Chapter XXIV. THE PENTECOST EVENT

1. The Organ of the Pentecost Revelation

In the preceding contemplation an attempt was made to express the spiritual fact that, alongside the written Gospels‑reports, there exists an ‘unwritten Evangelium’: the life‑tableau of Christ Jesus, which has, as it were, remained standing in the etheric aura of the Earth. This indestructible and indelible Evangelium is — and will in the future increasingly become — the source of that body of knowledge concerning the Christ‑event, which took place nineteen centuries ago that can be attained on the path of imaginative vision, inspired cognition, and intuitive experience.

    But this ‘unwritten Evangelium’ has significance not only for the present and for the future – it has also had an immense significance in the past, indeed already almost immediately after the events of the Mystery of Golgotha. For in the forty days between the Mystery of Golgotha and the Ascension there took place, in essence, the disciples’ experiencing of the scenes of the life‑tableau of Christ Jesus. The ‘instruction of the Risen One’, the instruction that the disciples at that time received from the Risen One, consisted in the arising of images before their souls, each of which awakened an image referring to the time of His life and deeds before the Mystery of Golgotha, and as it were united itself with the awakened image from the past. Thus, before the souls of the disciples the images appeared always in pairs: an image as a revelation of the Risen One, and an image of His life and deeds before the Mystery of Golgotha. And it was always so that the first image was experienced, as it were, as the higher meaning and fulfilment of the second image. In this way the Risen One led the souls of the disciples through the scenes of his life‑tableau, yet in such a manner that each scene was simultaneously experienced as an imaginative expression of a higher spiritual truth. It was indeed instruction – and that which was taught was the content of the ‘unwritten Evangelium’.

    Then it came to pass that the instruction given through imagination ceased. The images disappeared from the disciples’ experience, and the form of the Risen One Himself vanished as well. This occurred on Ascension Day. From that day onward a time of grief began for the disciples, for they experienced themselves as empty and forsaken. The world of meaningful images had been swept away; into darkness and silence their souls were now submerged. The grief the disciples endured at this moment is scarcely comparable with any kind of greif that one may experience in ordinary life. For it was not caused by the presence of something grievous or painful, but by the absence of everything that gives the soul life and content. In this condition of soul, every ‘positive’ suffering is but a relief: sharp pain is indeed also an experience and therefore belongs to life, whereas the grief of emptiness is not an experience at all, but a state in which the soul recognizes itself as nothing.

    The experience by the disciples of the death of the soul was what preceded Pentecost. And this experience was the necessary preparation for that event. For what was at stake in that event was the experience of the resurrection of the soul – an experience that could follow only upon that of the death of the soul. Yet this grievous preparation for the Pentecost event was lightened by a certain circumstance, namely by the fact that the pain of this preparation was, for the circle of disciples, a common and therefore a shared one. The loneliness experienced by the disciples was a spiritual one – but in human terms it signified precisely a bond that united the circle of disciples in the deepest way. For shared grief is the most powerful means of binding human beings to one another – and the grief experienced by the disciples proved itself to be the bond required to unite the group of disciples into the organ of the Pentecost revelation.

    For a special kind of unification of the group of disciples was necessary for the coming‑into‑being of the Pentecost revelation. And this unification had to be such that it rested not only upon a common disposition, but above all upon a commonality reaching into the deepest foundations of sentient life. To this end, the sentient bodies of the disciples had to be united with one another in a manner corresponding to the way in which the twelve streams of the supersensible heart of the human organism are united. It was, as it were, a matter of forming the group of disciples into an organ corresponding to the inner structure of the supersensible heart‑organ. For the experience of the resurrection of the soul had to be lived in the heart – yet it had to be lived by a heart capable of representing humanity.

