What is it then that we are witnessing? We are very clearly witnessing that the Easter-story is telling us about the three great leading roles assigned to the characters Pilate, Christ and Barabbas. These three roles together symbolize the average civilised modern human being's mentality or psyche.
      The Pilate-mentality is still the dominant or ruling temperament in the modern civilised human being. Barabbas expresses the animal temperament in him. This temperament comprises all the kinds of thoughts that lead to hate and revenge, violence and murder, robbery, untruthfulness and slander, and so to sorrow, distress and misery.
      Christ, on the other hand, is the expression of all the kinds of thought that constitute love, unselfishness and joy in serving others.
      The Christ-temperament dissolves all animosity with forgiveness and friendship. Everything that comes under the terms "humaneness" or "the creation of peace, joy and blessing for everything with which one comes into contact" is the same as the Christ-temperament.
      These three forms of temperament are present in every single civilised human being who has not yet become a completely evolved human being. The proportions of Christ-mentality and Barabbas-mentality that are manifested in such a civilised human being are determined by his Pilate-mentality. This mentality is a temperament that has partly grown beyond the Barabbas-temperament but has still not acquired a truly effective Christ-mentality, even if it, to some degree, sympathises with this temperament and would very much like to take part in punishing and executing the Barabbas-temperament.