The Rudolf Steiner Archive

61. Preludes to the Mystery of Golgotha. The Fifth Gospel

[ 1 ] In the spiritual worlds, connections took place between the Spirit of Christ and the spiritual being who later incarnated in the body of the boy Jesus of Nathan.

[ 2 ] These unions took place three times: once during the Lemurian era and twice later during the Atlantean era. One cannot speak of “incarnations” or “embodiments.” These three connections were three soul-infusions of the Christ into the one who later incarnated on Earth as the Nathanic boy Jesus. These three soul-infusions took place in the spiritual realm.

[ 3 ] If this third union—in the spiritual realm of the Christ Spirit—with the soul being of the Nathanic Jesus child had not taken place, the human astral body would have fallen into complete chaos of thought, feeling, and will, and would have succumbed to madness. To prevent this from happening, this third sacrifice of the Christ was necessary; through it, harmonizing forces radiated forth.

[ 4 ] Thus, three sacrifices of the Christ Spirit took place in the spiritual worlds; the one just described was the third sacrifice offered by the Christ while still in the spiritual worlds. It was not until the fourth sacrifice that he accomplished it in the physical world.

[ 5 ] Symbolically, this union of Christ with the soul of the Nathanic boy Jesus has been depicted in the figure of Saint George or the Archangel Michael slaying the dragon. In Greek and Roman mythology, we find the same event depicted in Apollo, who acted upon the wild, dragon-like smoke swirling around the mountain, transforming it into the vapor of the Pythia.

[ 6 ] The Fifth Gospel can be derived from the Akashic Records. (The words of Christ Jesus himself tell us: “I am with you always.”)

[ 7 ] There are three distinct periods in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, ... From the age of 12 to about 17 ... He worked in the trade practiced in his biological father's home; that was carpentry.

[ 8 ] On his travels, he would sit down with the people in the evenings after his work was done and talk with them. The people loved him because he radiated a profound power of love that was so real they could feel it immediately. Even long after he had left them, it would sometimes happen that he would seem to walk right through the door, sit down among them, and be right there in their midst, as if he were physically with them. — This was the vision shared by all who had once sat with him and listened to his conversations.

[ 9 ] Only such profound emotional pain as he had endured can be transformed into such powerful forces of love. The first great pain that Jesus of Nazareth endured was that caused by the decline of Judaism. The second great pain he had to endure was that caused by the decline of paganism. He was approaching his 24th year when he came to the Gentiles.

[ 10 ] The pagan sacrificial altars had been abandoned by their priests. - When Jesus of Nazareth came to them, the people believed he had been sent as a new sacrificial priest who would restore their sacrificial cult. They had all gathered at the sacrificial site and expected him to perform the sacred rite. Instead, however, Jesus of Nazareth had a vision. He fell down at the pagan altar. And when the people saw this, they fled from there.

[ 11 ] Demonic forces were associated with these pagan sacrificial rites; all these demons had taken hold of the people. Jesus saw this as his body lay there: He saw the demons fleeing along with the people. This was now his second great sorrow—that he now knew: Even the pagan sacrificial rites are no longer suitable for humanity. He heard the inspiring voice of the great Bath-Kol. Translated into German, the words are these:

Amen
Evil reigns,
A sign of dissolving individuality,
Guilt of selfhood created by others,
Experienced in our daily bread,
In which Heaven’s will does not reign,
For there, humanity parted from Your kingdom
And forgot Your name,
You, our Fathers in Heaven.

[ 12 ] This cosmic “Our Father” was first given at the laying of the cornerstone. If one meditates on it and compares it with the “Our Father” that was later given to humanity by Christ Jesus ...

[ 13 ] The third great sorrow came when he realized that even the spiritual development offered at the Essene school was not possible for everyone. He spent a great deal of time with the Essenes, was welcomed into their order, and was familiar with their aspirations. (Many Essenes, after passing through the first three degrees, had attained certain connections with the spiritual worlds.) When, one day, he saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing from the Essene gates and rushing off toward the rest of humanity, he knew that while the life the Essenes led prevented Lucifer and Ahriman from gaining access to them, it was precisely this that drove them toward the rest of humanity.

[ 14 ] Shortly before the baptism of John, a significant conversation took place between Jesus of Nazareth and his stepmother or foster mother. Although this mother had initially understood Jesus of Nazareth very little, she had come to understand him better and better in recent times. In this meaningful conversation, he opened up about these three great sorrows—the sorrows of all humanity. His words penetrated the stepmother’s soul.