    And such a heart had to be formed – a heart of humanity, consisting of a group of human beings whose sentient bodies had been united through the enduring of a common grief in a manner resembling the way in which the petals of a flower are united with one another. Thus, the community of disciples at the moment of the Pentecost event presented a ‘twelve‑petalled flower’, the individual ‘petals’ of which were arranged around a center. This center was represented by a figure who, as the thirteenth, occupied the central place in the circle of disciples. In ecclesiastical tradition she was designated and presented as Mary, the mother of Jesus – in the gnostic‑esoteric tradition she was characterized as the ‘Virgin Sophia’. Mary‑Sophia was the ‘heart of the heart’, that is to say, she formed the center of the circle of the Twelve, which at the hour of Pentecost was, as it were, the ‘heart of humanity’.

    Of the central significance of Mary‑Sophia in the circle of the Twelve for the coming‑into‑being of the Pentecost revelation one has always been aware – both in the first centuries after Christ and in the late Middle Ages. This knowledge also found expression in art. Thus a miniature of the Syrian Codex (586 after the birth of Christ), preserved in the Bibliotheca Laurenziana in Florence, represents the Pentecost event as follows: Mary standing in the midst of the Twelve, the Holy Spirit hovering above her head in the form of a dove and pouring the stream of revelation directly upon her, while as a consequence tongues of fire flare up above the heads of the Twelve. Mary‑Sophia is shown in a light‑purple mantle (maphorion) over a blue robe (chiton). The whole group of figures is surrounded by motifs of blooming flowers and covered from above by an encompassing, inverted chalice.* This image of the circle of Twelve with Mary‑Sophia at its center leads us to a question without whose answer the Pentecost event cannot be understood, namely the question concerning the intrinsic nature of Mary‑Sophia and her participation in the coming‑into‑being of the Pentecost revelation.

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* Carucci, p. 140; Kondakoff Ikonograya Bogomateri, Vol. 1, p. 187

2. Sophia and the Pentecost Event

In the Contemplations on the Old Testament the being of Sophia was already spoken of in connection with Solomon and with the event of the baptism in the Jordan; here it will not be a matter of repeating what was said there, but an attempt must be made to carry the understanding of the Sophia‑being a step further and to deepen it. It is first of all important not only to bring the cosmic being of Sophia a step closer to comprehension, but also to awaken a perception for the spiritual‑historical tragedy of this being. For spiritual beings are not merely ‘principles’, but living entities who also possess a kind of ‘biography’; only, the biographies of spiritual beings encompass many thousands of years, whereas human biographies are limited to decades.

    The first encounter with the reality of the Sophia‑being takes place in the present within human thinking that strives to understand the divine Trinity as unity of three distinct principles in their revelation in the whole cosmos. For the knowledge of the unity of the Trinity as it reveals itself in the whole cosmos is an event in the thought‑life of Man that goes beyond the thought‑life alone and points to an encounter outside ordinary thinking — an encounter that on the one hand graces the thought‑life, yet on the other hand is not itself a creation of the thought‑life. This encounter on the field of thinking can be the first experience of the reality of Sophia. For Sophia reveals herself above all through the fact that she brings about the harmony of all spiritual Hierarchies, through which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit reveal themselves as active for human consciousness.

    What in the practice of abstract thinking is called ‘synthesis’ becomes an experience of knowledge through the touching of the ascending thought‑life by the being of Sophia. This being brings about the cognitive perception of the consonance of the divine‑spiritual world. She brings about this perception quite literally in the form of consonance, for she is an inspiring being who can meet the ascending human thinking.

    To encounter this being, consciousness must — even if only for a moment — ascend two steps higher than ordinary object‑consciousness. This ascent is necessary because the Sophia‑being is, for the worlds of object‑consciousness and of imaginative consciousness, essentially mute. She is mute in these worlds because she does not possess the power of imagination, the capacity to create imaginations. She does not possess this capacity because it was ‘stolen’ from her by Lucifer. This occurred around the time in the spiritual history of the Earth when the Fall took place. At that time Lucifer appropriated the imaginations of Sophia by making her serve him rather than placing himself in her service. He used the imaginations of Sophia for the purpose of creating a world that was to be built out of these imaginations.

