Christ Module 11 - A new physics

This module is about the impact of the Christ Impulse on Earth and humanity, from a perspective of physical laws and framework.

Through the Mystery of Golgotha (MoG) and the fact the spiritual entity called the Christ became the spirit of the Earth, the constellation of the formative forces changed on Earth. With the separation of the Sun (and afterwards also the separation of the Moon) already certain spirits had separated in terms of influences and their workings from the Sun ('or Moon) or remaining with the Earth. With the MoG this situation changed again, and the MoG affected how the chemical and life ethers work on Earth and all the kingdoms of nature. This is why Rudolf Steiner mentioned that ".. the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha .. will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the [MoG] works in the world" and ".. a time will come where physics will consider that since the MoG something changed .. in the same way as physics recognizes electricity or radio activity, it will acknowledge the Mystery of Golgotha as a meta-physical event ..".

Note upfront:

The study of this topic requires that one is well versed in a spiritual scientific understanding of the formative forces and their changes in the evolution of the Earth.

Novices will appreciate the fact that (a) spiritual science already changes the worldview and view of the cosmos, and, from this topic: (b) also the changes due to Christ Impulse specifically. Therefore the study of this topic only makes sense if one is equipped and ready for it.

view on solar system and cosmos depends on two elements (thinking with physics in material timespace only) - now to be reconsidered taking into account considerations of time and space, and the etheric (see eg comets, 1920-12-10-GA202, last book Nick Thomas, etc)
- model of solar system
- expanding universe, big bang, dark matter etc
an understanding of the Threefold Sun, spiritual sun and the physical sun (eg 1920-12-18-GA202, von Keyserlingk drawing of the three Suns)

Aspects

[1] - the chemical and life ethers are now 'part of' and work from the Earth (in Man), whereas before they departed with the departure of the Sun and worked from outside
- the fall and the 'blinders on' (see below: 1909-09-21-GA114, 1914-07-16-GA155, 1917-04-12-GA175)
- the forces of the higher ethers (see below: 1908-08-14-GA105, 1910-09-12-GA123, 1914-07-16-GA155, 1916-01-09-GA165)
- spiritualization: how the atmosphere of the Earth changed with the MoG, the air in so longer ensouled as before the MoG, today it is the light that is ensouled (see 1919-11-30-GA194, see also Schema FMC00.084 on Spectrum of elements and ethers)
[2] - a new kind of astronomy, or rather 'two astronomies' (Schema FMC00.284)

[3] - two clocks or timelines: (a) the cultural ages and time epochs; and (b) the Christ-Earth timeline (the impact of Christ working on Earth and humanity)
- dephased by 747 or approx 800 years, see Schema FMC00.052A and Schema FMC00.052 below
- the working of the sun-laws or the working of the Sun-evolution in human earthly life) can be found in the study of the course of philosophical evolution. Eight-hundred year periods can be distinguished in the development of philosophy (1915-01-10-GA161, see also Schema FMC00.490 below and more on the topic page: Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs#1915-01-10-GA161)
[4] - regarding the pattern of 33 years - see Thirty three years rhythm
[5] - 'inversion' due to the Christ Impulse (see 1920-12-23-GA202)

Inspirational quotes

1914-01-10-GA069C

.. a time will come where physics will consider that since the Mystery of Golgotha something changed, and the Christ spirit lives in Earth and the inner development of humanity .. .. in the same way as physics recognizes electricity or radio activity, it will acknowledge the Mystery of Golgotha as a meta-physical event ..

1920-05-16-GA201

.. the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha .. will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.284 summarizes the 'two astronomies'

Schema FMC00.052 shows the dephased Christ solar impulse in red (dephased versus the cultural ages and timing of the regular hierarchies, called lunar/stellar astronomy). See Schema FMC00.052A for the original BBD (blackboard drawings). The timebar shows an interesting correlation between these impulses and two key periods for humanity: the first the next future Oriphiel age which will be a hardship test for humanity, and then the period in the next sixth cultural age where we have the Michael age and the impulse of the Maitreya Buddha .. a key period for the cohort of human beings that will provide the foundation for the next great Sixth epoch.

These two key periods are put in perspective to show - in yellow bars - the fact that "the fifth and sixth cultural ages are decisive" (1910-GA013), as "only a third of the population reaches the developmental goal at the end of the fifth epoch" (1904-10-24-GA090A).

To overlay schemas with a similar time-chart layout as below, see also:

Schema FMC00.013 on Current Postatlantean epoch which uses the same layout
Schema FMC00.167 on Transition between 4th and 14th century

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Schema FMC00.052A shows the dephasing between the start of the fourth cultural age and the Christ impulse which is of a totally different nature and intervenes from without. See the 1920-05-08-21-GA201 lecture and Lazarides in 'Further reading' below.

