The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Self, the God Within, and the God of External Revelation

[ 1 ] Over the years, you will have gathered from the very spirit of our anthroposophical work that it is based not on seeking immediate sensationalism, but on calmly pursuing precisely those aspects of spiritual life whose understanding can be important to us in our own lives. It is not by constantly talking about what is, so to speak, “on everyone’s mind” that one serves the day spiritually, but rather by acquiring knowledge of the great interconnections of life. Fundamentally, our own individual lives are linked to the great events of existence, and we can only properly assess our own lives if we can measure them against the greatest phenomena of life. That is why, after having spent four years within our seven-year cycle in the German Section laying the foundation for our views and insights, we have endeavored in the last three years to deepen these fundamental views with regard to universal questions. And from what has also reached you in the lectures given during various cycles, you will have seen that these most recent reflections included those on the Gospels. Not only because the content of the Gospels is meant to be brought close to us, but also because, through our contemplation of them, we can learn what is true about human nature. Therefore, let us speak today about the Gospels, with various applications to personal human life.

[ 2 ] Secular scholarship is increasingly less likely to regard the Gospels as historical documents for understanding the greatest individual who has ever influenced human development: Jesus Christ. The attitude toward the Gospels in the early Christian centuries—and for a long time throughout the Middle Ages—was quite different from what it has become in more recent times. Today, the Gospels are indeed perceived as four contradictory documents, and it seems nothing could be more self-evident than to ask: How can four documents be historical records if they contradict one another as much as the four Gospels do, which seek to inform us of what happened in Palestine at the beginning of our era?

[ 3 ] Now, if human thought today were not so inclined to overlook the most important matters, one thing might still give it pause. One might say to oneself, for example: Actually, it doesn’t take much to realize that the four Gospels contradict each other in the sense that we understand it today. One might think that every child can see that. But one might counter: Today, the Gospels are, so to speak, in everyone’s hands; today, everyone engages with them. There was a time before the invention of the printing press when these Gospels were by no means in everyone’s hands, when they were read only by a few, and those few were precisely the ones at the forefront of intellectual life. The content was conveyed to the others in a way they could understand. One might ask: Were these few who stood at the pinnacle of intellectual life really so utterly foolish that they failed to see what every child can see today—that the Gospels contradict one another in the modern sense?

[ 4 ] If one were to explore this question, one would soon notice something else, namely, that people’s entire emotional world had a different relationship to the Gospels than it does today. Today, it is the critical intellect that has learned its entire way of thinking from external, sensory reality. It is this intellect that sets about analyzing the Gospels, and it certainly has no trouble finding intellectual contradictions, for they are, after all, child’s play to find.

[ 5 ] How, then, did those who stood at the forefront of spiritual life and took up the Gospels in centuries past come to terms with what we today call contradictions? These people of old developed an immense reverence—unimaginable to us today—for the great Christ event as described in the four Gospels, and, strangely enough, they felt that precisely because they had four Gospels, they ought to honor and cherish this event all the more. How is that possible? It stems from the fact that these ancient interpreters of the Gospels focused on something entirely different than today’s critics do. Today’s critics are no wiser than someone who, for my sake, takes a photograph of a bouquet of flowers from one side—thereby obtaining a certain photograph of the bouquet. Now he goes through the world with that photograph. People take note of what the photograph looks like and say to themselves: Now I have an accurate impression of the bouquet. Then someone comes along who photographs the bouquet from the other side. The picture turns out completely different. He, in turn, shows people the picture of the same bouquet. They say: That can’t be a picture of the bouquet; the pictures contradict each other. - And if the bouquet is photographed from four sides, the four pictures do not resemble one another at all; yet they are four photographs of the same thing. This is how the early commentators on the four Gospels felt. They told themselves: The four Gospels are accounts of the one event recorded from four different perspectives, and because this is the case, they give us a complete picture precisely because they do not resemble one another; and only when we are able to form a comprehensive view from all four sides do we gain a complete understanding of the event in Palestine. - And so these people have told themselves: We must look up with all the more humility when we see the event in Palestine depicted from four perspectives, for this event is so great that it cannot be understood if it is described from only one perspective. We must be grateful that we have four Gospels that describe the great event from four perspectives. We need only understand how these four different perspectives came about, and then, once we are convinced of this, we can also form our own view of what each individual can gain from the four Gospels.