[ 15 ] Then something very strange happened: The real mother—that is, his biological mother, who had been dead for almost 18 years—now united with the stepmother. As a result, this stepmother, or foster mother, seemed rejuvenated; she walked around with the soul of the real mother of the Nathanite boy Jesus.

[ 16 ] During this conversation, however, the “I” of Zarathustra had now left the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. The Zarathustra “I” had truly departed with that conversation! The three bodies now walked down the path to the Jordan, where the baptism by John then took place. From the outside, one could not tell anything had changed; he looked just as he had before—the same noble face. Only, it was as if the wisdom of the entire world were now within him.

[ 17 ] On his way, he had three encounters. First, he met two Essenes, who asked him, “Where are you going?” - He replied that he could not really say, for the Zarathustra-self had, after all, stepped out. The words rang out from his mouth: “To where souls of your kind do not yet wish to look, where the pain of [humanity] can find the rays of the forgotten light.”

[ 18 ] They did not understand him. They realized that he did not know them. As the individuals he had once known through his “I,” he could not possibly know them, because his “I” had departed. — And they asked him, “Jesus of Nazareth, don’t you know us?”

[ 19 ] And once again a voice came from his mouth: “You are like lost lambs, (? But I was the Shepherd’s Son ?) from whom you ran away too soon ... (? It has been so long since you ran away from me ?). You bear the mark of the Tempter; he struck you after you fled from me. With his fire, he has made your wool gleam and shimmer... it stings my eyes.”

[ 20 ] They replied, “Didn’t we drive out the tempter? He has no hold on us anymore.”

[ 21 ] And he called back: “You certainly showed him the door, (? so he ran off to the other people because you drove him away?); he’s grinning at you from all sides... (? do you think you’ve become greater?); you haven’t become greater, but by humiliating others, you only appear greater to yourselves. —You’ve only diminished the other souls; that’s the only reason you appear greater.”

[ 22 ] Then, in a great vision, it appeared to them—as if on the far horizon—the great face of Jesus of Nazareth, like a mirage that filled the entire space, and from this magnified face came the words: “Your striving is in vain, for your hearts are empty (Pride in the shell, since humility appears deceptive?)”

[ 23 ] Then the vision vanished. By then, Jesus of Nazareth had left them. Only when they looked back did they see him, already a short distance down the road.

[ 24 ] From then on, the two Essenes spoke very little; they became increasingly taciturn; they spoke to no one about this experience; they kept silent about it.

[ 25 ] The second encounter was with a person who was in great despair. From the three forms of Jesus of Nazareth, the question rang out to him: “Where has your soul’s path led you? I saw you many millennia ago; you were different then.”

[ 26 ] And the desperate man replied: “I held high positions as a human being in this life; I rose from one office to the next on the human ladder of success, ever higher, and I said to myself, ‘What a gifted person you are,’ and I was proud of my abilities. ‘What a rare person I am, to have attained such high positions through these rare qualities and abilities of mine.’—Then a being came to me at night in a dream, and I felt a sense of shame come over me as the being approached me and posed this question to me; but it posed this question to me as if I were asking it of myself: “Who made you great?” > — that was the question. And the being itself answered: “I made you great, yet you belong to me.” (Today we would say: It was Lucifer who showed him that he had made him into this haughty human.)

[ 27 ] The Desperate One continued: “Now I have left my office; I told myself: I do not belong there. — Now I wander about, searching, and do not know what I am looking for.”

[ 28 ] There, standing between him and Jesus, was the being who had appeared to him in a dream that night, so that Jesus saw it as well. When the desperate man came to his senses again, the being vanished; but Jesus, too, had moved on down the path and was now visible to the desperate man only from a distance. The desperate man had no choice but to continue wandering.

[ 29 ] Now the third encounter took place that Jesus had on his descent to the Jordan—with a man afflicted with leprosy. To this leper, Jesus spoke these words: “Where has your soul led you? I saw you many millennia ago; you were different then.”

