingsor and to the Knights of the Grail — and will devote herself solely to the service of the Holy Grail.
The working of the Moral Ether, as the conscience of nature, is the secret of the white mechanical occultism of the future. Then the mechanisms will not dominate the forces of nature, but the forces of nature — following the ‘Moral Ether’ of Man — will set the mechanisms in motion. And it will be the will of Man that causes the moral ether to stream forth, the will in which the Christ‑impulse lives so strongly that it has led Man to the realization of the words of Christ Jesus: “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” There will be Father‑forces at work when Man has permeated his will — the will that causes this ‘Moral Ether’ to stream forth — with the Christ‑impulse, just as the prophets of the Old Testament worked and were persecuted (Matt. 5:12).
Just as the saying “Ye are the light of the world” refers to the overcoming of Lucifer in the objective outer world, so the saying “You are the salt of the Earth” refers to the struggle against Ahriman in the objective outer world. For just as Lucifer is the being who prevents the light of the Earth from streaming into the spiritual world, so Ahriman is the one who causes darkness upon the Earth. The spiritual‑moral darkness is also brought into nature by Ahriman. Yet this darkening is such only from a spiritual point of view; from the earthly point of view, it is a special kind of light. This special kind of light appears, for example, in electricity. In general, the most important weapon of Ahriman in nature is earthly electricity, which includes even finer forms than those known to humanity today. In the struggle against Ahriman for the sake of nature, the most important weapon of the beings of the spiritual world is the heavenly electricity. The heavenly lightning bolts often destroy and dissolve that which, from the sub‑earthly layers, had been prepared as a threat to the surface of the Earth — to nature and to humanity. Some preparations of evil are destroyed by the strokes of heavenly electricity. Nature, however, experiences this only as a struggle between two powers, a struggle that proceeds with alternating success. Neither the earthly electrical effects of Ahriman nor the lightning bolts of the heavenly electricity of Michael are convincing to nature in themselves. Driven by fear upon fear, she sighs for redemption and meanwhile serves now one side, then the other. Only the ‘Moral Ether’, which will reveal itself through Man, will she experience not as a power, but as a guiding call and a help.
A
phenomenon of this kind already existed in the past: A certain degree of
revelation of morally effective natural forces could occur through the
disciples of Christ Jesus after the event of Pentecost. Some of the miracles
mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles and in tradition can be explained simply
by the fact that the apostles stood for a certain time in a different
relationship to nature than was normally possible even then. One need only read
the Acts of the Apostles (Gr. Praxeis Apostolōn) from the viewpoint of the
relation between nature and the apostles, and one will find the statements here
confirmed. Indeed, one will find that the author of the Acts placed special
emphasis on making it clear to the reader that the apostles possessed a
new kind of magic — one that always triumphed when it came into conflict with
the old magic. The author of the Acts seems to have made it his special task to
convince the reader that the moral can work decisively upon the processes of
nature. It is not spells, amulets, talismans, and the like that are effective there, but the name of Christ Jesus and the inner permeation of the apostles with the Christ‑impulse (that is, with faith).
In the two sayings — about the light of the world and the salt of the Earth — the question is thus the objective significance for the world of that which in the nine Beatitudes was described as a human matter. This significance lies in the fact that through the reception of the Christ‑impulse, the Luciferic estrangement between heaven and Earth can be overcome, and the ahrimanically enslaved nature can gradually be brought closer being liberated.
The latter is namely a task that will only be able to reach its fulfillment in a distant future. For the “salt,” the working of which will become increasingly evident from the sixth, Philadelphian cultural epoch onward, will become — during the future Jupiter‑embodiment of the Earth — a factor governing the processes of nature just as gravity is today. For from the middle of the Jupiter‑evolution onward, gravity will lose its significance in nature. Then the beings of nature will no longer be bound to the theater of the Jupiter‑events by gravity; the force that prevents them from drifting away will be of a moral kind. The beings of nature will follow the ‘Moral Ether’ when they remain faithful to the planet Jupiter. The moral force of trust will keep them from drifting away — no longer the coercion of gravity, which on Jupiter will cease to exist.
With the completion of the contemplation of the nine Beatitudes, a step has been taken toward the knowledge of the working of Christ Jesus through the Word. But the nine Beatitudes signify the path of Man to the Son. A further step would be the contemplation of the path that leads through the Son to the Father. This further step is taken by Christ Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when He gives the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. The seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer express the relation in which Man can stand to the Father‑God when he has united himself with the Son in the sense of the nine Beatitudes. One understands the relation of the Beatitudes to the Lord’s Prayer in its deeper meaning when one uses the words of Christ Jesus —“No one comes to the Father except through Me” — as the key. For these words provide the inner thread that leads from the Beatitudes to the Lord’s Prayer.
Thus, the Lord’s Prayer is — in a deeper sense — a continuation of what is revealed through the Beatitudes. For this reason, the next contemplation will have the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer as its subject.
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