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proper relationship to his existence, after death on earth.
In later times his union with the Christ was to give him in another way what had thus been given him
in primval time by nature, through the sense of his own life-experience concerning the problem of
death. The Christ was so to permeate him, in the words of St. Paul, 'Not I, but the Christ in me', that
He might be his guide through the gate of death. Man now had indeed something in the ordinary
consciousness which could develop the complete Ego-sense, but nothing which could give the soul
the strength to approach the gates of Death with certain knowledge of its living passage through
them For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body, and therefore can give the soul only
such strength as must be regarded as extinguished in death.
To those who could learn all this from their old initiation, the human physical organism appeared out
of order, for they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a
comprehensive consciousness as to enable it to live its full life. Christ appeared as the soul-doctor of
the world, as the Healer, the Saviour, and as such in His fundamental relationship to humanity He
must be recognized.
The event of death and its relationship to the Christ is to be the subject of my next study.
Through the taking-up of the Christ-experience a Philosophy has grown out of what the ancient
consciousness, deepened by the saying of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity,
and a philosophy which can include the divine Father principle. The Father in Spirit can be regarded
again as the all-pervading Being. Cosmology gains its Christian character through the knowledge of
the Christ who, as a Being from outside the earth, assumed mortal shape in the person of Jesus.
In the events of human evolution the Christ is recognized as the Being to whose lot has fallen a
decisive part in this evolution. And through the re-awakening of the half-forgotten knowledge of the
'Eternal Man', the human mind is led out of the purely sense-world in which the ego-consciousness
develops, to the spirit, which can be experienced with full understanding by the soul in conjunction
with God the Father and the Christ in a renewed perceptive knowledge of Religion.
8 - The Event Of Death And Its Relationship With The Christ
In the state of sleep, sense-experience ceases for the ordinary consciousness as does also the psychic
activity of thinking, feeling and willing. Thus man loses what he terms as 'himself'.
Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking
is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot
be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel
oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one
cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought.
This only becomes possible by degrees.
The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary
consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary
glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-
thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to
the present moment as one's own proper Ego.
The memories of ordinary consciousness are also experiences of the moment, images realized in the
present which point to the past only through their content.
Such memories are at first lost when image-making begins. The past is then seen as if it was
something present. As in sense-perception the senses are led to the things which are side by side in
space, so the kindled activity of the soul is led to the different events of one's own life in image-
making. The course of events in time is presented as happening at the same time. A process of growth
becomes something present at the moment.
But in higher consciousness there is something else than just the memories of the ordinary
consciousness. There you have the activity of the etheric organism previously unknown to this
consciousness. The memories of the ordinary consciousness are only images of man's experience
through his physical organism of the outer world, whereas the 'imaginative' consciousness knows the
activity which the etheric organism has effected in the physical organism.
The rising-up of this experience happens in such a way that one has the feeling of something rising
from the depths of the soul which before Had indeed lain hidden in one's own nature, but had not
surged up into the consciousness. All this must be experienced in full consciousness; and that is the
case if the ordinary consciousness continues to be kept side by side with the 'imaginative'.
The experiences gained in the active exchange between etheric and physical organism must always be
capable of being brought into relationship with the corresponding memory-life of the ordinary
consciousness. Whoever is not able to do this is not dealing with imagination but with an experience
of a visionary kind.
In visionary experience consciousness is not adding a new content to the old, as in imagination, but it
is changed; the old content cannot be recalled at the same time as the new. The man who has
'imagination' has his ordinary self next to him, as it were; the visionary has been turned into quite a
different being.
Anybody criticizing Anthroposophy from the outside should take note of this. Imaginative knowledge
has often been considered as leading to something visionary. This view has to be strictly rejected by
the true researcher into the spirit. He does by no means replace the ordinary consciousness by a
visionary one, but he incorporates an imaginative one into it. Ordinary thinking fully controls
imaginative experience at every moment.
The visionary picturing is a stronger entering of the ego into the physical organism than is the case in
the ordinary consciousness. Imagining on the other hand is an actual 'stepping-out' from the physical
organism, and the ordinary constitution of the soul remains by its side consciously held in the physical
organism.
We grow conscious in a part of the soul which before was unconscious, but that part which before was
conscious in the physical organism remains in the same psychic condition. The interchange between
the experience of imagination and that of ordinary consciousness is just as real a happening to the soul
as is the guiding to and fro of soul-activity from one thought to another in the course of ordinary
consciousness. If this is kept in mind one cannot mistake imaginative knowledge for something of a
visionary nature.
It tends, on the contrary, to drive out all inclination to what is visionary. But he who uses 'imaginative
cognition' is also in a position to realize that visions are not independent of the body but dependent on
it in a far higher degree than sense-experiences. For he can compare the character of visions with that
of imagination which is really independent of the body. The Visionary is more deeply immersed in his
physical functions than the man who perceives the outer world by means of his senses in the ordinary
way.
When Imagination takes place ordinary thinking is recognized as something having no substantial
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