Schema FMC00.490 shows how the human thought about Man and the cosmos, or philosophy, evolves in periods of approx. 800 years related to the sun laws. Note everything in light grey - the extensions after 2400 and the time periods before 800 BC were added by extrapolation and are not covered in the lecture.

Compare with Schema FMC00.376 and variants on Christ in the future cultural ages and next epochs

Lecture coverage and references

Opening quotes about the future science of the Christ Impulse

1920-05-16-GA201

That is the cosmic significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christianity will not be understood until it has penetrated even into the physics of our Earth, until we understand how, even in physical things, the Christian substance works in the world-existence. We have not grasped Christianity until we can say to ourselves: Precisely in the domain of heat such a change is taking place in man that through it matter is being destroyed and a purely picture-existence comes forth out of the matter; but through the union of the human soul with the Christ-substance this picture-existence is made into a new reality.

1914-01-10-GA069C

pages 117, 120-121 (free translation)

.. a time will come where it will considered by physics that since the Mystery of Golgotha something changed and the Christ spirit lives in Earth and the inner development of humanity ..
.
.. in the same way as physics recognizes electricity or radio activity, it will be acknowledged that the Mystery of Golgotha is a meta-physical event ..

1911-08-27-GA129

describes the Christ Impulse as .. a future science and physics/chemistry

Let us suppose that we permeate ourselves with what we have already in a variety of contexts named the Christ Impulse. We then learn to understand in its deepest significance the saying of St. Paul, Not I but Christ in me.’ We stand there to begin with in our normal consciousness and say to ourselves: ‘We do not wish this normal consciousness of ours to work alone, we do not wish to remain alone in this personality of ours; we wish to be permeated by the Substantiality which since the Mystery of Golgotha is contained in the atmosphere of the Earth, we wish to be permeated by the Christ-substance.’
When we permeate ourselves with this Substance we do not take out with us into the cosmos merely our own tenuous ideas, but however far we soar into the widths of space, we carry with us the Substantiality of the Christ, and thereby something most remarkable comes about, which I should like to make clear to you in terms of modern scientific development.
Modern science took its start from the phenomena of external nature, and traced these phenomena back to all manner of forces. Then it went on to trace what goes on in the outer world in light and sound and so on, to vibrations, to particles of ether in motion, even to ponderable fragments of matter in motion, and considered it a triumph to be able to reduce the whole world to a world of moving, whirling atoms of ether and so on. This method has now for the most part been abandoned, since people have seen that it leads nowhere, but the consciousness of the general public in this respect still lags behind, it always does remain several paces behind scientific advance.
There is still a widespread desire to explain the whole world through the abstraction of whirling atoms, as if space were made up of pure vibrations, pure oscillations. Of course, when we with our ideas and with the empirical experience which one can have of realities, meet such conclusions, the moment we approach what is called the atomic universe, we at once feel the void; for those thought-out atoms have no existence. Atoms there can be within the limits of empirical reality, within the range of microscopic investigation, wherever there is matter endowed with light and warmth, but it is not legitimate to attempt to explain light and warmth themselves by means of atoms or atomic vibrations; for then one is thinking-out a theory of the universe, and a thought-out cosmology leads to something which no longer has any real content. There this old atomic theory has no longer any validity whatsoever. We think it out — and yet feel it has nothing to do with reality.
But it is quite different when we permeate our ideas, our abstract laws, with what in truth is the Christ Impulse; and when I speak of the Christ Impulse you all know that I do not mean anything that the orthodox creeds look to; I am referring to the great macrocosmic Christ Impulse. We must permeate ourselves with this in the Pauline sense. It is not our abstract ideas and concepts which we bear out into the cosmos, but what they become as our modern form of consciousness permeated by the Christ Impulse.
And here we experience something very strange. Just as when we press outwards with a consciousness devoid of the Christ we become emptier and emptier and more impoverished, and our consciousness becomes finally completely dissipated, dispersed into the cosmic void ... so, as soon as we have received the Christ Impulse our consciousness becomes richer, fuller, the further we come into the cosmic distances, into the widths of space.
And when we have reached the stage of clairvoyance, then is the Christ-filled soul abundantly filled with soul-substance, so that the true grounds of reality stand at last before us in all their might and grandeur as super-sensible realities. Whereas without Christ our consciousness brings us to the void, the Christ-filled consciousness brings us to the true causes of world-phenomena and ‘world-wonders’.
Foolish as this may sound today, I ventured to say in the book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind (GA015) that in the future there will be a chemistry and a physics, a physiology and a biology permeated by the Christ Impulse, and that true science, to an extent not today dreamt of, will become permeated by the Christ Impulse. Anyone who does not believe this has only to turn the pages of history to discover how the rational opinion of the future is often the foolishness of earlier times. If anyone pities us for supposing that what is regarded as foolishness in our day will be the reasonableness of the future, let him remember this. Foolish as it may seem to the humanity of the present day to think of a Christian chemistry it will in the future appear quite reasonable. When we carry the Christ with us into our outlook upon the world, He will give us plenitude in place of emptiness.

