The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] That individuality, which was embodied at the baptism of John in the body that had once housed the Zarathustra “I,” possessed—precisely because it was such a lofty individuality—a capacity for suffering and pain that was by no means lesser. On the contrary.

[ 2 ] This must be emphasized because many people believe that the being who incarnated at the baptism of John was a higher individuality and therefore suffered less. But that is not the case. Which individuality incarnated? The Zarathustra individuality left the three bodies, and then another individuality moved in. Only slowly and gradually can one rise to an understanding of the one who lived these three years on Earth. [This was a being who had never before been on Earth.] Zarathustra had once proclaimed that behind the physical sunlight stands Ahura-Mazdao, the spiritual light. We are not to imagine anything abstract here, but rather a real spiritual being, an individuality that has never incarnated before or since. A complete understanding is attained when one ascends to even higher levels than we have attempted to suggest. [For: To understand this, a person must first begin by understanding themselves.]

[ 3 ] A person must tell themselves: Gradually, I have developed from an imperfect being into what I am today. But gradually, I will become more and more perfect. There is something within me, like a seed, that is destined to emerge later. [Step by step, he has developed into the feeling, willing, and thinking being that he is today. But we also find hidden potentials within us—seeds that have not yet sprouted and that point to continued development in ages to come. The more a person develops in this way, the richer his knowledge of the world becomes, and the deeper his understanding of the mystery of life.]

[ 4 ] In this way, a person can compare his own being with that of the great world. What is he seeking from one incarnation to the next? I will find more and more insights and feelings about the world within my soul. Anyone who says they can find this in their soul—and that it is not out there—should simply say that they would be drinking water from a glass [in which] there is nothing. Whatever thoughts and feelings a person ultimately allows to rise within their soul must already be contained within it. Everything we will still find into the distant future must underlie the world. Spiritual content is within the world. What a person can ultimately find within himself was contained in the world from the very beginning.

[ 5 ] What does a person find outside?

1. The world of minerals operates according to the so-called lifeless laws of nature.
2. He finds plants and says he has the same thing within himself. 3. The same thing that is in animals, too.

[ 6 ] But he has something that the others do not have, and he must continually develop this further. An animal can rise to the level of sound, which is an expression of inner pain, but it cannot rise to the level of what configures our sound in such a way that it is a manifestation of the content of our thoughts. Through this, human beings can feel themselves to be the crown of earthly creation. And what brings forth this sound, they can designate as their “I.” In human beings, there is the word, interwoven and permeated by thought, which radiates, as it were, from the “I.” This word has therefore always been regarded as [gap in the transcript]. If human beings can look into a distant future, so that ever higher things can interweave their word [gap in the transcript].

[ 7 ] [If we look back to the most ancient times, we find the “I” spread throughout the world; and if we go back even further, we find the World Word as an expression of the World “I”—we find that the World Word sprang from the World “I.”]

[ 8 ] Just as the human body is the physical expression of the “I” that lives within it, so the universe is a physical expression of the World Word. Zarathustra called Ahura-Mazdao the World Word that lies behind the World Light. In Greek, this World Word was called the Logos, so Zarathustra pointed beyond the light to the World Word. And John the Baptist was called to recognize when this World Word was to manifest itself. He was to say when it would take on a physical form: Until now, the World Word has been poured out only throughout the entire expanse of the universe; now it has first taken hold of a soul.

[ 9 ] Thus we see that in the thirtieth year of life, the Zarathustra-self leaves the body, and that which lies at the foundation of our cosmos as spiritual substance takes its place.