    Yet this world was to be built out of these imaginations in such a way that it did not reveal the consonance of the divine world, but the glory of Lucifer himself. In this manner the imaginations of Sophia were rejected and transformed by Lucifer into their opposite — a world of falsehood came into being. This world of falsehood became the so‑called ‘Luciferic sphere’ surrounding the Earth, whose outwardly perceptible physical expression is the cloud‑region. The Luciferic sphere is the false paradise, the false spiritual world, from which those visions of self‑seeking beatitude arise that appear so often in the religious life of the peoples.

    The danger of this sphere lies not only in the fact that it indulges the egoism deeply rooted in human nature, but also in the fact that it is actually built out of the imaginations of Sophia — that is to say, out of images of extended cosmic truth — and that it can therefore work seductively upon the not‑yet‑fully‑awakened conscience. For falsehood in the cosmos is not mere wild fantasy, but misused truth. The truth of the imaginative revelation of Sophia was misused by Lucifer in the sense that it was first broken into fragments and then reassembled in another context. The radiant wisdom of God thus became the shining garment of Lucifer.

    In this way ‘Isis‑Sophia, the Wisdom of God’ was slain by Lucifer for the lower worlds — for thereby Sophia became a mute being with respect to the two lower realms of existence. The creative power of imagination was taken from her, and as a consequence she became a colorless, ineffective being, condemned to passivity with regard to earthly events. The image of the ‘Mater dolorosa’, the sorrow‑bearing Mother, is the one that most fittingly expresses the tragic condition of the Sophia‑being. For Sophia is a giving being, inwardly filled with the gifts of wisdom, but gifts which she can bestow only when a human consciousness enters her sphere; yet reaching down into the lower worlds is impossible for her because of the loss of the imaginative power that was taken from her by Lucifer.

    The gifts that Sophia bears within her are of an entirely different nature from the gifts of other hierarchical beings. For she bears within herself an internalized, inner wisdom that is not merely the shining‑through of the light of the Godhead, nor the mere overview of the vastness of the cosmic chronicle, the Akasha Chronicle. No, the wisdom to which this being owes her name is neither a direct revelation of the divine that stands above this order, nor a summary of the cosmic memory, the Akasha Chronicle, as it is present to the gaze of hierarchical beings, but a soul‑born remembrance rising from the inner depths of the soul.

    It is a wisdom that is pure creativity of the soul — yet at the same time a creativity of the soul such that the entire result of the previous cosmos arises inwardly from her own being as the primordial intention for the present cosmos, as the ‘plan’ for this cosmos. Therefore, Sophia is the spiritual archetype of the soul of humanity — not only in the sense of the tragic destiny of the soul increasingly being silenced in the world, but also in the sense of that internalized wisdom which is possible only in and through the soul.

Now, however, the tragic path of Sophia has been reflected in the history of the human soul to the extent that the formative power of the truth was likewise taken from the human soul: the power of imagination became subjective fantasy, bearing within itself the tendency toward the fantastic. Thus, the soul’s capacity to create imaginations out of itself lost its inherent truth. The soul became mute and was surrounded by a shell of self‑seeking interests that had taken possession of its former power of imagination.

    Thus there exists a kinship of destiny between the true soul‑being of Man on earth and the Sophia‑being in the spiritual world. In earlier times one was aware of this kinship: for this reason, an astral body (sentient body) that had been purified of the shell of self‑seeking interests to such an extent that the true soul‑being could thereby come to expression was designated as a “Virgin Sophia.” In this sense the mother of Jesus, Mary, was also called a “Virgin Sophia.”

    For she had — as a result of rather intricate experiences and interventions from the spiritual world — an astral body that was so purified that it could receive the revelations of the Sophia‑being and let them stream forth as soul‑born inspiration. This characteristic of Mary was precisely the reason why she occupied the central place within the circle of the Twelve at the coming‑into‑being of the Pentecost revelation. Without her, the revelation would have been merely spiritual: there would have been twelve prophets, connected with the spirit only in the sense of the ancient order of prophecy.