The fall and the 'blinders on'

1909-09-21-GA114

(see also Q00.002)

In the Lemurian epoch, after the onset of the Luciferic influence, of these four forms of ether only the two lower (light-ether and fire-ether) were left at the free, abitrary disposal of man; the two higher kinds of ether were withdrawn from him.
That is the inner meaning of the passage where it is said that when, as a result of the Luciferic influence, men had become able to distinguish between good and evil (pictorially expressed as eating of the ‘Tree of Knowledge’), the ‘Tree of Life’ was kept out of their reach. That is to say, the power freely and arbitrarily to penetrate the thought-ether and the sense-ether (‘meaning’-ether) was withdrawn from them. ...
... When Zarathustra, with his pupils around him, spoke of the realm of spirit, he could say:
‘Out of heaven there streams down warmth, or fire; out of heaven there streams down light. These are the vestments of Ahura Mazdao. But behind these vestments is hidden that which has not yet descended but has remained above in spiritual heights, casting only a shadow in the physical thoughts and words of men.’
Behind the warmth and light of the Sun is hidden that which lives in tone or sound, in meaning, manifesting itself only to those who are able to see behind the light that which is related to the earthly word as the heavenly Word is related to the part of Life that was withheld for the time being from humanity. Hence Zarathustra said:

‘Look upwards to Ahura Mazdao; see how He reveals Himself in the physical raiment of light and warmth. But behind all that is the Divine, Creative Word — and it is approaching the Earth!’

1914-07-16-GA155

Quote A

When the Luciferic temptation came, the progressive gods were obliged to place Man in a sphere where, from the life-ether downwards, death lives in his physical body. But at that time the progressive gods said — and the words are there in the Bible — ”Man has come to know the distinction between Good and Evil, but Life he is not to have. Of the Tree of Life he shall not eat.” In occultism, we can continue the sentence, “Of the Tree of Life man shall not eat”, by adding the words, “and the Spirit of Matter he shall not hear.” Of the Tree of Life Man shall not eat and the Spirit of Matter he shall not hear! These are the regions which were closed to Man. Only through a certain procedure in the old Mysteries were the tones of the Sphere-Music and the Cosmic Life, pulsating through the universe, revealed to those who were to be initiated when it was given them, outside the body, to see the Christ in advance. Hence it is that the old philosophers speak of the Music of the Spheres.
In drawing attention to this, we indicate at the same time those regions from which the Christ came to us at the time of the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Whence did Christ come? He came from those regions which had been closed to man as a result of the Luciferic temptation — from the region of the Music of the Spheres and from the region of Cosmic Life.
These regions had to be forgotten by Man because of the Luciferic temptation at the beginning of Earth-evolution. At the baptism by John in the Jordan, Christ entered into a human body, and that which permeated this human body was the spiritual essence of the Harmony of the Spheres, the spiritual essence of the Cosmic Life — the element that still belonged to the human soul during the first phase of its time on Earth, but from which the human soul had to be shut out as a result of the Luciferic temptation.
In this sense also Man is related to spirit. With his soul he really belongs to the region of the Music of the Spheres and to the region of the Word, of the living Cosmic Ether. But he was cast out from those regions. They were to be restored to him in order that he might gradually be permeated again by the spiritual elements from which he had been exiled.
So it is that from the standpoint of spiritual science the words of St. John's Gospel touch us so deeply: In the primal beginning, when Man was not yet subject to temptation, was the Logos. Man belonged to the Logos ... the Logos was with God, and Man was with the Logos, with God. And through the Baptism by John in the Jordan the Logos entered into human evolution — He became Man.
Here we have the all-important connection.

Note, in 1906-06-08-GA094, the region of the music of the spheres and the region of the living cosmic word described points to the three higher layers of the spirit world, hence what is meant here is Man's higher triad, as in Schema FMC00.128.

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Quote B

.. if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come about, Man would not have been able to permeate the radiations he gives out with the essences of the Music of the Spheres and the Cosmic Life. These essences would not have been there; they would not have flowed into the human radiations; but Christ brought them back through the Mystery of Golgotha. And when there is a fulfillment of the words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, when we bring about a relationship to Christ within ourselves, that which rays out from us and would otherwise be dead, is made living. Because we bear death within us, the living Christ has to permeate us, in order that He may give life to the spiritual Earth-being that we leave behind us. Christ the living Logos, permeates and gives life to the objective guilt and sin which detaches itself from us and is not carried further in our Karma, and because He gives it life, a living Earth will evolve into a living Jupiter. This is the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha.

