Note by the Translator: This 5-part essay is a translation taken from Tomberg’s early essays and other writing entitled “Aufbruch zur VI. Kulturepoche" published by Achamoth Verlag in Southern Germany by Katharina Barker in 2020 and available in English as "Towards the 6th Cultural Age" from Amazon. It ties in well with the title and mission of the Facebook and Telegram group “The Christmas Conference - Anthroposophical Movement as New Christianity”, on which these 5 sections were first published during the last part of the 12 Holy Nights because the Anthroposophical Society, refounded at the Christmas Conference is the organizational form of the true Christianity of the 6th cultural age that is to begin in only the 4th millennium but that has to be prepared in this present 5th age. This form was, it is true, inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner at this Christmas Conference in 1923, but has since then been seriously damaged, due to among other things the lack of understanding and therefore practice in the Anthroposophical Society of what Rudolf Steiner called “The Reverse Ritual”, the awakening in soul and spirit of its members through the union with the other. How this diseased social corporeality could possibly be restored, may be gleaned from my video request to the General Assembly of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum, Dornach on March 27, 2021. (https://willehalminstitute.blogspot.com/2021/03/request-to-general-assembly-of-general.html).
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When one attempts to immerse oneself in the holy Mystery of Golgotha, one will have to ascertain that a meditative immersion into the image of the cross awakens in us a feeling of innermost remorse. This feeling, which Christian believers know so well, must in our time assume another, more cognitive form.
In its purest form, this feeling of guilt with respect to the crucified God can be experienced through The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner. For this Philosophy of Spiritual Activity [as it has also been called] gives us a key for penetrating into the Mystery of Golgotha. And as a matter of fact, these ideas of The Philosophy of Freedom are especially suited to fathom the mystery of the crucified God that are related to the nature of human freedom. For the teaching about the nature of human knowledge is a true reflection of the great world-historical event.
As we know, human knowledge is according to this Philosophy of Freedom structured in such a way that the human being is at the beginning of his cognitive activity dependent on deleting the total ideational content of the world, that remains immanent within him so that this ideational content is at first only revealed in him as a striving for knowledge. And this striving, this feeling of dissatisfaction with the given image of the world can only be satisfied such that the human being at the end of his cognitive activity restores within him the originally deleted ideational content through a free effort of thinking.
And to the circumstance that the cognitive organism of the human being has this structure, to the fact that the human being at the beginning of his path of knowledge must delete the truth in order to at the end independently regain his knowledge, to this circumstance the human being owes his freedom. Thanks to this cognitional mode human freedom is incorporated in a wonderful way into the world.
Yet this experience of human freedom is only one aspect of the experience that can be gained through the study of The Philosophy of Freedom. For at first we only experience in which way our human freedom in the world becomes possible through this cognitional mode. We experience thereby what the original deletion of the truth and its restoration through the thinking of the cognitive human being signifies.
But it can and may also be asked what the aforementioned human cognitional mode signifies for the at first deleted and then restored ideational content of the world. And when one asks oneself about this, one shall have to ascertain that this path of knowledge of the human being signifies for the truth a path of death and resurrection– in order to ensure freedom for the human being, the truth must die away in him - and thus we must say to ourselves: It is we ourselves that kill this truth in order to experience ourselves at the beginning of knowledge as independent beings, it is we who in the striving for knowledge must experience our great guilt for the truth; and it is also we, who through the effort of self-sacrifice are to raise the truth again that was killed within us.
Thus we see that our human knowledge is based on the tragic mystery of death and resurrection. And this tragic mystery that is revealed in The Philosophy of Freedom in the field of human knowledge, takes place in the destiny of the individual human being as well as in the destiny of the whole of mankind.[1]
Upon studying the destiny of the individual human being, one will be able to discover that man’s tragic character is conditioned by the fact that between heaven and earth there yawns for the human being a deep abyss and that both worlds are divided by a threshold. And it is just by the presence of his threshold dividing both worlds from another that the two central experiences of human existence lead inevitably to the experiences of birth and death.
Now it is essential to realize that birth and death with regard to the threshold dividing both worlds are relative concepts. For an earthly birth, understood as a departure from the heavenly world is, from the standpoint of the latter that is thereby left, an experience of death, while an earthly death, from the standpoint of this world, is a birth of the spirit, a resurrection.
