The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we considered the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for human evolution on our Earth. But in the world, every event is fundamentally connected to the evolution of the entire cosmos through an almost infinite network of relationships. And we will only be able to fully understand the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha if we also gain insight into the cosmic significance of this event.

[ 2 ] We already know that the Being we call the Christ Being descended from super-earthly regions to our Earth, that He was, so to speak, seen approaching in ancient Persia through the clairvoyant gift of Zarathustra on the sun, then by Moses in the burning bush and in the fire on Mount Sinai, and finally, for those who experienced the Christ event, in the presence of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 3 ] We know that events on Earth—above all, the development of humanity—are connected to our solar system. For we have shown that this development of humanity, as it has come to be, could not have taken place at all if, at one time, the Sun—and later the Moon—had not broken away from a single celestial body in which our Sun and our present-day Moon were still united with the Earth, thereby placing our Earth in a state of equilibrium between the Sun and the Moon. Because human beings could not keep pace with the rapid tempo of development of those beings who sought a stage for themselves on the Sun, the Earth simply had to be separated from the Sun. And because, had the Earth remained united with the Moon, humanity would have fallen prey to rapid hardening and ossification, the Moon, with its substances and beings, had to be separated. This made human evolution possible in the right way. But we saw yesterday that a certain remnant of the tendency toward hardening has nevertheless remained, and that this remnant would be sufficient to lead humanity toward a kind of state of decay at the end of our Earth’s evolution, had the Christ impulse not come. This will enable us to gain a little insight into our entire evolution.

[ 4 ] Once upon a time, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth were a single celestial body. Then came the time when the Sun separated; only the Earth and the Moon remained united. Then the Moon as we know it today separated, and the Earth remained as the stage for human evolution. This was during the ancient Lemurian epoch, which preceded the so-called Atlantean epoch—which we have already discussed from various perspectives. The Earth then developed in such a way that the forces of the Sun and Moon acted upon it from the outside, from the Atlantean epoch right up to the present day.

[ 5 ] Let us now consider the further course of Earth’s evolution up to the time when the Christ impulse came. Specifically, let us focus on a very specific point in Earth’s evolution: the moment when the cross was raised on Golgotha, where the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus. Let us focus on this moment in Earth’s evolution.

[ 6 ] Up to this point, what has happened to humanity is the result of the combined forces of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings having entered into the innermost being of the human being. And we have seen that, as a result of this intrusion, human beings became immersed in Maya, or illusion, with regard to the external world: Ahriman caused the external world not to appear to human beings in its true form, but as if it were merely a material, physical world, as if the spiritual did not lie behind all that is material. Thus, for a long time—and for many stages of Earth’s evolution, humanity still finds itself in this state today—humanity has been in a condition brought about by error, because human beings perceive only the sensory, material impressions around them and process them through their imagination. Through this influence of Ahriman or Mephistopheles, humanity thus perceives the outer world in a distorted light and forms illusory and untrue conceptions of the spiritual world. But everything spiritual is connected to physical effects, and we have seen what physical effects accompanied this illusion of outer perception. We have seen that one consequence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences was that human blood became less and less capable of giving a person the ability to see what is true in the external world, so that the deterioration of the blood, the dissolution of the blood—as was the case in the times of ancient blood kinship—this scattering, this killing off of the blood through the mixing of blood, was accompanied by an ever-increasing illusion. For human beings could no longer turn to the ancient wisdom they had once possessed as an inheritance, which told them: It is not the case that the external world is merely matter; for if you hold fast to your ancient wisdom inherited from the past, it tells you that behind the physical world lies a spiritual world. — But these heirlooms were lost more and more. And so human beings became increasingly dependent on the external physical world for their entire soul life and their knowledge. This, then, transformed all their physical impressions into illusion, into deception. Had the influence of Christ not come, human beings would eventually have reached the point where they would have had to lose all the ancient legacies of wisdom, so that, little by little, they would have been entirely dependent on the external world of the senses and its impressions. They would have forgotten that a spiritual world exists. That is what would have had to happen. Human beings would have had to become blind to the spiritual world.

