The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have tried to form an understanding of what actually underlies the first chapters of the Gospel of Luke. Only by understanding the processes that have unfolded within human evolution—and which have occupied us for so long that we had to discuss them in depth—can one unravel what the author of the Gospel of Luke recounted as a kind of prehistory to the great Christ event. This enables us to understand who it was who, in the thirtieth year of his life, took up that world principle which we have also characterized: the Christ principle. To understand what the author of the Gospel of Luke tells us about the personality and ministry of Jesus Christ — that is, of that individuality who then worked in the world for three years and who represents the Christ within a human body — it is now necessary for us to briefly touch upon the development of humanity and to take into account certain characteristics of this development that our time finds so difficult to grasp. Our time is, in many respects, extraordinarily short-sighted and believes that everything happening to humanity today or over the course of roughly two to three centuries—the laws of human development underlying this era—has always existed, and that, in particular, what does not apply today has never applied. That is why it is so difficult for people today to understand and accept without prejudice accounts that refer to a past such as the one in which Christ lived on Earth.

[ 2 ] The author of the Gospel of Luke recounts the deeds of Christ on Earth. He tells them to us in such a way that, if we truly delve into the meaning of his accounts, we must gradually gain an ever-deeper understanding of what human evolution actually was at that time. We must once again draw attention to what has often been said in the course of our anthroposophical reflections: that our present humanity initially took its starting point from the Atlantean catastrophe, that our ancestors—that is, our own souls in other bodies—lived in ancient Atlantis, on that continent which we must seek between Europe and Africa on the one hand and America on the other. Then came the great Atlantean catastrophe, which transformed the face of the Earth. The masses of people migrated from Atlantis to the east and to the west, thus populating the Earth as we have described for the post-Atlantean era. It was then, in the post-Atlantean era, that the various cultures arose, which we have characterized as the ancient Indian culture, the proto-Persian culture, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the Greco-Latin culture, and the one in which we live today.

[ 3 ] One has a completely false conception of human evolution if one believes that, during this period of post-Atlantean development, human beings have always been the same as they are today. They have changed time and again; tremendous changes have taken place within human nature. After all, external historical records cover only a few millennia. Only that record inaccessible to external research—which we call the Akashic Records and which we have also described briefly in this cycle—provides insight into the development since the Atlantean catastrophe. - There we find that, following the Atlantean catastrophe, the ancient Indian culture first developed, in which people lived even more in their etheric bodies and not yet as strongly in their physical bodies as was later the case. The vast majority of the Indian population—though they had not, of course, developed today’s sense of self—were clairvoyant, possessing a dim, twilight-like form of clairvoyance. Their consciousness was similar to a dream-like state, but it was a consciousness that still looked into the depths of existence, into the spiritual world. Now we are accustomed to emphasizing in our ideas how necessary it is for modern people to know—because it can help them move forward into the future—what is connected with knowledge and the form of knowledge. We always emphasize how our ancestors in ancient India perceived and viewed the world, and how they were even more clairvoyant than people in later times. But if we want to understand the Gospel of Luke, we must also highlight another characteristic of these ancestors of ours.

[ 4 ] In those days, when the etheric body still extended far beyond the physical body on all sides and was not yet as closely connected to it as is the case today, everything pertaining to the human soul—its powers and qualities—still exerted a greater influence over the physical body. But the more the etheric body penetrated into the physical body, the weaker it became and the less power it had over the physical body. Among the ancient Atlanteans, the head region of the etheric body still extended far beyond the physical body. To a certain extent, however, this was still the case among the ancient Indians as well. This allowed them, on the one hand, to develop clairvoyant consciousness, but on the other hand, to exercise great power over the processes in the physical body.

