The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospel of St. John I

[ 1 ] Today and next time, I would like to speak about the Gospel of John. I would like to note, however, that the discussions we will be having about the Gospel of John will likely be fully understandable only to those participants who have already studied theosophy to some extent. Of course, it would take us too far afield if we were to discuss here all the other topics that might be of interest to non-theosophists.

[ 2 ] You may be aware that, in recent times, a certain view has emerged regarding the interpretation of the New Testament writings—the Gospels—which has effectively discredited the Gospel of John as a historical document. It is said in theological circles—at least among the “progressives”—that only the first three Gospels, the Synoptic Gospels, can be considered authentic accounts of the life of the founder of Christianity. They are called “Synoptic” because they summarize the content and aim to provide a comprehensive theological picture of the life of Jesus Christ. In contrast, modern theologians attempt to interpret the Gospel of John as a kind of fiction, as a confessional text, as the writing of a person who describes his emotional impressions and his inner religious life as he experienced it through the influence of Christianity. Thus, we would have to view the Gospel of John as a devotional text, a fervent confession, but nothing that could in any way be considered relevant to the actual facts of Christianity.

[ 3 ] However, for anyone who delves deeply into the New Testament writings, one inner truth will be absolutely clear. It is this: life flows directly from the Gospel of John—a conviction and a source of truth of a somewhat different kind than that found in other religious texts. A certainty flows from it that requires no external evidence. It is the kind of feeling that comes over people when they approach the Gospel of John with a sense of inner spiritual life and a desire for spiritual deepening. One cannot truly gain clarity about what is actually presented here through anything other than spiritual scientific deepening. Time and again I have spoken to you about how one can develop a relationship with the religious texts through spiritual science, through spiritual deepening.

[ 4 ] Each of you knows that one’s initial relationship to religious scriptures is that of a naive person who accepts the facts as they are presented, who does not question them further, who draws sustenance for religious life from these texts, and is satisfied with them.

[ 5 ] Many modern people who had held this naive view and then became “wise”—who had been enlightened—noticed the contradictions in the Gospels. Then they turned their backs on the Gospels and on faith. They declared: We cannot reconcile it with our conscience, with our sense of truth, to find insights in these writings and yet continue to believe in them. — This is the stage of the “wise,” the second stage.

[ 6 ] Then there is a third way in which people relate to religious scriptures. They begin to interpret the religious scriptures symbolically. They start to see symbols and allegories in them. Free thinkers have been choosing this path, especially in recent times. Bruno Wille, the editor of the journal Der Freidenker, has recently taken this path. He has begun to subject the Christ myth—and the Bible in general—to an allegorical interpretation. This cannot result in a necessary stage of development that human beings must undergo, nor can it lead to an inner turning point. Those who are less insightful will interpret these writings with less insight. Others, who are more insightful, will draw out more profound insights. In the process, much is read into them that is entirely in keeping with human insight and springs from it. The third approach, therefore, is a half-believing but arbitrary standpoint.

[ 7 ] Then comes an entirely different perspective, namely the one in which one comes to recognize that there are realities of the higher world, that beyond our sensory world there are other realities—namely, spiritual and soul-related ones—and that religious revelations are not at all revelations from the sensory world, but rather descriptions of realities of a higher world. Whoever then comes to know these realities of the astral world—which lies immediately beyond our own—and of the even deeper devachanic or mental world, will arrive at a new, higher understanding of the religious texts. And it is impossible to understand the Gospel of John without such an ascent to a higher world. The Gospel of John is neither a work of fiction nor a text born of mere religious fervor; rather, it presents communications from higher worlds that the author of this Gospel received. The matter is roughly as follows—I will briefly outline the facts for you. I do not wish to present the evidence for this today. Perhaps I will address that next time. The one who wrote the Gospel of John came to know the events that took place around the founder of Christianity at the beginning of our era, and his work, through his experiences in higher worlds.

[ 8 ] Now, here is an example of the difference between mere knowledge and true recognition. We recently mentioned here that a person can be right next to us, that we can see him as he is, but that this does not necessarily mean we recognize him. In this context, I mentioned the anecdote about the singer who was seated between Mendelssohn and a stranger at an evening gathering. She enjoyed a very pleasant conversation with Mendelssohn, but the other man, though very polite, was a complete turn-off to her. So afterward she asked, “Who was that dull fellow sitting to my left?” “That was the famous philosopher Hegel!” was the reply. If the lady had been told beforehand that the great philosopher Hegel would be present at the evening gathering, she would probably have accepted the invitation for that reason alone. But since he was now sitting next to her as a stranger, he was the “dumb guy.” That is the difference between seeing and understanding, between knowing and recognizing.