[ 7 ] Now we must consider in all its gravity the truth that human beings would fall more and more into delusion and error regarding the external world. It is not so easy to take this truth—which has just been set before you: humanity’s descent into error regarding the external impressions of the sensory world—in all its seriousness and full scope. Try to grasp what this means: We are to recognize all external sensory impressions, as they present themselves to us in the physical-sensory world, as illusion, as deception. We must learn to say to ourselves: Just as the facts and impressions in the sensory world are and as they affect us, so they are false, and we must learn to see their true form behind the external impressions.

[ 8 ] I will mention an event in which it is generally difficult for a person to apply the truth, so that he says to himself: The form that this event presents to me in the external world is untrue; it is an illusion; it is Maya. — And do you know what that event is? That event is death. As death confronts us in the outer, physical world, as it speaks to our understanding—which, under the influences we have described, has gradually become one capable of comprehending only outer physical events—death takes on certain characteristics; it has become such that people can now view it only from the perspective of the outer physical world. It is precisely regarding death that humanity has fallen into the most erroneous and fateful views. We must therefore conclude that the form in which death presents itself to us is merely Maya, an illusion, a deception.

[ 9 ] Before our very eyes, in the outer physical world, lie the most diverse of events. There, before our eyes, are the stars that fill outer space; there are the mountains, the plants, the animals; there is the entire world of minerals; there, too, is humanity and everything else, along with the facts we can glean through our sensory observations. And when we ask ourselves: Where do these facts come from? Where does this outer, physical-sensory world come from, which presents itself to us as a material world? Then we must answer: It comes from the spiritual. The spiritual underlies our physical-sensory world. - And if we were to go back to the most primordial form of the spirit from which all the physical-sensory world arises, we would have to call it the foundation of all being—in Christian esotericism, that which is called the Father-Principle within the Godhead. The divine Father-Principle underlies everything that is a created being. So what, then, has actually been veiled from human beings, since everything has become immersed in Maya, or illusion, for them? The divine Father-Principle! Instead of the illusions of the senses, human beings should see the divine Father-Principle in everything around them. The divine-spiritual Father-Principle, to which all things—and they themselves—belong, is what human beings should see everywhere. The divine-spiritual Father-Principle, to which all things and he himself belong, does not, therefore, reveal itself in its true form. Because humanity has suffered the diminutions of its faculties that we have spoken of, this Father-Principle reveals itself through the great delusion, through Maya.

[ 10 ] What is woven into the great deception? Among all the facts we see, one stands out as fundamental, and that is death. Man must therefore say to himself: The external things that present themselves to our senses are in truth the Father-principle; they express the divine-spiritual Father-element. And if death is interwoven into the entire sensory world, then death is for us something that belongs to the divine-spiritual Father-principle. Because human beings have developed as they have, the divine Father-principle is veiled for them in various forms—and ultimately in the veil of death. What, then, must human beings seek behind death, just as they do behind all that is sensory? The Father, the cosmic Father! Just as human beings must learn to say of every single thing, “In truth, it is the Father,” so must they learn to say to themselves, “Death is the Father.” And why does a false image of the Father appear to us in the physical-sensory realm? Why does the image of the Father appear so distorted to us that it even seems to be disfigured into what presents itself to us as deceptive death? Because the Lucifer-Ahriman principle is interwoven with our entire life! So if human beings were now to be guided from a false, deceptive, Maya-like view of death toward a true view of death, what would have to happen?

[ 11 ] Human beings must be enlightened about death through the facts! Something must happen through which human beings can learn that what they have known about death, what they have felt about death, and everything they have been able to do under the impulse of their conception of death is untrue. An event had to occur that would reveal the true nature of death to them. The false image of death had to be erased, and the true nature of death had to be presented.

[ 12 ] That was Christ's mission on earth: to replace the false image of death with the true image of death through his deed.

[ 13 ] Death has become this distorted image of the Father as a result of Lucifer-Ahriman’s interference in human evolution. Death was the consequence, the effect of Lucifer-Ahriman’s influence. What, then, did the one who wanted to rid the world of this false form of death have to do?

[ 14 ] The false form of death could never have been removed from human life unless the cause—Lucifer and Ahriman—had been eliminated. But no earthly being could have accomplished this. Within the course of Earth’s evolution, an earthly being can indeed eradicate the things that have been brought about by earthly beings themselves, but not the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. Only a being who was not yet on Earth when Lucifer-Ahriman was active—who was still out in outer space—and who came to Earth at a time when Lucifer-Ahriman had already fully entered the human body could remove that influence.