[ 6 ] What we call the Christ Event is, after all, a momentous occurrence in the spiritual development of humanity. How, then, can we situate what took place in Palestine at that time within the context of humanity’s entire development? We can situate it by saying: Everything that humanity had previously gone through spiritually and experienced spiritually—all of that flowed into and converged in the event in Palestine, only to continue flowing onward as a single stream.

[ 7 ] To name just a few: the ancient Hebrew teachings, as recorded for us in the Old Testament. This is one contribution. It flowed in when the events in Palestine took place. Then there was another current that originated with Zarathustra. It flowed into what then continued to flow through the world as Christianity, like a main current.

[ 8 ] And then there is what we might call the Eastern spiritual tradition, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha. That, too, flowed into the one great main current, and then continued to flow together with it. All of these individual traditions are present within Christianity today.

[ 9 ] It does not show you what Buddhism is today; it merely rehashes the teachings that Buddha gave six hundred years before our era. These teachings have been incorporated into Christianity. It does not show you what Zoroastrianism really is—it takes the ancient Persian documents and, based on them, attempts to reveal the essence of Zoroastrianism today; for the one who taught in ancient Persia what is found in the ancient Persian documents has evolved further and has contributed to the spiritual life of humanity, and we must also seek Zoroastrianism within the Christian tradition.

[ 10 ] Now, in order to get a clear picture of the actual facts, let us ask ourselves: How did these three specific traditions—Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and the ancient Hebrew tradition—influence Christianity?

[ 11 ] If we wish to understand how Zoroastrianism came to be, we must remember that the individual we refer to as Zoroaster was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, who first taught among the so-called Proto-Persian people and who was then incarnated time and time again. After rising higher and higher through each incarnation, he appeared approximately six hundred years before our era as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the ancient Chaldean-Babylonian cultural sphere. There he was reincarnated; there he was the teacher of Pythagoras, who went to Chaldea to perfect himself in the appropriate manner. Then this Zarathustra, who had appeared six hundred years before our era under the name Zarathos or Nazarathos, was reborn at the beginning of our era—reborn in such a way that he appeared in a body born of the parents named Joseph and Mary, as described to us in the Gospel of Matthew. We designate this child of Joseph and Mary—the so-called Bethlehemite parents—as one of the two infant Jesuses who were born at that time, at the beginning of our era. In doing so, we have transplanted into ancient Palestine precisely that individuality who was the bearer of Zoroastrianism, a significant spiritual current.

[ 12 ] But it was not only this spiritual current that was to be revived so that it could continue to flow in a new form within Christianity; other spiritual currents were to be revived as well. For this to happen, various factors had to come together at that time. For example, it was also necessary that Zarathustra be born into a body whose physical constitution offered the prospect that, in that very incarnation, Zarathustra could develop the abilities he possessed precisely because he had ascended so high from incarnation to incarnation. For we must certainly acknowledge: If an individuality, no matter how exalted, were to descend and find an unsuitable body—which could indeed happen if that individuality were unable to find a suitable body at all—it would simply be unable to fully express the spiritual and soul capacities it possesses, because the tools for doing so would not be present. One must have a brain of a certain nature if one wishes to fully express such capacities as Zarathustra possessed; that is to say, one must be born into a body that, inherited from one’s ancestors, possesses those qualities that make it a suitable instrument for these abilities. It was therefore necessary not only to ensure that the boy Jesus, as described in the Gospel of Matthew, possessed such a highly spiritual and soul organization that he could exert the powerful influence that had to be exerted, but also that this soul could be born into a perfect physical organization that had been inherited. This Zarathustra had to find the suitable physical brain.