[ 9 ] The one who founded Christianity could not be readily recognized by those who possessed only the ordinary, sensory-oriented intellect. This included what Christian mystics have often expressed in such grand and beautiful words. This is also what Angelus Silesius meant when he said:

Will Christ be born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not within you: you will remain lost forever.

[ 10 ] There is an inner experience of Christ; there is a way to recognize what confronts us externally in the events that took place in Palestine between the years 1 and 33. The One who came into this world from higher worlds must, in turn, be understood from a higher world. And the one who describes him most profoundly had to ascend to the two higher worlds under consideration here: the astral world and the devachanic, or mental, world. This ascent of John—if we may call it that—was an ascent into these two higher worlds. The Gospel of John presents this to us in its accounts.

[ 11 ] The first twelve chapters of the Gospel of John describe John’s experiences in the astral world. Starting with the thirteenth chapter, they describe John’s experiences in the devachanic or mental world, so that the one who wrote this down says of Christ—and these words must be taken entirely in a figurative sense—: Here on this Earth He lived; here He worked through powers that are divine, through occult powers. He healed the sick; He went through everything, from death to resurrection. It is impossible to comprehend these things with the mere intellect. Here on Earth there is no science, no wisdom, through which one can understand what happened there. But there is a way to ascend into the higher worlds. There one will find the wisdom through which one can understand the One who walked here on Earth. Thus the writer of the Gospel of John ascended into the two higher worlds and was initiated. It was an initiation, and the author of the Gospel of John describes this initiation—the initiation into the astral world and the initiation into the devachanic or mental world.

[ 12 ] In ancient times, in those regions where the human body was still suited to it, such an initiation was carried out in the following manner. The person in question had to undergo a kind of sleep-like state. Everything that is otherwise part of a modern European initiation—which lasts for years because a European cannot endure what is now being described—everything that is achieved in a European initiation through long exercises in meditation and concentration was once attained by some individuals in a short time, though also following certain preliminary exercises in meditation and concentration. I expressly note that for anyone who truly wishes to receive initiation, these two important experiences must eventually occur in some form, in which they undergo what is now to be described, albeit in a somewhat different manner. A person must pass through a kind of sleep state. To understand what sleep actually is in its essence, let us once again consider what takes place within the soul when a person sleeps. At that time, the higher bodies are separated from the lower bodies. After all, a human being consists first and foremost of the physical body, which you can see with your eyes. The second component is the so-called etheric body. This is the component of the being that envelops the physical body; it is much finer than the physical body, and within it currents and organs of wondrous diversity and splendor are at work. The etheric body also contains the same organs as the physical body. The etheric body, too, has a brain, a heart, eyes, and so on. These represent the forces that originally created the corresponding physical organs. It is roughly like water in a vessel cooling down until it turns into ice. This is how you should imagine the formation of the physical organ through the condensation of the etheric. The etheric body extends only slightly beyond the physical body.

[ 13 ] The third body is the astral body. It is the vehicle of desires, wishes, passions, and so on. It permeates the physical body in the form of a cloud. Colors are present there, and intense passions take the form of flickering flashes of light. The qualities of the temperament flow through the body as points of light of varying brightness. The entire inner being manifests outwardly in a form of light. This is the true self of the human being, the bearer of the higher, the true core of the being. When a person sleeps at night—that is, during ordinary sleep—the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed. These are firmly connected to one another. Separated from them is the astral body, along with everything else that still belongs to the human being. As long as a person does not take any special action, they remain unconscious when their astral body is outside the physical body. They remain unconscious, just as a person remains unconscious in the sensory world without eyes and ears. No matter how long you might live in the physical world—if you had no eyes, there would be no colors; if you had no ears, there would be no world of sound. It is the same when the astral body is outside the physical body. It is then extended into the spiritual world, but it does not see it; it does not perceive it, because it does not yet have astral senses. These must first be developed gradually. As long as a person does not practice these exercises, they remain unconscious in the higher world. But if they do practice them, they can attain consciousness in this higher world. When their astral body develops organs, they begin to see the astral world around them. Those who have heard these lectures frequently know that there are seven such astral senses. They are called the sacred wheels, chakras, or lotus flowers. Between the two eyes, between the eyebrows, is the two-petaled lotus flower. Near the throat is the sixteen-petaled lotus flower, and near the heart is the twelve-petaled one. As these organs gradually develop, the person becomes able to see in the astral world.