1917-04-12-GA175

(in evo) discusses the impact of the luciferic infection in terms of the higher ethers and the impact on Man's etheric and physical body

The forces of the higher ethers

1908-08-14-GA105

The following refers to the power of the higher ethers

At the baptism in Jordan, when the significant symbol of the dove appeared above the head of Jesus, he was not merely inspired but directly intuited by the Christ. On that occasion something shot through the entire body of Jesus of Nazareth, even into those parts which, at the present stage of human development, are most withdrawn from the influence of man — the very bones. I am now about to say something which to the materialistic consciousness of the present day seems nonsense; but that is of no matter.
At the moment when the body of Jesus of Nazareth was permeated and fired by the Individuality of Christ — the great Sun-Spirit — the effect reached even into the bones.
If you burn a bone the cartilaginous part is consumed and the bone ash is left. The mineral substance of the bone and the cartilage are held together by a power which is opposed to fire, but also, therefore, associated with it. This power is at present entirely beyond the control of man's will, but it was under the control of Him Who was later to pass through the Event of Golgotha. Man can at present move his hand, but has no power to affect the chemical forces of his bones; he has become solid through them. The body of Jesus of Nazareth, through its having been intuited by the Christ, is the only body on earth that has ever acquired control over the force that holds cartilage and bone-ash together.

1910-09-12-GA123

discusses how with the departure of the Sun in the Hyperborean epoch, the spiritual part and higher ethers left also. The Life Ether was called Honover in Persian times, in the Gospel of John it's called the Logos (as the 'meaning-filled tone belonging to the Being of the Sun')

We have therefore on the earth — warmth, air or gaseous substance, water or fluid substance, and solids or earthly substance. Opposed to these as finer conditions we have light-ether, tone-ether, and life-ether, this last being the finest etheric condition known to us..
Now with the departure of the Sun from the Earth, not only the material part of the Sun left but the spiritual part left also. It was only later, and by degrees, that this returned to the earth, and it did not return entirely.
That which as organizing quality lay here at the foundation of a new kind of fellowship is contained in the Life-ether, which organizes life, and which streamed into the Earth in the Deed of Christ.

1914-07-16-GA155

As a rule a man encounters death only when he sees another person die, or in other phenomena akin to death which are to be found in the world, or in the certainty that he must himself pass through the gate of death when his present incarnation is over. But that is only the external aspect of death. Death is present in a quite different form in the world in which we live, and attention must be drawn to this.
Let us start from a quite ordinary, everyday phenomenon. We breathe the air in and we breathe it out again; but the air undergoes a change. When the air is exhaled it is dead air; as exhaled air it cannot be inhaled again, for exhaled air is deadly. I indicate this only in order that you may understand the meaning of the occult saying: “When the air enters into men, it dies.” The living element in the air does indeed die when it enters into man. That, however, is only one phenomenon.

The ray of light which penetrates our eye must likewise die, and we should gain nothing from the rays of light if our eye did not set itself up against the ray of light, as our lungs do against the air. The light that enters into our eye dies in our eye; and through the death of the light in our eye it comes about that we see.

We are filled with much that has to die in us in order that we may have our Earth-consciousness. Corporeally we kill the air; we kill also the rays of light which penetrate us, and so we kill in many ways.

When we call spiritual science to our aid, we distinguish four grades of substance — earth, water, air and warmth. We then enter the realm where we speak of warmth-ether, of light-ether. As far up as the light-ether we kill that which penetrates us; we slay it unceasingly in order that we may have our Earth-consciousness. But there is something we cannot kill by our Earth-existence. We know that above the light-ether there is the so-called chemical ether, and then there comes the life-ether. These are the two kinds of ether that we cannot kill.
But because of this, they have no special participation in us. If we were able to kill the chemical ether, the waves of the Harmony of the Spheres would sound perpetually into our physical body, and we should perpetually destroy these waves with our physical life. And if we would also kill the life-ether, we should destroy and continuously kill within ourselves the cosmic life that streams down to the Earth. In earthly sound we are given a substitute, but it is not to be compared with what we should hear if the chemical ether were audible to us as physical human beings. For physical sound is a product of the air and is not the spiritual sound; it is only a substitute for the spiritual sound.