    Through the involvement of Mary, however, something entirely different could occur: the hearts of the disciples resonated, and the content of the Pentecost revelation was at the same time experienced by them as a personally human conviction. And through such a manner of experiencing, they did not become prophets, but indeed apostles. For there exists a tremendous inner difference between prophecy and apostleship: a prophet was an impersonal herald of the spiritual revelation — an apostle, however, bore that spiritual revelation within his soul. And this latter became possible only because the spiritual revelation of the Pentecost event could become soul through Mary, and as soul could be transmitted by Mary to the circle of the disciples.

What thus formed itself in the realm of the human on earth became an organ for the expression of what occurred from out of the spiritual world. For in the spiritual world, at the hour of the Pentecost event, something of great weight took place: the muteness of the Sophia‑being came to an end, and she could reveal herself again in a speaking manner. She could reveal herself in speech in such a way that not individual initiates lifted themselves into her sphere and she could inspire them there, but in such a way that she could actively descend and pour herself into the embodied waking‑consciousness of human beings on earth.

    It was not that Sophia was reached by this group of human beings — this had happened before — but that she, for the first time, could reach a group of earthly human beings. This fact meant that — for the duration of the Pentecost event — for the first time since the Fall the resistance of Lucifer was overcome. For the time of the Pentecost event, the obstacle that Lucifer had erected between Sophia and the realm of human waking‑consciousness was removed. The connection with the realm of earthly destiny, which had been interrupted by Lucifer, could be restored. And it could be restored because, on the one hand, a sum of imaginations had returned that had remained untouched by the influence of Lucifer, and on the other hand because Lucifer himself, through his sphere of falsehood, allowed the revelation of Sophia — through the exertion of his entire being — to pass through untarnished.

In order to approach these matters with a more pictorial understanding, the following diagram may offer some assistance:

The diagram above—though not complete, for the entire process is far more intricate—offers an image of the cooperation between the various forces at work in bringing about the Pentecost revelation. It concerns the relationship between the four worlds of consciousness. In the world of waking consciousness (below) stands the circle of the Twelve, with the open chalice at its center, the chalice which Mary depicts.

    Directly above this circle, in the world of imagination—at the threshold of waking consciousness—stands the life‑tableau of Christ, present as a lasting imaginative reality. This tableau was placed where the imaginations of Sophia had been deprived upward into the realm of Lucifer. It consists of imaginations which, because they were also physically real events, remained inaccessible to Luciferic influence. At the same time, they form the missing link between the world of waking consciousness and the inspirative world of Sophia.

    Yet between the inspirative world of Sophia and the imaginations of the life‑tableau of Christ there still lies the Luciferic sphere itself. During the time of the Pentecost revelation, however, this sphere became permeable to the Sophia revelation descending from above. This became possible because Lucifer experienced an inner reversal at the Mystery of Golgotha. The penitent Lucifer became a bridge of humility across the sphere of the lies he himself had created in the past. Thus the path of the Sophia revelation was led through the Luciferic sphere—indeed, through the very being of Lucifer. In the hour of the Pentecost event, Lucifer surrendered himself entirely to the impulse of Sophia: he became one with her and led her through his being downward to the life‑tableau of Christ, where it reached the souls of the human beings.

    In reality there occurred a union of the working of Sophia and that of Lucifer: this unified working of both beings is designated in the Gospel of John as the “Paraclete,” the “Comforter.” The Paraclete is not merely the Holy Spirit as the third hypostasis of the divine Trinity, but such a revelation of this third hypostasis that therein Sophia and Lucifer worked together, inasmuch as Lucifer placed himself humbly at the service of the impulse of Sophia. And this submission of Lucifer to the impulse of Sophia had not only the consequence that the Sophia revelation, in an undimmed form, reached the souls of the human beings; it also had the consequence that Lucifer, from out of himself, infused into the Sophianic revelation the inspiring fire of enthusiasm and joy. 

