The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] When a topic such as ours is discussed from the standpoint of spiritual science, this does not mean that any document or written work that has come into being in the course of human development is taken as a basis, and that this or that set of facts is then examined by virtue of the authority of that written work. That is not how it works in spiritual science. Rather, what has taken place in the course of human development is investigated by spiritual science entirely independently of any documents; and only then, once the spiritual researcher has investigated the relevant matters using methods independent of any document and has learned to characterize them, is the relevant document consulted to see whether what was initially investigated entirely independently of any tradition can also be found in the documents. So everything that is said in these lectures about the course of any events is not merely stated in the sense that it is drawn from the Bible or the four Gospels; rather, it is the result of spiritual research independent of all the Gospels. But on every occasion it should be pointed out that everything the spiritual researcher can investigate and observe is reflected in the Gospels, and particularly in the Gospel of John.

[ 2 ] There is a curious statement by the great mystic Jakob Böhme. Only those who stand outside the framework of spiritual science are puzzled by this statement. Jakob Böhme once points out that when he speaks of past eras in human development—such as the personality of Adam—he speaks of them as if they were experiences taking place right around him, and he says: Perhaps some might ask: Were you actually there when Adam walked the earth? And Jakob Böhme answers without hesitation: Yes, indeed, I was there! — And that is a remarkable statement. For spiritual science is indeed capable of truly observing what has happened—no matter how long ago it may have been—with the eyes of the spirit. I would like to point out in the introduction, if only in a few general words, what this is based upon.

[ 3 ] Everything that happens in the sensory-physical world has its counterpart in the spiritual world. When a hand moves, it is not only what your eye sees as the moving hand that exists, but behind the moving hand, behind the visual image of the hand, lies, for example, my thought and my will: the hand should move. There is, in fact, a spiritual element behind it. While the visual image—the sensory impression of the hand’s movement—passes by, the spiritual counterpart remains inscribed in the spiritual world and always leaves a trace, so that when we have opened our spiritual eye, we can trace the traces left behind by the spiritual counterparts of all things that have happened in the world. Nothing can happen in the world without such traces existing.

[ 4 ] Let us suppose that the spiritual researcher allows his gaze to wander back to Charlemagne, or to Roman times, or to ancient Greece. Everything that happened then has been preserved in the spiritual world as traces of its spiritual archetypes and can be perceived there. This perception of the traces that all events leave behind in the spiritual world is called “reading the Akashic Records.” There is such a living record that the spiritual eye can see. And when the spiritual researcher describes to you the events in Palestine or the observations of Zarathustra, he is not describing what is written in the Bible or in the Gathas, but rather what he himself is able to read in the Akashic Records. And then an investigation is conducted to determine whether what has been deciphered in the Akashic Records is also found in the historical documents—in our case, the Gospels. Spiritual research thus adopts a completely independent standpoint vis-à-vis these historical documents. But precisely for this reason, it will be the true arbiter of what appears in the original texts. However, if we encounter in the original texts the very same things that we are able to trace in the Akashic Records ourselves, then it follows for us that these texts are true, and furthermore, that they must have been written by someone who is also able to look into the Akashic Records. In this way, spiritual science reclaims many of humanity’s religious and other documents. Let us illustrate what has just been said by examining a particular chapter in human development: the Gospel of John and its relationship to the other Gospels. But you must not imagine that the Akashic Records—the spiritual history that lies before the seer’s open eye like an open book—are anything like a written text of the ordinary world. They are a kind of living text, and we will try to make this clear to ourselves in what follows.

[ 5 ] Let us suppose that the seer’s gaze wanders back—say, to the time of Caesar. Caesar did this and that, and insofar as he did it on the physical plane, his contemporaries saw it. Everything has left a trace in the Akashic Records. But when one looks back as a seer, one sees the deeds as if one were looking at a spiritual shadow image or a spiritual archetype. Imagine once again the movement of the hand. As a seer, you cannot perceive the visual image; but the intention to move the hand—the invisible forces that moved the hand—you will always see. In this way, everything that lived in Caesar’s thoughts can be seen, whether he intended to take this or that step or to wage this or that battle. Everything that his contemporaries saw arose from his impulses of will and was realized through the invisible forces that lie behind the visual images. But what lay behind these visual images can truly be seen as Caesar walking and acting—as a spiritual image of Caesar—when one looks back into the Akashic Records as a spiritual seer.

