The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospel of John IV

[ 1 ] We must begin our discussion today with an important term from the Spiritual Science. In Christian esotericism, the Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom and the Earth the Cosmos of Love. By “Moon,” we mean the Earth’s lunar phase. The designation of the Moon as the Cosmos of Wisdom is based on the fact that everything that was formed at that time was permeated by wisdom. The replacement of the lunar phase by the Earth phase signifies the replacement of the Cosmos of Wisdom by the Cosmos of Love. When the Earth emerged once more from the twilight state, Pralaya, the seeds that had been cultivated on the Moon sprouted, including the seeds of the human physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Wisdom was imbued into these three bodies and their mutual relationships on the Moon. Therefore, wisdom is also found in the structure of these three bodies. The greatest wisdom lies in the structure of the physical body, less so in that of the etheric body, and even less in that of the astral body. Whoever contemplates the physicality of the human being not only with the intellect but with a meditative soul will discover this wisdom in every organ, in every limb of the body. If one considers, for example, the human femur, one finds within it a veritable network of beams running crisscross, seemingly without order; yet no engineer today would be capable of constructing these two columns that support the human upper body with the least possible expenditure of force and material. As long as the divine spirits were still building the human bodies, only wisdom was placed within them. People generally regard the human physical body as the lowest, but wrongly so, for it is precisely in the body that the greatest wisdom is revealed. Only through this wisdom is it possible for the physical body to withstand the attacks that the astral body constantly launches against it without collapsing prematurely. The passions that operate within the physical body—drinking coffee, tea, and so on—all of these are attacks by the astral body on the physical body, and especially on the heart. Therefore, it had to be so wisely constructed that the attacks would be unable to destroy it for decades. Of course, the appropriate form of the heart first had to be determined through manifold restructuring.

[ 2 ] Precisely because wisdom underlies the structure of the world, it can be sought and found within it by our minds. But wisdom did not come into the world suddenly; its infusion has taken place only slowly and gradually, and just as slowly and gradually will the permeation of the earth with love take place. This permeation of the Earth with love is the purpose of the Earth’s evolution. Love began on Earth on the smallest scale, but it is spreading more and more, and at the end of the Earth phase, everything will be just as saturated with love as it was saturated with wisdom at the end of the lunar phase.

[ 3 ] When the Moon emerged from the Earth, the power of love was still in its infancy. At first, only blood relatives loved one another. This lasted for a long time; gradually, the sphere of love expanded. A certain degree of independence on the part of human beings is necessary for them to feel and act upon love. In human evolution, two kinds of forces had been at work from the very beginning: a unifying force and a separating force, the forces of the Sun and the Moon. Under the influence of these forces, humanity developed to the point where its three bodies, together with the ego-bearer, were drawn toward the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man. However, a final union could not yet take place without the intervention of a new cosmic force. This force, which exerted a particularly strong influence after the separation of the Moon, came from another planet that entered into a remarkable relationship with the Earth. This planet, Mars, made a sort of passage through the Earth’s mass as the Earth began its development. One metal had been missing on Earth until then: iron. Its appearance on Earth changed the course of its development in one fell swoop. It is the planet Mars that brought iron to Earth. From that point on, the possibility arose for human beings to form warm, iron-rich blood. The astral body, too, received a new component through Mars: the feeling soul, the emotional soul. With the arrival of Mars, the aggressive aspect developed within the soul. We must now distinguish the following in the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the feeling soul. The effect of the feeling soul on the physical body was the emergence of red, warm blood. Now, little by little, the fertilizing ego could integrate itself.

[ 4 ] “Blood is a very special fluid,” says Goethe in *Faust*. The God of Form, Yahweh, plays a particularly important role in this. Above all, he took possession of the newly formed organ, the blood, imbued it with his powers, transformed the aggressive qualities of the soul of courage into the forces of love, and made the blood the physical vehicle of the ego.