[ 5 ] Although they are far apart, we can compare an ancient Indian body to a body of our time. In our time, the etheric body has penetrated deepest into the physical body and is most closely connected to the realities of the physical body. Today we are right at the threshold where the etheric body is beginning to emerge again, freeing itself from the physical body and becoming more independent; and as humanity strides toward the future, the etheric body will emerge more and more from the physical body. Today, humanity has already moved somewhat beyond the lowest point at which the greatest union between the etheric body and the physical body existed. If we compare an ancient Indian body with a modern body, we can say: In the Indian body, the etheric body is still relatively free, and the soul can unfold forces that work into the physical body. The etheric body absorbs the soul’s forces because it is not yet so closely bound to the physical body; on the other hand, it also exerts greater control over the physical body, and the result is that the influences exerted on the soul in this era also affect the body to an immense degree. In the Indian era, when a person who hated another spoke a word filled with hatred, that word pierced the other person—it penetrated right into the physical structure. The soul still acted upon the etheric body, and the etheric body acted upon the physical body. Today, this power has, of course, been taken away from the etheric body. And on the other hand, when a word of love was spoken, it had an expanding, warming, and opening effect on the other person—and thus also on the physical body. That is why it was very important back then whether a loving or a hate-filled word was spoken, for it affected all the processes of the body. This effect diminished more and more in humanity as the etheric body became increasingly integrated into the physical body. Today it is different. Today, a word we speak initially affects only the soul, and it has become quite rare to find people who feel a hate-filled, loveless word as if it were constricting them, whereas a love-filled word feels as if it were expanding and bringing them joy. Those peculiar effects that we can still feel today in our physical heart as the result of a word filled with love or hatred were of immense intensity at the dawn of our post-Atlantean development. That is why, so to speak, one could do something quite different with these effects on the soul than one can today. For today it does not depend on how a word is spoken. A word may be spoken with the warmest love, but if it clashes with the structure of modern human society, it will always be rejected to a greater or lesser extent; it does not penetrate, for this depends not only on how it is spoken, but also on how it can be received.

[ 6 ] So today it is not possible to act so directly upon the human soul that it truly penetrates the entire physical organism. That is not possible directly. In a certain sense, however, it will be possible, for we are approaching that future in which the spiritual will once again take on significance. Even today, we can already point out what this will be like in the future. In our present human cycle, there is very little we can do in this area to ensure that what lives in our own soul—love, goodwill, and wisdom—flows directly into another soul and gains the strength there that works its way into the physical body. We must acknowledge today that we can bring about such an effect only gradually. But this spiritual mode of action is beginning anew. And it begins precisely on the ground where the spiritual-scientific worldview is planted, for this worldview is the beginning of the strengthening of soul effects. Today it is possible in only a few cases for a word to produce physical effects. But it is possible for people to come together to take in a body of spiritual truths into their souls. These spiritual truths will gradually grow stronger, will gain power within the souls, and thereby also the power to act into the physical organism and to shape it according to what they themselves are. Thus, in the future, the soul-spiritual will once again gain great power over the physical, and the physical will be shaped in its image.

[ 7 ] In those ancient times of India’s primordial culture, for example, what we call “healing” was something different than it was later, because it is all connected to what has just been said. Because what affected the soul could have an immense effect on the body, it was possible to influence another person’s soul with a word imbued with the right impulse of will in such a way that this soul, in turn, transmitted the effect to the etheric body, and the etheric body, in turn, to the physical body. If one had an inkling of the effect one wished to exert on another’s soul, one could—in the case of a diseased organism—exert the correct effect on the soul in the manner described, and thereby on the physical body, which would then bring about health. Now imagine this process intensified to the highest degree, so that the Indian physician mastered, above all, those soul influences and effects that come into play here; then you must realize that all healing in Indian times was a far more spiritual process than it can be today—and I say this explicitly: than it can be today. But we are once again approaching such modes of action. What is brought down from cosmic, spiritual heights as a worldview—as a sum of truths corresponding to the great spiritual content of the world—will flow into human souls, and as humanity lives toward the future, this will itself become a healing agent arising from the innermost being of the human being. Spiritual science is the great remedy for the souls as we move into the future. We must only understand that humanity has been on a downward path of evolution, that spiritual influences have diminished more and more, that we are at the lowest point of our development, and that we can only gradually raise ourselves back up to the heights where we once stood.