1916-01-09-GA165

contains the following sentence, here parsed:

the sun-being Christ
entered into the earth sphere and united with the whole etheric body of the Earth

he then entered into the Earth aura and now continues to work there

Two astronomies

1917-12-29-GA180

1920-05-08-GA201

Thus we find this interaction of two streams appearing in our ordinary life, two streams which come together and give a common resultant for life, but yet cannot be grasped so simply as to permit of the causes and effects of the one stream coinciding with the causes and effects of the other.
These things are of the highest importance for the consideration of the Universe and of life, and cannot be dispensed with if one wishes to understand the Universe. There are other facts too which are also entirely overlooked. And what do all these things betoken? They indicate the existence of a certain harmony between cosmic life, historical life and the life of individual men; but a harmony not constructed as is usual today where there is a desire to account for everything by a fundamental law of bio-genesis. The consequence is that we cannot have a single Astronomy but need different Astronomies, one of the Sun, another of the Moon.
If we have two clocks, one always a little slower than the other, then the latter will always be in advance; but we should never be able to assume that what happens on the one has its cause on the other. That would be impossible.
So too, although there is a certain conformity to law in the one being always the same amount behind the other, the two streams of which we have been speaking have nothing to do with one another; they only work together as I look at them together. Solar astronomy has nothing to do with lunar astronomy. The two only work conjointly in our Universe.

1920-05-14-GA201

The Jehovah vs Lucifer topic is put forth with the following conclusion:

Here we see the gradual divergence of the solar and the stellar astronomy. As we have seen, if we have one astronomy only, everything falls into confusion. We can only reach a right understanding if, not limited to one astronomy, we say: On the one hand we have the starry system which, in a certain respect, contains within it the Moon; and on the other, the system to which the Sun belongs. They mutually interpenetrate. They work together. But we are wrong if we apply the same law to the two.
When we realise that we have two quite different astronomies, we shall say: The cosmic happenings in which we are involved have two origins, but we are so placed that these two streams flow together in us. They fuse in us human beings.
What is it then that takes place in us? Suppose that only what is admitted by the natural scientist took place in us — all sorts of things would take place in the human organism, movements of substances and so forth; these would extend over the whole organism, also to the brain and consequently to the senses. What then would the consequence be if the whole transmutation of substances which goes on in the human organism and which is inserted into the Cosmos as I have explained — if this metabolism were to extend to the brain?
We should never be able to have the consciousness that we ourselves think.
Oxygen, iron and other substances, carbon and so forth — of these we should say, in their mutual relations, ‘they think in us’. But as a matter of fact we are not conscious of any such thing. There is no question of its being in our consciousness. What we have as a fact of consciousness is the content of our soul-life. That can exist under no other hypothesis than that the whole of this quite material happening is demolished, is annihilated, and that in us there actually is no conservation of force and substance, but room is made by the annihilation of substance, for the development of the thought life. In fact, Man is the one arena in which an actual annihilation of substance takes place. We shall never realise it so long as we are only conscious of what is outside ourselves.

Timeline effect - the 747 years

And then there is the 747 years effect between the cultural ages and what we know to be the effect of the regular hierarchies and astronomy, and then the Mystery of Golgotha that intervened 'on top of that', into that regular clock we work with. This implies that certain effects will be along a 'new clock'.

1920-05-08-21-GA201

In this lecture, central to this topic, we hear (SWCC)