[ 6 ] Now, someone who is not well-versed in such matters might say: When you tell us about times past, we believe that it is all just a figment of your imagination. For you know from history what Caesar did, and then, through your vivid imagination, you believe you see some invisible Akashic images. — But anyone well-versed in these matters knows that the less one knows about these same events from external history, the easier it is to read the Akashic Records. For external history and knowledge of it are actually a hindrance to the seer. When we reach a certain age, we are shaped by the education of our time. The seer, too, arrives at the point where he can give birth to his seeric self through the education of his own age. He has learned from history; he has learned how geology, biology, cultural history, and archaeology convey things to him. All of this actually obscures the vision and can make him biased toward what is to be read in the Akashic Records. For in external history, one must by no means seek the same objectivity and certainty that is possible when deciphering the Akashic Records. Just consider for a moment what determines whether this or that becomes “history” in the world. From any given event, some documents have been preserved, while others—and perhaps precisely the most important ones—have been lost. One example illustrates just how uncertain all history can be.

[ 7 ] Among Goethe’s various poetic projects that remained unfinished—and which, for those who delve deeper into Goethe’s work, serve as a lovely complement to the great and magnificent works he left us in their completed form—is a fragment of a poem titled Nausicaa. He wanted to write a poem about Nausicaa. However, only a few sketches remain in which he jotted down how he intended to carry out this poem. This was, after all, how he often worked—sometimes jotting down a few sentences—and often very little of it has survived. This is also the case with Nausicaa. There are a few scraps of paper with some notes on them. Now there were two people who both attempted to adapt this Nausicaa into verse. Both were scholars: the literary historian Scherer and Herman Grimm. But Herman Grimm was not only a scholar but also an imaginative thinker; he is the same author who wrote The Life of Michelangelo and works on Goethe. Herman Grimm did so by trying to put himself in Goethe’s mind and asking himself: If Goethe were such and such a person, how might he have conceived of a character like Nausicaa, who appears in the Odyssey? He then, with a certain disregard for this historical document, reimagined Nausicaa according to Goethe’s vision. Scherer, who searched everywhere for whatever documents existed in black and white, said that one may only reconstruct a “Goethean Nausicaa” based on the available material. And he, too, attempted to construct a Nausicaa, but only from what could be gleaned from these notes. Then Herman Grimm said: “But what if it happened that Goethe’s valet took some of the slips of paper—on which something very important was written—and used them as kindling? Is there any guarantee that these surviving slips are even relevant, as opposed to the others that may have been used as kindling?”

[ 8 ] Just as in this example, so it may be with all history based on documents. And very often, that is indeed the case. When relying on documents, one must never overlook the fact that the very most important ones may have been lost. Therefore, in history, we have nothing more than a “fable convenue.” But if the seer brings this “fable convenue” with him and sees things quite differently in the Akashic Records, then he has trouble believing in the Akashic image. And those who belong to the general public will then rebuke him if he recounts anything from the Akashic Records differently. That is why those well-versed in these matters prefer above all to speak of ancient times for which no documents exist, to speak of long-past stages of our Earth’s development.

[ 9 ] There are no written records of this. The Akashic Records provide the most accurate account here, because they are least influenced by external history. From these remarks, you may conclude that no one well-versed in such matters would ever think that the descriptions in the Akashic Records could in any way be an echo of what is already known from external history.

[ 10 ] When we now investigate the great event—the meaning of which we hinted at yesterday—in the Akashic Records, we find, in essence, the following. The entire human race, insofar as it lives on Earth, originates from a spiritual realm, from a spiritual-divine existence. We can say: Before there was any possibility whatsoever that an external physical eye could see human bodies, or that any hand could grasp them, human beings existed as spiritual entities, and in the most ancient times they existed as part of the divine-spiritual entities. Humanity was born forth as a being from divine-spiritual beings. The gods are, so to speak, the ancestors of humankind, and humankind are the descendants of the gods. The gods needed humankind as their descendants because, in a sense, they were unable to descend into the physical-sensory world without such descendants. At that time, the gods continued their existence in other worlds and worked from the outside upon human beings, who gradually developed on Earth.