[ 10 ] The one whom Christ appointed as his herald said: [Gap in the transcript.] In the beginning, the Word of the World was not in man, but was simply spread throughout the world; however, it was /Gap in the transcript.] In the very beginning, however, the Logos was not with a human being, but with God. And little by little, the Logos poured itself into humanity, very gradually. First, through the Logos becoming life—in what was originally the physical human body. Then came the time of the Luciferic influences. Had they not come, humanity would have been permeated by the Logos even in regard to the etheric body; as it was, only a part was permeated. The astral body, in astral light, would have become radiant within the human being had the Luciferic influences not come; as it was, it was darkened. The light did not shine in such a way that the human being could perceive it as radiant light. It shone into the darkness. It shone forth in full at the moment of John’s baptism: “And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Logos had entered a human body, and had taken upon Himself everything that human beings had made of themselves by descending ever deeper into matter. Thus He had taken all pain upon Himself. Through this, one can gradually gain an understanding of what happened at the baptism of John.

[ 11 ] But he was to experience not only what one experiences from incarnation to incarnation, but also what one feels in the human body through initiation. This was not written by the Evangelist John, for his task was to describe the Christ as He is perceived; it was the others—Matthew and Luke—who were to describe Him as He lives in the astral body.

[ 12 ] Matthew describes the Solomonic Jesus-child up to his twelfth year. Even though the Zarathustra “I” was later present in the other, the Nathanic Jesus-child, it had nevertheless developed within the first, awakening all the feelings within him; thus, what it had experienced in that body remained with him. Matthew described Christ-Jesus as a human being in particular. The one who was tasked specifically with describing the astral body was Luke. The seers Matthew and Luke described the human being Jesus—Matthew from the outside, Luke from the inside.

[ 13 ] The seers Mark and John had something else to write. Mark was to focus his gaze on the Logos as it permeates all things, on the Logos at the periphery, as it shines forth in Jesus of Nazareth; he therefore describes what took place after the baptism.

[ 14 ] John wanted to describe how this Logos became an inner essence when the “I” shone forth. [For John, Christ was above all the victor, the great conqueror, whom humanity looks up to as its ideal.]

[ 15 ] The evangelists Matthew and Luke describe the human aspect. Mark describes the human being with an outer aspect, permeated by the presence of Christ; John describes the inner Logos. Mark describes how he comes from the outside and becomes inner; John describes how he becomes flesh and pours himself out to the outside.

[ 16 ] Now we should describe how the human being who bore Christ within himself experienced not only the human aspect, the temporal aspect, but also the initiate, the eternal aspect — Mark.

[ 17 ] The others describe, like true seers, what must be overcome. John describes what the “I” means once it has been overcome—the highest perfection. In the times before Christ Jesus lived, one could experience initiation in two ways: the more Egyptian and [the more Persian—Mithras]. Egyptian: Developing inward toward the soul, turning away from the outer world and toward the inner. Everything that ebbs and flows in the astral body is Maya, and only when we descend to deeper levels do we reach the mental and spiritual realms.

[ 18 ] Let us imagine a soul that has been initiated in Egypt. It had to uncover all the evil that had become intertwined within this soul from one incarnation to the next. Today this is called the Tempter or the Little Guardian of the Threshold. It is the expression of the Luciferic entity within the soul: pride and falsehood. The human being had to free himself from it.

[ 19 ] A person can free himself only from that with which he stands face to face. He must examine all sources of pride and vanity within himself if he wishes to be free of them; he must experience every possibility of illusion and every possibility of lies. [At this stage, the temptation easily arises within him to believe that he has already found spiritual reality, that he already knows something, already possesses something. Here he encounters the little guardian of the threshold.] This is what the initiate in the Egyptian mysteries had to do: confront everything that the Luciferic beings have made of the soul. In the Greek Mysteries, this was called Diabolos.

[ 20 ] In the Persian initiation, which sought to lead the individual outward, the individual did not have to descend into himself, but rather to emerge from himself, to enter into ecstasy. There was another power to be seen: the one that prevents him from finding the spirit in the outer world, the one that deceives him into believing that the veil of the senses is the only reality. To believe that the physical is a reality is just as foolish as seeing the reflection in a mirror as the truth.