[ 13 ] What was developed there as a perfectly suitable physical organization is the contribution that the ancient Hebrew people were to make to Christianity. From this, a suitable body was to be created through purely physical heredity, equipped with the most perfect external physical tools conceivable. To this end, preparations had to be made far back through the generations so that the right characteristics could be passed down to the body that was born at the beginning of our era.

[ 14 ] Now let us try to form a picture of how this life has flowed into the great mainstream of our present spiritual life. That is to say, just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra within Christianity, let us now ask about the mission of the ancient Hebrew people for the overall culture of our Earth. It must be said that, the further it advances, spiritual scientific research increasingly tends to give more credence to the Bible than to what we have today in terms of external cultural history. What is being unearthed actually seems quite childish compared to what is written in the Bible—which one need only read correctly to understand. In the light of genuine spiritual research, this is the more accurate view. Thus, it is also true, among other things, that in a certain sense, later Judaism descends from a progenitor named Abraham or Abram. There is something entirely true behind this: that as we trace the generations back, we arrive at a progenitor who was endowed with very special abilities from the spiritual world. What were these abilities? If we want to understand what very special abilities were bestowed upon him, then we must recall a few things we have already mentioned here.

[ 15 ] If we go back to earlier times, we find that people possessed different soul faculties—faculties that, compared to those of today, we might describe as a kind of dull clairvoyance. Although people were not able to look out into the world in such a self-assured, rational way as people do today, they did possess the ability to still perceive the spiritual that exists in the environment—the spiritual phenomena, facts, and beings. However, because this seeing took place within a subdued state of consciousness, it was more like a living dream—one that nevertheless had a living connection to reality. This ancient clairvoyance was destined to grow weaker and weaker so that people could train themselves in our present-day external perception and our present-day culture of the intellect.

[ 16 ] The entire evolution of humanity is a kind of education. Individual abilities are acquired gradually. Today’s way of seeing—in which, for example, when we look at a flower in normal consciousness, we do not see the astral body writhing around the flower — whereas the ancient observer saw the flower and the astral body surrounding it — this modern way of seeing, which perceives objects with sharp, intellectual contours, had to be instilled in humanity through the disappearance of clairvoyance. There is a very specific law at work here in spiritual development. Everything that is instilled in humanity must always take its starting point from an individual. Abilities that are then to become the abilities of a large number of people must, so to speak, begin first with a single person. The abilities that relate specifically to reasoning—which has turned away from clairvoyance—and to judging the world according to measure, number, and weight; these abilities, which are directed precisely toward not looking into the spiritual world but rather toward combining sensory phenomena—they were first implanted from the spiritual world into that individual known as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen to be the first to develop those abilities that are, in the most eminent sense, linked to the instrument of the physical brain. It is no coincidence that Abraham is called the inventor of arithmetic—that is, the ability to assess and combine the world according to measure and number. He was, so to speak, the first among those from whose soul faculties the old, dim clairvoyance had been eradicated and whose brain had been prepared in such a way that precisely the ability that makes use of the brain comes most fully to the fore. This was a significant, powerful mission that had been entrusted specifically to Abraham.

[ 17 ] Now, this ability—which was implanted in Abraham from the spiritual world, as must be the case with every predisposition—was bound to become more and more perfect. You can easily imagine that everything that occurs in the world must develop. Thus, this ability to perceive the world through the physical brain also had to develop gradually from an innate disposition. The development of this ability took place over the course of subsequent generations, as what was given to Abraham was passed down to the following generations through the ages. But something different had to happen than what had occurred in the past when a mission was passed on from the older generation to the younger. For the other missions were not yet bound to a physical instrument. The greatest missions, in particular, were not bound to a physical brain. Take Zarathustra, for example. What he had given his disciples was a higher clairvoyant perception than that possessed by other people. This was not bound to a physical instrument; it was transmitted from teacher to student. The student became a teacher in turn, passed it on to the next student, and so on. Now, however, we are not dealing with a teaching, with a mode of clairvoyant perception, but with something that was bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Such a thing can only be carried over into later times if it is physically inherited. Therefore, the mission given to Abraham was contingent upon its being physically inherited from one generation to the next; that is, this perfect organization of the physical brain had to be passed down from Abraham to his descendants, generation after generation. Because his mission consisted precisely in making the physical brain more and more perfect, it also had to become ever more perfect from generation to generation.