[ 11 ] And now, step by step, people had to overcome the obstacles created by life on Earth. What are these obstacles?

[ 12 ] That is, after all, what is essential for human beings: that the gods remained spiritual, while human beings, as their descendants, became physical. The human being, who possessed the spiritual only as the inner aspect of the physical and had become physical as an outer being, had to overcome all the obstacles that physical existence itself presented. Within material existence, he had to continue his development. Through this, he progressed from stage to stage, becoming ever more mature, and as a result, it became increasingly possible for him to turn his gaze upward toward the gods from whose bosom he was born. Thus, a descent from the gods and a turning back toward the gods, in order to gradually reach the gods again and reunite with them—that is the path of human beings through earthly life. But in order for human beings to undergo this development, certain human individuals had to develop somewhat faster than the others, to go ahead of the others, in order to become their guides and teachers. Such leaders and teachers then stand among the rest of humanity and, so to speak, find their way back to the gods sooner than the others. So we can imagine: In a particular age, human beings have attained a certain level of developmental maturity; at that point, they may only sense the way back to the gods, but still have a long way to go. There is a spark of this divine in every human being, but there is more of it in the leaders. They stand closer to the divine, which humanity is meant to reach once again. And what lives within these leaders of humanity is perceived by those whose eyes are open to the spiritual as the essential and most important aspect of them.

[ 13 ] Let us suppose that some great leader of humanity were standing before another person who, while not exactly the leader’s equal, nevertheless stood out above the average person. This person, let us assume, has a vivid sense that the other is a great leader, that the spiritual quality which the rest of humanity is meant to attain is already present in him to a higher degree. How would such a person describe this leader? He might say something like this: Here stands before me a human being, a human being in a physical body just like the others. But the physical body is the insignificant aspect of him; it does not even come into consideration. When I turn my spiritual eye toward him, however, a powerful spiritual being—a divine-spiritual being—appears to me as connected with him. And this is so significant that I direct all my attention solely to this divine-spiritual being and not to what appears physically in him, just as in any other human being. — Thus, to the spiritual seer, a human leader reveals something whose essence towers above the rest of humanity and which he must describe in an entirely different way. For he describes what he sees in that person with his spiritual eye.

[ 14 ] Those who hold the dominant voice in public discourse today would, of course, mock such an outstanding leader of humanity. After all, we can already see how various scholars today are beginning to analyze great figures in human history from a psychiatric perspective! Only those who have sharpened their spiritual vision would recognize him. But they would know that he is neither a fool nor a dreamer, nor simply a “gifted person,” as more benevolent observers might describe him, but that he belongs among the greatest figures in human life in the spiritual sense. That is how it would be today. But in the past, things were still somewhat different—and in a past that is not all that far behind us.

[ 15 ] We know, of course, that humanity has undergone various metamorphoses with regard to its consciousness. All human beings once possessed a dim, twilight-like clairvoyance. Even at the time when Christ lived, clairvoyance was still developed to a certain degree, and even more so in earlier centuries, though it was merely a shadow of the clairvoyance of the Atlantean and early post-Atlantean eras. Gradually, humanity’s clairvoyant consciousness began to fade. However, there were still a few scattered among humanity who possessed it, and even today there are those who are “naturally clairvoyant,” who possess a dim form of clairvoyance and can therefore discern the spiritual nature of human beings.

[ 16 ] Let us consider the time when the Buddha appeared to the ancient Indian people. Back then, things were not yet as they are today. Today, if a Buddha were to appear—if such a thing were even to happen in Europe—it would not be regarded with any particular respect. But in the Buddha’s time, things were different. For back then there were still a great many people who could see what was actually taking place: that with the Buddha’s birth, something entirely different had happened than with any other ordinary birth. In the writings of the East—and especially in those writings that treat this subject with the deepest understanding—the Buddha’s birth is described, one might say, on a grand scale. It is told there that Queen Maya was “the image of the Great Mother,” and that it had been prophesied she would give birth to a powerful being. When this being was born, it came into the world as a premature infant.