[ 14 ] This astral vision is something entirely different from physical sight. You can get an idea of what astral vision is like if you recall how dream life unfolds. What we experience in dreams are symbols. In the same way, astral perceptions are also symbols—true symbols. There, a person becomes one who sees symbols. In the astral world, they lose consciousness of what is happening directly in the physical world, but through symbols they can experience such events from the life of Christ Jesus as John describes them based on his own experiences in the astral world. Descriptions of this kind form the content of the first twelve chapters of the Gospel of John. Do not misunderstand me! I know many will say: If these are astral experiences, then they are not real, and what is told to us about the founder of Christianity has no validity. — That is not correct. It would be the same as denying that a person of flesh and blood is a genius simply because one cannot see the genius. Even if one comes to recognize the truth about Christ Jesus only on the astral plane, his life did in fact take place on the physical plane. We are dealing with the symbol on the astral plane and with external reality on the physical plane. Nothing is taken away from reality when we understand it in a deeper sense, in the sense of the Gospel of John.

[ 15 ] Initiation into the astral plane must be preceded by what is called meditation. This is the soul’s immersion within itself; I have described it here on several occasions. To attain a meditative experience, a person must first render themselves blind and deaf to all sensory impressions. Nothing must disturb them; one must be able to fire cannons without them perceiving anything of it in their inner experience. This does not come easily, but through constant practice, one can acquire the necessary ability. One must also make oneself impervious to what one has already experienced; the memory must be erased. The soul must become wholly absorbed in itself; only then can the eternal truths rise from within it—eternal truths that are capable not merely of awakening our understanding, but of unleashing the faculties that slumber, as if enchanted, within our soul. These great, eternal truths will dawn upon a person according to the maturity he has attained through his karma: for one, as Subba Row says, in seven incarnations; for another, in seventy years; for yet another, in seven years; for others, in seven months, seven days, or seven hours.

[ 16 ] John now also describes what brought him into such a spiritual state, what led him to perceive on the astral plane. The formula he used as a meditation mantra appears at the beginning of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”

[ 17 ] These five sentences contain the eternal truths that conjure up the great visions in John’s soul. This is the formula for meditation. The person for whom the Gospel of John was written must not simply read it like any other book. He must regard the first five sentences as a formula for meditation; then he will follow in John’s footsteps, and he will seek to experience the same things that John experienced. This is the way to follow in his footsteps; this is what is meant. John says: Do what I have done; let the great phrases “In the beginning was the Word” and so on take effect in your souls, and you will find that what is said in my first twelve chapters is true.

[ 18 ] This is something that can contribute solely to an understanding of the Gospel of John. That is how it is meant, and that is how it should be used. As for what the “Word” means, I have already mentioned that on several occasions. In the beginning—let’s understand correctly what that means. “In the beginning” is not a good German translation. The translation should actually read: The Word sprang forth from the primordial forces. That is what it means: the Word came forth, from the primordial forces. “In the beginning” therefore means: from the primordial forces.

[ 19 ] When a person enters this state of sleep, they are no longer in the sensory world. They enter a spiritual world, and in this spiritual world they experience the truth about the sensory world. There, the truth of the sensory world dawns upon them. They move from the derived words of the sensory world back to the primal forces and ascend to the words of truth. Every truth has seven meanings. For the mystic who is deep in contemplation, however, it has this meaning here: The insight—the word that dawns—is not something that applies only to yesterday and today; rather, this word is eternal. This word leads to God, because it has always been with God Himself, because it is the very essence that God has placed within all things.

[ 20 ] But there is another way of understanding this, and one acquires it by returning again and again each day to the significant words: “In the beginning was the Word.” When one begins to understand it not only with the mind but also with the heart, so that the heart becomes completely one with this Word, then the power is unleashed, and the state of which John speaks begins. He describes this with great clarity: “All things were made through it, and without it nothing that has been made was made.”