[ 30 ] The leper replied: “People have cast me out because I was stricken with leprosy; I wandered aimlessly through the world, feeding on the crumbs they threw to me. On my journey, I came to a forest at night; there I saw a glimmer of light emanating from a tree; captivated by this magical glow, I drew nearer; then something emerged from the tree, and a skeleton stood before me. And Death, who stood before me in the form of a skeleton, spoke to me: “I am you; I feed upon you”—and I was overcome by great fear. Then the skeleton said to me: “Why are you afraid? You once loved me.” … And I fell asleep beneath the tree, and when I awoke the next morning, I realized that from that moment on my leprosy had grown worse, and so I wander aimlessly through the world. - (? Did he—Ahriman—now transform himself into a beautiful archangel?) In today’s theosophical language, we would say: It was Ahriman who had appeared to him, ... because he had brought earthly, outer life—that is, death itself. - Thus far from the Fifth Gospel. ...

[ 31 ] When we consider how popes, cardinals, and others quarreled at the councils, we see that, on a conscious level, nothing was understood about Jesus Christ. Even in our own time, people are inclined to have a rather abstract mental image of Christianity; they are all too eager to picture the “Teacher of the World”—a great “Master Teacher.” The power of Christ was a real act; it penetrated deep into the hidden depths of the human soul.

[ 32 ] Let us consider just two examples to illustrate how Christ, for instance, was effective through His deeds: Anyone familiar with history knows how profoundly Constantine’s victory over Maxentius brought about changes—not only in the history of Europe, but also in that of the Americas. On October 28, 312, Constantine won a victory outside the gates of Rome over Maxentius, who was ruling Rome at the time.

[ 33 ] It was not military prowess that was decisive here, but rather that both had a dream that guided their actions: Maxentius consulted the Sibylline Books and also sought the oracle’s counsel, which delivered this prophecy: “If Maxentius marches out of Rome, he will defeat Rome’s greatest enemy.” (The “enemy of Rome” was none other than himself!) Had he remained in Rome, securely entrenched with his army of 100,000 men, he would have been invincible. Instead, he committed the greatest folly he could have committed by leaving Rome. - And so Constantine, with an army four times smaller—25,000 men—was able to defeat him.

[ 34 ] Constantine had had a dream: with the symbol of the cross, he would be victorious at the gates of Rome. And he had the symbol of the cross carried at the head of his army into battle and, despite his army being four times smaller, defeated Maxentius.

[ 35 ] It was not military strategy that proved decisive here, but the work of Christ. We find this same fact confirmed in French history, in the case of the girl from Orléans, the Maid of Orléans, who acted in accordance with her vision. By saving “her king” and securing victory for the French, she did something that completely changed the map of Europe.

[ 36 ] We are living in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch, in which we must come to understand what previously operated only in the subconscious depths of the soul.

[ 37 ] [I hope that—if we succeed in presenting this building to the souls of the present—much of what we wish to express will also find its way into the souls of the present through this building. It should be our aim to truly become, as it were, conscious within this building of the task we have for our spiritual movement. The fourth post-Atlantean epoch has brought forth two kinds of architecture: the Greek temple, which is essentially conceived as the dwelling place of the god, for the spirits of ... It is complete even without human beings; it exists to encompass the spiritual world. The Gothic building had a different purpose; its forms cannot be conceived without the believing congregation.

[ 38 ] The fifth post-Atlantic era called for a new form. However, we do not have at our disposal the resources that would be necessary to immediately create something comparable to the Greek temple or the Gothic cathedral, because working conditions were entirely different back then. Human labor has much greater value today than it did back then—in a certain sense—and it has indeed already cost many sacrifices to erect our building. Nevertheless, we can only make a first attempt at a design that is appropriate for what we want. May the (relatively) small sacrifices that are still necessary be added to the great ones already made!

[ 39 ] People who are not anthroposophists will initially misunderstand this building, but they may become accustomed to anthroposophical ideas all the more quickly once these are physically embodied in the building. Our building is not an enclosed structure like a cathedral; rather—although it is enclosed on all sides—it is intended to point toward the spiritual world through the nature of its forms, opening up in all directions.

[ 40 ] Neither the deity nor the congregation is confined within the building. But the columns and architraves will evoke this feeling in our congregation: Physically, we are limited; but this limitation is one that negates itself, beyond which we ascend into the spiritual world.

[ 41 ] My belief—which is more than mere faith—is that when we return in our next incarnation, we will encounter this building with its two domes and so on in many places throughout the world.

[ 42 ] (Dr. Steiner said that the year 2086 would be the one in which such things would be experienced.)]