[ 8 ] Very gradually, those influences that had been so prominently present in ancient India began to fade. A similar structure—one that allowed for interaction from soul to soul—was also present, for example, in ancient Egyptian culture. The further back we go in Egyptian culture, the more we find that there was a direct influence from one soul to another, which could then extend to the physical organization. This influence was much less present in ancient Persian times. For that era had a different task; it was called upon to provide the initial impetus for penetrating the physical world. With regard to the characteristics I have just described, Egyptian culture is much closer to Indian culture than to Persian culture. In Persian culture, the soul already begins, so to speak, to withdraw more and more into itself, exercising less and less control over the outer body, because it was meant to develop self-consciousness more and more within itself. Therefore, the cultural current that had preserved the dominion of the spiritual over the physical had to converge with another cultural current that was primarily oriented toward inner deepening and the development of self-consciousness; and these two currents find a kind of balance in what we call Greco-Latin culture. This is the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. By this point, humanity had already descended so far into the physical world that a kind of equilibrium now arises between the physical and the soul-spiritual. That is to say, in this fourth cultural period, the spirit and the soul have roughly as much dominion over the body as the body, in turn, has dominion over the soul. A kind of balance has been established between the two: humanity has descended to a state of equilibrium.

[ 9 ] But now humanity must first undergo a kind of worldly trial once again in order to be able to ascend to the spiritual heights. This is why, since the Greco-Roman era, humanity has actually descended even deeper into physical materiality. Everything connected with the bodily and the physical has descended even further. In the era in which we live—the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—humanity has, in essence, been driven below the line of equilibrium and was initially able to rise only within itself, able to absorb a consciousness of the spiritual world that was of a more theoretical nature. It had to strengthen itself inwardly.

[ 10 ] Thus, we see a relative state of balance in Greco-Roman culture, whereas now, in our time, the physical has gained the upper hand and dominates the spiritual-psychic realm. We see that the spiritual-psychic realm has, in a certain sense, become powerless; it can now be grasped only theoretically. Over the centuries, the inner being of the human being has had to confine itself to strengthening itself inwardly in a way that does not take place in the manifest consciousness. Little by little, it must become stronger and more vigorous again so that a new consciousness can also develop in relation to it. And when it has reached a certain strength—which will be the case in the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—then, because human beings will have absorbed more and more spiritual nourishment, the spiritual-soul aspect will derive from this spiritual nourishment not merely a theoretical wisdom, but a living wisdom, a living truth. Then this spiritual aspect will be so strong that it will in turn—this time from the other side—gain dominion over the physical body.

[ 11 ] So how can we actually explain the mission of spiritual science to humanity from this perspective? If, in our time, spiritual science increasingly becomes something that comes alive within the soul—something capable not only of stimulating people’s reason and intellect but also, more and more, of warming the soul—then the soul will become so strong that it will gain mastery over the physical realm. Of course, certain transitional stages are necessary for this; various things are required that at first may even appear to be a decline or a detriment. But these are transitional forms that will give way to that future state in which people will incorporate spiritual life into their ideas, and in which a state will dawn for all of humanity that will signify the dominion of the soul-spiritual over the physical-material. And every person who today is not only interested in the wisdom of spiritual science because it stimulates their intellect, but who can be enchanted by the truths of spiritual science—who can derive inner, living satisfaction from them—will be a forerunner of those people who, in turn, will have regained the proper dominion of the soul over the body.

[ 12 ] In our time, we can already set forth the great truths concerning such events as we have allowed to come before our souls in recent days—those mighty events involving the convergence of the Buddha element with the Zarathustra element, everything that took place at the beginning of our era in Palestine. We have been able to describe how, in the course of the world’s progress, wisdom created those two childhood figures—the Nathanic and the Solomonic Jesus—and, through these great, momentous events, brought together the world currents that had previously flowed separately across the Earth.