[ 5 ] Not every human individual initially had their own “I.” Among all blood relatives who preserved the same blood through close kinship and marriage within the family, the same Yahve force—the “I” force of the same ‘I’—was at work. Thus, such a small group had a collective “I.” The individual related to the whole family as a finger relates to the whole body. In the beginning, there were group souls. The individual perceived himself only as part of the tribe. One perceived the same “I” not only in those living at the same time; it also lived on through the different generations, as long as the blood remained unmixed, as long as the tribesmen married only within the close-knit community. Thus, the “I” was not perceived as something personal, but as something shared by all members of the tribe. Just as a person remembers what they have experienced since birth, so the people of that time remembered what the ancestors of the same bloodline had done, as if they had experienced it themselves. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren felt within themselves the same “I” as their grandfather and great-grandfather. Thus the mystery of the patriarchs’ great age becomes comprehensible to us. “Adam,” for example, was not the designation for a single individual, but for the collective “I” that flowed through the generations. It has been stated above that Yahweh made blood the physical carrier of the self. He did this by bringing about the formation of blood. He expressed his power through the act of breathing. Thus, man became a being of Yahweh because Yahweh gave him breath. It is to be taken literally that man, now endowed with the prerequisites, was breathed into with the living breath. “Yahweh breathed the breath of life into man, and he became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). However, this breathing of the soul did not occur suddenly, but is to be understood as a very long-lasting process. Through this, man became an air-breather.

[ 6 ] On the Moon, the respiratory process took a different form. While modern humans inhale and exhale air, thereby generating a source of heat within themselves, their ancestors on the Moon—who consisted of a physical, etheric, and astral body—inhaled and exhaled heat or fire. The human ancestors on the Moon were fire-breathers. Esoteric science calls these beings fire beings, whereas it calls humans on Earth air beings. Esoteric science sees all matter as merely an expression of the spirit. We breathe in and out not only air, but also the spirit. Air is the body of Yahweh, just as flesh is that of man. The memory of this is expressed in the Germanic legend of Wotan, who rides on the wind. What was breathed in and out on the Moon, too, was the spirit.

[ 7 ] The Moon was inhabited by the same spiritual beings as the Earth. There they lived in fire; on Earth they have become air spirits. In the course of cosmic evolution, certain beings fell behind, just as some students fail a grade in school. Those beings who have made the Sun their home had developed more rapidly and found the transition from fire spirits to air spirits, while a large host of beings did not find this transition. The former now act upon human beings as spiritual forces from without, from the Sun and the Moon. Human beings take them in through their breath. Between human beings and these highly developed solar spirits stand those spiritual beings who, although they have advanced much further on the Moon than human beings, have not progressed as far as the solar spirits and the God Yahweh. They were not yet able to influence human beings through their breath, but nevertheless sought to exert an influence on them. These were the fire spirits that had not yet reached completion. Their element was heat, and in humans this was present only in the blood. They had to live off this heat.

[ 8 ] In the course of his evolution, man was thus placed between the air spirits, who live in his breath; the highest spirits, who spiritualize him; and the fire spirits, who sought out the elements of his blood. They act in his blood as adversaries of the God Yahweh. Yahweh sought to hold people together in small groups through love. He wanted to imbue them with a sense of belonging. But if only love had been present, human beings would never have become independent beings. They would have had to develop into, as it were, love machines. The fire spirits, however, directed their attacks against this, with the result that human beings attained personal freedom. The small groups of people were driven apart. The God Yahweh was interested only in uniting people through love. In the blood, he acted as the God of blood love. The effect of the fire spirits was different; it was they who brought art and science to humanity. These spirits are also called the Luciferic spirits. The further development of humanity proceeds under the influence of Lucifer, who brings freedom and wisdom to humanity. Under the guidance of the God Yahweh, humanity was to be brought together through the principle of blood brotherhood. That humanity has become a free citizen of the Earth, it owes to Lucifer. Yahweh placed humanity in the paradise of love. Then the fire spirit, the serpent, appeared in the form that humanity once had when it still breathed fire, and opened humanity’s eyes to what remained of the Moon. This Luciferic influence was perceived as seduction. Those educated in the secret schools, however, did not regard this enlightenment as seduction. The great initiates did not degrade the serpent, but exalted it, as Moses did in the desert. (Numbers 21:8–9.)

