Life, and everything connected with it, is formed as eternal cycles. Every such cycle is formed as two great rhythms, of which the one moves from light to darkness, from a spiritual to a material state, and the other moves from darkness to light, from a material to a spiritual state. Through this, the experience of life is made possible, because the being in every rhythm becomes acquainted with each contrast alternately, after which the opposite rhythm can be experienced. Day and night, and summer and winter are the most well-known of these rhythms, because these rhythms are so short that the being experiences them many times within one of its terrestrial lives. On the other hand the rhythm from the material state to the spiritual state, and from the spiritual state to the material state is not such a tangible fact since these rhythms extend over such great distances in time that hundreds of terrestrial lives are needed to cover these cycles. In a single terrestrial life the being will therefore be able to experience only such a little local part of this cycle that it will normally not see any rhythm or any change in this little part. Indeed, is it not so that for many lives it simply denies the existence of these rhythms? But this denial is of course a result of this rhythmic movement's creation of materialism or the mental state that we call "spiritual darkness".

This spiritual darkness cannot in itself be denied since it is culminating at this very moment. For everyone it will be established as fact through some stronger or weaker signal. War, with its noisy din, explosions, destruction, mutilations, death rattle and heaps of ruins, is spreading its terror over the entire world. Everything is enveloped in the material rhythm's darkest night - even where we imagine there to be neutrality or peace. The vibrations of death fill the columns of the newspapers, scintillate and flash through every radio and are whispered from ear to ear, from one man to another. Indeed, the rhythm of spiritual darkness is very much alive. But that which is not so alive is the cessation of this darkness. Some people on Earth reveal their ignorance by asserting that "there has been war as long as people have existed, and war will therefore persist". For the cosmically clear-sighted being it is obvious that here the Mayfly, which cannot overview the spiritual dark rhythm, is speaking. For this being this rhythm is of such vast dimensions that it can perceive it only as "eternity" itself. Such a view can of course be only one of the seeds of hopelessness from which the darkness of the material rhythm grows. With this philosophy or postulate, such a being is in reality the very culmination of the mental cycle's utmost fossilisation or density. Such a postulate, like atheism itself, is the spiral cycle's mental blocks of stone or rock formations. They weigh the I down and keep it tied and bound to the cycle's most inane or uninspired spheres. Their pronouncements about the cycle's opposite rhythm, "light", are thus quite without authority. They are then wholly inhabitants of the dark rhythm.

But does the divine world order not state: "While the Earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease". We have thus here the very law for the principle of the cycle, which of course in turn is the same as the principle of life itself. The principle of life thus determines that day can never entirely disappear from the regions of night. In the dark night we see a multitude of the heavenly stars, distant radiant solar clusters sparkling through space in order, after a passage of hundreds of thousands of miles, to light up the retina of our eyes and vibrate their shining story into our brains and consciousness. The only thing that shuts the light of these thousands of stars out from our horizon is the Earth's own atmosphere, its own grey, opaque clouds. Do these distant suns not contribute to making the night holy? Are they not in themselves a Christmas message that on every clear night is sent out from the great outer space? Does not a message emanate from their light, a message about the fact that even if day has disappeared from our latitudes, it exists there, far out in the Godhead's great world and, like a shining angel, sweeps over thousands of other worlds, planets and spheres? Does this divine message not open a colossal perspective for thought? Does not perfect logic or logical thinking tell us here about distant worlds with life, human beings, animals and plants? Is sunlight not the very seed that promotes the propagation of life and thereby populates the planets with life? But by which physical means could the life of the planets otherwise turn up in the various worlds? Indeed, the Godhead sanctifies every single night with a Christmas message. But how could this message about distant worlds, about the eternity of day or light, be related to human beings if the light of their own sun was not shut out for a short time? Would they not believe that their own little world and sun were everything that existed? Would this not be a very distorted picture of the Godhead's eternal majesty or almightiness?