[ 15 ] Now this being came to Earth and, as we have seen, eliminated Lucifer-Ahriman at precisely the right moment, thereby eradicating the cause of what had brought death into the world. So this had to be a being who had nothing to do with any other causes of death within humanity. With all that through which human beings have suffered death—that is, with all that was brought about by Lucifer and later by Ahriman, and with what individual human beings have thereby accomplished on Earth as a result of the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman—in other words: with all that through which human beings became guilty and fell into evil—this being could have no connection whatsoever with any of it. For if a being had suffered death while under the influence of all these causes, then that death would have been justified. Only such a death—one that was unjustified, one borne by a being through no fault of its own, a completely innocent death—could atone for all guilty deaths.

[ 16 ] According to this, an innocent person had to suffer death, had to wed death, had to endure death. And by enduring death, he brought into this human life those forces that gradually create for human beings the recognition of the true nature of death, that is, the realization that death, as it appears in the sensory world, has no truth; that, on the contrary, this death had to occur for the sake of life in the spiritual world; and that this death itself lays the very foundation for life in the spiritual realm.

[ 17 ] Thus, through the innocent death on Golgotha, the proof was provided—a proof that people will gradually come to understand—that death is the ever-living Father! And only once we have the correct view of death—only once we have come to know through the event at Golgotha that outward death means nothing, that Christ lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, with whom we can unite—only then have we recognized that this Christ has brought about the fact that, although the image of death on the cross presents itself, this is merely an outward event, and that the life of Christ in the etheric body before death is the same as after this death—that this death, therefore, can do no harm to life—once we have grasped that we are faced here with a death that does not extinguish life, that is itself life, then we have, through what hung on the cross, once and for all the emblem that death is, in truth, the giver of life. Just as the plant grows from the seed, so too is death not a destroyer, but a seed of life. It has been sown into our physical-sensory world so that this physical-sensory world may not fall out of life, but may be lifted up into life. The refutation of death had to be accomplished on the cross through a death that was full of contradiction—a death that was that of an innocent one. But what was actually accomplished by this?

[ 18 ] We know from the previous lectures that human beings have an “I” as the fourth element of their being, and that as this “I” develops, it has blood as its external physical instrument. Blood is the expression of the “I.” That is why the “I” fell into error, sinking deeper and deeper into Maya, or illusion, as the blood became worse and worse. That is also why human beings owe the increase in the power of their “I” to the fact that they have blood. On the other hand, however, in a spiritual sense, he owes this “I” to the fact that he learned to distinguish himself from the spiritual world—that he became an individual. This could not have been granted to him under any other circumstances than by his view of the spiritual world being initially cut off. And what cut off this view was none other than death. Had human beings always known that death is the seed of life, they would not have attained an independent sense of self, for they would have remained connected to the spiritual world. But as it was, death intervened, gave them the illusion that they were separated from the spiritual world, and thus nurtured in them an independent sense of self.

[ 19 ] But this sense of self became more and more independent, to the point where it exaggerated its independence, pushing it beyond a certain limit. On the other hand, this could only be balanced by depriving this “I-ness” of the very force that had driven it beyond that point. Whatever, therefore, had led the “I” too strongly into egoism—whatever in the “I” had fostered not merely egoity or “I-ness,” but egoism itself—that had to be driven out. But this was driven out—so that in the course of the future it can be driven out more and more from the individual “I”s as well—at that time, when death occurred on the cross at Golgotha and blood flowed from the wounds.

[ 20 ] In the blood flowing from Christ’s wounds, we therefore see the true symbol of the excess of egoism in the human “I.” Just as blood is the expression of the “I,” so the blood that flowed on Golgotha is the expression of the excess in the human “I.” Had the blood not flowed on Golgotha, humanity would have become spiritually hardened in selfishness and thus faced the fate we described yesterday. The blood flowing on Golgotha provides the impetus for that which makes the “I” selfish to gradually fade from humanity.