    The Paraclete, the Comforter, could appear as an active reality only because the same spirit that had brought about the isolation of souls now also brought the enthusiasm for the reunion of souls.

    This fact is mentioned in passing in the Acts, where it is said that some of the bystanders had the impression that the apostles “were filled with sweet wine.” The Dionysian enthusiasm that was indeed present gave an outsider the impression that this was the kind of ecstasy produced in the Bacchic cult through wine. It was, of course, a misunderstanding—but one that points to the essential fact that among the apostles there reigned an enthusiasm evoked through the participation of Lucifer.

    Above the Luciferic sphere—continuing the explanation of the diagram—stands, in the world of inspiration, the being of Sophia, depicted as an inverted chalice. She is inwardly, in the intuitive world, united with Christ (see the uppermost region of the diagram), and in this union she works in the spiritual world to bring about what must also be realized in the earthly human realm: the fulfillment of Christ’s words, “I in you and you in Me.” For the primary aim of the Mystery of Golgotha consisted in this: that Christ, who first had stood outwardly before the disciples as their Master, enter into the inner being of their souls. The path He had to take was one leading from an outward standing before them to an inward indwelling. This occurred in the Pentecost revelation: then Christ entered into the souls of the disciples, and in such a way that He was, as it were, born for the second time: through the heavenly Mother, Sophia, He was born into the souls of the disciples.    

    Thus the disciples were filled in their ‘I’ by Christ, who became, as it were, the Kyrios, the common ‘I’ of their circle. This ‘I’ was enveloped by the shared astral body of Sophia; in their etheric bodies they bore the shared experiences of the life‑tableau of Christ; and physically they formed a circle that became the organ for the Pentecost revelation, in that the circle bore Mary at its center, whose esoteric name was “Virgin Sophia.”

3. The Pentecost Event as Human Fulfillment 

of the New Testament

The meaning of the Old Testament was the preparation for and realization of the appearance of Christ in the human body; the meaning of the New Testament is the appearance of Christ in the human ‘I’. The ‘new law’ is precisely not meant to be a law, but to become the essential nature of the free human ‘I’. And this can only come about through the human ‘I’ taking into itself that Being which is the ‘new law’. This reception must be something that does not occur from without, but from out of the depths of that world in which the human ‘I’ is rooted. Just as the plant receives its juices from the soil in which it is rooted, so must the essential content of the Christ‑impulse enter into the human ‘I’ — as it were from the very ground in which that ‘I’ is rooted. How this was to take place with regard to the disciples is the content of the farewell discourses of Christ, as presented in chapters 13 to 17 of the Gospel of John. In these discourses it is essentially said: “I was with you as your Master — now I go to the Father in order to be in you in the same way as the Father is in Me.”

    It therefore concerns the task that the ‘I’ of Christ Jesus pass over into the innerness of the I‑essence of other human beings: the ‘I’ that lived in the one human form is to find the transition into the I‑innerness of other human forms, without thereby in the least impairing the freedom of those other I‑essences.

    Now, the transition into the being of the other ‘I’ is only possible through that sphere which is the primal ground and the Heimat of all human I‑essences. This sphere is that of the Father. Out of the Father all human I‑essences have come forth; in the Father they had their primal origin — and only from the sphere of the Father can workings be exercised upon the innerness of human I‑essences that are in harmony with the principle of freedom. For this reason, Christ had to walk the path that, through the Father, led into the innerness of the I‑essences of human beings. This path was outwardly that of death; inwardly, however, it was a complete union with the Father. The path of death led to the Resurrection; but the path of the Father led to Pentecost. For just as death and Father are two sides of one mystery, so the Resurrection and the Pentecost‑event were two sides of the result of the one mystery of Golgotha.