In fact, the earthly birth is felt as dying and the earthly death as reviving by that being which is man’s higher I, his actual spirit. Because what is for the earthly lower human being a birth, is death for this higher heavenly human being, and what for the earthly lower being is death, is birth for the higher heavenly human being.
One could therefore compare the whole human being, which includes the higher as well as the lower human being, with the Moon. For just in the way that the Moon must alternatingly pass through various phases, this happens as well with the total being of man. And it is therefore quite right when we compare the earthly phase of human existence with the Full Moon and the heavenly phase of this existence with the New Moon. And just as one phase of the Moon excludes the other, so it is also with human existence. The birth of the lower earthly consciousness is a death for the higher spiritual consciousness, and the earthly death of the human being death is a rebirth in the spirit.
As we know, these periodically alternating phases that exclude each other are expressed in the law of reincarnation. This law of reincarnation is for the beings of the spiritual world a means to protect the human being against Lucifer and Ahriman. And that is why it is so fruitful for an exact knowledge of both adversaries to view them in their relation to birth and death. Lucifer reveals himself then as an entity that behaves antagonistically towards birth, while Ahriman is an entity that fights against death.
Lucifer would love nothing better than that the human being would never needed to be born; but because Lucifer cannot prevent this, since the human being over and over again appears with the help of the Gods on the earth, Lucifer attempts, as well as can be, to withhold the human being from completely incarnating on the earth and to arouse in him a longing for the lost paradise. And were Lucifer to reach this goal, then the human being would experience himself in a paradise, yet this paradise would not be a true one. For since the history of the world is tragic, since toil, suffering and death prevail in the world, the state of paradisiacal bliss has become an unjustified, egotistical state, which can only be prevented by over and over again banishing the human being from the Luciferic sphere, where he would remain before his incarnation, through the portal of earthly birth.
Directly opposite intentions are pursued by Ahriman. While Lucifer would like to restrain the human being from his earthly birth, Ahriman strives to prevent the earthly death of the human being, which is after all a rebirth of the spirit. Ahriman would like nothing better than that the human being would never have to return through the portal of death to the spiritual world, that he would forever have connected himself to the earth. But because the human being must submit himself to the curse of death and despite all Ahriman’s efforts over and over again returns through the portal of death to the spiritual world in order to appear there before the judgment of the Gods, Ahriman attempts, as well as can be, to chain the human being during his living days as tight as possible to the Earth. Over and over again, he attempts to bind the human soul to his spiritless worldview and hopes that he will one day succeed in withholding the human beings from the judgment of Kamaloka.
Yet just as the human being is saved with the help of the Gods from the power of Lucifer by them banning the human being through the portal of birth from a pre-natal existence, the human being is saved from the power of Ahriman by being forced to return through the portal of death to the spiritual world in order to appear there before the judgment of the Gods.
As therefore birth is a repetition of the banishment from paradise, death is a prophetic preview of the Last Judgment. For what for the whole of mankind was the banishment from paradise, is birth for an individual human being. And what the whole of mankind will one day experience as the Last Judgment, is death for an individual human being. Thus birth and death are weapons for the spiritual beings of the higher world that they employ in their struggle for the human beings against both antagonists.
But it is now important to keep in mind that this struggle of the Gods against both antagonists could never lead to a decisive victory over them, in as much as the human soul through birth and death every time simply avoids a further struggle, i.e. abandons the field of this struggle. Through earthly birth, the soul evades Lucifer and through earthly death she evades Ahriman. Birth is an escape from Lucifer, death an escape from Ahriman.
What is now necessary to ultimately defeat Lucifer and Ahriman? To that end, it is necessary to be able to experience inside one’s corporeality what the higher I of the human being otherwise experiences only outside this corporeality as death at the earthly birth and birth at the earthly death. In other words, the human being, if he is willing to ultimately defeat Lucifer and Ahriman, is to become conscious of the destiny of his spirit also within his earthly body. The human being must be born a second time again after he has already physically gone through the portal of birth and he is to be able to mystically experience death before this death also physically occurs. Thus he is apt to develop in himself a consciousness that at the same time would be a state of death as well as a state of birth, and it is to occur by means of the human being becoming aware of those experiences that his spirit otherwise only has outside the earthly body before the earthly birth and after the earthly death. In this way the human being, if he is willing to achieve a decisive victory over Lucifer and Ahriman, is to experience in the earthly body a state that would at the same time be a birth of the higher in a lower being and a death of the lower in a higher being.