[ 21 ] But every physical event has a spiritual counterpart. To the same extent that blood flowed from the wounds on Golgotha, something spiritual took place. It was at that very moment that, for the first time, rays went out from the Earth into outer space—rays that had not gone out before—so that we, created at that moment, can conceive of rays going out from the Earth into outer space. The Earth had grown darker and darker as time passed, leading up to the event at Golgotha. Now blood flows on Golgotha, and the Earth begins to shine!

[ 22 ] If, in pre-Christian times, any being—initially through clairvoyant power—had been able to look down upon Earth from a distant celestial body, it would have seen how the Earth’s aura gradually dimmed and became at its darkest in the period leading up to the event at Golgotha. But then it would have seen the Earth’s aura light up in new colors. The event on Golgotha permeated the Earth with an astral light that will gradually become etheric light and then physical light. For every being in the world continues to evolve. What is now the Sun was once a planet. And just as the ancient Saturn evolved into the Sun, so too is our Earth—which is now a planet—evolving into the Sun. The first impetus for our Earth to become a sun was given back then, when the blood flowed from the Savior’s wounds on Golgotha. That is when the Earth began to shine, at first astral—that is, visible only to the clairvoyant. But in the future, the astral light will become physical light, and the Earth will become a luminous body, a solar body.

[ 23 ] I have told you many times before: A world body does not come into being through the aggregation of physical matter, but rather through the creation—by a spiritual being—of a new spiritual center, a new arena. The formation of a world body begins from the spiritual realm. Every physical world body was first spirit. What our Earth will one day become is, to begin with, the auric-astral substance that began to radiate from the Earth here. This is the first foundation for the future Solar Earth. But what a human being of that time would have seen with his deceptive senses is a mirage. It is not truth at all; it dissolves, it ceases to be. The more the Earth becomes a sun, the more this Maya burns up in the sun’s fire, dissolving within it.

[ 24 ] But because the Earth was then permeated by a new force—and because the foundation was laid for the Earth to become a sun—this made it possible for this force to permeate human beings as well. The first impetus was given to what I described yesterday: the radiating of the Christ force into the etheric human body. And through what was able to radiate into it on the astral plane, this etheric human body was able to begin absorbing new life force, as it needs for the future.

[ 25 ] So if you imagine a certain time after the event at Golgotha and compare it to the time when the event at Golgotha took place—that is, if you compare a future state of humanity to the moment when the event at Golgotha occurred—then you can say to yourself: At that time, when the Christ impulse came, the Earth was still in such a state that it could no longer radiate anything of its own into the etheric bodies of human beings. For a time afterward, however, the etheric bodies of those people who had found a connection to the Christ impulse were permeated; if they had understood Christ, they had taken into themselves the radiant power that has been in the Earth ever since—the Earth’s new luminosity. They had taken the Christ light into their etheric bodies! The Christ light flows into the etheric bodies of human beings.

[ 26 ] And now that, ever since that time, a part of the Christ light has always been present in people’s etheric bodies, what happens now? What happens to that part of a person’s etheric body that has absorbed the Christ light? What happens to it after death? What is it, in fact, that gradually takes root in a person’s etheric body as a result of the Christ impulse?

[ 27 ] This is something that the Christ impulse has brought about, something that the Christ impulse has instilled into the human etheric body, something that has been present there ever since and that was not there before. Since that time, the possibility has existed in the etheric bodies of human beings that something new may arise within them—as it were, as an effect of the Christ light—something that breathes life, that is immortal, and that can never succumb to death. But if it does not succumb to death, then—as long as human beings on earth still succumb to the illusion of death—it will be saved from death; it will not participate in death. Thus, since that time, there has been something in the human etheric body that does not participate in death, that does not succumb to the death forces of the earth. And this something that does not participate in death—which human beings gradually attain through the influence of the Christ impulse—now flows back, flows out into the cosmos, and, depending on whether it is stronger or weaker within the human being, forms a force that flows out into the cosmos. And this force will form a sphere around the Earth that is in the process of becoming a sun. A kind of spiritual sphere is forming around the Earth out of the etheric bodies that have come to life. Just as the Christ-light radiates from the Earth, so too do we have a kind of reflection of the Christ-light in the sphere surrounding the Earth. What is reflected here as Christ-light—and what has come about as a consequence of the Christ event—is what Christ calls the Holy Spirit. Just as truly as the Earth begins its transformation into a sun through the event at Golgotha, so it is true that from this event onward, the Earth also begins to become creative and to form a spiritual ring around itself, which later, in turn, becomes a kind of planet around the Earth.