[ 18 ] Thus, the mission of Abraham was something tied to procreation, in order to become ever more perfect in the course of physical evolution. Now, there was something else connected to this contribution that the ancient Hebrew civilization was to make. And we will understand this other aspect when we consider the following.

[ 19 ] If we consider the people of other cultures with their ancient, twilight-like clairvoyance, we might ask: How did they receive what was most important to them, what they revered most highly in the world? They received it in such a way that it shone forth as inspiration from deep within themselves. There was no need to conduct research as we do today. Today, people acquire scientific knowledge by investigating the external world, by experimenting, and by deriving their laws from the combined external facts. Thus, the ancient person did not learn what he was meant to know; rather, it flashed up within him as an inspiration. He received it within himself; his soul had to give birth to it within him. He had to turn his gaze away from the external world if he was to allow the highest truths to dawn upon him as inspirations.

[ 20 ] This was now to change among the people who derived their mission from Abraham. Abraham was to bring to humanity precisely that which is gained through external observations and through reasoning. Thus, when a member of other cultures—those based on ancient clairvoyance—looked up to the Highest, he would say to himself: I am grateful to the God who reveals Himself to me within. I turn my gaze away from the outside, and the deity becomes most present to me when, without directing my gaze outward, I allow the inspirations of this deity to shine within me. - But the people descended from Abraham should say: I will forgo the inspirations that come merely from within; I will prepare myself to direct my gaze toward the outside world. I will observe what reveals itself there in the air and water, in the mountains and fields, in the starry realms; there I will send my gaze upward, and then I will be able to reflect on how one thing relates to another. I want to combine the things outside with one another and see that I gain an overarching thought. And when I condense what I observe in the external world into a single thought, then I want to call that which the external world tells me Yahweh or Jehovah. I want to receive the Supreme through a revelation that speaks through the external world.

[ 21 ] That was the mission of the Abrahamic people: to give humanity what came as a revelation from outside, in contrast to what the other peoples had to offer. Therefore, this instrument of spiritual life had to be passed down in such a way that its structure corresponded to the revelations from outside, just as the inner faculties of the soul had previously corresponded to the revelations from within.

[ 22 ] Now let us ask ourselves: What came about when the ancient Hellenes devoted themselves to the revelations from within? They turned their gaze away from the outside world, for what was revealed in the external world could tell them nothing about the spiritual world. They had turned their gaze away even from the sun and the stars, for they listened only to their inner selves; and there the great inspiration concerning the mysteries of the world was revealed; there arose insights into how the structure of the universe is built. And what they knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the stellar world, about the spiritual worlds—these members of the ancient cultures did not attain this through external observation. They knew something about Mars, Saturn, and so on because the natures of these stars revealed themselves within. Thus, the laws of the universe—which are, so to speak, written in the stars—were at the same time inscribed within the innermost depths of the human soul. There they revealed themselves through inspiration. Just as the laws of the world that govern the host of stars had revealed themselves in the soul, so too were the laws governing the world—which were to be gained through external revelation—now to reveal themselves to the Abrahamic people through external combination. To this end, heredity had to be guided in such a way that the brain acquired those qualities through which it could perceive the correct combination out there. This wondrous regularity was implanted in the predispositions handed down to Abraham—predispositions that had developed over generations in such a way that their formation corresponded to the great laws of the world. The brain had to be inherited in such a way that the brain’s inner capacities and its configuration would develop in the same manner as the numerical laws of the stars up there in the universe. Therefore, Yahweh says to Abraham: “You will see generations descending from you, arranged in their order according to the number of the stars in the heavens. Just as the stars in the heavens are arranged in harmonious numerical ratios, so shall the generations be arranged according to harmonious numerical laws.” That is to say, these generations should carry within themselves laws such as the laws of the stars in the heavens.