[ 21 ] What do we find in this word? We find life. What do we recognize through life? Through the light? We must take the religious texts quite literally if we wish to ascend to a higher level of understanding. Where does the light shine when a person comes into being? Into the darkness of the night. It enters those who are asleep. It enters everyone who sleeps. But the darkness did not comprehend it—until the ability arose to perceive it on the astral plane. Thus, the fifth sentence, too, is to be understood literally. The astral light shines into the darkness of the night, but people usually do not see the light; they must first learn to see.

[ 22 ] Since all of this became a reality for the writer of the Gospel of John, it also dawned on him who it was that he was the disciple and apostle of. He had seen Him here on earth. Now he has rediscovered Him on the astral plane, and he has realized that the One who walked in the flesh on earth was distinguished from what lives in his own innermost being by only a single thing. A God-man lives within every single human being. In the distant future, this God-man will rise from within each and every one. Just as the human being stands before us today, he is, in his outward expression, more or less an imprint of the inner divine man, and this inner divine man is constantly at work upon the outer man.

[ 23 ] Last Thursday, I already pointed out how this can be seen even at a superficial level. Look at a child. You might say that these naive features resemble the father, the mother, an uncle, or an ancestor. But everything that lies within is expressed in the facial features, in the gestures of the hands, and in all of the child’s movements. What lies dormant within the child gradually emerges. Then, at last, the child’s own essence comes to the fore; the physiognomy becomes an imprint of the child’s own soul, whereas previously it was more the generic type that was expressed. In the savage, one’s own soul usually still lies dormant and has only a sparse existence. Over the course of many incarnations, however, the individuality works its way out; the soul gains more power over the physical body, and the physiognomy takes on the imprint or expression of the inner self. In the immature, little of the soul’s power is expressed. A person becomes more mature, and is truly mature, when the inner word has become fully incarnated, when the outer has become an exact reflection of the inner, so that the flesh is completely spiritualized. But he has only now understood this, after the higher self has appeared clearly before his astral eye. It stood on the astral plane before the soul’s eye of John, and he recognized: “That is me.” I have experienced it today only on the astral plane, but it will gradually descend, just as it did for the one I followed. - It is the profound kinship of Christ Jesus with the God-man who is inherent in every human being. This is John’s profound inner experience. The inner Self lives unconsciously within the human being, and it only becomes conscious to the soul through the processes described.

[ 24 ] What does it mean to say that we become aware of something? Can something that exists only within us become conscious to us? As long as it exists only within us, we are not aware of it. A person is not aware of what is subjective, of what they carry within themselves. I’d like to use a rough comparison to illustrate this. You all have a physical brain, but you cannot see it. It would have to be cut out for you to see it. The same reason—only in a slightly different way—applies to why you cannot see your higher Self. It is the Self within you. But it must come out if you are to perceive it, and that can only happen on the astral plane. When it emerges and is before you, then, in a spiritual sense, the same thing has happened as if you were to place a physical brain on a plate and make it the object of your sensory perception.

[ 25 ] The author of the Gospel of John describes this process: One’s own higher self steps forward—the higher self that, in its perfection, represents Christ. Only when you know this will you be able to understand certain allusions and certain truths in the first chapters of the Gospel of John. You will understand individual points very well if you simply take what I have said so far. In occult language, the physical body—which this “I” has built up for itself in order to dwell within it—is referred to as the temple. Thus, it is said: The soul dwells in the temple.

[ 26 ] It is not an entirely painless procedure when the soul is to leave the temple of the body for the first time, so that it is visible on the outside. This leaving of the body is not painless. Everything that forms this higher connection with the physical body consists of bonds that are not so easy to break—you can imagine it something like this: Suppose you are bound to an object by ropes and tear yourself away from it—you will experience painful sensations from this tearing. This is indeed a process akin to tearing when the astral body leaves the physical body, when it leaves in a perceptible way. Stepping out during sleep is something else; in that case, the person perceives nothing at all. But if one steps out consciously, then the pain becomes perceptible.

[ 27 ] When a person begins to develop astral consciousness, things on the astral plane appear to them in a mirror image. You must not read 165, but rather 561—that is, as if written in a mirror image. Everything appears reversed on the astral plane. Even time is reversed. If you follow a person on the astral plane, you start from the place where they are. Then you can go back all the way to their birth. You can follow them backward; on the physical plane—forward, on the astral plane—backward. This is how stepping out of the physical body appears to us. It is as if we were leaving the temple of the body and being grasped from all sides. This is the process that John seeks to describe, which consists of his stepping out of himself in order to experience the Christ—his own higher divine Self—before him. The people around him are such that they have strictly bound their astral bodies to their physical bodies, as if with chains. Had John remained like them, he would have continued to be bound to his physical body.