But what is this experience of the birth of higher in a lower being that is at the same time the death of a lower in a higher being? It is the state of crucifixion. And it is the higher I of the human being that in this state of crucifixion experiences itself crucified in his body. For on the one hand this higher I becomes during such a crucifixion in the earthly body aware of its spiritual streams, and on the other hand, it must however experience how these spiritual streams are as it were bound, as it were nailed to this stiff cross of the earthly body.
But just this painful state of crucifixion is nothing else than a decisive victory over Lucifer and Ahriman. For the resistances that are met by the force currents of the higher I in the earthly body stem from Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, from influences that can only be overcome by the higher I of the human being learning to expand itself just as freely inside the earthly body as it could previously only do outside the corporeality.
Thereby it must however especially be emphasized that not somehow the lower state of consciousness, which is itself a result of the earthly embodiment, is consciously capable of experiencing the crucifixion, but that it is the higher I of the human being that as such could previously only experience itself outside the body.
For only through a process of self-consciousness-raising in the physical body of that higher I, which otherwise only had experienced itself outside this body, only through this process of self-consciousness-raising in the earthly body arises the experience of crucifixion in the earthly consciousness of the human being.
If one knows this, then the necessity for mankind of the crucifixion of the Word in the course of world history becomes obvious, for just as for the purpose of the redemption of Lucifer and Ahriman the higher I of an individual must pass through the experience of crucifixion, so it is also with the redemption from these powers within the whole of mankind. The I-consciousness of the whole of mankind that is represented by Jesus can neither by its own inherent forces alone overcome Lucifer and Ahriman. Only the higher I of mankind, Christ, which relates to Jesus as the higher I of the individual human being to his earthly self-consciousness, is capable of doing this. Only Christ can through the power of Golgotha liberate mankind from the power of both antagonists and indeed through the synthesis of birth and death during the crucifixion. Through the birth of a higher in a lower being, Christ overcomes Lucifer, through the death of a lower in a higher being He overcomes Ahriman.
Now that we have attempted to fathom the inner significance of the crucifixion in the destiny of an individual as well in the destiny of the whole of mankind and have realized the necessity of this crucifixion for achieving a decisive victory over both protagonists, the question must arise for us about the historical reality of the crucifixion. We must namely inquire whether the historical reality of Golgotha without any tradition or documents whatsoever can be understood by a person who has not yet had an inner meeting with Christ.
If one raises this question, one will be able to discover that the historical reality of the Mystery of Golgotha too can be understood in the light of “The Philosophy of Freedom”. This is in no way a matter of rational proof, for it would be an unbearable pretension to somehow want to logically prove the highest miracle in history, the incarnation of God. Yet it is marvelous that the historical reality of Golgotha can be understood not out of a necessity of thinking, but out of freedom.
As we have already mentioned, the human mode of cognition is structured such that man must first become morally in debt towards the truth and afterward must atone for this debt and that just this path of debt and atonement renders our freedom possible. And the same path of guilt and atonement is to also tread the whole of mankind in order to be able to become free.
On account of freedom, therefore, the Fall of Man is admitted as well and on account of the same freedom, mankind is bound to be able to make amends for this Fall. And even though world history is in a certain sense a chain of necessities, this chain of necessities is accordingly based on the ideal of freedom. And as freedom on account of the Fall of Man was admitted at the beginning of history, so on account of this freedom, Christ appeared as the ideal of this freedom in the middle of the course of history. And from the same freedom from which the Fall of Man was admitted and the Redeemer was crucified, we can nowadays condone and acknowledge the wise guidance of the world, because for someone who from the viewpoint of freedom studies the history of the world, the reality of Golgotha is a matter of course that does not need to be proven and cannot be doubted. Just as in the center of a cyclone there is calm, because all around storms are blustering, we also find in the midst of the blustering storms of the times the divine calm of Golgotha. This Mystery of Golgotha is not conditioned by anything but itself. It is simply there, as a revelation of the most profound meaning of the world, so that anyone looking for the meaning of the world will find it. And the essence of a true Christian faith consists in understanding out of freedom the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha, understanding as that which should also occur historically because it is a revelation of the meaning of world history.
[1] See also “Anthroposophical Meditations on the Old Testament” in “Christ and Sophia” (Ch. XII “Jesus of Nazareth”, Section 3: “The Jesus Being and the Nathan Jesus”) by Valentin Tomberg
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