[ 13 ] There can be a dual perspective on everything we have allowed to influence us in recent days. Someone might say: At first glance, this seems a bit fantastical to today’s consciousness, but when I weigh all the external evidence, it strikes me as very plausible, and the Gospels only make sense to me when I accept what is told to me in the Akashic Records. Someone might find themselves interested in what is told to them, for example, about the two figures of Jesus and so on; it might satisfy their interest. They might say: “Now I can explain many things to myself that I could not explain before.” And yet another person might then say: “For me, there is now something else.” When I survey all these processes, when I take in everything that occult research says about that wondrous descent of the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya—which underlies the shepherds’ proclamation and so on—and when I also consider the other current and see how the star guided Zarathustra’s when their leader reappeared on Earth—when I see how one world current flows into another, how what was once separate is now united—when I let all of this sink into my soul, then I am left with one impression above all others: the impression that all of this is indescribably beautiful in the course of world-becoming! — One can also have the impression that it is magnificent, mighty, and grand. There is, in truth, something that can set our soul ablaze, something that can make us glow with passion for the true processes of the world.

[ 14 ] And that is the best we can gain from the great truths. The small truths will satisfy our need for knowledge, and the great ones will warm our souls, and we will say: What unfolds through the workings of the world is, at the same time, something immensely beautiful. When we perceive it in this way—in its beauty, in its glory—it begins to take root within us, and it transcends mere theoretical understanding. — As Christ Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke:

“The sower went out to sow his seed. And as he was sowing, some seed fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it; and some fell on rocky ground, and when it sprang up, it withered because it had no moisture; and some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it; and some fell on good soil and grew and bore a hundredfold fruit” (Luke 8:5–8).

[ 15 ] The same is true of the anthroposophical worldview. What Christ Jesus told his disciples to explain this parable of the sower applies to it as well. The seed is the kingdom of the gods, the kingdom of the heavens, the kingdom of the spirit. This kingdom of the spirit is to flow into human souls as a seed and take effect on earth. Now there are people who possess within themselves only those soul forces that repel the spiritual worldview, the kingdom of the divine-spiritual beings. It is devoured by the obstacles in the human soul; it is repelled before it can even begin to sprout. This applies to many people in relation to the words of Christ Jesus; it applies today to many in relation to what anthroposophy has to offer the world: it is repelled; the birds, so to speak, devour it and do not allow it to penetrate the soil at all. — Yet even when it is addressed to a soul—be it the word of Christ Jesus or the word of spiritual wisdom—the soul is not deep enough. The soul is prepared just enough to understand that these are entirely plausible truths, but they do not merge with its own substance and essence. It may even be able to pass the wisdom on again, but it has not become one with it; it resembles the seed that fell on the rock and cannot sprout. — And the third seed fell among thorns; there it does sprout, but it cannot grow. That is to say, Christ Jesus explains that there are people whose souls are so filled with the cares and concerns of ordinary life that, although they are capable of understanding the word of spiritual truth, everything else in their soul acts like a thornbush that constantly holds it back. Even today there are souls—and they are very numerous—who would gladly take the truths of spiritual science to heart, were it not for the fact that their outer life approaches them in such a way that it repeatedly holds them back. And only a few are able to unfold the spiritual truths as something free, like the fourth seed. These are the ones who are beginning to perceive the anthroposophical element as a living truth, who take it into their souls as the element of life and live entirely within it; these are also the ones who are the forerunners for the effectiveness of the spiritual truths in the future. But no one who does not possess, through their own inner soul power, the right trust and the right conviction regarding the mode of action of this spiritual wisdom can be convinced today by anything external of the truth and the power of spiritual wisdom.

[ 16 ] For is it proof against the effectiveness of spiritual wisdom if it does not yet have a physical effect on so many people today? On the contrary, one could say that it is proof of the soundness of spiritual wisdom that it often affects in a negative way—such as a city child with poor physical health who, from earliest childhood, has breathed only city air and has thereby become weakened in a certain way—does not need to become healthy when exposed to the crisp, healthy mountain air, but may in fact become quite ill. Just as this is no proof against the health benefits of mountain air, neither is it proof against the mode of action of spiritual wisdom when, upon penetrating certain human constitutions, it can also cause harm—albeit temporarily. For they touch upon what has been inherited in human bodies for centuries and millennia; after all, they affect nothing other than what is incompatible with them.