.. let us recall an important fact which takes its course entirely in the spiritual world, but will make clear to us a parallel phenomenon between spiritual life and the life of the external starry world. We divide the post-Atlantean epoch in 'cultural ages' of civilisation, and I have frequently shown how the fourth cultural age began in the continuous stream of the post-Atlantean time, about the year 747 BC., and ceased — speaking roughly, I always say about the middle of the fifteenth century, but to speak more accurately, it really ended in the year AD. 1413. That was the fourth; and we are now in the fifth.
If we thus consider the succession of civilisations, we can describe their characteristics, bearing in mind the descriptions given in Occult Science. Thus we can describe the Graeco-Latin, in which the Event of Golgotha occurred, but in doing so we need not refer to that Event, for we can describe the epoch by connecting it with the preceding one. It is possible to describe the successive epochs in their fundamental nature, and to have an epoch from 747 BC. to AD. 1413 so running its course that nothing in history shows that during this time an important event occurs. Let us recall the time of the occurrence of the Event of Golgotha, remembering all we know concerning the civilisations of the most advanced people of the time — the Greek, the Roman and the Latin. Let us reflect that to these people the Event of Golgotha was an unknown affair. It occurred in a small corner of the world, and the first mention of its effects is to be found in Tacitus, the Roman historian, one hundred years later. It was not observed by its contemporaries, least of all by the most cultured.
Thus the fact comes into evidence in the historical stream of evolution that there was no necessity inherent in the regular progress of the evolution of mankind from the first three epochs of civilisation to the fourth, that the Event of Golgotha should take place. This fact should receive close attention. The Event actually took place 747 years after the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period. In trying to understand the Event of Golgotha, we may say that it gave purpose and meaning to the life of the Earth, that the Earth would not have had this meaning if evolution had simply gone on as the outcome of the first, second and third post-Atlantean epochs. The Event of Golgotha came as an intervention from other worlds.
This fact is not sufficiently considered. In modern times several historians have alluded to it, but they have not been able to make anything of it. In fact, history practically omits the Event of Golgotha. At most the historians describe the influence of Christianity in the successive post-Christian centuries, but the actual intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha itself is not described in an ordinary course of history. It would indeed be difficult to describe it, if one kept to the ordinary methods of history. Certainly remarkable men — oddly enough, clergy among them — have attempted to explain the causes of the Event of Golgotha. Pastor Kalthoff, for instance, and many others. Pastor Kalthoff tried to explain Christianity from the consciousness and the economic conditions of the last centuries preceding the appearance of Christ. But what did this explanation amount to? In effect it said: People lived in certain economic conditions, and eventually the idea of Christ arose, the dream of Christ, as it were, the ideology of Christ; and from these arose Christology. It arose in humanity only as an idea. People like Paul, and a few others, described what had thus arisen as an idea as though it had occurred as a fact in a remote corner of the world! — Such explanations mean a doing-away with Christianity. It is a noteworthy phenomenon of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries that Christian pastors should set themselves the task of saving Christianity, by eliminating Christ. People were ashamed to admit the facts of the rise of Christianity outright. They found it more satisfactory to explain the rise of Christology, to explain it simply as an idea. Various streams of thought found their way into this domain, and one special province of science has become remarkable in this connection, arising in the materialistic stream of culture which reached its culminating point in Marxism. Thus Kalthoff is a kind of Marxist Pastor who tries to explain Christology out of a sort of pious Marxism. Others have ridden other hobby horses in seeking an explanation for the phenomenon of Christianity; why then should not each explain Christianity or explain Christ Jesus, according to his own fancy? A psychiatrist explains Christ according to psychiatry, simply by saying that the way in which Christ appeared in His time can be explained today from the standpoint of psychiatry as due to an abnormal consciousness. This is no isolated case. And these are phenomena which must not be disregarded, otherwise we do not see what is happening at the present time, for they are signs of present day life as a whole. We must clearly recognise that which has given the Earth a meaning, was an intervention from another world. We must distinguish two streams in human evolution, which indeed run side by side today, but only met for the first time at the beginning of our era. One is the Christian stream, which was added to the continuous current from olden times. Natural Science, for instance, has not yet accepted the Event of Golgotha and flows on in the continuous stream as though that Event had never occurred. Spiritual Science must endeavour to bring natural scientific study and Christology into harmony; for where has Christology any place if the Kant-Laplace theory holds sway and we look back to a primeval mist out of which everything has been formed? Would Christianity ultimately have any real world-significance for Man on Earth if the stars were regarded as they are by Father Secchi? For the starry heavens are regarded by him materialistically, not as though an Event of Golgotha had been born from out of them. And that becomes the chief ground for leaving it to other powers to say how Man should think of the Event of Golgotha. If Man can develop nothing from Cosmic knowledge concerning the Event, some other source must be found to tell him what he ought to think of it, and it is obvious that Rome is that source. All these things are so consistently — in a sense, so grandly — thought out, that it is inexcusable to be under any illusions about them at the present difficult and fateful time.
These 747 years fall in the world's evolution as a period which speaks with the utmost significance. It tells us of all that is connected with the old evolution, all that recalls, and is related to the past periods of time. The new beginning commenced at the end of this epoch, 747 years after, let us say, the founding of Rome — which was really 747, not the point of time given in the ordinary history books.
Here we have a fresh start, and if we now go back and take the periods of time, we shall have to say that everywhere we must add fresh turning-points of time to those already rightly assigned. An entirely new division of the course of time was brought about by the Event of Golgotha's falling in this period, inserted into human evolution from outside, as it were. We must clearly realise the existence of these two streams in world evolution in so far as Man is involved in it. If we hold fast to this we can now see something more.

or, summarized from 1920-05-08-GA201

We must clearly recognise that which has given the Earth a meaning, was an intervention from another world. We must distinguish two streams in human evolution, which indeed run side by side today, but only met for the first time at the beginning of our era.
... An entirely new division of the course of time was brought about by the Event of Golgotha's falling in this period, inserted into human evolution from outside, as it were. ... The Event of Golgotha came as an intervention from other worlds. This fact is not sufficiently considered.
... We have seen that if Man places himself rightly, the result is not one astronomy, but two; a solar and a lunar astronomy. So too we have a human development of a heathen nature — natural science is still heathen —and a human development of a Christian nature.

See FMC00.052A above.