[ 28 ] Now read how this event is described figuratively and symbolically in the Gospel of John, chapter 8, verses 58 and 59: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ - Then they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, passing right through the midst of them,” through the obstacles. This concludes the eighth chapter. This is the process of the astral body emerging from the physical body. Usually, such a process—the final act leading to this emergence, which makes the person fully sighted—takes three days. When these three days are over, the person attains the same level of consciousness on the astral plane as they previously had on the physical plane. Then they unite with the higher world.

[ 29 ] In occult terminology, this union with the higher world is called the marriage of the soul, which is contracted with the powers of the higher world. Once one has stepped out of the physical body, the physical body stands before one just as a child—if it were capable of consciousness—would face the mother from whom it was born at the moment of birth. This is how the physical body stands before you, and the astral body may very well say to the physical body: “This is my mother.” Once it has celebrated its wedding, it can say this; then it looks back upon the union that once existed. This can happen after three days. Such is the occult process on the astral plane. Chapter 2, verse 1, states: “And on the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there.” This is the figurative expression of what I have just said. It happened on the third day.

[ 30 ] Once a person has passed from this world into the astral world, they find themselves in a realm from which a further ascent leads them to an even higher world—the mental or devachanic world. This entry into the mental or Devachanic world must be achieved through a complete shedding—a mortification—of the lower nature. A person must undergo the three-day death and then be resurrected. If they have become clairvoyant on the astral plane, if the images on the astral plane have appeared to them, then they have also become ready to gain knowledge on the mental or devachanic plane. It is then that one can describe his resurrection on the Devachanic plane. The conscious, mental finding of oneself on the higher plane—that is the resurrection of Lazarus.

[ 31 ] John also describes this raising of Lazarus. Earlier, he had shown that through this entire process one can enter the higher world, that this is the door to the higher worlds. In chapter 10, verse 9, it says: “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” This is the raising of that which was shrouded in sleep and is now being raised on the Devachan plane. John experiences it. John is Lazarus, and John means nothing other than what is described in his first twelve chapters: He described as an astral experience that he had been raised on the astral plane. Then came the initiation into the Devachan plane. He lay in the tomb for three days, and then he received the resurrection. The resurrection of Lazarus is the very resurrection of John, who wrote the Gospel.

[ 32 ] Read through the text up to the chapter on the raising of Lazarus to see if John appears anywhere yet, or if there is any mention of him. Look at Lazarus and John. Regarding John, it says: “Now there was a certain one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, who was reclining at Jesus’ side.” And in the case of Lazarus, too, you will find the words that the Lord loved him. It is the same individual. He is not mentioned before the raising. He appears only afterward, after he has been “raised from the dead.”

[ 33 ] These are the mysteries that lie hidden in the Gospel of John. The disciple whom the Lord loved—that is the one whom He Himself initiated. The writer of the Gospel of John was the one whom the Lord loved. And how was he able to write this? He was able to do so because he had first been initiated on the astral plane and then on the Devachan plane. If you deepen your understanding of the Gospel of John in this way, only then will the Gospel of John be understood in its true depth; only then will it become one of the greatest documents ever written. It is a description of the initiation into the depths of the soul’s life. It was written so that everyone might live out what is written therein. And this is possible. Sentence by sentence, word by word, as a person ascends to the higher plane, they can find within themselves what is described in the Gospel of John. It is not a biography of Jesus Christ, but a biography of the evolving human soul. And what is described is eternal; it can always take place in the heart of every human being. This text is a model and example. That is why it possesses that living and awakening power which not only makes a person a Christian, but also enables them to experience the resurrection into a higher reality. The Gospel of John is not a confessional text, but a text that truly bestows power and an independent, higher life. This springs forth from the Gospel of John, and whoever receives it in such a way that they do not merely seek to understand it but to live it has understood the Gospel of John in the right way.

[ 34 ] I was able to allude to what is contained therein in just a few words. Next time, let’s go into more detail. You will then see how every single sentence can serve as a confirmation of what we have outlined today regarding the Gospel of John. You will then gradually come to see to what extent this Gospel of John is directed not merely at the human intellect, but at all the powers of the soul, and how spiritual content truly springs forth from the Gospel of John.