[ 23 ] There we have twelve constellations. A reflection of this was to appear in the twelve tribes, as they descended from Abraham, so that the corresponding abilities—which had been implanted in Abraham as a predisposition—would be passed down through the generations. Thus, a reflection of the number and measure in the heavens was to be created within the entire organic structure of the people as they evolved from age to age. However, one Bible translation rendered this to say, “Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth the passage must read: Your descendants shall be arranged in a regular bloodline so that their arrangement is a reflection of the laws of the stars in the sky. Oh, the Bible is profound! But what is presented today as the Bible is colored by the modern worldview. It says, “Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth it says: Everything in your lineage shall be so orderly that, for example, twelve tribes shall follow one another, corresponding to the twelve constellations in the sky.

[ 24 ] And so the individual characteristics should also manifest in such a way that it was always made clear that the mission of the Abrahamic people consisted in this: I receive—as a gift from outside, not as something that springs up from within—what my mission is. What I am actually meant to bring to the world is given to me from outside. —This is beautifully illustrated in the Bible: Abraham’s mission is precisely to be something given to him from the outside, in contrast to earlier revelations, which were given from within. What is Abraham’s mission to be? Abraham’s mission is to deliver that which flows through the blood all the way to Christ Jesus. Into this, the entire spirituality of a certain current is to be poured. This is to appear as if it came from outside, as if it were a gift from outside. Abraham is to give the ancient Hebrew people to the world. That is his mission.

[ 25 ] But for this to correspond to the very nature of his mission, this people itself—which is, after all, his mission—must be a gift from outside; it must be given to him as a gift from outside. Abraham had a son, Isaac. He was to sacrifice him, as the Bible recounts. And when he arrived to sacrifice him, this son was once again given to him as a gift by Yahweh. What, then, was given to him? The entire people descends from Isaac. If Isaac had been sacrificed, there would have been no Hebrew people. The entire people was thus given to him as a gift. This nature of the gift is expressed in a wonderful way in the sacrifice of Isaac. The people themselves are Abraham’s mission, and with Isaac, he receives this entire Hebrew people as a gift from Yahweh.

[ 26 ] The descriptions in the Bible are that profound, and in every detail they correspond in a grand and powerful way to the inner character of humanity’s ongoing development. This ancient Hebrew people had to gradually abandon what other cultures had embraced; they had to abandon the ancient art of clairvoyance. This ancient clairvoyance was linked to abilities that came from the spiritual world. These clairvoyant abilities were designated, depending on their nature, by using terms derived from constellations. The final ability that was surrendered in exchange for the ancient Hebrew people being given to Abraham is the one linked to the constellation of Aries. That is why a ram was sacrificed instead of Isaac. This is the outward expression of the fact that the final clairvoyant ability was sacrificed so that the ancient Hebrew people might be given to Abraham. Thus, this people was chosen to develop precisely those qualities that were directed toward the observation of the external world. But in everything, atavistic remnants of the past emerge. Hence, time and again, the ancient Hebrew people were compelled to eliminate whatever was not purely in the blood—that which was necessary for the transmission of these outwardly directed abilities—and which still recalled ancient clairvoyance. Whatever came as an inheritance from other peoples always had to be eliminated.

[ 27 ] We are now touching on a subject that is quite difficult to describe today, because it contains a truth that is as far removed from contemporary thinking as possible; but it is, after all, a truth, and one may reasonably expect that those who have been working with us in our branches for a long time are capable of accepting even such truths as these, which lie somewhat beyond the bounds of today’s conventional thinking.