    Thus the Resurrection was the victory over Ahriman in the body; the Pentecost‑event was the victory over Lucifer in the soul. And just as the Resurrection was a ‘resurrection of the body’, so the Pentecost‑event was a ‘resurrection of the soul’.

    The Pentecost‑event was a resurrection of the soul, in the sense that a soul‑life was awakened which was wisdom having become soul. That soul‑life did not consist of mere feelings, but of an immense wealth of knowledge of the Christ‑mystery — and at the same time of such a form of knowledge of the Christ‑mystery that it came about from the deepest grounds of the heart. What heart is can be understood through the contemplation of the Pentecost‑event. What one ordinarily understands by ‘heart’ stands to the heart‑experience of the Pentecost‑event as the moon stands to the sun. The semi‑darkness of heart‑inclinations and presentiments was then replaced by the daylight clarity of love‑knowledge. For the unshakable inner certainty which the apostles had concerning the Christ‑mystery rested not on authority — not even on the authority of the outer or inner senses — but on the experience of the reality of love. And because the apostles experienced this reality in their soul, they knew at the same moment how and along which paths it had been working in the world and will be working. They also knew that what they now experienced in their soul was the same as what lived in Christ Jesus when He spoke the Sermon on the Mount and accomplished the healings. And they likewise knew that the meaning of the mystery of Golgotha was that this power dwell in human beings and overcome loneliness and death.

    Out of this experience the apostles spoke to the bystanders; and each one heard them speaking in his own language. This could occur because the language of the apostles was such that the fragmentation caused by Lucifer had been overcome in them. Because the Luciferic element had been overcome during the Pentecost‑event, a language could be spoken that was a kind of resurrected primordial language of humanity. For it was the resurrected soul that spoke: it spoke the language of the human soul, not the languages of the peoples that have arisen through fragmentation.

    To understand the essence of the “Pentecost‑language,” it is not sufficient to form only a general idea of the overcoming of the Luciferic fragmentation; one must also take into direct view the essential nature of that process through which the new speaking became possible within the human organization. To grasp this process more concretely, one must begin from the fact that the human being shares outer existence with the mineral world, organic life with the plant world, and movement with the animal world, but distinguishes himself from these three kingdoms through a fourth outwardly manifesting property, namely through language.

    This, however, means that in the human being, in addition to the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, yet another member of being reveals itself: the I. It is precisely this I that is the reason why the human being not only participates in physical existence, is alive, and can move, but can also speak. Although the human I is the true cause of the capacity for speech, it is nevertheless dependent, in the formation of articulate language, upon the threefold bodily organization. It must make use of the astral body in order to connect the verbal with the qualitative, the adjectival; and of the etheric body in order to relate it to the substantive, the object‑bearing; and finally, it must make use of the organs of the physical body in order to cause language to sound forth in the air.

    On this path, along which the speech‑impulse of the ‘I’ has to pass through the astral, etheric and physical body in order to reveal itself as spoken language, it happens that not only does this impulse work upon the bodies — influencing them — but that it is itself influenced by the bodies. On the way from the ‘I’ to the physical body, the speech‑impulse is in fact strongly metamorphosed. And it is metamorphosed in such a way that the verbal element in the astral body is weakened through the fact that it falls prey to the influence of the sphere of self‑seeking sympathies and antipathies, and that within this sphere of subconscious sympathies and antipathies a limiting effect is exercised upon the speech‑impulse. This limiting effect then has the consequence that the speech‑impulse, in the etheric body, is determined in the direction of the folk‑element, the national element — so that it finally, as the sounds of a particular language, is spoken forth through the organs of the physical body. In this way the originally purely human speech‑impulse becomes a relative and one‑sidedly influenced manifestation through the various languages: it occurs as a consequence of the Luciferic influence within the human organization. If, however, this influence is overcome — as was the case in the Pentecost‑event — then the speech‑impulse is freed, to that extent, from the limiting influence of the bodily organization, so that it is no longer compelled to flow out into the stream of a single language, but can move effectively and freely within the circle of human languages. This, however, means that the speech‑initiative of the human ‘I’ can place itself in connection with the sphere of activity of the complete circle of the spirits of speech (the Luciferic Archangels), because it has previously acquired the capacity to unite itself with the complete circle of workings of the folk‑spirits (the normal Archangels).