[ 28 ] Thus, from the time of the event at Golgotha onward, something essential has been taking place in the cosmos. Back then, when the cross was raised on Golgotha and the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus, a new cosmic center was created. We were there when this new cosmic center was created! We were there—whether in a physical body or outside of physical life, between birth and death.

[ 29 ] This is how new worlds come into being! But we must understand that, as we contemplate the dying Christ, we stand at the starting point of a sun that is just beginning to form.

[ 30 ] Christ unites himself with death, which on earth has become the characteristic expression of the Father-Spirit. Christ goes to the Father and unites himself with its expression, death—and the image of death ceases to be true, for death becomes the seed of a new sun in the universe. If we feel this event, if we feel this transformation of death, if we feel that death on the cross becomes the seed from which a new sun springs forth, then we will also truly feel what humanity on Earth must have sensed and intuited as the most important transition in human evolution.

[ 31 ] There was once a time when people still possessed a dim, twilight-like clairvoyance. They lived in the spiritual realm, and from there they looked back on their lives. When they were, say, thirty years old, they looked back on their twentieth year, their tenth year, and so on, all the way back to their birth; but they knew: “I have come into this birth from divine-spiritual heights.” - Back then, birth was not a beginning: as spiritual beings, they saw birth and they also saw death, and they knew that within them there was something spiritual, something that could not be touched by this death. Birth and death, in the modern sense, did not yet exist. Birth and death came only later—and took on their false, deceptive form in the outward image of the father. In the outer image of the Father, death became the defining characteristic! And then people looked upon death and saw how it seemingly destroyed life. And death became more and more an image that represented the opposite of life. If life often brought suffering, then death was something that represented the greatest suffering.

[ 32 ] How must the one who viewed earthly events from the outside—that is, who saw how these earthly events were reflected in humanity before the coming of Christ—how must he have thought about death? When he descended from divine-spiritual heights as a higher being with a different perspective than that of human beings, when he looked upon humanity, he must have said what the Buddha said.

[ 33 ] This Buddha had emerged from a royal palace where he had been raised. There, he had seen nothing but what ennobled life. But now, as he stepped outside, he saw a suffering person; he saw a sick person; and above all, he saw a dead person. When he had experienced this, the words came to his mind: “Sickness is suffering! Old age is suffering! Death is suffering!” This was indeed how humanity had felt. And what all of humanity had felt welled up from the Buddha’s great soul.

[ 34 ] Then came the Christ. And after the Christ, once another six hundred years had passed—just as six hundred years had passed from the Buddha to the Christ—there were people who, when they saw the cross and the dead man upon it, could say: “What hangs on the cross is the symbol of that seed from which life springs forth, life upon life!”—They had learned to truly perceive death!

[ 35 ] Christ Jesus united himself with death, went forth to this death—which became the characteristic expression of the Father—and united himself with it. And from the union of Christ Jesus with death, the dawn of a Sun of Life has been brought forth. It is a mirage, a maya, or an illusion that death is synonymous with suffering. Death—if, in the course of the future, people learn to allow it to approach them just as it approached Christ—is in truth the seed of life. And people will contribute to a new sun and a new planetary system to the extent that, receiving the Christ impulse, they give of their own, thereby making the Sun of Life ever greater and greater.

[ 36 ] Someone might object: “That’s what the humanities say! But what use is such a cosmology in relation to the Gospel?”

[ 37 ] Christ taught those who were his disciples. And to prepare them for the greatest truth, he followed the method necessary for one to learn to comprehend the greatest truth in the proper way: he spoke to the disciples in parables or, as it is translated in the German Bible, in “proverbs”—in figurative language and parables. Then comes the time when the disciples have become more and more mature, and when they felt ready to hear the truth without proverbs. And Christ Jesus allows that moment to arrive when he wishes to speak to his apostles without proverbs, without parables. For the apostles want to hear the name for which he came into the world; they want to hear that important name:

“Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask, and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. .

I have spoken these things to you in parables. But the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in parables, but will tell you plainly about my Father.”

[ 38 ] Can we sense the moment approaching when he will speak to his disciples about the Father?