[ 28 ] We must be clear that, for certain classes of people in ancient times, old abilities were preserved well into later periods, particularly with regard to knowledge. Clairvoyant abilities were present in the soul. Human beings were closely connected to spiritual beings. These beings manifested themselves within them. However, in certain individuals—who, so to speak, represented the remnants of those ancient times—this connection to the spiritual outer world manifested in a lower form. While those who were truly clairvoyant were more closely connected to the entire universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, those who were in a state of decline—who, in their decadence, developed this ancient connection with their surroundings—were lower types of human beings. They lacked independence; their sense of self would not emerge, yet their old clairvoyant abilities were no longer at the appropriate level. Such people have always existed, and in them the kinship of certain physical organs with the ancient clairvoyant organs became apparent. And now comes the truth, which will sound so strange. What one might call ancient clairvoyance—this inner illumination of the world’s mysteries—had to enter the soul in some way. We must imagine that inflows occurred within human beings. The ancient human being did not perceive these inflows, but once the inflows had occurred and illuminated him from within, he perceived them as his ancient inspirations. Certain currents thus flowed into human beings from their surroundings; these currents were later transformed within them.

[ 29 ] In ancient times, these currents were purely spiritual; for a clairvoyant, for example, they were perceptible as purely astral-etheric currents. But later, these purely spiritual currents dried up, so to speak, and condensed into etheric-physical currents. And what emerged from this? Hair emerged from this. Hair is the result of the ancient inflows. What is now hair on the human body used to be spiritual inflows into the human being from the outside to the inside. Dried-up astral-etheric currents are our hair today. And such things are, in fact, preserved only where the ancient truths have remained purely outwardly, in accordance with the scriptures, through tradition. In Hebrew, therefore, the word for “hair” and the word for “light” are denoted by roughly the same characters, because people were aware of the kinship between the astral light flowing in and hair; indeed, in ancient Hebrew literature, the greatest truths are contained in the texts themselves, purely in the words themselves.

[ 30 ] So one could say, then, that humanity is undergoing a process of further development. As for those people whose ancient abilities were in decline, what happened was that while the inflows of energy were transformed—or, so to speak, dried up—no new abilities developed to replace them. They were connected to the new in the old way and yet, at the same time, not connected, because the inflows had dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who continued to evolve were less hairy, because new abilities emerged to replace those abilities that later condensed into hair.

[ 31 ] It will be a long time before science arrives at these significant truths again. They are found in the Bible. The Bible is far more learned than our modern science, which is still at the childish level of a beginner. Read the story of Jacob and Esau! Jacob is the one who has progressed a step further, who had developed the capacity of the end times. Esau has remained at an earlier stage; he is, so to speak, the “dumbbell” compared to Jacob. When the sons were presented to their father Isaac, their mother disguised Jacob with a false beard so that Isaac would mistake the younger son for Esau. This is meant to show us that the ancient Hebrew people still carried within them something inherited from other cultures, and that had to be cast off. Esau is cast out. Through Jacob, that which was to live on as the outer combination is perpetuated.

[ 32 ] And just as that which had been preserved, so to speak, in a somewhat primitive form had been cast out in Esau, so, too, the ancient clairvoyant abilities had manifested themselves as an atavistic inheritance in Joseph, who was then cast out by his brothers and sent to Egypt. He has dreams; he can interpret the world through them. This is the ability that was not meant to develop within the mission of the Abrahamic people. Therefore, he is cast out and must go over to the land of Egypt.

[ 33 ] Thus we see how a current developed among the ancient Hebrew people that is based on blood kinship across generations, and from which that which remains as an ancient legacy is gradually cast aside. This is the capacity inherent in the ancient Hebrew people: that what is passed down through the generations is to become an ever more perfect instrument, so that from this the body might develop that can serve as the vessel for the one who has been reincarnated there. If the ancient Hebrew people could not receive the revelations from within, they had to receive them from without. Even what other peoples had attained through direct inspiration, the ancient Hebrew people had to receive through a revelation from outside. This means that the Jews had to go over to a people—led by Joseph—who possessed the ancient inspiration. And there, as Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian mysteries, they acquired through external mediation what they needed to know about the characteristics of the spiritual worlds. They even received the moral law from outside, not as something that dawned upon them from within. That was the mission of the ancient Hebrew people. Then—after they had assimilated what they had to assimilate from outside—they returned to their Palestine with this as a revelation attained from outside.

