The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospel of John V

[ 1 ] “The Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). If we fully understand this passage, we also grasp that profoundly significant turning point in human history brought about by the coming of Christ. In the preceding lectures, the development of humanity was outlined in broad strokes, and it was shown how the sense of self has evolved. In the distant past, entire groups and generations of people perceived themselves as a single “I.” The great age of the patriarchs becomes understandable in this light. Gradually, this sense of “I” became increasingly restricted to individual personalities. It was also shown how two spiritual currents asserted themselves in this development: one, the blood kinship, which naturally sought to hold humanity together; the other, the Luciferic current, which placed the human being on his own and prepared him for the coming, purely spiritual covenant.

[ 2 ] Throughout the entire period of the Old Testament, the term “law” refers to something that brings order to human society from the outside. After kinship through blood had lost its binding power, people had to be brought into a certain relationship with one another through an external, conceptual order. The law was perceived as something coming from outside. This law, given to us from without, remains in effect until the devotion, grace, and truth bestowed upon us through Christ have created within us, from within, the understanding necessary for true knowledge. Devotion and truth can develop only gradually. Christianity, which seeks to replace the law with devotion, is still in the early stages of its development today. The more the earth progresses in its development, the stronger the influence of Christianity on humanity will become. Humanity is to rise to a level of coexistence where every person, driven by an inner impulse, is led to relate to his neighbor as brother to brother. Humanity could not rise to this high stage of development by its own strength, and it is the task of Christianity to help it achieve this. Then human beings will no longer need an external law, once they have the inner impulse to behave in such a way that devotion and truth form the guiding principle of their actions.

[ 3 ] This should not be understood to mean that humanity no longer needs laws; rather, it is an ideal toward which we should strive. Little by little, humanity is coming to a point where, through its voluntary actions, harmony in the world is established. To achieve this goal, the power that, in the spirit of the Gospel, is Christ, had to intervene. In the secret schools, it is said of one who, through his own inner strength, is able to rise to such a relationship with all his fellow human beings that he blends freely, without any compulsion, into this harmony, that “he bears Christ within himself.”

To understand what follows, it is necessary to review the composition of the human body:

I
Astral Body	Spirit Self
Etheric body	Life spirit
Physical body	Mental man

[ 4 ] Through the work of the “I” on the astral body, the latter is transformed into the spiritual self. This, however, occurs in stages, as first the sensory soul, then the intellectual soul, and finally the conscious soul develop. The spiritual self pours into the matured, purified soul of consciousness. In the same way, the “I” works on the etheric body, and the impulses that have the greatest effect there are those of art, religion, and esoteric training.

[ 5 ] Even in pre-Christian times, there were secret schools that could develop their students to such an extent that they were able to glimpse the higher worlds. But only the true disciples in the most secret of schools were granted this vision, and even then only during the actual act of initiation, when the etheric body was separated from the physical body. Initiation is understood as the lifting up of a person to allow them to behold the spiritual world. In all initiations of pre-Christian times, the one to be initiated had to be brought into a kind of sleep-like state. The initiation sleep differs from ordinary sleep in that, in the latter, the etheric body remains connected to the physical body, whereas in the former, the etheric body is separated from the physical body for a short while. During this time, the hierophant had to keep the body alive. By withdrawing the etheric body, it was possible to lead it, together with the other bodies, into the higher worlds so that it could gain experiences there which could later be transmitted to the physical brain. Only such initiation methods existed in pre-Christian times.

[ 6 ] With the appearance of Christ Jesus, something entirely new emerges with regard to the nature of initiation. Imagine that a human being had transformed the entire astral body into a spiritual self. Then this spiritual self imprints itself upon the etheric body like a seal in sealing wax, giving it its character. Through this, the etheric body is transformed into the life spirit. When this is fully accomplished, the life spirit imprints itself upon the physical body, transforming it into a spiritual human being. It was only through the coming of Christ Jesus that it became possible to imprint what was the life spirit directly into the life body. The experiences gained in the higher worlds could now be incorporated into the physical brain without the need for a prior separation of the etheric body. The first to possess an etheric body entirely permeated by the spiritual self and a physical body entirely permeated by the life spirit was Christ Jesus. Because Christ Jesus came to Earth, it has become possible for those connected to him to undergo the same initiation without separating the etheric body from the physical body. Thus, all pre-Christian initiates had undergone the experiences of initiation outside the physical body, had re-entered the physical body, and were now able to proclaim as their own experience what had taken place in the spiritual world.

[ 7 ] Buddha, Moses, and others were such initiates. In Jesus, for the first time, a being came to Earth who, while remaining in a physical body, was able to perceive the life of the higher worlds. The teachings of Buddha, Moses, and others are entirely independent of the personalities of their masters. A person is a Buddhist or a follower of Moses if they observe the teachings of Buddha or Moses. It does not matter whether they recognize Buddha or Moses, for these founders merely transmitted what they had experienced in the higher worlds. With Christ, it is different. His teaching only becomes Christianity through his personality, and it is not enough merely to follow the teachings of Christianity to be a Christian. Only those who feel a connection to the historical Christ are truly Christians. Individual tenets of Christianity can be found even earlier. However, this is not what matters; what matters is that the Christian believes in Jesus Christ, that he regards him as the manifestation who, walking in the flesh, represents the perfect human being.