[ 17 ] In the outer world, we cannot yet seek evidence in this regard; we must delve into these teachings and develop a strong conviction in them. No matter how much circumstantial evidence there may be in the outer world, we must have the opportunity to delve into our inner selves, must cultivate conviction within ourselves, and tell ourselves: If these anthroposophical teachings are open to criticism here and there today, it is because they have fallen into unhealthy circumstances among people. Therefore, spiritual wisdom is indeed sound, but people are not always so. That is why it is also understandable that not everything that can reach people in the course of time in terms of spiritual wisdom is revealed today. Care is already taken to ensure that the harm does not become too great; city children are not sent out into mountain air that would be exhausting for them. Therefore, however, only what the average person can tolerate can be communicated from time to time. If, for example, the deeper wisdom that still exists were to be fully revealed, people with certain constitutions would collapse under its weight, just as physically frail health would in the mountain air. The great wisdom of humanity can be revealed only gradually; but it will happen, and it will lead to the comprehensive healing of humanity.

[ 18 ] All of this lies behind what we summarize under the term “the humanities movement.” People must slowly reclaim what they were forced to lose: the dominion of the spiritual-soul aspect over the material. It was gradually lost, from the development of Indian culture through to the Greco-Roman era. Even in the Greco-Roman era, there were still people who, as a legacy from ancient times, possessed that elevated state of the etheric body and were, in their entire constitution, receptive to soul-spiritual influences. That is why Christ Jesus had to appear precisely at that time. Had he appeared in our time, he would not have been able to work as he did then, nor would he have been able to set such a great example as he did. In our time, he would encounter human organizations that have sunk much deeper into physical matter. Today, he himself would have to enter a physical organization in which that powerful influence of the soul-spiritual upon the physical organization would no longer be possible as it was then.

[ 19 ] But this applies not only to Christ Jesus; it also applies to all similar manifestations, and we can only understand human evolution if we examine it from this perspective. This applies, for example, to the Buddha and his appearance on Earth as well. We have seen what the Buddha’s mission was. He first established what might be called the great teaching of love and compassion and all that is connected with it—as described in the Eightfold Path. Do you think that if the Buddha were to appear today, he would be able to establish this in the same way? No. For today, a physical organization is not possible that would allow the Buddha to undergo the same development he underwent in his time. Physical organizations are constantly changing. That precise moment had to be observed so that exactly such a model organization could be established, so that the Buddha could descend and use that human organization to once and for all establish the mighty work of the Eightfold Path, which is to continue to have an effect so that people may penetrate it spiritually. Today, humanity is called upon to gradually assimilate this Eightfold Path spiritually and soulfully. It may seem strange, but it is true: everything that humanity has accomplished since then in all philosophical and moral teachings is merely a very feeble beginning toward achieving what the Buddha once established. No matter how much people may admire all manner of philosophies, no matter how much they may rave about Kantianism and other such things, all of that is merely a trifle, merely the most elementary aspect compared to the comprehensive principles of the Eightfold Path. And only slowly can humanity rise again to understand what lies behind the words of the Eightfold Path. First, such a thing is established at the right moment as a comprehensive reality; then, development continues from there. Humanity takes this as its starting point and only after a long time attains what was first exemplified as a mighty deed. Thus the Buddha stood there in his time and brought to the world the teaching of love and compassion as a beacon for future generations, who are to gradually acquire the ability to recognize from within themselves what lies in the Eightfold Path. And in the sixth cultural epoch, there will already be a good number of people who will be capable of this. Oh, we still have quite a long way to go before people say to one another: What the Buddha set forth as an example in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.E., we can now draw from within our own souls; we have now become like the Buddha in our own souls.