[ 21 ] But the Luciferic forces have led people to regard the veil of Maya—which has become opaque—as the truth. Zarathustra spoke of that second kind of force that prevents human beings from attaining the spirit: Ahriman, who was able to oppose them after the Luciferic powers had woven the veil. When a person enters a state of ecstasy, they bring with them the error that the outer world is not a veil. This is what the second guardian of the threshold protects them from: the belief in materiality appears before their eyes as a mirage. The great guardian is the one who urges them to distinguish this preconceived illusion from the true spiritual world.

[ 22 ] There are thus two stages to distinguish: Either a person must have the strength to resist and rush past, or they remain with the guardian of the threshold and cannot proceed further. That is why [there is] the possibility of remaining with vanity and lies, with the Diabolos. Whereas the external tempter, who presents the illusions, is designated as Satan. We encounter Satan as the tempter when we follow the path outward; Diabolos, when we follow the path inward. The great Guardian of the Threshold leads us beyond the temptations of Satan.

[ 23 ] In Christ Jesus, both initiations were to be united; therefore, he had to overcome both tempters.

[ 24 ] The seer Mark describes that tempter who paints illusory images—Satan—; and the writers of the human aspect of Christ Jesus had to depict how, through the descent into the soul, the other tempter came to the fore. If you read the scenes of the temptation in Matthew and Luke, you will see that they differ greatly from Mark’s account, and for good reason: Satan appears in the context of external initiation, while Diabolos appears in the context of internal initiation. It is no coincidence that they are described this way; rather, there is a sound basis for it. Consequently, the scene of the temptation is also depicted differently.

[ 25 ] “Turn these stones into bread,” it says in Luke and Matthew; and the tempter, the Diabolos, speaks of vanity: “All this I will give you, so that you may rule over it.” — This passage describes the person who selfishly wants to build a world for himself within his own mind and does not believe that one must penetrate the world that is spread out all around us.

[ 26 ] And Markus—the initiate who goes out into the outer world—what does he experience? In the outer world there are two realms of nature, the mineral and the plant, which have not been permeated by an astral body. It is only in the astral body and the “I” that the possibility of vanity and error lies—the possibility of falling. We can carry this into the outer world; so in what forms will our errors take shape? In animal forms, not in plants. The possibility of error regarding the outer world expresses itself in animal forms, which we must overcome. Only by seeing beside himself the angelic form of the great Guardian of the Threshold does a human being overcome the animal forms that he might otherwise take for truths of the spiritual world. This is why it is so beautifully expressed in Mark: “He was led into the wilderness, and he was with the animals, and the angels ministered to him”—that is to say, they led him upward.

[ 27 ] When two Gospels describe different things, we can show that they have good reason to say different things. The path inward, then, leads through the temptations and the little guardian of the threshold, who destroys self-delusion. The path of Mark leads outward.

[ 28 ] Thus, the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—do not describe what the ordinary person must go through on Earth, but rather what the initiate of every kind must endure.

[ 29 ] But the writer of the Gospel of John had to describe how Christ becomes the Victor, the one who is able to live in harmony with the life of the entire world. The ideal of the future is exemplified for us by Christ Jesus. Such an individuality does not live selfishly within, but in every being. Therefore, it can awaken within every being the powers to live in this way one day. — I am the light and the life. — He can therefore pour this light and life into another individual. In the raising of Lazarus, we have the description of that power whose life can flow into another individual. — His death will appear as life, for I am the life.

[ 30 ] Because he wanted to portray this powerful individuality, the author of the Gospel of John does not begin by describing the temptations, but rather the Overcomer. And he became the Victor at the cost of Christ Jesus making himself the Lamb of God, who desires to be nothing other than the expression of God, nothing other than that which can provide an opportunity for the Will of the World to act.

[ 31 ] In the same way, John the Baptist’s conviction is sparked by the realization of just how truly the one standing before him is the Lamb—ready for it.

[ 32 ] The theosophist can recognize the truths more and more independently of the Gospels, and they shine out at him from the Gospels. Therefore, one realizes that those who wrote the Gospels were seers. That is the result when we first discover the truths independently.