[ 8 ] In ancient times, people still used the expression: “The initiate is a divine human being.” — The underlying idea was that during the initiation ceremony, the initiate was up in the spiritual world among the spiritual beings or deities. There, he was the divine human being. In the physical body, however, “the divine human being” could only be seen through Christ Jesus—never before. The passage in John 1:18—“No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known to us”—is therefore to be taken literally. In the past, only those who had themselves made the ascent could perceive the Divinity. In Christ, the Divinity had descended visibly to Earth for the first time. This is proclaimed in the Gospel of John 1:14 and was also taught in the Dionysian School. Christ was here to show humanity the way; people are to become his followers, to prepare themselves to imprint what is in the etheric body into the physical body—that is, to develop the Christ principle within themselves.

[ 9 ] The Gospel of John is a book of life. No one who has sought to understand this book through reason has truly grasped it; only those who have experienced it know it. If one repeats the first fourteen verses day after day for a while, one discovers the purpose of these words. They provide material for meditation and awaken in the human soul the ability to see the individual sections of the Gospel—such as the wedding at Cana in chapter 2 and the conversation with Nicodemus in chapter 3—as personal experiences within the great astral tableau. Through these exercises, a person becomes clairvoyant and can personally experience the truth of what is written in the Gospel of John. Hundreds have gone through this process. The author of the Gospel of John was a great seer, initiated by Christ himself.

[ 10 ] The disciple John is never mentioned by name anywhere in the Gospel of John. He is referred to only as “the disciple whom the Lord loved,” for example in chapter 19, verse 26. This is a technical term denoting the one who was initiated by the Master himself. John describes his own initiation in the story of the raising of Lazarus, chapter 11. It is only because the writer of the Gospel of John was initiated by the Lord himself that the most secret connections between Christ and the development of the world can be revealed. As mentioned above, the ancient initiations lasted three and a half days; hence the raising of Lazarus on the fourth day. It is also said of Lazarus that Christ loved him (chapter 11, verses 3, 35, and 36). This is again the technical term for the beloved disciple. While Lazarus’s physical body lay in the tomb as if dead, his etheric body was taken out to undergo the initiation and receive the same power that is in Christ. Thus he became one who had been raised from the dead—the very one whom the Lord loves, from whom the Gospel of John originates. If one then reads through the Gospel of John, one will see that not a single line contradicts this fact, except that the process of initiation is presented veiled.

[ 11 ] Let us consider another passage from the Gospel of John. Chapter 19, verse 25 states: “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister—Mary, the wife of Clopas—and Mary Magdalene.” To understand the Gospel, it is necessary to know who these three women are. Just as it is rare today for two sisters in a family to have the same name, so too was it rare in the past. Thus, the passage cited is evidence that, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ mother was not named Mary. If one searches the Gospel of John for this, one finds no indication anywhere that Jesus’ mother was named Mary. For example, at the wedding at Cana (Chapter 2), it simply states: “Jesus’ mother was there.” These words point to something important, but we can only understand it if we know how the writer of the Gospel uses his words. What does the expression “mother of Jesus” mean? As we have seen, the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. We must not imagine the transition from the astral body to the spiritual self as a simple process. The “I” slowly and gradually transforms the astral body into the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul. The “I” continues to work, and only when it has brought the astral body to the stage of the conscious soul is it able to purify it in such a way that the spiritual self can arise within it.

A human being is composed of:

Father	7. Spiritual Human	distant future
Son	6. Life Spirit, transformed etheric body
Holy Spirit	5. Spiritual Self, soul of consciousness	Virgin Sophia, purified soul of consciousness
	4. Intellectual Soul, Astral Soul	Mary, wife of Cleophas
	3. Sensitive Soul, Sensitive Body	Mary Magdalene
	2. Etheric Body
	1. Physical Body

[ 12 ] The spiritual human being will not develop until the distant future. The life spirit, too, is present in most people only in embryonic form. The development of the spiritual self has now begun. It is inseparably connected to the conscious soul, much like a sword in its sheath. The feeling soul, in turn, is contained within the feeling body or astral body. Thus, we find nine members in the human personality. However, because the spiritual self and the consciousness soul, as well as the feeling soul and the astral body, are inseparably connected, theosophical literature usually speaks of seven members. The spiritual self is synonymous with the Holy Spirit, who, in the Christian sense, is the guiding entity on the astral plane. The life spirit is called the “Word” or the “Son” by Christians. The spiritual human is the “Father Spirit” or the “Father.”

[ 13 ] Those who had given birth to the Spiritual Self within themselves were called “children of God”; in them, “the light shone in the darkness,” and “they received the light.” Outwardly, they were human beings of flesh and blood, but within themselves they bore a higher human being. Within them, the spiritual self had been born from the consciousness soul. The “mother” of such a spiritualized human being is not a physical mother; she lies within him; she is the purified and spiritualized consciousness soul. It is the principle from which the higher human being is born. This spiritual birth—a birth in the highest sense—is depicted in the Gospel of John. The Spirit-Self, or the Holy Spirit, pours into the purified consciousness soul. The following expression also refers to this: “I saw the Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and remaining upon him.”