[ 20 ] Thus, humanity must gradually ascend to the summit. The first adherents are those who, with the individuality in question, reach into a great age and then bring back the heirlooms with them, so as to understand such things. The rest of humanity ascends slowly and attains only much later what is set forth for them as something to be attained. But then, when a larger number of people have come to regard the Eightfold Path as their own, based on the soul’s innate knowledge—not as something they have derived from Buddhism, as it is described to them there—then these same people will already have come very far with regard to something else as well. Read the article “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” in the journal Lucifer-Gnosis to learn how the unfolding of the sixteen-petaled lotus flower is connected to the Eightfold Path. People will then have reached the point of developing precisely the sixteen-petaled lotus flower through the Eightfold Path. These are intimately connected. And for those who can look into the development of humanity, there is a sign of how far humanity has progressed in its evolution. It has progressed as far as it has in the development of the sixteen-petaled lotus flower, which is one of the first organs that people will make use of in the future. But once this organ is developed, a certain dominion of the soul-spiritual over the physical will have been established. Only those who are willing today to undergo spiritual development in the esoteric sense can say that they are on the path to truly internalizing the eightfold path. The other merely “studies” it. That, of course, is also very useful; it will simply serve as a stimulus.

[ 21 ] We can also see, however, that, fundamentally speaking, the spiritual-soul aspect can only take effect in those people who are already beginning to integrate organically into their own soul what is given to them as spiritual wisdom. To the same extent that the eightfold path becomes the soul’s own experience, it also has a reciprocal effect on the physical realm. Now, of course, the very intelligent people of the present day who cling to materialism may come along and say: “We have had very specific experiences in this regard; we knew this or that person who began to pursue spiritual development—that is, in your sense, to bring spiritual wisdom to life within themselves—but he died at the age of fifty; so these experiences contributed little to prolonging his life.” — That is a very sound truth; one can experience it time and again. It is just a pity that the counterexamples are not brought to bear—namely, how long the person in question would have lived if he had not undergone spiritual development—whether he might not then have reached only forty years of age! That question would have to be settled first. People always merely state what is there and pay no attention to what is not there. That is the essential point—that one views things in this way.

[ 22 ] Gradually, then, the dominion of the spiritual-soul aspect over the physical realm faded away for humanity, right up until the fourth cultural epoch, in which Christ appeared and in which there were still enough people through whom one could see how the spiritual influences the physical. That is why Christ had to appear. Had He appeared later, all the things that were revealed at that time could not have been revealed. Such a great manifestation had to enter the world—but precisely at the right time.

[ 23 ] What, then, does Christ’s coming into the world mean? That human beings, by truly understanding Christ, now learn to make full use of their self-awareness; that they learn to permeate their entire sense of self with it; that their “I” gains complete mastery over everything within them—that is what the coming of Christ into the world means. It will be this “I”—this self-aware “I”—that will reclaim everything that humanity has lost throughout the ages. But just as the Eightfold Path had to be first established by the Buddha, so too, before the end of the ancient ages, the dominion of this “I” principle over all that exists in the world in terms of the processes of the outer physical body had to be visibly established. In our time, it would no longer be possible for the Christ principle, upon entering the world, to exert upon the surrounding world those powerful healing effects that were exerted in those days. That era was necessary because there were still people then whose etheric bodies extended so far that they could receive, through the mere word or mere touch, such powerful effects of which only faint echoes may remain today. And humanity began to develop the “I” so that it might first understand Christ and, building upon that, regain what it had once lost. It had to be demonstrated to the last remnants of humanity from ancient times how the “I,” which was now fully present in a human being—in Christ Jesus—worked powerfully upon the people of that time in all areas, just as it will one day be present in the rest of humanity at the end of the Earth’s history. This is what the writer of the Gospel of Luke depicts in order to show us: Christ now brings into the world an “I” that permeates the human physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body in such a way that it can exert effects capable of influencing the entire physical constitution—and even of healing it. This fact had to be presented to show that when, in the future—over the course of thousands of centuries—human beings have assimilated everything that can emanate as power from the Christ-I, then effects will be able to emanate from human I’s just as they were once radiated into humanity by the Christ. This had to be demonstrated in all areas; however, it could only be demonstrated for the humanity of that time.