[ 34 ] And now—after this ancient Hebrew people had gone through all of this—it was to be shown how they developed from generation to generation in such a way that, ultimately, this body, which became the body of Jesus, could be born from among this people, so that this ancient Hebrew current might flow into Christianity.

[ 35 ] Do you remember how we discussed the development of a person’s innate abilities? The life of an individual is divided into periods of seven years each. The first period, from birth through the change of teeth and into the seventh year, is when the physical body simply builds its forms. Then comes the second seven-year period, lasting until sexual maturity, during which the etheric body works to ensure that the forms grow and become larger. The forms are determined by the seventh year; after that, only the forms that have already been determined continue to grow. Again, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year of life, it is primarily the astral body that is predominant. And so we see how it is not until the twenty-first year that the human being’s true “I” is born and becomes independent. Thus we see how, in certain periods, the life of the individual unfolds until the birth of the human “I.”

[ 36 ] Thus, the predispositions also had to develop gradually within the people, who, precisely as a people, were to provide a body for the most perfect Self. Therefore, it had to develop in such a way that what occurs over the course of years in an individual occurs here from generation to generation. Each successive generation must have a more developed predisposition than the previous one. Everything cannot unfold all at once within a single generation. To explore the occult reasons why this is so would take us too far afield. However, we can recall a very common phenomenon. Remember that heredity works in such a way that certain traits are not passed down directly, but skip a generation, so that it is the grandson who resembles his grandfather in those inherited traits. So it has also been with the inheritance of characteristics in the successive generations of the Hebrew people. There always had to be one generation skipped. What corresponds to a single period of life in an individual human being corresponds to two such periods in the successive generations. So that we can say: This people, like a great individual, had to develop from generation to generation in such a way that the first phase corresponds to what occurs in an individual human being from birth until the change of teeth—twice seven generations, fourteen generations. Then a second period had to follow, comprising again twice seven generations; this corresponds to the period between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. Then a third period, again comprising twice seven generations, corresponding to the period between the fourteenth and twenty-first years of life, when the astral body becomes particularly prominent. Then the “I” can be born. The “I” was able to be born into the ancient Hebrew people when three times two times seven—that is, three times fourteen generations—had elapsed.

[ 37 ] The one who sought to describe for us the body given as an instrument to Zarathustra had to show how, over the course of three times two times seven generations, the predisposition given to Abraham developed so that, after three times fourteen generations had passed, the “I” could be born into it; just as, in the individual human being, after three times seven years, the “I” is born into its threefold physicality. This is what the author of the Gospel of Matthew does. He describes three times fourteen generations: the generations from Abraham to David, the generations from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and those from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus. There, drawing from the depths of insight, we have pointed out in the Gospel of Matthew the mission of the ancient Hebrew people—how, little by little, the forces were developed that made it possible for the perfect “I,” which Zarathustra had attained, to be born into the body of this people.

[ 38 ] And when we now consider the fate of this ancient Hebrew people, we find that the captivity befell the entire people at the very time when, for the individual, the preparation for true life begins after the age of fourteen—the time when what can later be realized in life begins to sprout, and what is absorbed between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one: the hopes of youth; that this captivity was the time when, so to speak, the astral body of the ancient Hebrew people came into play, when what had been implanted through the last fourteen generations—that which gives it its impulse—began to take effect. Thus, the ancient Hebrew people were led into the Babylonian captivity, where, precisely at that time—six hundred years before our era—Zarathos or Nazarathos, in his incarnation at that time, was the teacher in the secret schools of the Babylonians. And there, in these mystery schools, the most outstanding leaders of the ancient Hebrew people came into contact with the great teacher of antiquity, Zarathos. There he became their teacher; there he united with them; there they received the great impulse that worked in such a way that, over the course of the last fourteen generations, this people was prepared for the birth of Jesus.