“On that same day you will ask in my name. And I do not tell you that I will ask the Father on your behalf.

For the Father himself loves you, because you love me and believe that I came from God.

I came from the Father.”

[ 39 ] He naturally proceeded from the Father in His true form, and not from the Father’s deceptive form.

“I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”

[ 40 ] Now it dawns on the disciples—because they have matured—that the world around them is the outer expression of the Father, and that the most significant aspect of the outer world—where the outer world is most like maya, or illusion—is the expression of the Father: that death is the name of the Father. This dawns on the disciples. But one must interpret it correctly.

“His disciples said to him, ‘Now you are speaking plainly and not using a figure of speech.’

‘Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to ask you; that is why we believe that you came from God.’

Jesus answered them, ‘Now you believe.’

Behold, the hour is coming—and has already come—when you will be scattered, each to his own, and leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.

I have told you these things so that you may have peace in me. In the world you will have tribulation; but take heart, I have overcome the world.” (16:24–33)

[ 41 ] Did the disciples know where he was going now? Yes, from that moment on they knew that he was going to his death, that he was uniting himself with death. And now read what he said to them after they had come to understand the words: “I have come forth from death”—that is, from death in its true form, from the Father of Life—“and have come into the world; again I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” Then his disciples said:

“Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to ask you; therefore, we believe that you have come from God.”

[ 42 ] Now the disciples knew that the true nature of death is rooted in the divine Father-Spirit, that death, as it is perceived by human beings and experienced, is a deceptive appearance, an illusion. Thus Christ reveals to his disciples the name of death, behind which lies the source of the highest life. The new Sun of Life would never have come into being if death had not entered the world and allowed itself to be overcome by Christ. Thus, when viewed in its true form, death is the Father. And Christ came into the world because a false reflection of this Father had arisen in death. And Christ came into the world to create the true form—a true image—of the living Father-God. The Son is the offspring of the Father who reveals the Father’s true form. Truly, the Father sent his Son into the world so that the true nature of the Father might be revealed—that is, the eternal life hidden behind temporal death.

[ 43 ] This is not merely the cosmology of spiritual science. It is what is needed to fully grasp the entire depth of the Gospel of John. And the one who wrote the Gospel of John thereby set down, as it were, the highest truths and was able to say to himself: Within it are truths from which humanity will be able to draw sustenance for all time to come. And as humanity learns more and more to understand and put these truths into practice, it will possess a new wisdom and grow into the spiritual world in a new way. — But this will happen only gradually. Therefore, the overall guidance of Christian development had to provide the opportunity to create, so to speak, supplementary books to stand alongside the Gospel of John—books that were not intended merely for the most willing of understanders, as was the Gospel of John, which was meant to be Christ’s legacy for eternity, but rather supplementary books had to be created for the times to come.

[ 44 ] First, a book was created from which the early centuries of Christian development—in accordance with their level of understanding—could learn the best of what they needed to comprehend the Christ event. Of course, even then, in relation to all of humanity, there were only a few who, through this supplementary text, understood what it meant for them. This first supplementary text, which was given—not to the very elect, but to the elect—was the Gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark has precisely that structure—and we will return to this later—which made it, so to speak, particularly suited to a certain understanding prevalent at that time.

[ 45 ] Then came a time when people gradually began to understand the Gospel of Mark less well, a time when human understanding was oriented in such a way that people best understood the full power of Christ as lying in its inner value for the human soul and in a certain disregard for the external physical world. A time came when people were quite inclined to say: External, temporal goods are worthless; true wealth lies only in the developed, more human inner self. That was the time when, for example, Johannes Tauler wrote his book On the Poor Life of Christ, in which the Gospel of Luke was particularly well understood. — Luke, a disciple of Paul, is one of those who reshaped Paul’s Gospel itself in a way appropriate to that period, so that it placed foremost the “poor life” of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born in a stable among poor shepherds. There we see Johannes Tauler’s “The Poor Life of Christ” depicted in the Gospel of Luke—a second companion volume for the further development of humanity.