[ 17 ] Very often, this is one of the ways of sending a significant being into the world: allowing it to be born prematurely, because then the human being into whom the higher spiritual being is to incarnate does not unite as thoroughly with matter as it would if it were carried to full term.

[ 18 ] The significant writings of the Orient further report that at the very moment the Buddha was born, he attained enlightenment, and immediately opened his eyes and turned them toward the four cardinal directions of the world: north, south, east, and west. Furthermore, we are told that he immediately took seven steps, and that the imprints of these seven steps are engraved in the ground where he took them. And he also spoke at once, we are told, and the words he spoke were: “This is the life in which I shall become a Buddha, the last of the incarnations I have to undergo on this earth.”

[ 19 ] As strange as such a message may seem to the materialistically minded person of today, and as little as it can be readily interpreted in materialistic terms, it is nonetheless true for those who are able to see things with spiritual eyes. And at that time, there were still people who, through a natural gift of clairvoyance, were able to perceive spiritually what had come into being with the Buddha’s birth. These are strange statements that I have now shared with you from Eastern writings regarding the Buddha. Today, people say that these are legends and myths. But those who understand these things know that there is something hidden there that is true in relation to the spiritual world. And events such as the Buddha’s birth do not merely signify something within the narrow circle of the personality who was born, but they signify something for the world; they radiate, as it were, spiritual forces. And those who still lived in times when the world was more receptive to spiritual forces saw that spiritual forces were indeed radiated at the time of the Buddha’s birth.

[ 20 ] It would be very simplistic for someone to ask now: Why doesn’t this happen anymore today? Oh, these effects are still present today; it’s just that a seer is needed to perceive them. For it is not merely a matter of the presence of the one from whom the forces radiate, but also of the other who receives them. In times when people were more spiritual, they were also more receptive to such emanations. Therefore, there is a profound truth behind the statement that, at the time of the Buddha’s birth, forces of a healing and reconciling nature were at work. This is not merely a legend; there are profound truths behind the statement that, when the Buddha was born, those who had previously hated one another were now united in love, those who had quarreled now met in words of praise, and so on.

[ 21 ] To those who survey the development of humanity with the eye of the seer, it does not appear—as it does to a historian—as a level path, one that is, at most, slightly overshadowed by those whom we regard as historical figures. People do not want to admit that there are also heights and mountains; they cannot bear the thought. But anyone who surveys the world with spiritual eyes knows that there are mighty heights, mighty mountains, that rise above the path of the rest of humanity. These are precisely the leaders of humanity.

[ 22 ] On what, then, is such leadership of humanity based? Such leadership is based on the fact that human beings gradually pass through the stages that lead them to life in the spiritual world. Yesterday we identified one of these stages as the most important: the birth of the higher, spiritual “I.” And we said that there are preliminary stages and subsequent stages. From what we said yesterday, you can see that what we call the Christ Event is the most powerful ascent in human evolution, and that a long period of preparation was necessary so that the Christ Being could incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. To understand these preparations, we need to visualize this same phenomenon on a smaller scale.