1918-10-13-GA184

There may also be a hint in this lecture, where a comparison is made between the year 333 as the middle of the fourth cultural age

Yesterday we saw how the mood of soul, towards which in this age of the Consciousness Soul we have to aim, was in a certain sense prepared historically. Let us keep clearly before us the relevant situation in the external world. We may say: The year 333 after Christ represents a kind of equilibrium (see diagram), distinctly perceptible in the course of historical events, but figuring very little in external history, for the simple reason that affairs revolve round it, and the actual pivot — this holds good even in mechanical motion — does not belong to the system that is moving. Take a pair of scales. You see the movement of the scales and of the beam, but the pivot itself is an ideal point — something we cannot really see. Yet it is obviously the most important part of the balance and must essentially have proper support.
It is particularly necessary for us to grasp what happened in this important year 333, as little noticed by the external world as is the pivot in a pair of scales. The year 333 is indeed the mid-point of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the midpoint of that significant epoch which ran its course from the founding of Rome, 747 years before the Mystery of Golgotha, until approximately 1413, when the Graeco-Latin epoch came to an end and was followed by the epoch which will last until the middle of the fourth millennium — the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. When we consider outward events, this midpoint of 333 is as little apparent as the mid-point of a balance.
But we could indicate something else, 333 years later — the year 666. Of this year we can say that what later developed as the scientific method of thinking was already then evident in the activities of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr, which were later blunted by Mohammedanism. We tried yesterday to follow up how a certain mood of spirit, or mood of soul, spread among the people of Southern Europe — that typically scientific mood which still pervades modern natural science and has extended very widely into modern ways of thought. This was 333 years from the time when people still only looked back to the old days, as Julian the Apostate did. Up to 666 is 333 years; if we then go back and take the other side of the scales, 333 years earlier, we come to the preparations for the Mystery of Golgotha through the birth of Christ Jesus.
(see drawing)

and then:

I have often mentioned, and you will find it brought out in the first of my Mystery Plays, The Portal of Initiation, that as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha men stood facing the turning-point of the fourth post-Atlantean age, the year 333, so we today are facing a turning-point.
The time is rather shorter because the movements of the higher Spirits change in velocity; we cannot reckon that today we have 333 years again before the turning-point. It changes somewhat in the course of time, this speed with which the various separate Spirits of the higher Hierarchies move on.
Thus today, in the first third of the twentieth century, we are facing the approach of an important event for mankind.
And all the convulsions, all the catastrophes, are nothing else than the earth-shaking occurrences which precede a great spiritual event of the twentieth century. It is not an event now in the physical world, but an event that will come to men as a kind of enlightenment, reaching them before the first third of the twentieth century has run out. If the phrase is not misunderstood, one can call it the reappearance of Christ Jesus. But Christ Jesus will not appear in external life, as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but will work in man and be felt supersensibly. He is present in the etheric body. Those who are prepared can constantly experience Him in visions, constantly receive His counsel; in a certain sense they can enter into a direct personal relation with Him. All this that lies before us is comparable with what the Romans felt prior to the Augustan age, as the physically real Mystery of Golgotha that was approaching.

1915-01-10-GA161

Introduces the 'new timeline'

You see, these are the effects of the laws of the Sun. In this case, we do not need to ascend to the same suprasensory regions that we investigated when considering personal destiny. We see what remains in the world from the Sun laws through the example of philosophical development.
Yesterday, in connection with the etheric body, we wrote "angels" here [in reference to diagram].
Such angels undergo development. And when people believe that they themselves are philosophizing, the laws of the Sun are actually at work in them, insofar as they continue to carry the Sun stage of evolution (which is to say, what the Sun stage of evolution brought about in their physical bodies, and the effects that it had in their etheric bodies). And the laws of the Sun continue to work from epoch to epoch in such a way as to bring about philosophical development and carry it to a point that it has not reached before.
Because these are laws of the Sun, the Christ—the Sun Being—was also able to take hold, through them, in the second philosophical epoch. This was prepared during the first epoch; and then the Christ, the Sun Being, took hold in the second epoch.
You see how all of this is connected. But when the Christ, the Being of the Sun, took hold, these laws came into connection with a line of development that is not the same as human evolution; one that is not Earth evolution, but rather Sun evolution within existence on earth.
Sun evolution within earth existence! Just think for a moment about where we have actually arrived in this lecture. We have been considering the course of philosophical development, considering the progression of philosophical thought since the time of Ancient Greece; and when we step back and look at how philosophical thought has developed from one philosopher to the next, we are saying it is the laws of the Sun, and not those of the earth, which are active in this development. The laws that played out between the spirits of wisdom and the archangels back then appear once again on earth in the form of a philosophical striving for wisdom. Go back to An Outline of Esoteric Science and read again about how the spirits of wisdom took hold during Sun evolution. Now they are repeating this influx during Earth evolution, not in the new evolutionary course, but via the remains of the old Sun evolution. And although human beings do not notice that throughout philosophical development the spirits of wisdom have been pulsing in their heart-minds [Gemut], humans go about developing their philosophies.
The old Sun lives in philosophical development. It really and truly lives in it.
..
then goes on to explain the
We see from this what Mysteries are actually hidden in the Cosmos, for as soon as we admit we have two astronomies, which work together in their results — what is the result? The human heart. The whole outlook of modern natural science is based on the fact that it does not distinguish these two streams from one another.