[ 39 ] Then events unfolded as you know them. And then we see something remarkable: we see that the author of the Gospel of Matthew observed a spiritual law that will increasingly be recognized as a significant law for all life. This is the law that what has happened before is repeated at a higher level. Modern science already has a somewhat distorted version of this, stating that what has occurred over longer periods at lower levels of the species is briefly repeated in the individual organism. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew demonstrates this to us in a magnificent way. He shows it to us by telling us: The “I” of Zarathustra was to be incarnated in a body that had been gradually formed within the Abrahamic people. Abraham set out from Ur in Chaldea, the place from which Babylonian culture originated, and made his way through the Near East to Palestine. His descendants were led further south through the dreams of Joseph, to Egypt, and, after receiving the Egyptian impulse there, back to Canaan.

[ 40 ] This is the destiny of the entire people. First, the entire people are led through Canaan, across to Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. Now, what unfolded there as the destiny of the people will be briefly recounted. Where the “I” is born—for which the vessel is thus prepared after everything that was laid down in Abraham had taken shape—there this “I” takes its starting point once again from Chaldea. In Chaldea, Zarathustra had been the secret teacher in his last incarnation; his spirit was connected to Chaldea.

[ 41 ] What path does the soul of Zarathustra take when it seeks to incarnate in Bethlehem? Zarathustra had remained connected to those who were initiated into the Chaldean mystery schools—the Magi. They remembered very well how they had heard from their teacher that he would reappear, that this soul—which had always been known as Zarathustra, the golden star—was to set out for Bethlehem at a specific moment in time. And when that moment came, they followed the path that this soul took, retracing the path of the ancient Hebrew people. Just as Abraham had traveled the road to Canaan, so too did the Star—that is, the soul of Zarathustra—travel this road to Canaan. And the three Magi followed the Star Zarathustra, and he led them to the very place where he was born into the body that had been destined for him from among the Abrahamic people. First, Zarathustra—the “I” of Zarathustra—had been led along the path, retracing in spirit the journey Abraham had taken all the way to Palestine. Then the ancient Hebrew people had to seek the path across to Egypt. They were guided across by the dreams of the elder Joseph. Now the “I” that had been born into the body of the infant Jesus of Bethlehem was guided across to Egypt—again through the dreams of another Joseph—following the very same path along which the Abrahamic people had been driven by the dreams of the elder Joseph. Repeating this in spirit, this “I” of Zarathustra relives the entire destiny of the ancient Hebrew people within the body of Jesus. There it journeys to Egypt and then back again to Palestine. Here we have the repetition in spirit experienced by the soul of Zarathustra, and this is a reflection of the destiny of the ancient Hebrew people.

[ 42 ] We have faithfully described this in the Gospel of Matthew, based on our understanding of the Law that what appears at a higher level is, in short, a repetition of what existed before. Oh, these Gospels profoundly describe the event that marks the beginning of our calendar. It is so great that four writers said to themselves: Each of us can describe this great event only from our own point of view. Each of these four described the one event according to his own limited abilities. Just as when we depict a being from four sides, we always obtain only one image, and by holding together the contradictory images we recognize the whole being, so the writer of the Gospel of Matthew described what he knew about the law of three equals two times seven, about the preparation of the body for the great I of Jesus of Nazareth through the mission of the ancient Hebrew people, in accordance with these mysteries, which were made known to him specifically through his initiation.

[ 43 ] The author of the Gospel of Luke wrote based on the initiation that was specifically known to him, and through it he described how the Buddhist current flowed into Christianity in a different way, so that it might continue to flow within it. And the other evangelists wrote from different initiatory perspectives. The event they described is so great that we must be grateful to find it described from four different perspectives—from the perspectives of four initiates.

[ 44 ] We should mention just a few aspects of the spirit in which Christianity arose, in order to show how our understanding of the world and of humanity grows when we learn to trace the greatest event in human history. We should merely awaken a sense of how profoundly this event is to be taken, and how profound the Gospels are, if we truly understand how to read them.