[ 23 ] Let us assume that a person embarks on the spiritual path of knowledge in some incarnation; that is, they perform certain exercises—which we will discuss later—that shape the soul into an ever more spiritual being, make it ever more receptive to the spiritual, and lead it toward the moment when it gives birth to the higher, imperishable “I” that can look into the spiritual world. A person goes through many experiences on the way there. Now, one must not imagine that a person can rush anything in spiritual matters. Such a process must be endured with patience and perseverance. Let us suppose, then, that a person begins such a process of development. Their goal is the birth of the higher Self. But they only progress to a certain stage. They reach certain preliminary stages leading up to the birth of the higher Self. Then they die and are reborn. Now two things can happen when such a person—who has undergone a certain spiritual training during one incarnation—is reborn. Either they may feel the urge to seek out a teacher again, so that they can be shown how to quickly repeat what they have previously gone through and how to ascend to the correspondingly higher stages. Or, for whatever reason, they may not seek such a path. Even then, his life will often unfold differently than that of another person. For a person who has already traversed part of the path of knowledge, life will of its own accord bring about experiences that resemble the effects of the level of knowledge he had already attained in his previous incarnation. He will experience different things, and these experiences will make a different impression on him than they do on other people. And then, through such experiences, he will once again attain what he had previously achieved through his striving. In his earlier incarnation, he had to strive actively, moving from one point to the next. In his next life, where life itself, so to speak, repeatedly brings him what he had previously striven for, it approaches him, as it were, from the outside, and it may be that he experiences the results of his earlier incarnation in a completely different form. Thus it may happen that, even in childhood, he encounters something in some experience that makes such an impression on his entire being that the powers he acquired in his previous incarnation are reawakened within him. Let us suppose that such a person attained a certain level of wisdom in one incarnation. In the next incarnation, he is reborn as a child like any other. But at the age of seven or eight, he goes through a difficult ordeal. This has the effect on his soul of bringing back to the surface everything he had previously attained as wisdom, so that he now stands once more at the level he had previously reached and can proceed from there to the next. Now let us further assume that he strives to advance a few more levels. He dies again. In the next incarnation, the same thing may happen again. Once more, an external experience may come his way that puts him to the test, so to speak, causing first what he had worked out in the incarnation before last to come to the surface, then what he had attained in the previous incarnation, and then he can ascend another step.

[ 24 ] You can see from this that we can only understand the life of such a person—one who has already passed through certain stages of development—if we take this into account. For example, there is a stage that one soon reaches when one first sets out on the path of knowledge; this is the stage of the so-called “homeless” person—the person who outgrows the immediate prejudices of their immediate surroundings and becomes free from the various constraints that bind them to those surroundings. This does not mean that the person must become irreverent; in fact, they may become all the more reverent. But they must be free from the bonds of their immediate surroundings. Let us take the case of such a person dying at a stage where they have worked their way toward a certain freedom and independence. Now they are reborn, and it may be that relatively early on, an experience occurs through which the feeling of freedom and independence is reborn. This usually happens when the person in question loses his father or someone else to whom he is otherwise connected, or when this father behaves poorly toward him—perhaps casting him out or something similar. The legends of various peoples faithfully tell us this, for in these matters the myths and legends of the peoples are truly wiser than modern science. Everywhere you will find the archetype in which the father orders that the child be abandoned; the child is found by shepherds, who nourish and raise him, and later return him to his destined calling—as in the cases of Chiron, Romulus, and Remus. In order to revive what they had already attained in earlier incarnations, they were to come to themselves, so to speak, through the betrayal of their homeland. The legend of Oedipus’s abandonment also belongs to this category.

[ 25 ] Now you can also imagine that the further along a person is—whether at the stage of the birth of his higher self or beyond—the richer his life must be in experiences, so that he may reach the point where he undergoes yet another new experience that he has not had before.

[ 26 ] The one who was to embody within himself that mighty Being we call the Christ could not, of course, undertake this mission at just any age. To do so, he first had to gradually mature. No ordinary human being could have undertaken this. It had to be someone who, over the course of many lifetimes, had attained high degrees of initiation. The Akashic Records faithfully recount what had to happen. They tell us how, over the course of many lifetimes, an individuality strove from stage to stage toward high degrees of initiation. Then this individual was reborn, and in this earthly incarnation, they underwent experiences that were initially preparatory. But within the being that had incarnated there already lived an individuality that had passed through high stages. It was an initiate who was destined to receive the Christ Individuality within themselves at a later point in their life. The experiences that this initiate now has at first are repetitions of his earlier stages of initiation. Through this, everything to which this soul had previously aspired is drawn out of it.