[ 46 ] In our time, too, there will be some people who will learn what they are able to understand—in a way appropriate to our time—best from the Gospel of Matthew. It will come to pass that our time, even if it may then use the name “Matthew” less frequently, will nevertheless increasingly choose that which most corresponds to the Gospel of Matthew. A time will come when people will increasingly point out that one cannot understand the supernatural events that took place at the baptism of John, as we have recounted them. This is something that still lies in the future for many people. We are living our way into an era in which the one who received the Christ in the thirtieth year of his life will, more and more—even among religious scholars—be portrayed as the “simple man from Nazareth.” Those who desire this—for whom the simple man from Nazareth is the most important thing, who place less value on the Christ than on the high-ranking initiate, who want the Jesus of Nazareth—will find the Gospel of Matthew particularly significant, at least in terms of its meaning. A materialistically minded age might say: When we open the Gospel of Matthew, we find a genealogy, a family tree, showing us the line of ancestors of Jesus of Nazareth; it goes down from Abraham through three times fourteen generations to Joseph. And as it is said: Abraham begot Isaac, Isaac begot Jacob, and so on, all the way to Joseph and Jesus of Nazareth. And this is included there for the purpose of making it clear that one can trace the physical lineage—the physical line of inheritance of the body into which Jesus of Nazareth was born as an individual—all the way back to Abraham. If you leave out Joseph, this genealogy makes absolutely no sense. If you speak of a supernatural birth in relation to this genealogy, then this genealogy ceases to make the slightest sense. For why would the writer of the Gospel of Matthew go to the trouble of drawing up a genealogy through three times fourteen generations if he then wanted to say: Jesus of Nazareth, physically speaking, in the flesh, is not descended from Joseph! — One can only understand the Gospel of Matthew by emphasizing that the individuality was born into a body that was truly descended from Abraham through Joseph. That was the intention behind this genealogy: No, Joseph cannot be omitted in the sense of the Gospel of Matthew! — Therefore, Joseph cannot be omitted by those who cannot comprehend the supersensible birth in the sense of John the Baptist.

[ 47 ] But the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in a community where the primary emphasis was not placed on Christ, but on the individuality that stood before the world in the person of the initiated Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of Matthew is based on what the Ebionite Gnostics knew as a “certificate of initiation,” and the Gospel of Matthew traces its origins back to such a text as its source. There, the emphasis was placed on Jesus of Nazareth as the Initiate, and everything else becomes even clearer because it is found in the Ebionite Gospel. But this is precisely what gives the Gospel of Matthew a certain atmosphere that one does not have to read directly into it—for in truth it is not explicitly stated there—but one can read it into the text; one can read the Gospel of Matthew in such a way that one says: We are not dealing here with a supernatural birth. - And yet, on the other hand, there will be the possibility of interpreting what is presented in the Gospel of Matthew as a symbol of a God who is called by that very name—a God who, in reality, is really only a human being, even if Matthew does not mean it that way. But those who invoke Matthew today—and will increasingly do so in the future—will interpret it in this way.

[ 48 ] So that no one who wishes to approach the Christ may lose the opportunity to draw near to him, provision has also been made for those who cannot rise from Jesus to the Christ, ensuring that in the Gospel of Matthew they have one of those stepping stones through which they can develop upward toward Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 49 ] Spiritual research, however, is called upon to lead people to an understanding of the Gospel of the Gospels—the Gospel of John. Every other Gospel should be regarded as a supplement to the Gospel of John. And the foundations for all the other Gospels lie in the Gospel of John. We therefore understand the other Gospels all the better when we view them against the backdrop of the Gospel of John.

[ 50 ] A study of the Gospel of John will lead people to understand, in the broadest sense, what happened on Golgotha; to understand through what mystery death, in the form that is its false nature, has been refuted within the course of human evolution. And people will come to understand how the event at Golgotha not only revealed the truth that death is in fact the source of life, but also how it made possible for human beings to adopt an attitude toward death that leads them to shape their own being more and more vividly, until it finally becomes fully alive, that is, can rise from all death—until it has overcome death. This was what was revealed to Paul when he saw the living Christ before Damascus, when he knew: The Christ lives! — when he looked, through his now clairvoyant eye, into what was the spiritual environment of the Earth, and, as one initiated into the Old Testament, knew: Before, the Earth was without a certain light. Now I see the light within it. Thus the Christ was there; thus the one who ended on the cross was the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth!

[ 51 ] This is how Paul, on the road to Damascus, came to understand the event that had taken place on Golgotha.