[ 14 ] Since the soul of consciousness is the principle within which the spiritual self has developed, it is called the “Mother of Christ” or, in the mystery schools, the “Virgin Sophia.” Through the conception of the Virgin Sophia, Christ was able to be born in Jesus of Nazareth. In the mystery schools of Dionysius, the intellectual soul and the emotional soul were called “Mary” and “Mary Magdalene.”

[ 15 ] The physical human being is born from the union of two people. The higher human being can only be born from a soul of consciousness that encompasses the entire people. Among all peoples, the method of initiation was essentially the same in its fundamental phases. Every initiation has seven stages. In the Persian initiation, these were: First, the Raven. The one at this stage was tasked with bringing news from the outside world into the temple. The raven is universally known as the messenger of the spirits, for example, in the German legends of Odin and his two ravens. Second, the Occultist. Third, the Warrior. He had already been permitted by the secret schools to go out into the world and proclaim the teachings. Fourth, the Lion—the one firmly grounded within himself, who possessed not only the Word but also magical powers, who had passed the test and therefore offered a guarantee that he would not abuse the powers entrusted to him. Fifth, the Persian. Sixth, the Solar Hero, and seventh, the Father. What interests us here is the designation of the fifth degree, the Persian. In all the secret schools, the initiate of the fifth degree was called by the name of the people to whom he belonged, for his consciousness had expanded to the point that it encompassed the entire people. He felt all the suffering of the people as his own. His consciousness had been purified and expanded into the general national consciousness. Among the Jews, the initiate of this degree was called an Israelite. Only when we understand this fact can we comprehend Christ’s conversation with Nathanael (Chapter 1, 47–49). Nathanael was an initiate of the fifth degree. Christ’s striking reply—that he had seen Nathanael under the fig tree—points to a specific stage of initiation, namely, the reception of the consciousness soul.

[ 16 ] The following explanations will help in understanding the inner processes of initiation. The individual “I”-consciousness of human beings is in the physical world. Human beings move about with their “I.” The “I” of animals, on the other hand, is on the astral plane. Every group of animals has a collective “I”-consciousness there. But it is not only the “I” of animals that exists in the astral world; there is also the “I” of the body that humans share with animals—that is, the “I” of the human astral body. In the Devachan world, we find the “I”s of plants, as well as the “I” of the body we share with plants—the “I” of the etheric body. If we ascend even higher into the higher Devachan, we find there the “I” of the minerals and the “I” of that part which humans share with the minerals: that is, the “I” of the physical body. We are thus connected to the higher Devachan through the physical body. Here in the physical world, we are with our individual “I.” When, in an initiate, the “I” of the astral body is permeated and transformed by his individual “I,” he becomes conscious in the astral world. He can then perceive and act within it. He encounters the beings incarnated in astral bodies, as well as the group souls of animals and those higher beings whom Christianity calls angels. At an even higher level of initiation, the “I” of the etheric body is also permeated by the individual “I.” Human consciousness thereby expands all the way up into the Devachan world. There one encounters the plant “I”s and the planetary spirit. An even higher initiation takes place when the individual “I” permeates the “I” of the physical body. Then the human being will also attain personal consciousness in the super-spiritual world. There, one encounters the “I” of the minerals and even higher spirits. Thus, initiation is an ascent into higher worlds, in which ever higher beings are encountered.

Higher Devachan Realm The “I” of Minerals	The “I” of the Physical Body	Super-Devachan Consciousness
Devachan The plant self	The etheric body	Devachan consciousness
Astral world The animal self, including angels	The astral body	Astral consciousness
Physical world	Individual “I”	Daytime consciousness

You could use the following image:

The “I” of the etheric body can be compared to an engineer
The “I” of the astral body can be compared to the driver of a car
The ‘I’ of the individual “I”—the physical body—can be compared to the owner of a car.

[ 17 ] When the individual self has attained full mastery over the three bodies, it has developed inner harmony. A being who possessed this harmony in its entirety is Christ. He appeared on Earth so that human beings might develop that power of inner harmony. In this Son of Man, one sees the entire evolution of humanity represented, all the way up to the highest spiritual level. Before this, such inner harmony did not exist; in its place, external laws operated. Inner harmony is the new impulse that humanity has received through Christ. Human beings are to acquire the Christ-capacity; that is, they are to develop the inner Christ. But just as Goethe said, “The eye is formed by the light for the light,” so too is this inner harmony—this inner Christ—kindled only by the presence of the external, historical Christ; before His appearance, it was not possible for human beings to reach this stage of spiritual development.

[ 18 ] Those who lived before the historical life of Christ are by no means excluded from the blessings that came to humanity through his appearance. For one must not forget that, according to the law of reincarnation, they must return and will consequently have the opportunity to develop the inner Christ. Only if one forgets the doctrine of reincarnation can one speak of injustice. The Gospel of John shows the path to the historical Christ, to that Sun which kindles the inner light within human beings, just as the physical sun has kindled our eyesight.