    It was precisely this connection with the complete circle of Archangels (the Folk‑spirits) that the twelve apostles had at the Pentecost‑event. And this was possible because the host of Archangels brings about the Christ‑mystery within the peoples. What the content of the Pentecost‑revelation was for human consciousness, that is whispered by the host of Archangels — ordered according to the individual parts or “words” — into the life of the peoples. For the Archangels, as folk‑spirits, have had since the Pentecost‑event the task of letting the working of Christ stream into the life of the individual peoples. The summary of their activity is the complete Pentecost‑revelation of the Christ‑mystery as it was experienced within Archangelic consciousness; while the summary of the Pentecostal knowledge of the twelve apostles was the complete Pentecost‑revelation of the Christ‑mystery as it was experienced within human consciousness. Therefore it was possible for the circle of the apostles to unite itself with the circle of the Archangels. For the Pentecost‑revelation was an event that took place not only within human consciousness, but also within the consciousness of the Folk‑spirits. There, too, a circle formed  itself which received the “apostolate” of Christ. And just as the circle of earthly human beings formed itself around a human being, Mary, so the circle of Archangels gathered around an Archangelic being who is designated as Sophia.

    The circle of human beings below and the circle of Fire‑spirits (Archangels) above — this is the archetype of the realization of the New Testament among human beings and peoples. It is the true archetype of the “Ecclesia,” the “Church,” which is to unite both humanity and the beings of the spiritual hierarchies in Christ. And this unity is not to be realized through organizations and statutes, but through the living fire of the Pentecost‑revelation. For the essence of the Pentecost‑revelation is not only the all-embracing, internalized knowledge of the Christ‑mystery, but also the coming-into-being of the archetype of every true community out of the experience of that knowledge.

    The reality of the Pentecost‑event stood in history behind the idea of the Church: it was the reality whose impression - gradually fading - later became the idea of a community of Christians embracing all peoples. The Pentecost‑event was also the true world‑historical experience of freedom, united with brotherhood in humility in the face of the magnitude of the all‑embracing Christ‑mystery. This world‑historical experience was later — this time not transformed into an idea, but into its opposite — distorted into the form of that immense misfortune of mankind which was the French Revolution. For that revolution was precisely the opposite of the Pentecost‑event: a community of human beings formed itself at that time in the consciousness of their right (“le droit humain”) around the figure of the Gloria. What Mary‑Sophia was at the Pentecost‑event, that became the imaginary figure of the Gloria — and what had once been the perfect silence of the souls of the disciples, who had passed through emptiness and solitude, now became a loud clamoring for rights.

    The fact that the Pentecost‑event became the subject of both abstraction and distortion is only an expression of the significance it possesses for the entire history of the post‑Christian era. For it reveals the true aim of the post‑Christian era, and now everything revolves around the understanding, the preparation, and the realization of that event — as well as upon its fading, its veiling, and its distortion. Since it is the task of the fifth post‑Atlantean epoch (for the sixth epoch, the so‑called “Philadelphian,” will be founded upon the knowledge of Pentecost), it is also the target of all attacks from the side of the powers that strive toward other goals. To understand the events of the final great part of world‑history, it is necessary to know this: the Spirit of Pentecost struggles forward through the course of the centuries and is engaged in conflict with the powers that seek to conceal and to deform it. For it is the fulfillment of the New Testament, in the same sense in which the appearance of Christ in the human body was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And it is so because the task of the event of the New Testament — the Christ‑event — consists precisely in causing the “new law” to shine forth within human hearts. For Christianity is not a doctrine but an event. And that event will attain its full meaning when it has taken place not only upon the stage of world‑history, but also within the inner life of Man.

(To be continued.)