[ 9 ] What was to be revealed in humanity had long been revealed through Yahweh as the love of blood. Alongside this, the Spirit of Wisdom was at work, a principle that had something else to prepare. Gradually, love spread from smaller to larger groups of people, from families to tribes. A characteristic example of this is the Jewish people, who felt they belonged together as a group and referred to all others as Galileans—that is, as those who did not belong to their bloodline. Humanity was not to be given merely blood kinship, but spiritual love, which will encompass the entire earth with a brotherhood. The time in which humanity was held together only by kinship love is to be regarded merely as a period of learning for what was to come later. Even the influence of Lucifer, which consisted in breaking apart the restrictive bonds, is merely the preparation for the influence of a Higher Being who was to come. In the Christian esoteric school, this Higher Being was called the true Bearer of Light, the true Lucifer, the Christ.

[ 10 ] Let us now go back to the time when the Atlantean people lived on Earth. The Earth looked quite different back then. Between Europe and America, where a vast ocean now lies, there was land—a continent that now rests on the ocean floor. Even modern science is gradually coming to the realization that a continent once existed where the Atlantic Ocean now stretches. People of a completely different kind than those of today inhabited Atlantis. The relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was quite different back then than it is today. A clairvoyant sees two points in the head of a modern human being, one in the etheric brain and the other in the physical brain, between the eyes, about one centimeter deep. These two points coincide in modern humans. This was different for the Atlanteans. The etheric brain protruded considerably beyond the physical brain, and the two centers of the brains did not coincide. In exceptional cases, it can also happen in modern humans that these two points do not coincide; one consequence of this is idiocy. It was not until the last third of the Atlantean era that the union of the centers of the two brains took place, and only then did humans learn to consciously say “I” to themselves. Nor could the Atlanteans previously calculate, count, judge, or think logically. Instead, they possessed a vast memory that spanned generations and a dim form of clairvoyance. They did not see the outlines of physical bodies clearly, but they perceived the soul processes. When an Atlantean encountered an animal, he sensed clairvoyantly how the animal related to him. If, for example, they saw a reddish-brown color, they would step aside; they knew that a hostile influence was at work. But if they saw a reddish-violet color, they knew that something sympathetic was approaching them. Foodstuffs were also assessed for their value with the help of this clairvoyance. Today’s animal, which has retained this dull clairvoyance, distinguishes plants in the pasture in a similar way with regard to their beneficial or harmful nature. The experience that humans have retained in their dreams is a decadent remnant of the clairvoyance of the ancient Atlanteans. For the Atlanteans, there was no such sharp separation between sleep and waking consciousness as there is for modern humans. Daytime consciousness was less clear than ours today. Sleep and dream consciousness were brighter. In the earliest Atlantean times, states of complete unconsciousness also occurred, permeated by powerful dream images. The Atlanteans of the earliest period knew nothing of the act of procreation. This took place in states of complete unconsciousness. When the Atlantean awoke, he knew nothing of procreation. The process of procreation was shown to him only in symbols. This is still recalled in the Greek legend of the two humans, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who moved to Greece and threw stones behind them, from which humans then emerged. The process of procreation remained shrouded in unconsciousness as long as marriages were contracted only between blood relatives. The fact that human beings awoke to consciousness and consciously recognized the act of procreation is attributable to the activity of the Luciferic spirits, who “opened the eyes” of humanity. They learned to distinguish between good and evil. Because people were now aware of their love and no longer asked only about blood kinship, they became independent. Then Yahweh was replaced by Christ, who brought a higher love into the world and made people independent of their tribesmen and blood relatives. This universal love is still in its early stages. But once the Earth has surrendered its beings to Jupiter, they will be completely permeated by this spiritual love. Christ’s saying points to this universal love: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The Spirit that is pouring this universal love more and more over the Earth is the Christ Spirit. The development of the Earth is divided into two parts by the appearance of Christ Jesus. That blood which flowed on Golgotha signifies the replacement of kinship love by spiritual love. This is the connection between Yahweh, Lucifer, and Christ.