[ 27 ] Now we know that the human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. But we also know that in the course of a human life, at first—at physical birth—only the physical body is born; that then, until the age of seven, the etheric body is still surrounded by a kind of etheric maternal sheath; and that by the age of 7, with the change of teeth, this etheric maternal sheath is shed just as the physical maternal sheath is when the physical body is born into the outer physical world. Later, upon reaching sexual maturity, an astral sheath is cast off in a similar manner, and the astral body is born. Around the age of 21, the “I” is born, but again, only gradually.

[ 28 ] Having reviewed the births of the physical body, the etheric body at age 7, and the astral body between the ages of 14 and 15, we must similarly consider the births of the feeling soul, the intellect soul, and the consciousness soul; specifically, the soul of sensation is born around the age of 21, the soul of understanding at the age of 28, and the soul of consciousness around the age of 35.

[ 29 ] Now we shall see that the Christ-Essence could not incarnate in a human being on Earth—could not find a place within that human being—until the intellectual soul had been fully born. Thus, the Christ-Essence could not incarnate in that initiate into whom it was born before the age of 28. Spiritual research also confirms this. Between the ages of 28 and 35, years, the Christ-being entered the individual who came onto the Earth as a great initiate and then, little by little, under the radiance and light of this great being, developed all that a human being would otherwise develop without this radiance and light—namely, the etheric body, the astral body, the feeling soul, and the intellectual soul. Thus we can say: Up to this age, we have before us, in the one who was called to become the bearer of Christ, a great initiate who gradually undergoes the experiences that ultimately bring forth all that he has experienced and worked out in earlier incarnations as conquests of the spiritual world. Then the opportunity arises for him to say to himself: Now I am here; I sacrifice everything I have. I no longer wish to be an independent “I.” I make myself the bearer of Christ. He shall dwell within me, and from now on be everything in me!

[ 30 ] All four Gospels allude to this moment when Christ incarnated into an earthly personality. However different they may be in other respects, all four Gospels allude to this moment—when Christ, as it were, slips into the great Initiate—namely, the baptism by John. At that moment, which the writer of the Gospel of John describes so clearly when he says that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove and united with Jesus of Nazareth—at that moment we have the birth of the Christ; at that moment, the Christ is born in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth as a new, higher Self. By that time, another “I”—that of a great initiate—had developed to such an extent that it was ripe for this event.

[ 31 ] And who was to be born into the Jesus of Nazareth entity?

[ 32 ] We already hinted at this yesterday: the God who has been there from the beginning, who has, so to speak, remained in the spiritual world and allowed human beings to develop for the time being, was now to descend and incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. — Is this what the author of the Gospel of John is suggesting to us? — We need only take the words of the Gospel seriously in this regard. To this end, let us read the beginning of the Old Testament:

“In the beginning (or in the very beginning), God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

[ 33 ] Let us imagine the situation: The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Below lies the earth with its realms as the successors of the divine Spirit. Among them, an individuality develops to such an extent that it can receive within itself this Spirit that hovered over the waters. What does the author of the Gospel of John say? He tells us that John the Baptist recognized that the corresponding being, spoken of in the Old Testament, was present. He says: “I saw the Spirit descend like a dove from heaven and remain upon him.” He knew that when the Spirit descends upon someone, that is the one who is to come: the Christ. There you have the beginning of world development—the Spirit hovering over the waters; there you have John baptizing with water, and the Spirit who first hovered over the waters and now enters into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth. There is no more magnificent way to link the event in Palestine to that other event—narrated at the beginning of the very same document to which the Gospel is appended—than the way the writer of the Gospel of John does.

[ 34 ] But the author of the Gospel of John also draws on this oldest document in another way. He does so precisely with the words he uses to express that Jesus of Nazareth is connected to that which, from the very beginning, has been the creative force behind all earthly development. We know, of course, that the first words of the Gospel of John are:

“In the beginning was the Word (or the Logos), and the Word (or the Logos) was with God, and the Word (or the Logos) was God.”

[ 35 ] What is the Logos? And how was He with God? Let us consider the beginning of the Old Testament, where we find this Spirit, of whom it is said:

“And the divine Spirit hovered over the waters. And the divine Spirit said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light.”