But just at the Godhead reveals the presence of the light of day during the darkness of the night, so too does the Godhead reveal his presence in the form of the presence of the light in the dark zones of other cycles. Winter belongs thus to these. Winter is thus daily life's physical zone of darkness. This holds true especially on our latitudes. Because of the Earth's particular relationship to the sun, the days become darker and darker, and the further north we come, the more the darkness of night reigns. Plant and animal life diminishes. And the lack of sun makes the human being's existence and the maintenance of life difficult, in masses of cases promoting illness, melancholy and depression. When the human being nonetheless has been able to brave winter's hard conditions of life and been able to migrate from the Earth's warmer regions, and has tempted life in this cycle's sphere of night for thousands of years, it is also due to the eternal principle that allows the eternal light of day to shine during the night. The year cycle's winter zone or the sphere of night has also its shining night sky. This night sky is the human being's sphere of thought at an advanced stage. In this sphere greater and greater twinkling stars have gradually come to shine. And just as the Godhead, by means of the twinkling stars of the night in the sky, has been able to tell the human beings about the vast contours and areas of his kingdom, so too has the Godhead, through these stars of the human being's sphere of thought been able to tell the beings such wonderful fairy-tales about its nature and world, fairy-tales so animating that these human beings have braved hardship, cold, hunger and, through the invention of clothes and shoes, houses and tents, light and heating, have simply been able to change a great deal of the night zone of the winter cycle into a day zone. With the light from the stars, that is, the brilliant ideas from their sphere of thought, they have carried so much of summer over into winter that for thousands of years it has been a tolerable, indeed sometimes even pleasant, sphere for their daily life and activities.

But when these shining stars of the sphere of thought have been able to spread light so actively, it is due to the fact that a message from God's great world emanates from this light too, just as it does from the stars of the night - the ideas of higher beings, powerful godheads, whose favour it would be good to gain. The worshipping of these godheads became great celebrations and displays of joy with which one could stimulate and experience existence in the dark midwinter, when all other sensate beings in Nature seem to rest or dormant. These stars of the sphere of thought, like the stars of the sky, have too their paths and cycles. They came and disappeared, some quickly and some slowly. But they were always replaced by other twinkling mental stars. Indeed, some even came so close that they could be clearly discerned as great suns. These, the gigantic stars or shining suns of the mental winter darkness or the mental night sky, are the world redeemers. You can get an idea of how vast a light that can emanate from such a star when you hear that the light from one such star shone so much sympathy, love and joy onto the human being's mental night sky that, with unchanged strength, it was able to light up the barren and desolate dark period of nineteen hundred midwinters with its superterrestrial light. Indeed, this heavenly light vibrated, quivered and sparkled so strongly over the snow and frost regions of midwinter, and made itself one with the experience of winter, that the inhabitants here simply cannot imagine this light symbolised by anything other than snowfields, sleighing, skating, festive gatherings around the plant peculiar to these cold regions: the fir tree. To this day tens upon tens of thousands of beautiful winter pictures portraying snow-covered fir trees, white, peaceful landscapes with the fresh and radiant manifestation of joy in living, are sent to and from all the countries in the world with greetings and wishes for a "Merry Christmas".

You now know what I am referring to. You know the star. You have all felt its light. It is possible that you no longer feel its brightness so strongly. You are perhaps not looking at your mental night sky at the moment and cannot of course see its shining light either. It is possible that you are filled with a more or less strong antipathy against all the small childish outer decorations of Christmas: Christmas pixies around the Christmas rice pudding, Christmas trees with their decorations gilded with silver and gold, presents and sweets, Christmas carols and so on. Indeed, you perhaps do not believe at all that the world redeemer, of whom Christmas is an after-effect, has existed, and that the Christmas gospel is pure fabrication, sheer fantasy, which you take a downright pride in removing from the terrestrial human mentality. But even though the light of the star is thus at the moment overshadowed by your own dark mental clouds, then the fact will remain that every single year on 24^th and 25^th December a vast mental wave of love moves across the Earth. Hundreds of thousands of postmen are almost collapsing while delivering this tidal wave of love, which gushes around the Earth vying with the tidal waters of the moon. Who can fail to notice this? The beautiful fairy-tale that began with the poor child in the crib is thus today, nineteen hundred years later, not without basis in reality. Are we not facing a living revelation of the world redemption's enormous force and effort? Which being other than a world redeemer, does one believe, is able to leave behind such a monument? Which of the great autocrats or famous beings of the past have such an influence today on our exchange of post and thoughts? The world redeemer thus came to shine brightly in the human beings' mental sky. And thus we must ourselves become a shining star in the night sky of our fellow beings, shining on our enemies and those that do not like us. In this way we will be in harmony with the world redemption, and have become an open channel for its heavenly light. Our vibrations, our light will shine down through the history of man for thousands of years.