[ 24 ] It has been shown that there are illnesses that originate in the human astral body; how they manifest depends on the nature of the whole person. If people today possess bad moral qualities, these may be limited to being merely bad qualities of the soul. Because the soul today does not have the same dominion over the body that it had in the time of Christ Jesus, not every sin readily manifests as an external illness. Little by little, we are already approaching that state again where the etheric body is once more coming to the fore. Therefore, an epoch is beginning for humanity in which great care must be taken to ensure that moral and intellectual vices do not manifest physically as illnesses. This time is already beginning. And many of those illnesses that are presented as half-psychic, half-physical—the nervous disorders of our time—mark the beginning of this epoch. Because people today have absorbed the disharmony of the external world into their perceptions and thinking, such things can naturally only manifest themselves in phenomena such as hysteria and the like. This, however, is connected to the distinctive feature of the spiritual development we are moving toward: the separation of the etheric body.

[ 25 ] At the time when the Christ appeared on Earth, there were numerous people in his vicinity in whom sin—specifically, character-related sin stemming from bad traits dating back to earlier times—manifested itself as illness. What essentially lies in the astral body as a sin and appears as illness is called “possession” in the Gospel of Luke—a state in which a person draws foreign spirits into their astral body because they do not exercise mastery over their entire humanity through their better qualities. Among those people who still experienced the old separation of the etheric body from the physical body, this manifested itself to a remarkable degree in those times in that negative traits and qualities acted in the way the writer of the Gospel of Luke describes to us as forms of illness that present themselves as possession. - Now the Gospel of Luke shows us how such people were healed through the presence and encouragement of that individuality that was in Christ Jesus, and how that which acted as evil was driven out of such individuals. This is presented as a model of how, at the end of the Earth’s history, the good qualities will have a healing effect on all qualities.

[ 26 ] One usually fails to notice the subtler aspects hidden behind many things, so that even here there is still talk of entirely different ailments, such as those described to us in the chapter commonly called the “Healing of the Man with Gout” (Luke 5:17–26). Strictly speaking, it should be called the “Healing of a Paralyzed Man,” for the Greek text uses the word “paralelym&nos” at this point; this refers to one who is paralyzed in his limbs. In those days, people still knew that these forms of illness stemmed from the qualities of the etheric body. And by describing to us that Christ Jesus also heals those who are paralyzed, we are told that through the powers of his individuality, effects are achieved not only in the astral bodies but also in the etheric bodies, so that even those people whose etheric bodies are impaired can experience healing effects. Precisely when Christ speaks of what is referred to as a “deeper sin” that has taken root in the etheric body, he uses a special expression. This clearly indicates that the disease-causing spiritual factor must first be removed; for he does not immediately say to the paralytic: “Get up and walk,” but rather addresses the cause that is acting as a disease deep within the etheric body and says, “Your sins are forgiven”—that is to say, whatever has eaten its way into the etheric body as sin must first be removed. Ordinary biblical scholarship, however, does not address these finer distinctions; it fails to see that what is shown here is how this individuality exerted an influence on the mysteries of the astral body and also on those of the etheric body. Indeed, it even exerted an influence on the mysteries of the physical body.

[ 27 ] Why, in this context, are the mysteries of the physical body referred to as, so to speak, the supreme mysteries? Even in external life, the interaction between astral bodies is, at first glance, the most obvious. You can hurt a person, for example, by uttering a hate-filled word. This is a process taking place in his astral body. He hears the hurtful word; he experiences it as suffering in his astral body. There you have the exchange between astral body and astral body. Much more hidden is the exchange between etheric body and etheric body; this includes finer effects from person to person that are no longer even noticed today. But the most hidden of all are the effects that act upon the physical body, because the physical body, through its dense materiality, conceals the effects of the spiritual to the greatest extent. Now, however, we are also to be shown that Christ Jesus has dominion over the physical body. How is this demonstrated? Here we touch upon a subject that would be completely incomprehensible to today’s materialistically minded people. — It is good that only prepared students of spiritual science are gathered here for this lecture series; for anyone who simply walked in off the street would consider what is being spoken today to be utter madness, even if they regarded the rest as only half or a quarter madness.