Spiritual beings behind the laws of the higher ethers

But also with the higher ethers, like with everything, we have to think in terms of spiritual beings, and in 1922-05-28-GA212 reference is made to what Ernst Hagemann calls the elementary spirits.

1922-05-28-GA212

What we have considered so far amounts to one aspect of what in the future threatens mankind.
There is another aspect — just as the lower elements of earth, water and air are inhabited by elemental beings, so are the higher elements of light ether, chemical ether and life ether.
However, these beings of the higher elements differ considerably from those of the lower ones. The beings of light, and particularly those of life, do not aim at becoming multitudes. The ones who strive the most to become multitudes are the beings of the earth element. The beings of the etheric element strive rather towards unity. It is difficult to differentiate them from one another; they do not express any individuality and rather strive to amalgamate. Certain initiates in ancient times, through whom certain teachings of the Old Testament originated, turned their attention particularly towards the etheric elements. The strong tendency of these elements towards unification created an influence which resulted in the strict monotheism of Judaism.

Various

1919-11-30-GA194

for long extract and link to lecture, see Human breath#1919-11-30-GA194

the breathing process has become a different one since the third post-Atlantean cultural age. Roughly speaking, we might say: In the third post-soul; today he breathes air. Not only our thoughts have become materialistic; reality itself has lost its soul.
I beg you, my dear friends, not to see something negligible in what I am now saying.
For just consider what it means that reality itself, in which mankind lives, has been transformed so that the air we breathe is something different from what it was four millennia ago.
Not only the consciousness of mankind has changed, oh no! there was soul in the atmosphere of the earth. The air was the soul.
...
Just as it was self-evident for the man of the second and third pre-Christian millennium to think of the air as ensouled — so must it become self-evident for us to think of light as ensouled; we must arouse this ability in us when we consider light the general representative of sense perception. We must thoroughly do away with the habit of seeing in light that which our materialistic age is accustomed to see in it. We must entirely cease to believe that merely those vibrations emanate from the sun of which, out of the modern consciousness, physics and people in general speak.
We must become clear about the fact that the soul element penetrates through cosmic space upon the pinions of light; and we must realize, at the same time, that this was not the case in the period preceding our age.
That which approaches mankind today through light approached mankind of that former period through the air. You see here an objective difference in the earth process. Expressing this in a comprehensive concept, we may say, Air-soul-process, Light-soul-process.
This is what may be observed in the evolution of the earth. The Mystery of Golgotha signifies the transition from the one period to the other.
[editor note: this is a key statement. The transitions flips symmetrically around warmth/heat, which means: spiritualization instead of material-condensing]
...
It is a question of learning to say the following:

there was a time prior to the Mystery of Golgotha when the earth had an atmosphere which contained the soul element that belongs to the soul of man.

Today, the earth has an atmosphere which is devoid of this soul element. The same soul element that was previously in the air has now entered the light which embraces us from morning to evening.

This was made possible through the fact that the Christ has united Himself with the earth.

Thus, also from the soul-spiritual aspect, air and light underwent a change in the course of the Earth evolution.
..it is a childish presentation that describes air and light in the same manner, purely materially, throughout the millennia in which Earth evolution unfolded. Air and light have changed inwardly.
We live in an atmosphere and in a light sphere that are different from those in which our souls lived in previous earthly incarnations.

1920-12-23-GA202

Discussion

Note 1 - Regarding the 747 timeline effect

Rudolf Steiner positions the 747 years of difference between the regular timeline of the spiritual hierarchies and their eigenperiods. These cycles, at the level of the Archai, correspond to a time period for the fourth cultural age of -747 to 1413. However the Mystery of Golgotha infused a divine solar impulse some -747 years later. Hence the effect of this has to be considered with an 'offset' of adding 747 years to the timeline used for cultural ages. See Schema FMC00.052A above.

From this follow significant dates (to be commented) - see also Schema FMC00.052A

869+747=1616
1250+747=2119
1413+747=2160
1879+747=2626

Note it has been observed by some that, given the fact the the year 0 corresponds to the birth of Jesus whereas the Christ Impulse happened 33 years later, the above reasoning should actually be made not with adding 747 years but 780 years.

However to our knowledge to date, Rudolf Steiner used an offset of 747 years and never spoke of 780 years.

Nevertheless he did speak of the 33 years cycle separately - see Thirty three years rhythm

Related pages

References and further reading

Georg Blattmann: The Sun: The Ancient Mysteries and a New Physics (1985)
Christian Lazarides: Vivons-nous les commencements de l'ère des poissons ? (1990)

Various other unqualified

Johannes Hemleben: 'Biologie und Christentum' (1971)