[ 36 ] Let’s keep that in mind and express it a little differently now. Let us listen to how the divine Spirit proclaims the Word of Creation throughout the world. What is this Word? In the very beginning was the Logos, and the divine Spirit spoke, and what the Spirit spoke came to pass. This means: In the Word was life. For if there had been no life in it, it could not have come to pass. And what came to pass? It is told:

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

[ 37 ] And now let's return to the Gospel of John.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

[ 38 ] Now the Word had flowed into matter, becoming, as it were, the outward form of the Deity.

“In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity.”

[ 39 ] Thus, the author of the Gospel of John draws directly on the oldest text, Genesis. Using slightly different words, he points to the same divine Spirit. And then he makes it clear to us that it is the divine Spirit who subsequently appears in Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 40 ] In this regard, the author of the Gospel of John agrees with the other evangelists that, with the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth by John, the Christ is born within Jesus of Nazareth, and that Jesus of Nazareth had to prepare himself for this beforehand. And we must be clear that everything we are told about the life of Jesus of Nazareth is nothing other than a collection of experiences that reveal to us his ascent into the higher worlds in earlier incarnations—how he gradually prepared everything he possessed within himself—in his astral body, his etheric body, and his physical body—so that he might finally be able to receive the Christ.

[ 41 ] The author of the Gospel of Luke even states, in somewhat paradigmatic terms, that Jesus of Nazareth prepared himself in every respect for this great event—the birth of the Christ within him. We will speak tomorrow about the individual experiences that led him up to the experience of Christ. Today we would like to point out how the author of the Gospel of Luke states in a single sentence: The one who received the Christ had prepared himself well in the preceding years. In his astral body, he had become as virtuous, noble, and wise as he needed to be so that the Christ could be born within him. And he had also brought his etheric body to such a state of maturity and made his physical body so supple and beautiful that the Christ could dwell within him.

[ 42 ] One simply needs to understand the Gospel correctly. Let’s take verse 52 of the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke. Of course, the way this verse appears in standard Bibles, it does not convey what I just said. There, verse 52 of the second chapter reads:

“And Jesus grew in wisdom, age, and favor with God and man.”

[ 43 ] One might well try to make some sense of it when someone like the author of the Gospel of Luke says of Jesus of Nazareth that he grew in wisdom. But when he then recounts as a significant event that Jesus “grew in age,” this is not immediately understandable, for that is something that does not particularly need to be emphasized. The fact that it is mentioned nonetheless suggests that there must be something else at play here. Let’s take a look at verse 52 of the second chapter in the original text:

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

[ 44 ] But in reality, it is as follows: “He grew in wisdom,” that is, he developed his astral body. Anyone who knows what the Greek mind had in mind with the word ἡλικίᾳ (hēlikia) can tell you that what is meant here is the development that the etheric body undergoes, through which wisdom gradually becomes skill. You know that the astral body develops qualities that are intended for one-time use; that is, one understands something once and has understood it. The etheric body develops what it cultivates into habits, inclinations, and skills. This happens through constant repetition. What is wisdom becomes a habit. One carries it out because it has become second nature. This, then, is what this “maturity” signifies. Just as the astral body grows in wisdom, so too does the etheric body grow in noble habits—habits of goodness, nobility, and beauty. And the third quality in which Jesus of Nazareth grew, χάρις (charis), actually refers to that which reveals itself and becomes visible as beauty. All other translations are incorrect. We must translate that he grew in “graceful beauty,” meaning that his physical body also developed into something beautiful and noble:

“And Jesus grew in wisdom (in his astral body), in mature character (in his etheric body), and in graceful beauty (in his physical body), so that this was evident to God and to people.”

[ 45 ] Here is Luke’s account, which shows us how he knew that the one who was to receive the Christ within himself had to develop the threefold body—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—to their highest potential.

[ 46 ] In this way, we will come to realize that what spiritual science teaches—independently of the Gospels—can also be found in the Gospels themselves. Thus, spiritual science is precisely a cultural movement that reclaims the religious texts for us, and this reclamation will not merely be an event of human knowledge and cognition, but a conquest of the heart and the mind, in feeling and perception. And we need such an understanding especially if we wish to grasp this event—the impact of Christ on human evolution.