[ 28 ] Christ Jesus demonstrates that he can see through the physical body and work within it. This is shown by the fact that, through his power, he can also heal those illnesses that are rooted in the physical body. To do this, however, one must understand the mysterious effects that the physical body of one person exerts upon the physical body of another if one wishes to cure illnesses in the physical body. If one wishes to act spiritually, one cannot regard the human being as a being enclosed within his own skin. It has often been said here that our finger is wiser than we are. Our finger knows that blood can flow through it only if it flows properly throughout the entire body, and it knows that it must wither if it is separated from the rest of the organism. Likewise, if a person were to truly understand the workings of his body, he would realize that, in terms of his physical organization, he belongs to all of humanity; that influences constantly pass from one person to another; and that one cannot at all separate one’s physical health as an individual from the health of all humanity. People today will admit this when it comes to the more obvious effects, but not when it comes to the more subtle ones, because they cannot know the facts. Here in the Gospel of Luke, however, the text points to these more subtle effects. Read chapter 8, where it says:

“But when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for everyone was waiting for him.

And behold, a man named Jairus, who was a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his house;

for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, who was dying. But as he went, the crowd pressed in on him.

And a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years and had spent all her money on doctors, and no one had been able to heal her,

came up behind him and touched the tassel of his cloak,

and immediately her bleeding stopped” (Luke 8:40–44).

[ 29 ] So Jesus Christ is to heal Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter. How can she possibly be healed, since she is near death? This can only be understood if one knows how her physical illness is connected to another phenomenon in another person, and that she cannot be healed without addressing this other phenomenon. For when the girl, now twelve years old, was born, there was a certain connection to another personality that was deeply rooted in karma. That is why we are now told that a woman who had been suffering from a certain illness for twelve years pressed her way up behind Jesus the Christ and touched the hem of his garment. Why is this woman mentioned here? Because she was linked in her karma to this child of Jairus. This twelve-year-old girl and the woman who had been ill for twelve years are connected, and it is not without reason that this is presented to us as a numerical mystery. Then this woman, who had been ill for twelve years, approached Jesus, and she was healed—and only then could he enter the house of Jairus, and only then could the twelve-year-old girl, who had already been presumed dead, be healed.

[ 30 ] One must delve this deeply into things in order to grasp the karma that passes from one person to another. Then one can see how the third of the modes of action of Christ Jesus—that which affects the entire human organism—is revealed. It is particularly in light of this that one must consider the higher power of Christ, as it is shown to us in the Gospel of Luke.

[ 31 ] In this way, we are vividly shown how the Christ-Self acted upon all the other aspects of the human being. That is what matters. And the author of the Gospel of Luke, who focuses particularly in these passages on describing the healing effects, wanted to show how the healing effects of the “I” reveal to us the unfolding of the “I” at a high pinnacle of human evolution, and he shows how Christ had to work upon the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body of human beings. Luke has, as it were, set before us the great ideal of human evolution: Look to your future; today your “I,” as it has developed, is still weak; it still has little control. But it will gradually gain mastery over the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body, and will transform them. Before you stands the great ideal of Christ, who shows humanity how the “I” can exercise dominion over the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body.

[ 32 ] These are the kinds of truths that underlie the Gospels, and which could only have been written by those who relied not on external documents but on the testimony of those who were “seers” and “servants of the Word.” Little by little, humanity will first come to grasp what lies behind the Gospels. But then it will gradually internalize the essence of these religious texts with such intensity and strength that it can truly influence all other members of human society.